Britain cannot be better off in a contested world unless the systems beneath the economy hold. That means defence that contracts at the speed of threat, cyber resilience that works in practice rather than on paper, supply chains that bend instead of breaking, and sovereignty built on what the UK can do rather than where a supplier is registered.

Britain starts from strength — genuine world-leading capability in cyber security, AI assurance, quantum and defence systems integration. Our members build that resilience. We want to deliver it alongside government, not lobby about it.

UK context:

£100 billion and 1.7 million jobs	5% of GDP	4 per week
The gross value added and employment of UK digital technology — the foundation every other Industrial Strategy sector depends on. Source: techUK Local Digital Index 2025	The NATO commitment: 3.5% core defence and 1.5% security and resilience. Industry has been given no roadmap to either. Source: NATO Hague summit commitment, 2025	Four nationally significant cyber attacks each week. And more are coming. Source: NCSC Annual Review 2025

techUK objectives:

Core ask:

The one thing that we ask from Government is to name a single senior owner for resilience across BIST, DCMS and the Cabinet Office.

Cyber security has moved to DCMS, frontier technology to BIST, and part of the former DSIT cyber team to the Cabinet Office. Resilience now sits across all three, which means it currently sits nowhere. This costs nothing and is the precondition for everything else on this page.

How can techUK support:

The tech sector is the one most directly affected by how the UK answers the sovereignty question, and the one that has to deliver the answer. techUK is well placed to support.

We sit on the Defence Industrial Joint Council, RISC, Cyber Growth Partnership, and Tech7.

Our members include the largest grouping of cyber security companies in the UK and an established defence technology community.

We will be a delivery partner, coordinating roundtables, defence technology engagement, cyber resilience briefings, and published frameworks government can pick up and use.

Related Report:

Report

Report: Confident Sovereignty - techUK’s framework for sovereignty to support growth, security and resilience

8 September 2026

overview

Digital technology is the UK's primary growth sector, adding over £100 billion in GVA a year and employing 1.7 million people. It is the country's most significant export engine and the foundation every other industrial strategy sector depends on. The UK has the third-largest tech ecosystem in the world by valuation, the deepest tech labour market in Europe, and in 2026 alone has raised roughly as much venture capital as the rest of Europe combined. The question is no longer whether government should intervene in technology markets. It is how to do so without weakening the firms the UK relies on for growth.

Report

techUK Report: Towards a UK–EU Partnership for a New Age

10 September 2026

overview

As Europe navigates a more turbulent geopolitical landscape, this report sets out the scale of UK–EU digital and security interdependence - worth over $350 billion in bilateral digitally deliverable services trade - and the practical opportunities for closer cooperation ahead of the UK–EU Summit.