The UK is over-reliant on a small number of big tech companies to provide critical datacentres, software and digital infrastructure, placing national security at risk, according to a report by the Open Rights Group (ORG).
The report, which is backed by a number of MPs, warned that the UK’s dependency on US big tech companies places the UK at risk as relations between the two countries have become strained.
Rifts between the UK and the US over the conduct of the US and Israel’s war with Iran, if they are exacerbated, could expose the UK to threats of US sanctions that could impact critical infrastructure, the report said.
Big Tech companies have used their power and resources to control markets, limit innovation and lobby government, allowing them to capture the market for UK’s critical infrastructure, said the lobbying group, adding: “This over-reliance on foreign companies has become an urgent issue of national security as US foreign policy actions are creating geopolitical uncertainty.”
Risk of sanctions
The US has powers to issue sanctions that can be used to stop companies supplying technology services to government institutions or individuals, which could place critical services at risk in the event of a dispute with the US.
The US used its powers to sanction the International Criminal Court (ICC), leading Microsoft to block the email account of the ICC’s chief prosecutor after the US objected to the ICC issuing warrants targeting the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“If the UK’s relationship with the US were to deteriorate – for example, over Greenland or Iran – the US could leverage power through its corporate dominance of the UK’s critical infrastructure,” the report said.
The UK also risks exposure to surveillance of sovereign data through US cloud services, which US agencies can access under the US Cloud Act; and Chinese tech companies, which under China’s national intelligence laws must assist the Chinese government and intelligence services.
Risk of lock-in
The UK government is dependent on strategic IT suppliers and consultancies that have led to government departments being “locked-in” to a particular suppliers technology, while being vulnerable to overcharging and cost overruns, the report argued.
The Competition and Markets Authority estimated in a report last year that the UK could be paying up to £500m a year more for cloud services than it would if the market was more competitive.
The Open Rights Group urged the UK government to follow EU countries, including Germany, France, the Netherlands and Denmark, which are making strategic investments in technology that is based on open standards and publicly available open source software. It argued that investing in open source software, which must be made publicly available free of charge, will boost the economy and boost innovation, citing EU research that suggested that every £1 invested in open source technology produces £4 in economic payback.
UK should promote sovereign cloud
Lib Dem MP Tim Clement-Jones told Computer Weekly that the government should change its procurement rules to assist UK cloud providers to scale up: “We need to change our procurement rules to actually discriminate in favour of UK providers.”
He added that the government should provide more encouragement to open-source software providers and to the development of sovereign AI models: “There seems to be very little real holistic sort of strategy on all of this,” he said.
Labour MP Clive Lewis said that the UK government’s dependence on big tech companies, such as Palantir, had left the UK “dangerously vulnerable”, saying: “With increasing geopolitical uncertainty as a result of US and Israeli military actions, the UK must ensure that it has control over its critical digital infrastructure. Digital sovereignty must be a priority.”
Sian Berry, an MP for the Green party, said that digital sovereignty should be a top government priority. “As global events continue to cause instability, we must build much more resilience to protect our critical digital infrastructure from the potential threat of sanctions and service withdrawal,” she added.
