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Toby McCrindle, Partner
Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the latest session of the Mishcon Academy. Just to set the scene, so my name is Toby McCrindle, I'm a partner at Mishcon and I run our, what we call our Defence and Deep Tech Sector Group. So the people within that group spend their days supporting defence companies and deep tech companies adjacent to the defence sector, and we're going to be talking a little bit about some of that today with Tobias. So without further ado, um, thank you for coming. So Tobias Ellwood, senior parliamentarian, 19 years I believe in Parliament. Prior to that, 6 years in the British Army as a Royal Green Jacket. I know we've got across the firm actually other veterans who had served in the Green Jackets, so, or the Rifles as it might have been then. And during that time in Parliament, you served in senior ministerial roles both in the Foreign Office, I believe, and then also in the MOD. And you chaired the Defence Select Committee, which, for about 3 years, I think that's right. So there's no one better placed perhaps to talk about what we're going to be talking about today, which is to introduce Tobias's book, 10 Steps to Prevent World War III.
A nice light topic to kick us off as we head into the rest of the summer, but I think very timely. And so on that note, I'm going to ask, you've written the book, presumably it's not accidentally timed, why now?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Well, firstly, thank you very much indeed for allowing me to say a few words and for us to have a chat. Pleased to meet you. I'm really looking forward to the questions that you have asked afterwards. So, you know, we'll pursue this. But yes, I am concerned about where our world is going. I think we all are. Lots of plates spinning and what I've tried to do is place it in some sort of context, to put it into some sort of chronological order as to how we got here, where we're heading to, and what we might do about it. And if you think back through the last few decades, you could argue that 1945, '46 was a pretty good year. We defeated tyranny. The world had come together, set out some basic rules. 1990, '89, '90 was a pretty good year as well and with the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of communism, and so on. And yet look where we are today. The talk of the fragmentation or the collapse of our global order is frequently commented, not least at the recent Davos meetings. And my concern is the trajectory as to where this all goes to.
World War III is obviously very provocative. For me, World War III isn't World War II all over again. It's actually a different form of war. It's a world in conflict, all sorts of conflicts taking place in various levels rather than as we saw in World War II. And to place it into context, going back to 1946, there were some very clever people who created the atomic bomb, arguably won, certainly concluded the Second World War, so Teller and Oppenheimer and so on. And they came up with something called the clock, the atomic clock that was going to mark towards midnight. So they set the clock at 17 minutes, uh, 7 minutes to midnight. So we had 7 minutes to go until midnight, and then the world would end because they'd created something that could destroy the world. And after the, in 1962, it went down to closer to that. After the end of the Cold War, it was back to 17 minutes. [3.45 – 4.03 – tape cut off silent] We have some slides here which are taken from the book. Forgive me for jumping around, but it, and I haven't used one of these since I was at school, so this is going to be quite fun.
This, I don't know if you can see it, but it's in the book. And essentially what I've done is map out, it's actually from a tapestry that a Canadian chap had done. But I put together all the great civilizations going all the way back beyond the Incas and the Chinese and so on. And it lays them all out in one nice mapping of humanity from the Romans to the Greeks and so forth and our advance all the way up to where we are today, and there's a little arrow saying where we are today. And the sadness is, is that war absolutely is part of our world. We can't get over that. They are what Churchill called the punctuation marks in our history. But never before have we been able to destroy ourselves. So that's why there is this concern that the trajectory that we're on, we need to check this. We need to be aware of what's going on, more alive to what we're doing about it, and provide greater leadership. So that really is the spirit of the book.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. And I suppose the objective you would like, I suppose, is to walk us back from the 85 seconds on that Doomsday Clock, right? For the people reading this that are in power today.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
That's correct.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
So for those obviously who wouldn't have read the book yet, but it starts with a very subtly written alternative future, which took me a while to understand wasn't actually where we are today. And so it's at the sort of introduction talks about the state of the world in 2040, I think it is, which is the fragmentation of society as we know it, great powers falling out with each other, resource scarcity, in fact, many of the things we're seeing today, but realised, or starting to see today, but realised. And I think that's a perfect place to dive into. So we're 85 seconds now. That sort of alternative universe is not quite at doomsday, but we're getting maybe down to 15 seconds, something like that. It's a warning rather than a prediction.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
I think you put in the book. But how close are we to that reality, do you think? Where really do we sit?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So I often compare it. So that atomic clock, some of them call it the Doomsday Clock, is another term that you may have heard. But if we go, let's click a couple of slides here to this one. It was a bit small, but I can sort of read it out. It compares today with 1937 as to the period then when there was a sense of denial in what was going on in the world. Yes, there was rearming taking place, authoritarian states starting to build up. But a risk-averseness by the West to do anything about it. America was in complete isolation after the First World War. They said, we're not going to participate in the second and, but there was a slide, inevitable slide towards war. I argue in the book that actually it's, I'm afraid, worse than then because you add other factors in. War has become very, very cheap indeed. If you think about the drone capability, simple drones able to take out tanks, take out aircraft carriers and so forth, costing next to nothing. So that is a new dimension. The character of warfare has changed. So a lot of work is spent on grey zone warfare, the fact that our economy could be attacked very easily from afar, causing mayhem here, political discord as well and yet we are not protecting ourselves.
And you add to that, of course, the nuclear, the capability of not only the city killers, but small nuclear weapons as well. And then another dimension which we tend to forget but we've been reminded of this summer is climate change, is the fact that we are really testing the limits of our fragile planet. And you're going to get gargantuan biblical movements of people from Africa, for example, when parts of that become uninhabitable. Where are they going to go? Well, they won't go to Ceuta. They'll go straight to Europe and so forth and we're not really getting our heads around where the world is going. And you've really got the situation where the world is splintering into 2. We're splintering the West and East. China particularly is on a mission, it's on a plan. Absolutely. It didn't buy into the world order in the very beginning and it now has something called the Belt and Road Initiative, which you may have come across. People signing up to their programmes, getting into debt. There are now over 100 countries signed up to the Chinese Belt and Road system. China is ever more aligned with Russia, with Iran, with other countries too.
