In the summer of 2025, after a year in office, the UK’s Labour government released a raft of plans for the future of the country: the AI Opportunities Action Plan, Strategic Defence Review, Industrial Strategy and National Security Strategy. Each sets out a vision for what the UK should prioritise in the coming years, with a notable focus on the idea that technological innovation and defence can become a driver for economic growth. And with this core focus, the outlook presented for the UK’s future often takes on a remarkably US-centric and somewhat dark tone.
The vision set out in these government plans seems to resemble that of the newly empowered (US) defence tech industry and its financial backers. Both the UK government and the defence tech sector advocate for untrammelled support of the use of AI in government, less regulation of new technologies, more willingness to embrace risk and for structuring the economy around a defence sector-led growth model. They adopt Donald Trump’s slogan of “peace through strength” — which Keir Starmer has begun to fashion his foreign policy agenda around.
What is the motivation behind the UK adopting the ethos and language of US-focused bets on “patriotic capital” in the realms of technology and defence? Or, to put it differently, who stands to gain from this? Perhaps more importantly, is this defence-tech-focused future vision in line with the interests of the UK and the needs of its citizens? As the UK pivots toward an even closer alignment with the US and its defence and security priorities, it stands to reason that this shift de-prioritises the interests of citizens and elevates those of a proliferating defence tech industry and associated financial actors, in a misguided hope for trickle-down economic benefits.
In its language as well as its policy inclination, the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) draws the UK closer to the US and its emergent defence tech sector. The SDR’s stated aim is to restructure the UK economy around defence, and to transform defence through investment in technology and innovation, in lockstep with NATO and especially the US.
Notably, the SDR is rife with language that mirrors publications by both the Pentagon and its private contractors, such as the term “warfighter.” The phrase is leveraged in relation to industrial growth and transformation, which is said to “deliver for the warfighter.” The term is new in UK defence terminology and was not used in previous defence strategy reviews in 2021 or 2015. It is, however, common in US defence publications, for example by the US Defense Innovation Unit, which, in its 2023 Annual Report, doubles down on “delivering critical capabilities to the warfighter”. 1 Most interestingly, the term is frequently used to sell the importance of new military technology by companies like Anduril and Palantir. As a favoured phrase of the defence tech industry, “delivering for the warfighter” reflects an imaginary in which the managers of violence only need technological and industrial superiority to win wars. This language shifts the already fraught political, social and strategic aspects of both addressing and preventing conflict into the margins.
Similarly, the SDR places an emphasis on “lethality”, which it associates with digital and autonomous military technologies. This is also a relatively recent entrant to the government’s language. The SDR advocates for a more “lethal and agile combat force” and aims to create “a British Army which is 10x more lethal.” This, too, resonates very strongly with US military discourse. “Lethality” became a more ubiquitous focus of the US military establishment in 2018, when then-Defense Secretary James Mattis reportedly became “obsessed” with the term and subsequently mandated his department to embrace it as a priority. It may be a coincidence that, at the time when Mattis was Defense Secretary, “[a]t least three Pentagon officials close to Mattis, including his deputy chief of staff and a longtime confidante, either worked or lobbied or consulted for Palantir,” but, regardless, the trope of digital technologies as an enabler for greater lethality has since become commonplace. The UK has fully adopted this trope. The announcement of Project ASGARD, a digital targeting web which is expected to “make the Army ten times more lethal” in the next decade, is illustrative of this rhetorical shift. 2
Just as the term “warfighter” bears certain connotations, so does “lethality.” As a measure of the ability to inflict deadly violence it is, as Matthew Ford shows, contingent on context and environment, and for that reason, inherently imprecise. 3 There is “no pure science of lethality”, as Ford notes, which makes the suggestion that it can be engineered to increase tenfold a somewhat bizarre statement. 4 The historic shift toward lethality as a measure for military activity reveals a transformation of “technologies of war [as] a constitutive part of the reification of war-as-killing”. 5 This moreover reflects an alignment of technology with defence practice and priorities, promoted in the US and now, it seems, adopted by the UK and reflected in the SDR. 6 These are practices and priorities that manifest an unduly crude framing of conflict, and indeed politics, as a matter of technical capacities for destruction, and simultaneously marginalise military activities and mandates that contribute to non-violent approaches to human security or the building and maintaining of peace.
