The strategic threat landscape – security in a new epoch

One of the factors driving interest in the security of research and innovation is a growing recognition that the strategic threat landscape has become more challenging.

It is important for organisations to have a tactical, day-to-day understanding of the threats that they face. However, it can also be beneficial for organisations to assess the broader strategic threat environment. This might be likened to distinguishing between the weather and climate change. The weather changes daily and affects us immediately. Changes in the overall climate might be harder to observe, but their impact can be much more profound. 

For the security of research and innovation, a key factor in the strategic threat landscape is the threat posed by China. This threat perception was set out in the UK government’s updated Integrated Review of foreign and defence policy in 2023. In that document, China was described as an “epoch-defining challenge to the type of international order we want to see, both in terms of security and values”. The same review emphasises the need to “increase protections for academic freedom and university research” and to support “research and innovative firms”. 

This claim was reiterated in a May 2024 speech by Anne Keast-Butler, the Director of GCHQ, when she called China “the ‘epoch-defining’ challenge”. Again, that speech emphasised the importance of research and innovation, with Keast-Butler arguing that collaboration “across academia, the private and public sectors is crucial for developing cutting edge science and technology solutions for national security.”

What does this claim of a new epoch mean for research and innovation? It means that researchers, start-ups, and investors cannot adopt a business as usual approach. People who have never had to think about the security of their work before will have to start doing so, or risk seeing their work – be that their research, their intellectual property, or the value of their investments – be destroyed by the actions of capable and well-resourced adversaries. 

This might be an uncomfortable thought. People generally don’t like to think that someone is out to cause them harm. This is where security can be a positive force; an enabler that reduces the burden imposed on us when we are uncertain about the possible threats we face.

The need for a new approach to security might also prompt moral or philosophical objections, particularly for researchers in academia who are rightly committed to principles of openness and scientific exchange. Here, again, security should be seen not as constraining collaboration but as mitigating the threat posed to that collaboration by adversaries. The measures that an organisation puts in place to secure research and innovation might prove disproportionate and undermine collaboration. However, that would be an argument for developing a more effective research security programme, not for rejecting the need for security wholesale.