Most people understand why Britain imports food, energy, and manufactured goods. We cannot produce everything ourselves.
But there is another form of dependence that receives far less attention.
Increasingly, the technologies that power our economy, our communications, our defence, our scientific research, and even our government services are owned and controlled by companies based in other countries.
And as artificial intelligence becomes one of the most important technologies of the twenty-first century, that dependence is becoming harder to ignore.
The question isn’t whether the United Kingdom should cooperate with allies. Of course it should.
The question is whether Britain is becoming so dependent on foreign technology that we are losing the ability to make our own choices.
What happens when the tools of modern power – AI, satellites, rockets, and cloud computing – belong to someone else?
Last Friday, the US government issued an order to an artificial intelligence company called Anthropic. The instruction was simple: shut down your most advanced AI systems for all foreign nationals. Immediately. No warning. No consultation. No appeal.
And just like that, businesses, universities, researchers, and public bodies across the UK – and the rest of the world – lost access to some of the most powerful AI tools on the planet. Not because of anything Britain had done wrong. Because Washington decided to.
That moment should stop every one of us in our tracks. Because it wasn’t a one-off. It was a glimpse of where we actually stand.
We don’t own the tools that now run the world
Let’s be honest about something that politicians rarely say out loud: Britain, one of the world’s oldest and proudest nations, does not own the critical technologies that define power in the 21st century.
Think about the platforms and tools you use every day. Your emails probably run on Microsoft servers. Your searches go through Google. Your business files may sit on Amazon Web Services. Your phone is made by Apple or Samsung. If you use AI, you’re likely using American systems – OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, or Anthropic’s Claude.
None of these are British. Not one.
Now think bigger. The satellites that tell our military – and our smartphones – exactly where they are? That’s American GPS. The rockets that could put a British satellite into orbit? We rely on others for that. The factories capable of producing batteries for electric vehicles at scale – gigafactories – the UK has none of significance. The cutting-edge robotics and autonomous systems that will define how future conflicts and economies operate? Built elsewhere.
And our nuclear deterrent – the thing we’re told guarantees our ultimate security – uses American-made missiles, leased from a US Navy stockpile, dependent on US satellite systems to hit their targets. We call it an “independent” deterrent. It is independent in name, and deeply dependent in practice.
The Anthropic wake-up call
Let’s return to what happened on Friday 12th June 2025 – a date worth remembering.
The US Commerce Department sent a letter to Anthropic‘s CEO designating the company’s most advanced AI models as subject to national security export controls. The directive applied not just to people outside America, but to any foreign national anywhere in the world – including Anthropic’s own non-American employees, who suddenly found themselves locked out of the system they had helped build.
Anthropic, with no choice, switched off its top-tier models for every user on earth.
Just like that.
No parliamentary debate. No diplomatic consultation. No opt-out for allied nations. Britain, America’s closest ally, the country that shares intelligence through Five Eyes, that stood alongside the US in every major conflict for a century – we got the same treatment as everyone else. The off switch was flipped, and we had no say.
This is not a criticism of the United States. America is entitled to protect its national interests, just as we should protect ours. The point is precisely that: we have no equivalent levers to pull. If the roles were reversed, there is no British technology platform, no British AI system, no British cloud infrastructure that America – or anyone else – depends on. We are consumers of other nations’ power, not creators of our own.
A pattern we keep ignoring
This is not new. We have simply chosen, for decades, not to look at it squarely.
When the EU built Galileo – their own satellite navigation system – it was partly because they wanted to stop being dependent on American GPS, which the US military could theoretically degrade or disable during a crisis. Britain was part of that project. Then we left the EU, and our full participation in Galileo became complicated. We announced plans for our own satellite navigation system. Progress has been slow.
We have no domestic search engine at scale. No British-owned social media platform with global reach. No British smartphone manufacturer. No homegrown large-scale AI model. No private space launch company with anything close to the capability of SpaceX. No cloud infrastructure that global businesses rely on. No British equivalent of the massive data centres that now form the backbone of the digital economy.
We have brilliant universities. We produce world-class researchers. We punch above our weight in scientific papers and Nobel Prizes. But we have consistently failed to turn that intellectual talent into strategic industrial power. The ideas are born here. The companies, too often, end up elsewhere – or get bought out.
Why does any of this matter to ordinary people?
Here is why it matters to you, regardless of whether you work in tech.
