The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) announced that it will contribute £400m ($543.5m) toward securing intelligence sharing with the United States through the Google Cloud platform.
Slightly subsumed by the extensive industry activity to come out of DSEI 2025 last week, the move to secure communications between the two nations will exploit the latest technology, including, the MoD stated, artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics, and cyber security.
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Defence intelligence and national security specialists on both sides of the Atlantic will share secure information and “outcompete” their adversaries, namely Russia and China.
The deal has already led to millions of pounds of inward investment from Google Cloud, the UK government suggested without revealing any specific sum, the US company will recruit a specialist dedicated team in Britain to manage these technologies.
Second state visit
The move touches on several tenets underlying the Strategic Defence Review (SDR), for a digitally integrated service, and the more recent Defence Industrial Strategy, which introduced a new consultation policy where UK investment overseas then strengthens the British economy, in return for jobs and technology.
Furthermore, the MoD also hinted that more will come when the US president Donald Trump’s second state visit later this week.
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By GlobalDataPolitical observers anticipate at a landmark bilateral tech partnership as the major visit deliverable, offering a common approach to AI, quantum computing, and rare earth minerals. Investments in UK data centres and defence collaboration may follow – measures aimed to secure supply chains and limit China’s control over the minerals fuelling the AI revolution.
Off the back of the SDR, the UK is also in the market for air-launched nuclear weapons for a dozen new F-35As, partly sourced and fully built in America, which could be discussed as a way of securing a new European nuclear umbrella, coordinated between Britain and France.
UK reform military intelligence
The UK has restructured its military intelligence institutions beneath the Defence Intelligence (DI) orgaisation, which itself reports to the Chief of the Defence Staff and Permanent Secretary of the MoD.
“Within Defence, however, intelligence capabilities are underpowered and fragmented,” the SDR reads.
To this end, the government has agreed to the recommendation in the SDR related to further investment in DI and have the organisation head up the new ‘Military Intelligence Services’ enterprise. This is intended to facilitate data-sharing and integrate collection, reporting, assessment, targeting, and operations.
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer stated that this new deal with Google Cloud “will help us outmatch hostile actors who we have seen attempt to cause chaos for working people by disrupting their everyday lives, including by trying to steal sensitive information and launching targeted cyber campaigns.”
On 27 August, for example, the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre revealed that Britain and its allies had linked three technology companies based in China with a global malicious cyber campaign targeting critical networks.
Since at least 2021, the agency noted such activity has targeted organisations in critical sectors including government, telecommunications, transportation, lodging, and military infrastructure globally, with a cluster of activity observed in the UK.
