Undersea Cables
Lord West of Spithead Excerpts(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Earl for the question. This is an important area. As I have said, most of the breaks are not malign, but there is, of course, that risk. Regular reviews are undertaken as part of the national risk assessment. The MoD works with DSIT and others to look at what the risks are. We also work continuously with partners, including NATO. In 2023, there was a specific NATO action to look at critical undersea infrastructure co-ordination to make sure that a response and detection system was in place.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, the joint maritime operations centre, together with the embedded national maritime intelligence centre, are able to monitor shipping throughout our EEZ and European waters, so we know where those ships are. We know which Russian ships in particular are involved in this sort of operation. We have now purchased the RFA “Proteus”, which we should be able to get to where these events are happening. When will we get the second ship? When will we be on top of one of these when it is doing something? I do not know about retaliation, but would we then be able to arrest a ship in our EEZ that was damaging one of our cables?
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord for the question. It is quite a long way from my brief in DSIT. If I may, I shall try to get somebody to answer it for him.
Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence
Lord West of Spithead Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
We are in active discussion with all those partners. As we consider an AI Act, we will work closely with partners in the US and elsewhere and apply it only to the limited number of companies at the very forefront of AI, to those models of tomorrow which carry particular risk and, again, where guard-rails have been asked for.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, a number of countries are using AI and developing weapons systems that have no human being between sensor and shooter. What are we doing to regulate this arena? It is extremely dangerous and is becoming a growing area of endeavour for a number of countries that, I have to say, I do not particularly like.
Lord Vallance of Balham (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that important question. The convention does not apply to military matters, but the responsible AI in the military domain—the REAIM Forum, which the UK co-hosted in September this year—covers exactly those issues, which are incredibly important.