I don't understand why physically hosting the compute in the UK is so important, especially if we are going to be using foreign models that are available to our adverseries. I would rather focus on using the extra power required to shift away from fossil fuels for heating and transport.
We will probably suffer more cyber security attacks, but unless we have access to the source code of the vulnerable software then we won't be able to patch it. If we do have access, then its likely to be open source so someone else will be able to patch it.
Maybe the money could be spent on sponsoring open source projects to help keep them secure and to move government departments over to said open source and away from the closed source systems that would be more vulnerable.
In general I agree that people are not freaking out enough about the Hugging Face hack, and more generally about how good AI has got at cybersecurity. But the current deluge of vulnerability reports probably won't continue at the same rate forever. The usual pattern with any new bug-scanning tool is that it finds a huge number of bugs the first time you run it against a new codebase, but once those bugs are fixed the rate drops off. As the tool improves it finds a few more bugs, but all the easy pickings were found in the first run. Then you try another tool that works on different lines to anything you've tried before, and the cycle begins again...
If that's the purpose, then building datacentres in places with high availability of electricity and cooling resources would be good.
That means a lot in places with lots of wind turbines and high rainfall, which sounds like the North of England, Scotland, and Wales. Maybe with a preference for the original water-powered industrial revolution areas like along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Rather than in the South-East.
This reminds me a bit of the private / public / hybrid server battles of yesteryear. People were certain that large companies would always run their own private clouds
I don't understand why physically hosting the compute in the UK is so important, especially if we are going to be using foreign models that are available to our adverseries. I would rather focus on using the extra power required to shift away from fossil fuels for heating and transport.
We will probably suffer more cyber security attacks, but unless we have access to the source code of the vulnerable software then we won't be able to patch it. If we do have access, then its likely to be open source so someone else will be able to patch it.
Maybe the money could be spent on sponsoring open source projects to help keep them secure and to move government departments over to said open source and away from the closed source systems that would be more vulnerable.
In general I agree that people are not freaking out enough about the Hugging Face hack, and more generally about how good AI has got at cybersecurity. But the current deluge of vulnerability reports probably won't continue at the same rate forever. The usual pattern with any new bug-scanning tool is that it finds a huge number of bugs the first time you run it against a new codebase, but once those bugs are fixed the rate drops off. As the tool improves it finds a few more bugs, but all the easy pickings were found in the first run. Then you try another tool that works on different lines to anything you've tried before, and the cycle begins again...
If that's the purpose, then building datacentres in places with high availability of electricity and cooling resources would be good.
That means a lot in places with lots of wind turbines and high rainfall, which sounds like the North of England, Scotland, and Wales. Maybe with a preference for the original water-powered industrial revolution areas like along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. Rather than in the South-East.
Alas: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/never-seen-this-level-of-objection-scotland-pushes-back-against-datacentre-boom
This reminds me a bit of the private / public / hybrid server battles of yesteryear. People were certain that large companies would always run their own private clouds