And much of the Global South, many countries are having to choose. Do I look West and stay West or do I sign up to China's model? And the curiosity is over the last couple of years is that actually the Chinese model, although it's authoritarian and human rights and so on is pushed aside, actually it's a lot more stable. There's a lot more predictable about what's going on in China compared with the Western-led or the American-led model, with the American president choosing to absent himself from any sense of duty in supporting the very global order that a previous American president, along with Churchill, designed in the first place.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
So maybe that's a nice place to jump into the steps. So the book outlines 10 steps, as the title suggests. And it starts by looking back into history and learning from our, our past and including the mistakes that we've made along the way as we built the global order post-Second World War. The first one is very provocatively titled, Stand for Something. Well, I think it's provocatively titled.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Do we now stand for something? Do you think, just based on what you've said a little bit, do you think we as a, as perhaps as the UK or as part of the transatlantic alliance, do you think we actually are clear about what we stand for? We hear a lot about British values, American values, all the rest of it. I'm not sure there's a consensus around what they are anymore. I don't know if you agree.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So that is the fundamental question. What do we stand for? What do we believe in? What are we willing to defend? Many of us, particularly the veterans, we participate in Remembrance Sunday and we repeat those words, lest we forget. We forget what a previous generation did to step up. They gave their today for our tomorrow. And yet we have forgotten that. We've forgotten the fact that you do need to support and defend your own rules otherwise, I'm afraid bad people will take advantage of you to exploit the fact that you've become rather timid. And there is a cycle here which we see where you have a treaty, an agreement, a set of rules, and most people abide by that. And then one country or groups of countries start to actually challenge that. And then because nobody pushes back, you end up with a war and then you end up with another treaty. And it all started, it all started, the first big, big, big treaty that the world decided we need some rules was the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. And that was the worst war the world had actually ever seen, even to date as well.
It was to the point where Europe itself was going to actually implode. Nobody was winning and all the adversaries, a very complicated war, got together and said, unless we actually do agree some rules, we're going to actually make ourselves almost extinct, to make ourselves unmanageable. It was in those days where you could attack another country just because they had a different religion. So that was the first rule, you know, you can't do that, you need to respect other countries. So the Treaty of Westphalia was the starting point, and that lasted a good number of years. But of course, it fragmented. And then you had the Treaty of Utrecht, 1713. That lasted a number of years. That was a big argument over the future of Spain. That took us up to Napoleon. Napoleon did his thing across Europe. We all know about that and that led to something called the Vienna Congress, where we spent months working out another set of rules. And that lasted pretty much all the way until the Second, First World War and we had the Treaty of Versailles, which we know wasn't particularly well written. That didn't last very long at all.
And then that took us to the Second World War and what we now call Bretton Woods. The Bretton Woods organisations - the United Nations, the World Trade Organisation, the International Criminal Courts, and so forth, the International Development Bank, and the IMF - these are the pillars of, all created in Bretton Woods in New Hampshire. That's why it's called Bretton Woods. And they're the ones that are now starting to unravel and fall apart. And in that cycle, we're at that point now where unless that is checked, war then follows in one form or another.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah and I think it's quite clear and we're going to jump around a bit, clearly but I think later on in the book, we talk about getting closer again to our once very close allies, particularly Americans. But you talk about the Anglo-French-German relationship as well. Do you think, still on the theme of standing for something, do you think that leading European nations and America still stand for common principles? Or do you think that with what's gone on in the States, particularly pulling away, increased isolationism, and also certainly a pretty healthy disregard for the International Rules-Based Order, which we can talk about, whether it's invading Venezuela, abducting leaders, and other things, do you think we do stand for something in common? Because that's the underlying principle for all of this.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah. So the short answer to that is no. We've lost sight of what we believe in, what we stand for. And we have an American president that recognises that the global order is collapsing but has no interest in repairing it. In fact, believes that there's greater value in allowing a sense of chaos. And I suggest in the book that actually Donald Trump sees the world as a bit of a jungle with big beasts in that jungle, and those big beasts sort of respect each other. So America will respect China, even do business with China transactionally, certainly respect Russia, and each will have their zone of influence. So America will have Venezuela, absolutely that's their patch, as is Greenland. That's part of America's interests. And Russia? Well, yes, they get Ukraine, which is why America is not spending a penny to support Ukraine anymore. That's all stopped. Any American kit is purchased by Europe and then slid across the table. So, and then China, of course, as well. So you have these areas, zones of influence, and that's how America perceives itself. He tapped into, and I was there, I was half American, so I go over there a lot, a sense of anger, though, that we didn't do enough to support those rules that we spoke about.
