Laura Cleary and Graeme Olley worked together at the Defence Academy over a six-year period, delivering Defence Engagement. During that time they fielded a range of questions from students regarding international security, operational commitments, governance and management. Here they reunite to reflect on the impact of COVID-19.
LC: The risks to the UK’s security have not fundamentally changed since the start of the pandemic. Since 2010 the top risks have been identified consistently as pandemic, natural disaster or manmade accident, international terrorism, cyber attack, and international military crisis.
What will change as the result of the pandemic is the government’s ability to respond in a meaningful and sustained fashion should any of the other risks become a reality.
The lockdown measures imposed by the British government, and other nations, may have been absolutely necessary from a public health perspective, but they will have long term consequences in terms of revenue and recession; the Bank of England is currently predicting the worst recession in 300 years.
We can anticipate that the public will want to see greater investment in the NHS going forward. With businesses shuttered, staff furloughed or made redundant, tax revenue will fall, however Government expenditure is increasing as it endeavours to bail out businesses and pushes money into the social welfare system. All of that will have an impact on the Government’s ability to invest in response mechanisms to other security risks in the future.
GO: The only thing I would add is, perhaps the new risk may be that we may not have learned the lesson that ‘Resilience’ is not just a buzz word and about reaction, but about analysis, preparation, prevention and learning.
My time working for and with governments worldwide tells me that one drawback of that obsessive reliance on and use of technology is that in the near future, once again, the lessons will only be identified. The technological hamsters will continue to remain confused as to why the wheel seems to move even faster than before without the circumstances significantly improving.
