Kamran Balayev is an international legal and policy expert, business leader, and former London mayoral candidate.
London often remembers the Blitz as a story of courage.
It was also a story of continuity: public authority endured, essential services adapted, and the capital kept functioning under severe strain. That is the more useful lesson now. A great city proves itself not only by absorbing shocks, but by continuing to operate through them.
That matters because modern disruption increasingly targets systems rather than buildings. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has repeatedly hit energy infrastructure and trade routes, with effects spreading into oil markets, shipping and wider supply chains. Recent reporting suggests significant disruption to global energy supply due to disrupted shipping and lower regional output.
For London, the relevance is structural. The capital is not simply Britain’s largest city; it is a dense concentration of systems on which the wider country depends. UK financial and related professional services contributed a record £110.2 billion in tax in 2023, equal to 12.3 per cent of all UK tax receipts, and supported more than 2.3 million jobs across the UK. That makes resilience in London a national question, not a metropolitan one.
The same logic applies to public services. The 2017 WannaCry attack disrupted NHS services, and more recent ransomware incidents have caused delays to thousands of outpatients and elective appointments, with the greatest impact in London. When digital systems fail, the consequences are no longer confined to servers and screens; they affect patients and citizens directly.
Resilience, in this context, can no longer mean only protection. It has to mean continuity. The UK’s National Risk Register identifies cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, including fuel supply infrastructure, as a serious national risk. State actors continue to pose a significant threat to UK cyber security, with a rising number of nationally significant incidents in recent years.
That should shape how Britain thinks about artificial intelligence. The debate is often framed as a race to build bigger models or attract more investment. Those things matter. But government policy documents point to a deeper issue: compute is becoming part of national infrastructure. Recent policy initiatives include long-term strategies for AI infrastructure, including the designation of AI Growth Zones expected to generate tens of billions in investment and thousands of jobs.
So the real question is not simply whether Britain builds more AI capability. It is whether the systems it builds are robust enough to function under stress. An AI-enabled NHS, AI-assisted transport network or AI-supported public service is valuable only if it remains dependable when networks are degraded, data flows are interrupted or cyber pressure intensifies. These systems are still relatively new, so their performance under sustained disruption is naturally less tested than that of older utilities. That is precisely why reliability should be treated as a strategic priority, not a technical afterthought.
This is also where the current government looks vulnerable. Keir Starmer’s government has been active on AI adoption, growth zones and industrial positioning. But its published AI programme is framed mainly around growth, jobs, adoption and capability. Those are sensible objectives. They are not yet the same thing as a full doctrine of operational continuity for AI-enabled national infrastructure. That is a judgement, but it follows from the government’s own priorities.
A conservative answer, properly understood, would be more demanding. It would argue that strong institutions do not merely adopt new technologies; they ensure those technologies can be trusted when conditions are difficult. It would treat resilient design, fallback capacity, cyber hardening and recovery planning as part of national strength. And it would say that London should aspire to more than competence. It should aim to be a model.
That is because success here would create something Britain could export. London already exports legal expertise, regulatory standards and financial services. If it becomes exceptionally good at designing and governing AI-enabled systems that can withstand shocks and keep operating, that too becomes exportable know-how: British expertise in trusted, resilient infrastructure. In a world of fragile networks and rising digital dependence, that would be commercially valuable as well as strategically useful.
The issue, then, is not whether London should embrace AI. It should. The issue is whether it can become the place that shows how advanced systems can remain reliable, secure and calm under pressure. Britain has been a beacon of resilience before. There is every reason for London to aim to be one again.
Kamran Balayev is an international legal and policy expert, business leader, and former London mayoral candidate.
London often remembers the Blitz as a story of courage.
It was also a story of continuity: public authority endured, essential services adapted, and the capital kept functioning under severe strain. That is the more useful lesson now. A great city proves itself not only by absorbing shocks, but by continuing to operate through them.
That matters because modern disruption increasingly targets systems rather than buildings. The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has repeatedly hit energy infrastructure and trade routes, with effects spreading into oil markets, shipping and wider supply chains. Recent reporting suggests significant disruption to global energy supply due to disrupted shipping and lower regional output.
For London, the relevance is structural. The capital is not simply Britain’s largest city; it is a dense concentration of systems on which the wider country depends. UK financial and related professional services contributed a record £110.2 billion in tax in 2023, equal to 12.3 per cent of all UK tax receipts, and supported more than 2.3 million jobs across the UK. That makes resilience in London a national question, not a metropolitan one.
The same logic applies to public services. The 2017 WannaCry attack disrupted NHS services, and more recent ransomware incidents have caused delays to thousands of outpatients and elective appointments, with the greatest impact in London. When digital systems fail, the consequences are no longer confined to servers and screens; they affect patients and citizens directly.
Resilience, in this context, can no longer mean only protection. It has to mean continuity. The UK’s National Risk Register identifies cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, including fuel supply infrastructure, as a serious national risk. State actors continue to pose a significant threat to UK cyber security, with a rising number of nationally significant incidents in recent years.
That should shape how Britain thinks about artificial intelligence. The debate is often framed as a race to build bigger models or attract more investment. Those things matter. But government policy documents point to a deeper issue: compute is becoming part of national infrastructure. Recent policy initiatives include long-term strategies for AI infrastructure, including the designation of AI Growth Zones expected to generate tens of billions in investment and thousands of jobs.
So the real question is not simply whether Britain builds more AI capability. It is whether the systems it builds are robust enough to function under stress. An AI-enabled NHS, AI-assisted transport network or AI-supported public service is valuable only if it remains dependable when networks are degraded, data flows are interrupted or cyber pressure intensifies. These systems are still relatively new, so their performance under sustained disruption is naturally less tested than that of older utilities. That is precisely why reliability should be treated as a strategic priority, not a technical afterthought.
This is also where the current government looks vulnerable. Keir Starmer’s government has been active on AI adoption, growth zones and industrial positioning. But its published AI programme is framed mainly around growth, jobs, adoption and capability. Those are sensible objectives. They are not yet the same thing as a full doctrine of operational continuity for AI-enabled national infrastructure. That is a judgement, but it follows from the government’s own priorities.
A conservative answer, properly understood, would be more demanding. It would argue that strong institutions do not merely adopt new technologies; they ensure those technologies can be trusted when conditions are difficult. It would treat resilient design, fallback capacity, cyber hardening and recovery planning as part of national strength. And it would say that London should aspire to more than competence. It should aim to be a model.
That is because success here would create something Britain could export. London already exports legal expertise, regulatory standards and financial services. If it becomes exceptionally good at designing and governing AI-enabled systems that can withstand shocks and keep operating, that too becomes exportable know-how: British expertise in trusted, resilient infrastructure. In a world of fragile networks and rising digital dependence, that would be commercially valuable as well as strategically useful.
The issue, then, is not whether London should embrace AI. It should. The issue is whether it can become the place that shows how advanced systems can remain reliable, secure and calm under pressure. Britain has been a beacon of resilience before. There is every reason for London to aim to be one again.