Throughout, the strategy documents set another priority: to attract more investment, from domestic and international venture capital (VC), for the development of the UK’s defence tech industry. This shift, too, is even reflected in their language — for instance, the repeated use of the metric “10x,” which is popular in tech entrepreneur and investor circles and often traced back to Peter Thiel’s statement that if “you’re 10x better, you escape competition”. 7 As a representative from the venture capital firm America’s Frontier Fund (affiliated with Peter Thiel and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt) reportedly noted: “if the China-Taiwan situation happens, some of our investments will 10x [grow ten-fold], like overnight.” In the VC industry, war is an investment opportunity that can, and should, be scaled up.
Pairing this investment terminology with the focus on lethality is disturbing on its own, but it betrays the deeper influence of VC logics and actors on the UK’s defence and security strategy. VC strategy thrives on rapidly speeding and scaling up growth for extraordinary returns, and in this, it inherently jars with the interest of responsible government, which should prioritise deliberation and democratic oversight, especially in matters of defence and security, rather than fast action at scale.
The SDR bets considerably on attracting VC investments to the UK, to the point of establishing a “new Defence Investors’ Advisory Group whose membership includes venture capital and private equity investors”. Similarly, the National Security Strategy (NSS) makes clear that the relationship between the state and private sector investors will become more entwined as “[i]nnovation will be fuelled by flows of venture capital, private equity and institutional investments.” The pursuit of innovation through technology will, the NSS suggests, require that the state reduces “regulation and red tape to create the best possible environment for innovation”. This mandate for innovation through VC investment is also laid out in the UK’s Industrial Strategy, which aims to close the gap for VC investment with the US by half — while making the UK Europe’s leading defence exporter. To this end, and to facilitate better startup and scale up conditions, the UK government is providing strategic public finances and relief schemes to subsidise the private investors that comprise the VC sector.
But VC investment, especially in defence, comes with its own dynamics. VC is historically anchored to US financial practices. 8 It is first and foremost a high-risk investment strategy, meaning VC firms provide funding for startups that are too risky for other forms of funding, typically because they are unproven. Every VC firm hopes to have a number of unicorns in its portfolio — these are startups that receive a valuation of US$1 billion or more. The valuations are not scientific — they are arrived at through a mix of qualitative and quantitative factors — but very often it is the promise and plausibility of a projected success that drives valuations up. Narratives produced by and for the VC environment are potent and in part it is precisely these future-oriented narratives that underpin the current AI hype landscape.
As I explain in detail elsewhere, the influx of large amounts of VC investment to the (US) defence sector produces particular interests and priorities that affect military practices. 9 The VC financial logic needs military startups to scale fast in order to make high returns, but an ethos that prioritises speed, scale, risk and experimentation raises strong ethical concerns when applied to military organisations. This risks an imbalance of power between global VC interests and the interests of a state’s citizens. The UK’s pursuit of VC investments is of particular concern, especially given that the most influential financial actors in these spaces remain US firms which often are ideologically inflected in dangerous ways.
The global VC sector is dominated by US firms, with ten times more investment in the US than the UK. The US VC environment is significantly more aggressive than the UK and it has access to much greater levels of capital. Some of the most financially powerful investors in the defence VC space include Andreessen Horowitz, Peter Thiel (with various companies), 8VC and General Catalyst. It is these US companies, and individuals, that also financially prop up many of the most talked-about defence startups within Europe. This financial dominance by US financiers, who, in their role as VC managers wield some influence over the direction and focus of their technology startups, raises questions about the sovereignty of the developing European defence industrial base.
