This Week in Dual-Use
NEWS
John Healey resigns in the face of a Defence Investment Plan that fails the country
John Healey, until recently the UK’s Defence Secretary, resigned after being presented with a Defence Investment Plan that he couldn’t put his name to. He was right to go.
I wrote a short piece about this, from the viewpoint of an investor in novel defence technology. It’s about a four minute read, here.
Royal Marines board Russian shadow fleet tanker
Royal Marine Commandos boarded a Russian "shadow fleet" oil tanker in the English Channel in the early hours of Sunday morning.
I had the privilege of commanding a Royal Marines boarding team when I was in uniform. There are few things more exhilarating than being in the back of a helicopter with the door open, kicking out a fast rope and waiting for your turn to slide down it. Reading this article took me straight back to those heady days.
Back then it was Somali pirate dhows, not Russian shadow fleet vessels, onto which Royal Marine boots landed. But the tactics remain the same and the skills honed over years of operations in the Indian Ocean are now being deployed closer to home.
It is a geopolitical watershed. Never before have British commandos boarded a Russian flagged vessel in such a way. It is a statement of intent and a message to the Kremlin.
Trump administration blocks Anthropic models
Citing national-security concerns, the US Government ordered Anthropic to prevent any non-American, including those on its own staff, from accessing its latest Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models. In response Anthropic suspended their use altogether.
This has jolted everyone. The idea that America might restrict access to AI had been a hypothetical scenario, possible at some point in the future. It came sooner than expected.
The cut-off exempts no one, not even America’s partners in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance: Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Losing access to Fable and Mythos puts them in the same boat as Russia, China or Iran.
The obvious take-away is that every country needs sovereign AI. The problem is that America’s is the best. By some margin. France has Mistral and Canada has Cohere. The UK has nothing. It did have DeepMind, but of course that was acquired by Google.
In any case, the Trump administration is unlikely to allow NVIDIA to start shipping boatloads of its most advanced GPUs to Europe. So even if DeepMind were still British, it would struggle to keep pace with Anthropic, OpenAI and others.
For some, this will be an argument in favour of open source models, such as that offered by China’s DeepSeek, which just raised money at a $50B valuation (see below).
FUNDRAISING
DEFENCE
Fabri, a manufacturing startup, emerged from stealth with $13.5M in funding from Lavrock Ventures, Balerion Space Ventures, RTX Ventures, Lockheed Martin Ventures, Marlinspike, Tenon Ventures and SBXi.
Maritime Robotics, a Norwegian developer of autonomous surface vessels, navigation systems, and modular sea drone platforms, raised a $32.5M round led by MS+Partners.
Foundation Alloy, an American advanced metals manufacturing startup, raised a $22M Series A led by Voyager Ventures.
SPACE
Apex, an American builder of satellites, raised over $200M in funding at a $2.3B valuation.
Axiom Space, an American developer of commercial space infrastructure, raised $175M in an extension to its recent funding round, led by Type One Ventures and QIA.
NewOrbit, a British developer of very low Earth orbit satellites, raised an $18.5M Series A led by Voyager Ventures.
Orbital, an American builder of satellites equipped with GPUs to perform AI inference in orbit, raised a $5M pre-seed led by a16z.
GOING PUBLIC
SpaceX priced its IPO at $135 a share, raising $75B in the largest public offering ever. The company’s market cap later hit ~$2.7T.