China signed up to the World Trade Organisation and so forth, but didn't honour the rules themselves, has benefited from playing the game a bit to America's detriment that did follow the rules. And Donald Trump turns around and says, well, if China don't follow the rules, I'm not going to either. I'm going to look after us, I'm going to put America first. Now, short-term-wise, that's brilliant, not only electorally, but also economically too, with tariffs and so forth. But long-term-wise, it does lead to the fragmentation of globalisation, end of globalisation, and the growth of our adversaries, and the slide towards war.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. And quite clearly, if you are in Donald Trump's shoes, you forfeit the right to then be that world leader or the leader of the free world, which is a phrase I cannot stand but let's assume American presidents once were. Well, they then forfeit that right and then you lose that influence, that soft power, to the extent it was there, to the Chinese or what have you. And that's obviously happening now.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
So slightly more positively, though. So we've got the Americans pulling away, for now at least. They may come back. One of the direct consequences and it was a couple of years ago now, I think, at the Munich Security Conference. Was it Marco Rubio who stood up and said, good luck, Europe. You're on your own.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
J D Vance.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
J D Vance. And said, we're not interested, right.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
I was at an event at RUSI, Royal United Service Institute where General Patrick Sanders was talking and he was saying, well, this is never going to happen. It was the same time, it was almost like a set piece. Saying, well, this is never going to happen, we're all still aligned behind a set of common principles and goals. And as he was talking, people's phones were going off. People were following along at the MSC. And the first question was, well, hang on a minute, sir. Look, the Americans have left us behind. The very next day, you had Keir Starmer, Macron, Schulz, and all the key leaders in Europe coming together quite physically the next day coming together to say, well, we need to plug the gap. And so one of the - in my view anyway - one of the positives of American isolationism is that it's pulled or pushed Europe back together again. And rearm Europe is one phrase that's being bandied about and the various financial instruments that are being put together and the banks are being built to fund rearmament. That's a positive thing to some degree, I think, within Europe.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
It is. But whenever you get America and Europe not on the same page, that's not a good place to be from many angles.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
And I'm afraid it goes back to the point when actually Donald Trump is doing more deals with Russia than the rest of Europe. He sees Europe, particularly the EU, as something that's a challenge to America, whether it comes to AI or digital regulation and so forth, or simple trade as well. You know, the EU is a profound trading block, a challenge to America. It can't strike the same deals that America can do anyway, bully his way. And it's interesting to say, yes, it's teased us or pushed us to spend more on defence. Why are we having to spend more on defence? Because of Russia and yet he is not helping out to say, let's put Russia at bay.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Mm-hmm.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
If Russia can declare any form of victory in Ukraine, Russia won't stay there. I mean, this goes on to the second step of the book, which is, know your enemies. And Russia is an absolutely fascinating country. You go back to Ivan the Terrible, was the first big strong character. Russia is like 11 time zones. It's very big. If you've ever played the game of Risk, the green is quite difficult to protect. What's the best way to defend? Attack. And this is what Ivan the Terrible realised. In fact, there were many principalities, many princes and fiefdoms across Russia and they realised they needed one really strong authoritarian figure that can actually rally everybody, have the support of the Orthodox Church, keep the country strong. And Ivan the Terrible pushed the Mongols out. Peter the Great pushed the Lithuanian Poles north. Catherine the Great pushed the Turks south and Stalin, of course, pushed the Nazis back West as well. So these were very, very strong characters of which Putin realises he needs to emulate. And understanding that mindset is very, very important. And yet Donald Trump turns around and says, you've got to spend more on defence.
Why? Because Putin is doing exactly what his predecessor is doing to expand their influence, actually have a buffer zone. Because the last thing Putin wants is a bit of EU, which is pretty successful if you look at some of the Baltic countries now and Poland and so on. The last thing he wants is democracy rubbing up against rubbing up against Russia. So he's now pushing westwards to try and rekindle the old Soviet, the Warsaw Pact Soviet influence. And yet America is participating, or Trump is distancing himself from any support. In fact, the opposite. He's actually buying minerals and wealth and so forth. America's, all of America's atomic power, uranium, comes from Russia. So these are the quiet things behind the scenes which you pick out and realise why Trump is choosing to actually bring Putin in from the cold rather than stand up to him but then that means that Putin has been able to pursue the war with Ukraine even further.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. Without wishing to sound a bit fey, you've met Putin.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
I did.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
About 10 years ago, something like that.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
I did.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Can I just ask what that was like? Give we knew what he was like.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
I suppose, to a degree then, but 10 years hence. It's quite a different world.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So we turned up at this event. It was the European Games held in Baku in Azerbaijan and we both arrived early in this VVIP centre overlooking the stadium, quite an amazing stadium. And I think he was actually bored talking to the person he was talking to because we were so early, it was the speaker of the Azerbaijan Parliament. And walked across to me and I really wasn't expecting to speak to him at all. In fact, when you go as a minister anywhere in the world, the local embassy gives you little pieces of paper with, like, if you meet the President of Azerbaijan, mention the BP oil deal, things like this. But nobody gave me a card to say, if you meet President Putin, raise these sort of things.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
And this was 2015, so put it in perspective. He'd just done his thing in Crimea. He'd already sent some soldiers and bits and pieces into eastern Ukraine. So he wasn't flavour of the month with the West. So I thought the last thing I should do is really say, oh, you naughty boy, what are you doing there? You know, he'd just walk away. So I had to think quickly. I congratulated him on his English and he says, I have lessons every Tuesday morning. He was very proud of that. There was a lot of Botox going on here. I remember that. He was slightly smaller than me, and he was like, very shiny, there was a light there. I remember that. These are little things that you take away. And then I just thought, well, what can I say? I then said, why do you then need a translator if you speak such brilliant English? And he said, it gives me time to think. Which, of course, is very useful.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
