With the news agenda consumed by war in the Middle East and last month’s boardroom drama at OpenAI, you could be forgiven for having missed the release of the government’s Advanced Manufacturing and Battery Strategies.
While the reports were published without fanfare, both are important policy issues for the UK’s future competitiveness and our ability to respond to challenges like reaching net zero, rebuilding an industrial base, and future pandemic preparedness. The commitment to spend £4.5bn by 2030 in areas like autonomy and life sciences is a welcome signal of intent.
Managing the energy transition, improving disease prevention, responding to rising geopolitical tension and developing advanced computing are rooted in the physical world.
They require the attention of policymakers, but also the ingenuity of scientists and entrepreneurs working on breakthroughs in fields like material science, computational biology, autonomy and quantum mechanics....