Research Handbook on #Cyberwarfare is out today! | Edited by @tcstvns & me, with 23 chapters from an outstanding group of contributors, covering the theory, practice, governance, actors & institutions involved in #cyberwarfare @warstudies @ElgarPublishing

If you have a National Security Adviser and central NS machinery, why not use them for exactly this kind of thing?

@wsuomi46144 @alessionaval To govern is to choose. I wouldn’t say spending more would be politically easy, but is strategically wise, and would be a winnable argument if the government wanted to make it. Not doing so is a decision.

@alessionaval The tightrope of being a cabinet minister ultimately responsible to the boss (No.10), but also wanting your department to succeed. On budget, the telling thing for me was how SDR ToR framed explicit HMT leash. Healey never going to cross that. I thought a Reviewer just might.

There must be more than just me on the internet who appreciates a good Yorkshire/Cyber/Sigint post!

Pleased to say this is already on the @warstudies Cyber Diplomacy reading list, with Michele Markoff’s chapter very timely for today’s debate about the evolution of the UN cyber norms process.

And I’d be really interested to know if the shadow of the US election was ever discussed as a material factor that should influence UK tactics and timing. It just seems like they got the Trump factor wrong, which is surprising.

@CommsWhisperer I’m less sure of that. I think if the US really wanted to apply pressure the deal would be dropped. What would happen then to its strongest proponents in UK government? That’s a good question. But I guess we’ll find out soon enough either way.

@RAdmAubrey And the wider context is that the Trump admin is monitoring all this and deciding its position. If they say no, this is a significant and embarrassingly public defeat for Starmer, and looks entirely self-inflicted.

@RAdmAubrey It feels symptomatic of a degree of panic setting in. They tried to say as little as possible, belatedly realised that was unsustainable, and had ceded the narrative to others, domestically & internationally, & are now forced to construct a public narrative seemingly on the fly.

@MTSavill I looked at this a few years ago re: NS and the centre. There's a (historically atypical) high point in openness in the early coalition years, where they shared quite a lot with Parliament about how NSC/NSS had re-wired the centre. After that, demonstrably less over time.

Also, given what the US & Mauritius sides have separately been briefing, plus UK critics, the UK government has seemed at times like a passive bystander in its communications. It pushes back a few times in this article, but overall it's not been a good showing on this file.