But I then said to him, I have a friend, I just made this story, I didn't make it up, but I then found a story I could share. And I said, listen, a friend of mine wants to use your transport and he's a bit worried that he's going to get to his destination and not get back because East-West tensions are getting pretty bad. And of course, he looked at me a bit puzzled. And I said, my friend's name is Tim Peake. He's an astronaut going up to the International Space Station in your Soyuz capsule and he doesn't want to get stuck up there. And he grabbed my arm and said, Mr Ellwood, tell Mr Peake we will not abandon him. So that was quite fun. I then related that story actually in Parliament because we were talking about, you know, we've got to stay friends with Russia. And I used this as an example to say, when it comes to space and things like that, we still have a good rapport. But The Telegraph took the story and spun it out a bit. Tim Peake's mum read the story, phoned up the international ESA to say, is it true that my son might get abandoned? So I got in a little bit of trouble about that one. But yeah, that was my meeting with Putin.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
And do you think, I mean, that was a very entertaining story. But within that, you mentioned that you went to Parliament talking about maybe bringing him in from the cold and why we should address him and keep him closer. Would that have changed things prior to the annexation of Crimea, do you think, if he had felt more part of the international order? At that stage, or do you think it would've…?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So that's a really good question. Was there this window…
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
…after the fall of the Soviet Union, which he says was the biggest calamity ever to affect his country and you could look back and say, there's more that we could have done. He blames the West, and this is why it's important to understand your enemies. He blames the West on all these oligarchs, many of them that came to London, I should say, spent an awful lot of money. What happened is that there was a rush to privatise all the big industries in Russia, everything from aluminium to coal, this and the other. And of course, if you were in the right place at the right time, you got to be the boss of that, you got to buy all the shares. You then got to sell the shares and then you got to make all the money and you took the money abroad. And that's exactly what happened. It made Russia very, very poor indeed. There was a potato famine and so forth. There was all sorts of problems in Russia. And he was the saviour because he not only was helping the mayor's office in Petersburg, St Petersburg, he then became the de facto leader after Yeltsin. And he is seen by much of Russia as the saviour that got Russia off its knees. So he has a lot of stock in the reserves, if you like, to say, I'll allow you to go and do your fights in Chechnya. I mean, he really put that to bed, that one. There was an uprising there, and he stamped on it. And then in Ukraine, he gets a lot of forgiveness because he saved the country from complete collapse and again, we tend to forget that, tend to forget that too.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
I think it's also interesting when you go right back into the 18th century with The Great Game and how actually a lot of Russians or the Russian state perceives the British as one of the great enemies, not necessarily the Americans, which is quite interesting. Same in Iran, given our involvement in Iran and our various attempted coups.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah. So The Great Game is a flippant phrase about the advance of Russia across the East this time and the advance of Britain through India and so on and countries like Afghanistan were created as a buffer to stop the two actually touching each other. There's an extension of Afghanistan where it links to China deliberately to keep the Russian Empire and the British Empire quite separate from each other.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. So you talk in the book about, and you make a very forceful argument for building into the International Order somehow, and I don't know how we do that, and maybe we'll talk about it, but a series of off-ramps.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
So a pressure release or a way in which conflict can be avoided. So to your point, had we intervened with or pulled in Putin sooner than we tried to do, then maybe Ukraine wouldn't have happened. If we could have done the same in Iran, perhaps we wouldn't be where we are now, before Trump decided to start bombing. How do we do that? So the International Order is fracturing. We have international multilateral organisations that perhaps aren't functioning. How do we build in an off-ramp or a system or find a way in which great leaders, strongmen, will actually step back before pulling a pin, for example, on a plan?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So firstly, let's explain why the Global Order is where it is. It's because people aren't buying into it anymore. The United Nations is seen as polarised. You've got, it's not been updated at all since '45, '46. I mean, it's expanded a little bit in its numbers, the UN Security Council. But nobody's invested time and energy to make sure that it's relevant for today. So the digital side of things and trade and so forth, that doesn't really work. So there's, it's not come out, I'm afraid, on the thing, but the 4 pillars of our Global Order are very much the UN that does security, World Trade Organisation that does trade, international development, which is done by the IMF and the World Bank. So they help countries that are not doing well, need a bit of support and so forth to make sure they don't collapse. And then the final one is the laws, which are the International Criminal Courts to hold individuals or indeed countries to account. So these are the 5 pillars of our Global Order. But if you don't invest in them, if you don't believe in them, if you opt out of them, then of course those 5 pillars stop to work.
And the UN Security, you've got America using its veto, Russia and China always using its veto. Should they even have the veto anymore? So that's not working. The World Trade Organisation hasn't worked, there's supposed to be an appeals process. So if somebody throws some tariffs on you, you can then appeal. But America hasn't put their own lawyers in to make up the World Trade Organisation for a number of years. So that's not working either. That's the second pillar. The IMF and World Bank have been taken over by - we touched on it before - the Belt and Road, which is throwing money left, right, and centre. And then finally, the International Criminal Courts, well, dozens of countries never signed up to that in the first place. So the modelling is there. The architecture exists. We've absented ourselves from supporting it. So it does need updating. There's certainly something there that could be worked but you need to, certainly the big countries need to be committed to say, we need a Global Order 2.0. What might it look like?