Consider, for example, Stark Defence. The German startup makes weaponised drones and is an offshoot from another German drone company, Quantum Systems, which produces Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) drones used in Ukraine. Stark Defence, in operation since 2024, has just announced that it will open a major drone manufacturing facility in Swindon, South West England. The company is about to conduct a funding round that will reportedly include investments from 8VC (founded by Joe Lonsdale, cofounder of Palantir and Peter Thiel). Quantum Systems has similar affiliations with Thiel and Palantir.
Similarly, Helsing, another European defence “unicorn” that produces AI drones, has also announced plans to open a factory in Plymouth. The company’s main VC support comes from Lightspeed Ventures and General Catalyst (both US companies). Helsing has also announced a “defence tech alliance” with the French AI company Mistral. Mistral is financed by Lightspeed Ventures as well, but also by Andreessen Horowitz, a prominent VC firm that funds Anduril and is affiliated with Palantir.
The breadth and political activity of this network is a barrier to sovereign tech development. Joe Lonsdale of 8VC, Peter Thiel, of Palantir and Marc Andreessen of a16z are enormously influential actors in the defence VC sector, and they are also decidedly political in their orientation. All three are outspoken in their support for the current Trump administration. These political practices are mirrored in the operation of VC in other sectors. As legal scholar Hilary Allen notes in the context of fintech, VC funded startups have aggressively sought to upend existing legal regimes. By subsidising VC investments (and profits) to develop the UK’s defence tech sector, an opaque financial industry is given a say in how the future of security should be shaped. And since the success of this sector hinges on conflict and warfare, we are likely headed for a dark future.
The UK’s strategy documents all walk a fine balance between striking a sombre tone in relation to today’s geopolitics and enthusiastic optimism for the promises of a technologically oriented future. With this, the Labour government is banking its future on a pathway of innovation through defence-related investments. This is unlikely to produce the government’s promised “defence dividend” given the limited economic benefits of defence investments in terms of jobs or economic growth. Such a dividend is even more unlikely given the logics of the military technology sector and VC, which are capital intensive and place a premium on rapid growth in valuations. Instead, the UK’s new growth model may destabilise its geopolitical position.
The UK’s strategy is reminiscent of differently dark times. There are allusions to “national unity,” a “whole-of-society approach” and a shift in mindset to make defence and its industry “the fundamental organising principle of government.” This, Keir Starmer notes in his introduction to the SDR, requires “a new partnership with industry and a radical reform of procurement, creating jobs, wealth, and opportunity in every corner of the country.”
Starmer is determined to drive innovation forward at a “wartime pace.” This is familiar from US initiatives like American Dynamism, driven forward by Andreessen Horowitz, or Reindustrialize supported by the Trump administration and affiliated with the VC company Narya Capital, founded by JD Vance with backing from Peter Thiel. Both movements are defence focused and deal in wartime tropes to mobilise attention and funding.
If the growth of a country is built on the dynamics of a wartime economy, peace will become a hindrance to prosperity. Consider, for example, the current drive of innovation in military drones. This development is unmistakably spurred on by the Russia-Ukraine conflict which provides a tragic, but fertile laboratory for prototyping, testing, experimentation and improvements for drone technologies, providing a source of contracts and hype for drone startups. These companies become all the more valuable the more access they have to the battlefield. In the environment of wartime, both normality and democratic oversight are suspended, making conflict an important factor in economic returns. Peace is a less economically attractive proposition, and risks are de-prioritised. If the industries and innovations prioritised in this ecology need conflict to thrive, what are the possible futures it ushers in?
There is a steep cost to a “defence dividend.” As a mode of politics, the militarisation of economy and society bears consequences. In many ways, the US is a laboratory of militarisation, long the organising principle for social, economic and political affairs. This focuses visions, perspectives and associated practices on emergency, crises, fears and threats. This is neither a sustainable nor a healthy means of organising politically in the long run and it relegates political approaches that take the foundations for peace seriously to the margins, for the benefit of a war economy. As the US focuses its attention on refining its capacity for violence and lethality, eschewing already precarious pursuits of upholding peace or working toward a sustainable future that could benefit the wider public rather than a defence tech elite, the UK can still change course to avoid becoming fully subservient to the US and its defence industry interests. This window may, however, be closing.