NATO Strategic concept

He led the No. 10 team which produced the Integrated Review of 2021, the Integrated Review Refresh of 2023, and in 2025, he was reappointed by the Labour government again to lead work on the National Security Strategy 2025.

He also served as the UK's official representative, preparing NATO's 2022 Strategic Concept.

He was party to many key strategic decisions and negotiations leading up to them, about which we shall not be asking him today, as I am sure they are still covered by the Official Secrets Act.

But I equally do not doubt that his answers to our questions will be informed by the wisdom he derives from these enviable experiences.

And then one last thing to note on the guarantee, since you brought it up.

In the 2022 Strategic Concept that NATO published, it says specifically that the strategic nuclear forces of the alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of the alliance.

So, of course, one thing to note, that guarantee also includes the strategic nuclear forces provided by the United Kingdom and France, so that's all three of our allied nuclear powers.

But one thing to note, Just maybe a particular here, I don't actually see it as a guarantee.

This is a really important thing, and I'd say a pretty significant evolution in how NATO has been really talking about nuclear deterrence more in, say, the past five or six years.

You know, for decades, I mean, nuclear deterrence is not something that really many people focused on outside of some experts.

It wasn't a core part of what the alliance was really thinking about in terms of a strategic concept, but in recognition really of growing threat from russia which even preceded the the full-scale invasion of ukraine back in 2022 nato started to evolve what it's doing with equal deterrence a lot of that work is internal to the alliance something that i called our software in terms of policy and planning and all the internal decision making but we knew that we needed to have an externally facing part of that so you've seen Strict in language and of some communicates a strategic concept.

Native is talking more about nuclear deterrence.

and power projection build heavily on principles of cognitive warfare.

NATO's 22 Strategic Concept highlights that ensuring national and collective resilience is critical to all our core tasks and underpins our efforts to safeguard our nation's societies and shared values.

Technology able to alter human behavior For example, via information processing, communication, or social media can be used to target both military personnel and civilians.

Collaboration between civilian defense stakeholders is therefore essential to detect, mitigate, and respond to cognitive attacks.