Anthropic and the UK — a perfect fit?

Happy Monday and welcome back. I'm in all sorts of pain after running 12 miles yesterday (my own fault, I know). I hope your weekends were less sore.

Happening Today 🗓️

Hello Fraud Strategy: The government's Fraud Strategy is due to drop this morning. The focus is on combating online fraud, with the launch of an "Online Crime Centre" for banks, tech companies, telecoms firms, the police and government to work together on.

In Parliament: A busy one. The Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill is back in the Commons this afternoon and, as reported last week, ministers are seeking broad new powers to enforce the outcome of the social media and chatbot consultation, which MPs are likely to pass. Meta, X and TikTok are all in front of the Foreign Affairs Committee at 2pm to answer questions about how they're both disrupting and platforming foreign disinformation campaigns. Also taking evidence today is the APPG on Children's Online Safety which will be hearing about the positive uses of AI for children.

Securing the cloud: The prime minister will respond to the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Cloud Technologies Report today. The report was confidential but the prime minister's response should be published in a written statement to Parliament.

News In Brief 🩳

The CRINKS do AI: The UK should focus on national security risks posed by hostile countries co-operating on AI, the Alan Turing Institute says in a report out this morning. The research, from the Turing's Centre for Emerging Technology and Security (CETaS), finds evidence of collaboration between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea (aka the CRINKS) on AI.

Hold up: The UK's flagship "Invest in Women Taskforce" is yet to deploy any capital, two years after launching, Sifted reports this morning.

Paid to forget: AI startup Locai Labs will use Britain's most powerful supercomputer, Isambard AI, to explore "machine unlearning" — methods of training existing open source AI models to forget things they've learned during training, such as political censorship (hello Chinese open source).

At it again: A government spokesperson has described the latest use of Grok to generate abuse as "sickening", Sky reports.

The UK woos Anthropic

Welcome mat: London Mayor Sadiq Khan has pounced on the Trump administration blacklisting of Anthropic to encourage the frontier AI firm to expand in the UK.

More than an outpost: The city is already Anthropic’s biggest office outside the US and it has deep links in the UK. The company, which is looking to IPO this year, has quadrupled its head count in less than two years to more than 200 staff, including 60 researchers. But Khan spies a further opportunity in the White House designating Anthropic as a supply chain risk over its refusal to allow the Pentagon to use its technology for all military uses. 

Pen pally: "Anthropic’s approach to safety and governance reflects the principles we want to see embedded in future AI development," the mayor wrote last week, in a letter quoted by The Times. "I believe that London can provide the stable, proportionate and pro-innovation environment in which this kind of AI can flourish." He adds it “would be good to discuss how we could support you to expand operations further".

You know it makes sense: Anthropic's co-founder Jack Clark is British, along with senior staff, and it works closely with the UK government’s AI Security Institute. The company signed an agreement last year to deepen its work with the British state. It counts Rishi Sunak as an adviser and Sunak's former chief of staff, Liam Booth-Smith, is its policy chief in EMEA. Its chatbot Claude is being used to create a chatbot for the public to interact with government services on GOV.UK.

Already on it: David Lawrence, co-founder of the Centre for British Progress, was calling a UK move for Anthropic before the fallout with Trump. “The UK government should do everything it can to get Anthropic to move,” he wrote in February. “The British state could be an early shareholder in a newly-London listed Anthropic.”

Monday Movers 👩‍💻

Get in touch to share your career updates. 

That was quick: Global Counsel's tech team have wasted no time in finding new jobs since the firm's collapse into administration. Tom Doherty has joined FGS Global's tech team, which is led by Global Counsel alumni Conan D'Arcy, while David Swanson is off to Hanbury as an assistant director.

Congrats all: Lulu Freemont has left Milltown to serve as SpAd to the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, Darren Jones. BCS, The Chartered Institute of IT, has appointed Harpreet Panesar as Director of Membership and Adam Thompson as Director of Digital.

Spotted on LinkedIn: OpenAI has a comms job going in London and Public First's TMT team is also recruiting.

That's your lot, back tomorrow.

Tom