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Until that happens, you then need a series of off-ramps. I'll see if I can find the slide. There are 7. It might take a second or two. I see 7 ways that war could start. And there's the nuclear, the AI. I don't know if you saw, but there was a big story in the last few days of an AI company choosing to break out into the real world and start hacking bits and pieces. So humans being removed from decision-making. Let's see if I can find whichever one it is and, uh, escalation pathways, number 15. So these are the pathways to war. So it's in the book but essentially, I map out areas in which warfare could actually start and we lose control of what's going on. But it isn't just one, there could be 2 or 3 of these that can happen at the same time and you've got nobody in control. And this is where it goes to the off-ramp. So what is the off-ramp for an advancement of nuclear escalation? Who would be the intermediary? Which country would take the lead on that and understand it and develop the back channels? I mean, going back to the Soviet time, there's some great films about this with Morgan Freeman, I think…
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Mm-hmm.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
…is in one of them with Matt Damon about an escalation to war. But it's the back channels that they talk behind the scenes to say, my president just said this and absolutely criticised your president, but he didn't mean it, it's just for a domestic audience, so just ignore it. There are no back channels anymore. They've all disappeared completely. So there isn't a way, and then all the treaties that existed around nuclear proliferation have now all very much all fallen apart. So there are no guardrails in place anymore in so many cases to prevent escalation. And a great example of this real life is Iran, you touched on it before. You can see how other Gulf nations have been brought in. Cyprus, which is our own sovereign territory, was hit. There's a US base in there as well. Jordan was hit more recently as well. Saudi Arabia has decided to hit back at Iran too. This is where we are today. And you talk of Trump talking about full annihilation, I mean, he talks about civilization removal and so on.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
You can see how these things are getting, and yet there's no clear off-ramp at all. There's no way out for him other than more war because he hasn't thought of the strategy. So what I've tried to do is to break down where is likely for warfare to take place? Space is actually probably the most worrying one for me because it's OK Corral up there. We don't know what's actually going on. There are now satellites designed - I kid you not - to throw spanners at other satellites. Why? Because I'm afraid since the '60s, since we've been up there, astronauts have dropped things and they now circle around. Tim Peake said that the most worrying thing about being on the space station was some random object, not an asteroid, but another thing that somebody dropped 15 years ago coming at 40,000 miles an hour, ripping right through what you're going on. So if you can develop a machine that throws spanners out, then you can say, hey, it wasn't me but then you can break down GPS. Now imagine if we didn't have GPS. Imagine, you know what it's like when you lose your phone, imagine if we all had no GPS.
Yeah, it wouldn't be just getting your Boris bikes or anything like that. Our world would stop. And we'd have to, suddenly there would be panic, there would be chaos. There could even be riots as people then fended for themselves. We have no backup GPS, by the way. Galileo isn't there for us because we opted out of that. So there's all these resilience capabilities that we actually haven't thought about.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
And then there's cyber and so forth. The biggest one for me is also quantum, quantum computing. So there's something called Quantum Day and this is where a quantum computer becomes more powerful than your normal laptop. And it will then mean that hacking and things like that can be done 10,000 times better than today. So Land Rover, Jaguar, that's a walk in the park. Whoever harnesses quantum first, you're going to have full advantage, you're going to be able to get our nuclear codes. Cryptocurrency out the window. Hacking bank accounts and everything like that, so easy for a quantum computer to do so. And Quantum Day is the day that somebody harnesses that computer. You need to have things at very low temperatures. It's quite complicated. But China is pouring tons of money into this, linking together their academic, their commercial, and their military and state capabilities. Eventually, the same way that we did with the Manhattan Project to create the bomb. Now, we are quite cocky about this, saying, oh yeah, we've got Google, we've got all these other, you know, and so forth, and we'll get there first. But it'll happen in the next 4 years. And I'm a little bit worried that we might not win that race.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
We're actually working for a number of particularly startups and privately financed businesses that are doing post-quantum secure technology. Maybe we're trying to leap ahead again, I don't know. But you're right, it's a huge threat. So back to the off-ramp. So if we have…
Tobias Ellwood, Author
I like the way you just say, it'll be all right. It'll be all right.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. So maybe it'll be fine.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
We'll be fine.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
So back to the off-ramp.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
I have to rewrite my book now.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. Don't read it. So we've got strongman politics and the dominance of individuals in the Global Order. How do we then get, how do we build a system, or how do we develop the system we've inherited with those people still in power? Or do we have to wait for a cycle? What happens post-Trump? Post-Putin, where do we go post well, we're not going to have a post-Putin.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So we can probably skip through step, well, step 5 is alliances and that's so important. You know we’re not, Brexit didn't really do our relationship with Europe, apologies if you were for that. But it's not really enamoured us to the rest of Europe. Ukraine is now bringing us all back together again. It used to be that France, Germany, and Britain, E3, as we called it, where they went, the rest of Europe followed. I argue in the book that you would include Poland in that to make an E4 because they are now so advanced on military side as well, they're right up against it with Russia. But also economically, they are just growing and growing and growing and they mean well. There's a leadership element there. So we need to get those alliances working again. I touched on America. Fundamental to repair that and then I point to India being the point nation in the next 15, 20 years. They're the ones that are going to surprise. If they tilt towards the East, when I say the world's splintering, and not the West, then it will be game-changing. The world will definitely splinter in that way. It may be that they'll try and survive on their own, looking both ways, but it's going to be trickier to do so.
But he turned up, Modi turned up at, with President Xi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. So they're becoming buddies and Trump hasn't done very much to enamour himself to the Indians too. So sorry, that's the next one. You were talking about the leadership and so on. That's step 8.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Let me ask - sorry to put you on the spot - but who would dare, put your hand up if you would dare step into public life, if you would be a Member of Parliament. Now, usually I get one or two. There's one hesitant one on the front here.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Reluctant, yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
But this is the dilemma that we face. And there's a lot of understandable reasons and I've got scars on my back of how I've been treated as to why people don't want to do that. But when the great and the good hesitate to want to lead in Britain, it means the gene pool of leadership we have, which is Parliament, that's where we get our Ministers from. That's where we get our Prime Minister from. We're not going to get another Churchill if the majority of people, and you're reflective of it, decide, no, it's not for me. So when we say Britain steps forward, Britain leads, and so forth, you're actually saying British people, individuals who decide to actually become parliamentarians and that's the challenge at the moment. That's what step 8 is all about. If we can't fix our own democracy, which is not in a great place, how can we persuade other countries who are authoritarian to be like us when we don't even like being like us anymore either? America is in a very, very divided place. We're not much better if we ever think about it. When I was at the NATO Summit, and we were talking about these big, big issues, we were going through the cycle. They were all saying, what's going on in Britain? And we're going through another Prime Minister.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Another Prime Minister, that's 7 in how many years? I don't know what it is.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
It's one for one almost.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
One for one. So that is a dilemma.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
It's how do we then rekindle that sense of statecraft? Because historically, Britain has led. When other nations hesitate, it's us that have stepped forward, First World War and Second World War. And that's what we really need to regenerate is this sense of purpose. It goes back to that very first point, you know, what do we actually stand for?
