UK

Microsoft has hired former prime minister Rishi Sunak, but the role comes with one condition. Mr Sunak has joined the American tech giant as a part-time senior adviser. In the role, he will give company leaders “high-level strategic perspectives on macro-economic and geopolitical trends and how they intersect with innovation, regulation and digital transformation”. He will also speak at events.However, Sunak has been told he must not lobby the government on the firm’s behalf.He will also not be advising on UK policy matters, according to an Acoba (Advisory Committee on Business Appointments) report, and will donate his salary to his and his wife Akshata Murty’s numeracy skills charity The Richmond Project.Mr Sunak was prime minister between October 2022 and July 2024.Former prime minister Rishi Sunak with Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 2023 More

Artificial intelligence (AI) will pain a “whole swathe” of the UK economy before ultimately providing a net benefit, the chief technology officer of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said.The greatest under-appreciated AI-driven cyber threat on the horizon is models learning to find weak spots in digital spheres, Ollie Whitehouse added.Companies that cannot effectively use AI for cyber defence will “feel the brunt” of models revealing these vulnerabilities – and this will be “quite a painful correction”, he said at a cyber security start-up event at the National Theatre, central London, on Thursday.Meanwhile, the UK’s AI Security Institute (AISI) is focusing on the danger of advance AI creating “chemical and biological threats, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems that cause real widespread harm”, attendees heard.The CTO at NCSC, the UK’s cyber security authority, was asked on a panel for the “most under-appreciated AI-driven cyber threat on the horizon that we’re not preparing for today”.Mr Whitehouse told the event hosted by Harmonic Security: “It is the one where AI gets very effective at surfacing what our vulnerability truly is, and us simply not having the capacity to be able to triage and respond to that.“At the moment, there is… this beauty in us not knowing the true extent of that and being able to quantify it – that is going to rapidly change.“And then when we do know the true level of our vulnerability across digital states, across software, we are going to be left with some really hard decisions.”This threatens “good corporate governance, future profits and other wellbeing in the UK”, he said.NCSC staff are “AI optimists”, he told the room, “but I think the journey between where we are today and that sunny upland is going to be rocky and uneven.“There is definitely going to be the risk of the haves who are able to employ AI for effective cyber defence, but there’s going to be a whole swathe of the economy who are unable to, and are going to feel the brunt and the implications of that in quite a painful correction.“But we will net out in a far better situation”.Ben Dewar-Powell, the recently-appointed chief information security officer (CISO) at AISI, said: “At the institute we’re focused on the most serious emerging risks from advanced AI, so things like chemical and biological threats, cyber capabilities and autonomous systems that cause real widespread harm.”Last year the institute found that models can produce expert-level knowledge about biology and chemistry, with some providing answers equivalent to PhD-level experts. These could be used for positive or harmful purposes, it said.AISI, which is part of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, prioritises what “could cause severe damage”, what is “uniquely enabled by cutting-edge AI capabilities”, and “where Government-backed research actually adds value that others can’t provide”, Mr Dewar-Powell said.“My take on the cyber piece is it’s really the automation of the entire kill chain, so not just bits and pieces at every stage running at pace.“So campaigns that have taken weeks can take hours running parallel, and completely change the economics.”A cyber kill chain outlines the stages an attacker must successfully complete to achieve an operation goal.The comments came after Alastair Paterson, chief executive and co-founder of Harmonic Security, said the UK “cannot afford to rely on other nations for the technologies that protect our infrastructure… our technology, our economy, really our way of life, but we are right now”.A raft of businesses have been hit by major cyber attacks in recent months, including British car maker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), high street retailer Marks and Spencer and nursery group Kido Schools.Mr Paterson referenced JLR and said the attack cost taxpayers £1.5 billion in a loan guarantee.“Pretty much every week or every month we see the headlines here that just underline how important this sector is”, he said.However Britain is being “outpaced and out-competed all the time” by other nations, notably Israel, he said.“Israel has this incredible ecosystem that really turns their (cyber start-up) founders into serial winners, right? They go back, they help each other out again and again. And they built an incredible technology sector there, specifically around cyber security.”He added: “At the same time, the geopolitical environment around the UK is shifting pretty fast right now… you’ve got, obviously, the rise of China; you’ve got a really belligerent Russia that is expansionist right now (and) have their shadow war going on; and then unfortunately the US is more inward-looking than it’s been before as well.” More

