The geopolitics of technology in the United Kingdom

This chapter focuses on the geopolitics of technology in the United Kingdom, placing it at the heart of three overlapping and sometimes contradictory sets of relationships with the United States, the European Union and China. The United Kingdom has struggled to manage these relationships, with Brexit compounding the challenges emanating from the United States and China. Although the chapter illustrates the technological strengths of the United Kingdom, it also argues that the development and use of technologies are not without their challenges. These challenges reflect the geopolitical position of the United Kingdom, the relatively small size of its domestic market and the increasingly global commercial and regulatory nature of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).