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah. And I'm not sure we know. I think we, I would find it very hard to articulate. What I thought the country stood for, if someone were to ask me. So we've sort of cantered through a little bit and we've dived around. We've not talked about, I mean, this is something I'm really interested in personally because we spend our days, or I spend my days, working for companies building defence technology and sort of strengthening national resilience, whether it's for the UK or wherever else. How do we move to, or should we move to a war footing? Again, that's quite an alarmist phrase. There are plenty of people that follow the news but don't spend their days thinking about defence and security, moving to a war footing feels a bit scary, frankly.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
And lots of our leading universities in the defence resilience space are publishing really interesting work at the minute, academic work around the public perception of where we stand from a defence readiness or from a war footing perspective, and how far back public perception really is from where we need to be.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
So how do we start to do that? You talked about national service, you know, these sorts of things come up a lot. What does that mean, a war footing?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So let me pose a question to you. How many spheres of competition are there? How many domains of war are there, would you say? Should we try and group them together? There's land, air, and sea. They're the obvious ones as well. We've got 2 more in the form of space. That's another one where warfare can take place. We've got nuclear. That takes us up to 5. Sorry?
Audience
Cyber.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Cyber. That takes us up to 6. You've got disinformation, which is another separate one to that, but the whole of trying to persuade people one way or another, disinformation. So that takes you up to 7.
Audience
Biological.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Biological is a good one. I would probably cater that as part of the, so biological, nuclear, chemical is probably always all the same one. But yes, it's a specific one.
Audience
Economic.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Economic. Okay, so economic we could break down into the resilience, our industrial resilience, capability to build things and so forth. Then you've also got soft power to be able to prevent things from happening in the first place. You know, a COVID outbreak in Africa, you can't do that with tanks and ships, but you can do that with extra soft power. But we've cut our aid budgets as well. So we've got economic resilience as well, industrial capacity too. Then there's national resilience, so our ability to protect ourselves. So at the moment, London has no air defence. If a drone came in targeting this building from afar, the first thing we'd hear about it is that you've got a hole upstairs, okay. It's not going to happen, don't worry. Well, not today. But I'm afraid.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Well, there was a, I mean, even yesterday, was it yesterday, day before? There was drones in Germany, right?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Exactly.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Armed ESADs primed, ready to go.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Exactly. Exactly. You probably aren't high on the targeting list.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
I know, well, we are Mishcon though.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
It would be a random attack. But Portsmouth is very much on the targeting list.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
And if you think about a shadow trawler that's kicking around in the English Channel, you could easily, they come in racks of 5, the Shahads. They use GPS and they could easily land in and hit and decimate, would be a mini Pearl Harbour, easily done from that perspective. And then the final one - I count up 11 in the book - is actually political will. It's the actual will to stand up and we talked about Chris Cavoli, who I think spoke here. Does that ring a bell with you guys?
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Perhaps not many people in the audience. He was a 4-star, he is a 4-star US general, retired, and was the European Supreme Allied Commander NATO. So pretty much the second most senior person in the military side of NATO.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah. So a big American cheese responsible for European security in simple language. And I met him at a small Munich Security Conference event in the December before Russia had invaded. And I went up to him and said, General, why don't you slide some NATO forces into Ukraine? Look Putin in the eye and say, come on, bring it on, because we're stronger than you and he knows that. And he says, Tobias, I've already done the homework. 16th Air Assault Brigade, 82nd Airborne. He listed all the units and he'd done all his homework, just like General Patton did in the Second World War. All the staff work are done. He then turned around with his little finger, he's a little smaller than me…
Toby McCrindle, Partner
He is.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
…but he's very strong, he goes to the gym. Thumps me in the chest and goes, but it's up to you guys to give me the green light. You need to give me the permissions to do that. And of course, we blinked. We didn't do that. Imagine how different it would be. Of course, there would be that Cuban Missile moment where we would be looking at Russia, but we'd be defending a European country, a democratic country that had asked for help.