Britain’s former national security adviser has become the latest senior civil servant to raise questions about Sir Keir Starmer’s explanation for the collapse of a case against two alleged Chinese spies. Lord Sedwill, who held the post between 2017 and 2020 and has also served as cabinet secretary, said he found the prime minister’s position “very hard to understand”. He said “of course China is a national security threat to the UK”, directly, digitally, through espionage and through the country’s “aggressive” behaviour in the South China Sea. “I’m genuinely puzzled, to put it politely, about the basis on which this trial has fallen apart. We introduced the National Security Act because the Official Secrets Act was not fit for purpose,” he told The Crisis Room podcast.Mark Sedwill raised questions about Keir Starmer’s explanation of the collapsed case More

Withdrawing the UK from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), once a fringe idea, has become a defining issue for political parties. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, who previously opposed leaving, has now said the Conservatives will take the UK out of the convention if they win an election.Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has arguably made an ECHR exit central to its political identity. Even the Labour government has said it could reform the convention, or change how UK courts interpret the law.The case for leaving is often framed as one of “sovereignty”, particularly in relation to immigration laws and deportation powers.Politicians argue that the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which enforces the ECHR, overrides “the will of the British people” and that democratic legitimacy demands withdrawal.But evidence shows that “the people” don’t actually want to leave.Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has arguably made an ECHR exit central to its political identity More

Nigel Farage is set to meet the billionaire owner of Manchester United before Christmas as Reform UK doubles down on its drive to woo business chiefs. The Reform leader will try to win over Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the founder of chemicals giant Ineos, who has amassed an estimated fortune of around £20bn.Sir Jim, who has been a fierce critic of Britain’s net zero drive, which Mr Farage and Reform also oppose, disclosed details of the meeting on a podcast. The Reform leader requested the meeting More

Sir Keir Starmer’s former top civil servant has questioned the prime minister’s explanation of how the case against two alleged Chinese spies collapsed. Simon Case, who served as cabinet secretary between July 2020 and December 2024, challenged Sir Keir’s assertion that the government’s hands were tied by the previous Conservative government’s stance on whether China was officially a threat. The director of public prosecutions, Stephen Parkinson, said this week that a trial involving two men – a former parliamentary researcher and an academic – accused of spying on behalf of China collapsed after the government refused to brand Beijing a threat to national security.Simon Case served as cabinet secretary between 2020 and 2024 More

Cabinet ministers have been warned they will no longer be able to dip into Treasury reserves to fund public sector pay rises in a bid to ease mounting pressure on government finances.Chief Secretary to the Treasury, James Murray, has written to ministers to remind them to keep a tight control of public spending and said access to reserves will only be granted on an exceptional basis.Any extra help paid to departments will also have to be paid back to the Treasury, as part of preparations for next month’s highly anticipated Budget.Mr Murray said: “To keep tight control on public spending, departments must take responsibility for managing pressures and making choices about priorities without relying on the reserve.“We must deliver the efficiency plans set out in June – reducing administrative budgets, including those of arms-length bodies and agencies – and deliver comprehensive digital transformation.”The chancellor Rachel Reeves is under growing pressure after gloomy economic figures led to predictions that she will have to raise taxes or break her own fiscal rules to plug a £50bn gap in Labour’s sums. But the crackdown comes just months after Labour offered above-inflation pay rises to most public sector workers shortly after entering power. Chancellor Rachel Reeves (Stefan Rousseau/PA) More