Your job. Across almost every sector – finance, healthcare, logistics, retail, manufacturing – the software and AI systems that businesses now depend on are foreign-owned. When those systems become unavailable, or their prices go up, or access is restricted, British businesses have no alternative to turn to. Prices rise. Jobs go. Decisions get made in boardrooms in Seattle or San Francisco, not Sheffield or Salford.
Your security. Future conflicts will not be won primarily by the number of ships in a fleet or soldiers in a regiment. They will be shaped by AI systems that process battlefield information in real time, autonomous drones that don’t need pilots, cyber capabilities that can disable an enemy’s infrastructure, and the industrial capacity to produce all of it at scale. On almost every one of those fronts, Britain is a buyer, not a maker.
Your privacy and sovereignty. Every time you use an American platform, data about you – and about our country – flows to servers governed by American law. The US Patriot Act and its successors give American authorities broad powers over data held by American companies, regardless of where in the world that data was generated. British citizens’ information, NHS data, government communications – all subject to rules we did not write and cannot change.
Your children’s future. The industries that will create the most wealth and the most jobs in the coming decades are AI, robotics, clean energy technology, and advanced manufacturing. Right now, those industries are dominated by the United States and China. If Britain does not build serious capacity in these areas – and build it soon – we will be exporting our young talent to work for American and Chinese companies, and importing the products of their labour at whatever price they choose to charge.
The uncomfortable questions we need to ask
Here is what we should be demanding that our government and MPs answer:
Why does Britain have no serious AI company of global standing? We had DeepMind – and it was bought by Google. We have extraordinary AI research talent. Where is the national plan to build on it?
Why are we still dependent on American GPS? After leaving the EU’s Galileo programme, what has actually been built? What is the timeline? Who is accountable?
What would happen if America switched off the cloud services that UK hospitals, banks, and government departments depend on? Has anyone in government seriously modelled this? What is the contingency?
Why has no government of any party made strategic technology independence a central national priority? Not an afterthought. Not a line in a white paper. A genuine, funded, long-term commitment – the kind we made to the National Health Service, or to nuclear weapons in the 1950s.
What is the plan for British manufacturing in an age of AI and robotics? Not retraining leaflets and pilot schemes. A real industrial strategy.
This is not about anti-Americanism
Let’s be clear: the United States is our most important ally, and that relationship matters enormously. This is not an argument for hostility or distance. It is an argument for something our American friends would completely understand: you should be able to stand on your own feet.
America built GPS because it needed to. It built its own chip industry because it understood the stakes. It has poured hundreds of billions into domestic AI development because it knows the country that leads in AI will have extraordinary advantages – economic, military, diplomatic – for generations.
We admire that. We benefit from it. Now we need to do the same.
The EU, for all the criticism Britain levels at it post-Brexit, is doing something important here too. It has built Galileo. It is investing heavily in European AI. It is explicitly trying to reduce its dependence on American and Chinese technology platforms. You may disagree with how the EU does things. But the instinct – to ensure that your civilisation controls its own critical tools – is correct.
And Britain, standing outside that project, needs its own answer.
What needs to happen
This is not a problem that solves itself. It requires decisions – political will, sustained investment, and a willingness to think in decades rather than electoral cycles.
At minimum, we should be demanding:
- A serious, funded national AI programme – not just regulation, but creation
- Genuine progress on British or allied satellite navigation, not announcements
- Investment in domestic cloud and computing infrastructure
- A proper industrial strategy for robotics and advanced manufacturing
- An honest public debate about what “defence” means when future conflicts are won by algorithms and autonomous systems, not just aircraft carriers
None of this is cheap. None of it is quick. But the alternative – waking up one day to find that a decision made in Washington or Beijing has switched off the infrastructure our country depends on – is far more costly.
Ask the question
You don’t need to be a technologist to engage with this. You just need to ask the question.
The next time a politician knocks on your door, or holds a meeting in your area, or appears on your local news: ask them. Ask what Britain’s plan is to own the technologies that will define this century. Ask what happens if America decides, again, to switch something off. Ask what we are building, not just buying.
These are not niche questions. They are the questions that will determine what kind of country your children inherit.
I guess what I am trying to say is simply this: Technology ownership increasingly determines economic power, political influence, military capability, and national resilience. Britain has become heavily dependent on foreign-owned technology in many strategic sectors. Whether that trend continues should be a matter of public debate and democratic choice. For me, I want us to own these technologies. You?
Britain at a crossroads: Reclaiming growth, influence, and global relevance
First dropped: | Last modified: June 14, 2026