But instead, it was Jens Stoltenberg, the head of NATO, that said, well, Ukraine's not a member of NATO, therefore not our responsibility. Well, I served in Afghanistan and Iraq. They're not in NATO either, but we did things there and they didn't go down too well. Yet this is Europe, this is all about European security. And he now realises, Jens Stoltenberg, that it was a regret that he wasn't able to conjure even a coalition of the willing if it wasn't full NATO. So that political will is absolutely critical. And at the moment, there's no political will, I have to say, because the good people of Britain are aware that things are getting more dangerous but are not pressuring MPs, Parliament, and so forth to say spend more on defence. Andy Burnham's just come in.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Shopping list of things to spend on, bus fares going down, threshold taxes, and so forth, welfare, nothing on defence. And I thought with John Healey, going into the Treasury, that actually we'd spend more. But that didn't happen. Obviously, the layout of Number 11 Downing Street was too much, too intoxicating for him to then remain committed to spending more on defence. And I fear that it will take an event, an acute event, an attack of some form for the penny to drop.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
But this is why I think what's happening or happened in Germany in the last couple of days is so interesting. Because if they can link it back to Russia, which almost certainly it is Russian.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Then there's already bellicose rhetoric saying, well, then this will be different, this would be a different matter if it's state-sponsored terrorism and it's state-on-state action. My guess is that won't actually change things. I strongly suspect there will be no reaction other than perhaps a behind-the-scenes reaction. But we'll see. But we've also struggled to make a decision on whether to shoot down aircraft that have come into NATO airspace flying over Poland with armed Russian aircraft. So I don't see that shifting but I think that goes back to the point about how far removed the general population of, you know, Western Europe is from where we actually are in reality. And then there's no political will, because if it doesn't buy votes, if talking tough on defence and investing in defence doesn't buy votes, then politicians typically won't stand up to it. You're very much excepted from that.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
And there is a little bit of a boiling frog blunder, you know, cyberattacks take place, we just assume it's like bad weather. Rather than actually saying, no, there's an element somewhere that means us harm. Why aren't we countering this? There's a great story which I mention in the book. There's a film called The Interview and it's really rude. It's with Seth Rogen, quite old now and it is a rude interview. It's about this cable company that interviews people and the president of North Korea, happens to like it and invites these 2 characters to North Korea to do an interview. And they think this is fantastic and they go out there. But the CIA grab them on their way out and say, while you're out there, you need to kill him. You need to, you're going to get close quarters with him. This is what you do, you put this little thing on your hand and it's one-way and it'll poison him. It all goes, lots of things go horribly wrong and bits and pieces like that but you probably won't watch it. But it is quite a funny film, but it is very rude. I'll just warn you now. The language in it is, it's Knocked Up, it's in that sort of era of film, same sort of people. But it ends up with the North Korean president, Kim Jong-un's head blowing up. He finds out, the real Kim Jong-un finds out about this, ends up watching this and he launches a massive cyberattack on Sony Studios in Los Angeles. And it, $400 million it cost, wiping out lots of other movies, other bits and pieces like that and he ended up, but the CIA, Sony saw their machines, computers not working really well. They couldn't put their finger on it, they didn't know what it was. It was a very clever attack and they brought in the FBI. The FBI couldn't understand it. They brought in the CIA. Eventually, it was then deemed that this was a very complex clever attack by North Korea.
President Obama then was informed about this, and then he launched a responsive cyberattack back on North Korea to say, proportionate, don't ever do that again. Now, the interesting thing for me as a legislator was that had that been an attack on the building, like blown up or whatever like that, Congress would have been informed. There would have been a big debate. There would have been discussion. There would be anger and there would have been a response of some form, a proportionate response. But this was bypassed completely. This was the president making an executive decision and actually, I only know about this because there's a chap called David Sanger who works for the New York Times, specialist in cybersecurity and things like that, actually leaked this out. But this is happening all the time. And yet nobody knows of these stories because they're all kept very, very quiet. And that's grey zone warfare, but without any legislative involvement, any parliamentary oversight about what's going on and it's getting more and more complex.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Whilst we're doing film reviews, there's another very good film called Zero Day, which I don't know if you've seen.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yes.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
It's quite recent. But it's effectively what you're describing.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
It's a brilliant film.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
It's really good. So for those who haven't seen it, there is a cyberattack on the States.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Idris Elba plays the president.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
An enormous cyberattack. It takes out road traffic systems. There are crashes, trains become derailed. So it is a really serious attack. And it's effectively the first, maybe it's a series, actually, not a film. But the first couple of episodes are all the dithering within the US about how to respond to this thing. They don't know what it is. Turns out it was effectively the equivalent of Elon Musk doing it and no surprises there. But we've digressed. Across the time, do we have questions in the room? We've got about 10 minutes left. So if there are any questions, now is your opportunity. Yep, down here. Oh yeah, mic.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah, that's a big mic, isn't it?
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yeah, yeah, we like to be very clear on branding.
Audience
Okay, thank you. Um, I'd like to ask Tobias, do you have any views as to who might succeed Putin? I mean, he's not immortal, he's not going to be there forever. Is there any clarity on who might take over?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah, I cover in the book some names that, that, uh, the Defence Secretary and so forth. My point though I make is that it does not matter. The idea that we're going to the silver bullet, that Putin, that Russia will change direction. So corrupt is the system itself, often people compare it with if you make a snowball out of dry ice and you put your hands around it, the hands hold the snowball together but as soon as you let go, it all falls apart. Those hands are the executive, Putin, and so forth and he controls all the corruption, and therefore his successor will continue doing the same, otherwise, the whole thing sort of falls apart. The Russian economy has now moved onto war footing that you simply can't unpick that as well. And they've become extremely subservient to China as well. They are absolutely reliant on China. They have this sort of no-limits relationship, as it's called between Russia and China. That was the first concern I had, that you had these 2 countries signing up to mutually support each other and that was the biggest indication to say our Global Order is going to hit the buffers because 2 big superpowers are choosing a different model, a different direction of where to go.
Audience
It's all very frightening, but thank you for the answer.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Yep, over there.
Audience
Um, I just wondered what your views on the appointment of Wes is and what the practical impact of the cuts on the budget are in effect.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
So I wrote, actually wrote a piece on Wes Streeting yesterday in the Express, and, you know, there was a lot of criticism, you know, he's not ever worn the uniform, not even been in Cub Scouts, I understand. Not that that matters. But I have to say this and as a military, I'm still in the reserves but not everybody in the MOD likes an ex-officer or an officer who's then a minister because you tend to ask questions and get involved in things when the actual Ministry of Defence wants you to do one thing, and that's fight the Whitehall battles, not all the other things and get involved in the design and bits and pieces like that. There's many other ministers to do that. They simply want you to get more money and the actual heading of the article is, the biggest enemy to the MOD is not Russia, China, or Iran. It's the Treasury. So Wes has one job to do, get more money and I know him a little bit, he's a punchy guy, no nonsense and actually, he's not in a bad place to secure that. He's got an ally in the Treasury but as we touched on before, Andy Burnham has yet to appreciate the fact that we need to spend more on defence.
