That will require “innovation and procurement measured in months, not years,” the review said.
The Ministry of Defence is undertaking major reforms to how it buys technology, including by creating a dedicated Defence Innovation unit, while the U.K.’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said last month it will work more closely with the MoD “to pull through innovative capabilities to mission at speed and foster a thriving and world-leading U.K. defence technology sector.”
In a long-term plan last month, DSIT said backing dual-use technology through better use of procurement and a greater share of R&D funding would not just boost the U.K.’s security, but benefit the U.K.’s broader tech sector.
Last week, DSIT told the U.K.’s national AI institute to refocus its work on security and defense, after rebadging the U.K.’s AI safety institute as the “AI Security Institute” earlier in the year.
The limits of success
In the U.S., startups backed by In-Q-Tel have been acquired by the likes of Google and Amazon, or else grown into giants in their own right such as Palantir.
In the U.K., some people initially doubted whether NSSIF would find similar success, the investor cited above said. “I went from being mad to being farsighted,” Finkelstein recalled. “Modesty aside, they’ve done some quite successful startups.”