ATI to focus on securing critical systems and countering AI threats
The UK must not depend on foreign AI systems that can be “restricted or even switched off” at short notice and must develop its own versions of the technology, according to George Williamson, head of the Alan Turing Institute (ATI). The country needs a stronger domestic position in AI given the dominance of the United States and China in the field, Williamson said, with national resilience a key focus for the institute. ATI is the UK’s leading AI research body and is under new leadership after the government, its main source of funding, demanded a strategic shift.
“As AI becomes more embedded in critical services, in domains like defence, national security, critical infrastructure and healthcare we shouldn’t depend solely on systems we can’t inspect or control, or that could be restricted or even switched off,” Williamson said. He pointed to recent examples of AI access becoming contingent on political or commercial pressure: in June, Washington temporarily blocked the release outside the United States of Anthropic’s latest models, and US authorities have reportedly asked leading AI labs to withhold their models from being tested by the UK’s AI Security Institute until they have been examined by AISI’s US counterpart.
“We’ve seen now that both political and commercial pressures mean we may not have access [to AI] in all the circumstances when we want it. That is not a place where a nation wants to be,” Williamson said. He added: “There’s a set of circumstances where it would be a good idea for us to have something that we don’t have to ask other people’s permission to use.”
National resilience would be a focus of ATI’s work, Williamson said, amid concern about the geopolitical situation and the risk posed by increasingly powerful AI systems. “It’s a moment when national resilience is definitely what the country needs and it’s definitely a thing I think the Turing institute can help with,” he said.
Outlining the new direction, Williamson said: “We are facing a more adversarial world, more frequent shocks to our critical infrastructure and now powerful AI amplifying these threats. To strengthen national resilience, the Turing will focus on securing critical systems against disruption, countering threats from AI itself and helping to shape the right strategic AI capability for the UK.”
Williamson said the institute could assist by helping produce uses for AI “for the public good”, working on areas from weather forecasting to farming, as well as helping spot disinformation. Referring to state-led disinformation campaigns, he said: “It’s very dangerous for the state of democracy and it’s an area that we can monitor.”
It had become clear in recent months, Williamson said, that the UK needed “more agency on access to technology” and a stronger sovereign position in AI. “It feels pretty uncomfortable if you don’t have some control or ability to use technologies when you want them, and also harder to imagine how you build an economy on the top of stuff that can disappear,” he said.
Geopolitical pressure on AI has surfaced elsewhere in recent weeks. Prime Minister Andy Burnham last month announced a new national centre to tackle state-backed disinformation, and Anthropic has published a forecast putting the probability of AI wiping out humanity by 2030 at greater than 10 percent.
Williamson questioned the value of assigning such figures. “I’m not sure it’s helpful trying to assign particular percentages to it because I have not seen anyone show me a convincing evidence of how they’ve arrived at the number they then start throwing around,” he said, adding that there was “a lot of stuff being tossed around” on the existential threat risk that “is not always well grounded in science.”
Williamson said ATI, a registered charity, could be an “objective and helpful” arbiter of concerns about AI, including existential threat. “A national institute should be an active partner to government and the public more generally in helping to navigate some of this stuff,” he said.
The push for domestic capability mirrors calls elsewhere in Europe. In recent weeks, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen have urged the continent to become more self-sufficient in AI, with Lagarde warning of the risk of being “cut off” from US and Chinese technology.
Williamson pointed to China as a separate reason to develop sovereign capability, arguing that Chinese-made AI models may not “coincide with our values.” His test for the claim: “Try asking some of these models about some events in the recent past in China and you’re not going to get an answer that’s particularly helpful if you’re doing GCSE history.”
“This is the defining technology of our time. We want to be able to shape that technology … in a way that accords with who we are and our values,” Williamson said. He conceded that ATI and the UK more broadly cannot match the financial firepower of major frontier AI labs but said they could still produce “nationally owned IP” or smaller models for use by startups. “We can be ambitious here without trying to copy what frontier labs are doing,” he said.
The new framing also allows ATI to retain work on climate change that the previous government had sought to sideline. In 2025, then technology secretary Peter Kyle wrote to ATI’s chair demanding the institute switch its main focus to defence and security; Williamson’s predecessor, Jean Innes, resigned soon afterward. “For me climate is as much a national security issue as defence. For me, it [national resilience] is a frame that enables us to cover the range of threats and opportunities to the UK,” Williamson said.
Williamson is the former head of His Majesty’s Government Communications Centre, a secretive government body that makes gadgets for UK spy agencies and counts Alan Turing — the wartime codebreaker after whom ATI is named — among its former staff.