So there is a setup there. I don't believe that you could actually jump to 3%, which is what we really need. We need another $20 billion. There's money to be gained from welfare, certainly by trimming that and being more sensible. Pensions, really, we need to, you know, the triple lock needs to be addressed. But I think I argue that if you were to increase income tax by 1%, which is the price of a cup of coffee a day for everybody average, and you ring-fenced it and told the British people, firstly, explain to British people everything we've spoken about, the fact that the world's getting more dangerous. We need to upgrade our defence posture, particularly in the resilience and the grey zone, our economy is vulnerable. Then the British people will be more inclined to say, I'm willing to spend the price of a cup of coffee a day because the consequences of not doing that is the price of war and that's a lot more money in different forms. So you imagine, as I say, GPS going out, billions upon billions that would cost us, and all the social upheaval as well.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Do we have any online? Oh, down here, sorry.
Audience
All right, thank you.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
We'll come to you next.
Audience
Sorry, sorry. It's harrowing, it's a lot to think about. I've been kind of, um, one thing that I thought about right from the beginning, we talked about something to stand for and lest we forget, is that there is, and it sometimes presents in a bit of a misguided way, a bit of a romantic nostalgia for World War II that especially comes out in the run-up to Poppy Day.
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Yeah.
Audience
Um, and manifests in weird and strange ways to the point of fetishization. But does that help or hinder us in protecting ourselves?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
I think it's really well put. We tend to believe, to say, oh, yes. In part, actually, there is some truth behind it. I participated in a debate at Oxford University. It was quite a famous one, a repeat of a famous one, which took place in 1932. The motion in the debate was, this House will not fight for king and country. In 1932, these are students that had grown up in World War I, posed the question, would you do it? Germany was already starting to rearm, very clear where the world was going. But no, they did not want to. Churchill believed that Hitler saw the result of this because it was all in the papers in 1932, and that Britain had lost its will to fight. Now, when it came to it, absolutely, we were up there. And I think we're in the same position now, that there's this hesitance now. You put forward, I argue in the book that we need national service. We need a modern form of national service, get us all trained up in the same way that Finland and Sweden do now. But there's always pushback saying, we're going to go fight for Ukraine.
No, no, no, that's not what we're doing, we're looking after Britain. We're able to have greater resilience in this this country. And I think if you explain to the British people what the threats are, then they'd be more inclined to then support it. But you're right. A lot of us just assume that there's this romantic image of what's done in the past, and we can lean on that. Actually, as I described, warfare has changed fundamentally, and we need to wake up to that. I think there's a lady on the left, just on the left in the red as well.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
Oh, sorry. Can you come down? Oh, sorry. Down here with the lady with the glasses.
Audience
Sorry, it's going back to something you said earlier. And this is all quite alarming in a way, listening to all of this. But you said that the back channels have disappeared. Why have they disappeared? Why has it broken down so badly?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
On the first point, I think next time we do this, let's do it in a bar so we can all have a drink after. Why? Because there is no effort to ensure that they are in place, so, and I actually met at a conference in Abu Dhabi, I met Lavrov, who is the foreign minister there. He lies through his teeth all the time, the Russian foreign minister. But I did ask him when we were in a queue for lunch or whatever like that. I said, what do you think about the back channels? Are you not slightly concerned they're not there? The first time I believed him. He said, no, I worry. There isn't this ability to quickly, quietly speak to the other side, clarify what's going on before things get actually out of control. Instead, Trump is using social media particularly to speak to other countries, to speak to Iran, to speak to Russia and so on, rather than through the usual diplomatic channels. So it's a fragmentation, I'm afraid, of the Cold War statecraft skills that were once in place that absolutely, yes, we saw escalation, but then eventually led to the removal of so many nuclear weapons.
Now, I'm afraid the nuclear club is growing again, and even Britain is now procuring more nuclear weapons. But Russia, America, and China are all building more and more nuclear weapons. And it's not just those big ones like Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and so forth. It's actually the small low-yield tactical weapons that I worry about. And my fear is, going back to biological, is that if Russia starts to lose in Ukraine, it will resort to something like that on its way out, it will not care of scorching the Earth in that way. Once you've crossed that line, though, of using a single nuclear weapon, no matter how small, that taboo that has been there for how many decades is then broken and that's a very dangerous place to be.
Mishcon
We've probably got time for one more. Carrie, is there anything online yet?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
Shall we try and end on a positive note?
Audience
You posed the question to us about where is statesmanship coming from. If we were to look outside the sphere of politics for a moment and think about crowdsourcing something from business, and specifically responsible business, What answers do you think might, or action do you think might lie there to contribute towards de-escalation?
Tobias Ellwood, Author
De-escalation. Okay, well, de-escalate, what causes de-escalation? It's a respect on the other side not to pursue their vision and their aggression. So I'm afraid step 6 and 7 and 8, 6 and 7, sorry are all about upgrading our hard power. We have to look strong. We have to build our resilience and our capabilities so that we can defend ourselves and we deter. So we absolutely need to do that. But de-escalation is where we want to go. What you speak about business is absolutely pivotal because we're not learning from the business procurement. I touch in the book how long it takes for us to build things. It takes, you know, you can build a cruise ship in about 2 to 3 years, they're quite complicated things, you know, they're not that easy. They've got lots going on. It took us 15 years to build an aircraft carrier and much of that is empty because it's the middle bit where you keep the aircraft and we don't even have pingy bits to make them fly off, they actually, the aircraft themselves just shoot off themselves. Our procurement is so slow. So our ability to stay strong, we've got much to learn, I think, from industry itself, not least industry leadership too, that is able to find solutions much, much, much faster than I'm afraid that the civil service and the MOD do at the moment.
Toby McCrindle, Partner
I think that ends us bang on time. So thank you very much for that. We really appreciate you coming in. So if we could…
Applause