Digital and Technology Policy: National Sovereignty

Baroness Berger Excerpts

Thursday 23rd July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berger (Lab)]

My Lords, we stand today at a moment of profound vulnerability for the United Kingdom. Our economic security, our national safety and even our long-term sovereignty are at massive risk because we do not yet host or own enough of our own computing infrastructure, our own cloud services or our own advanced AI capabilities. By relying so heavily on foreign businesses and Governments far from our shores, we leave ourselves exposed to the possibility of remote disablement, restriction or withdrawal of the very systems that our society, our public services and our businesses increasingly depend on.

Today, the UK relies almost entirely on American and Chinese companies for the most capable AI models. Recent events, including the United States restricting access to one of Anthropic’s most advanced systems, show how fragile that dependence is. In a world where AI increasingly underpins economic growth and national security, Britain must develop homegrown capabilities. Yes, we have a sovereign AI fund, but it is just a fraction of what our neighbours are pursuing. Other nations are already building sovereign AI systems at scale. The United States, China and the European Union are investing billions into domestic computing infrastructure, national-level model development and secure AI infrastructure. France has launched a sovereign AI initiative centred on national cloud and compute capacity, the UAE is developing its own frontier-led models, and countries such as Japan, South Korea and India are rapidly expanding state-backed AI ecosystems.

Here in the UK, we have one of the largest and richest bodies of public data anywhere in the world, not least from our NHS. As the cost of building capable AI systems continues to fall, we have a genuine opportunity to harness that data for ourselves, to help clinicians reach diagnoses faster, and to build public services that reflect our own standards and accountability, rather than simply adopting whatever the market happens to offer us.

But we must also confront the elephant in the room: leading AI companies are racing towards superintelligence, despite acknowledging that it could pose an existential threat to humanity. Sovereign AI is absolutely critical, but it is worth investing in only if other AI models can be kept under control. As we welcome our new Prime Minister, there is a danger that could overshadow all his important goals: the real possibility that advanced AI systems become uncontrollable. How the incoming leadership chooses to approach AI risk will shape our entire future.

Over 120 parliamentarians so far have called for superintelligent AI to be formally recognised as a national and global security threat. I am one of them. Simply put, the UK must lead an international agreement to prohibit the development of superintelligence until it can be proven safe. If we fail, every other ambition for our country risks being swept aside. The clock is ticking. Some AI systems already exceed human abilities in narrow domains, such as Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold. In June, the director of the US National Security Agency revealed that Anthropic’s Mythos model identified vulnerabilities in classified systems. This should be a wake-up call for every Government, including ours.

We are only just beginning to see a shift in the West towards an appetite for government action. At the recent G7 summit, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Sir Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind both called for a US-led standards body to test the cutting-edge frontier AI models for national security threats. But there is no indication that this is actually coming—and there are agitators that we should all be aware of. It was only this week on X that President Trump’s former AI adviser, David Sacks, called for “permissionless innovation”.

Building more of our AI at home is vital to our security and our economy, but none of it will count for anything unless humans stay in charge. The day that someone builds a true superintelligence or we lose our grip on a powerful AI system, that sovereignty is gone. This week—in fact, just the other day—we witnessed a taste of what happens when humans lose control: the unintended and unprecedented accidental cyber attack by the new GPT-5.6 Sol and other models on the very platform that was hosting a test. Perhaps it should concern us all that that did not make some of the front pages of our newspapers.

This debate shines a spotlight on something vital for our country: that building sovereign AI capacity is absolutely essential. But, if any nation or company builds a true superintelligence without guardrails, that sovereignty disappears everywhere. We need urgent action to develop our own models to ensure that we have rapid investment in our own AI infrastructure for our economy, for our security and for our resilience. But we also need urgent action to prohibit the development of superintelligent AI until scientific consensus shows us that it can be made safe. The time to act is now.