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Britain’s deputy prime minister will on Tuesday announce the creation of a new UK public-private forum on economic security challenges, as he warns of the risk that the “world’s next shock will be a tech shock”.
Oliver Dowden will speak at the Saudi-hosted Future Investment Initiative, known as “Davos in the desert”, to highlight the threats as well as the opportunities that technological advances present to the UK and its allies.
His speech, which comes ahead of the British government holding its own summit on AI safety at Bletchley Park next week, will outline the need for greater economic security to prevent hostile state actors exploiting sensitive technologies and to safeguard investor confidence.
The battles facing business from AI and other digital advances coming down the track are likely to make the cyber attacks, ransomware, bots and deepfakes witnessed to date seem like “relative skirmishes”, Dowden is expected to say.
He will warn that it is imperative to “build a policy environment that provides the private sector with the confidence to innovate”, adding that “economic security should never be seen as a constraint to growth”.
Dowden, who has been given the job of building resilience against potential shocks by Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, will announce the creation of a new forum between government and business, which will meet for the first time later this year.
Chaired by Dowden and Kemi Badenoch, UK business secretary, the forum will involve companies in strategically important sectors that are likely to be affected by government economic security policies.
It builds on the establishment of the National Protective Security Authority, set up as part of MI5, the domestic UK intelligence agency, to support businesses in better understanding and identifying future threats.
Speaking in Riyadh on Tuesday, Dowden will warn: “We’ve had a glimpse into this future, with cyber attacks bringing public services to a halt and ransomware wiping millions off companies’ share prices.
“Deepfakes have duped consumers, bots have interfered in elections, and intellectual property has been stolen from businesses and academic institutions.
“So far, these have been relative skirmishes, wrought by an unholy alliance between hostile states and non-state actors.”
He will also reaffirm the UK-Saudi defence and security partnership as an “important collaboration between our nation states” and signal that the two countries had to “work together to build economic security”.
Saudi Arabia is pressing the UK, Japan and Italy for full membership of an alliance to build a next-generation fighter jet, a move first reported by the Financial Times in August.
At the FII summit from 24-26 October, Dowden is expected to attend a dinner with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and meet Saudi business and economy ministers, along with international chief executives.
The UK’s AI summit, scheduled for November 1-2, will focus on so-called “frontier AI”, a sophisticated form of the technology that includes large language models that can process and generate vast amounts of data.
