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AI
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Processing, analysing and extrapolating insights from large data sets to support public service and financial management functions; natural language processing and translation tools; autonomous vehicles and devices.
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Autonomous weapons systems; cognitive warfare, including AI-enabled information campaigns and social media manipulation; identification and exploitation of cyber vulnerabilities; optimized intelligence-targeting and analysis.
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Quantum computing
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Molecular modelling for medical and pharmaceutical research; financial, climate and materials modelling and optimization.
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Breaking existing cryptographic systems and decrypting sensitive communications.
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Quantum sensing
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Geological mapping; environmental monitoring; advanced medical imaging and diagnostics.
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GPS-independent military positioning, navigation and targeting systems.
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Engineering biology
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Vaccine development; drug discovery; genomic treatments for diseases; development of new agricultural food sources and biofuels.
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Development of targeted biological agents (biological weapons); enhancement of human performance for military personnel.
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Advanced connectivity technologies
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5G/6G telecommunications; ‘Internet of Things’ (IoT) devices; smart city infrastructure; connected critical national infrastructure including healthcare and energy.
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Intelligence interception and surveillance; coordination of autonomous military systems; military command-and-control networks.
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Source: Krelina (2025), Military and Security Dimensions of Quantum Technology; OECD (2026), Building capacity in technology horizon scanning: A guide for policymakers, Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2026/06, https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2026/04/building-capacity-in-technology-horizon-scanning_7a0a98c6/b4f0d383-en.pdf.
The convergence of emerging technologies is likely to create dual-use capabilities far more transformative than any one technology alone. For example, the convergence of AI, quantum computing and engineering biology could accelerate scientific discovery by enabling researchers to model complex biological systems, optimize genetic designs and rapidly identify new materials, therapeutics and manufacturing processes. At the same time, these technologies may accelerate the development of chemical and biological threats and enable the design of bioengineered weapons.
How are these threats realized in practice?
Foreign state activity targeting the UK research sector is not limited to any single country and spans a spectrum of methods, both licit and illicit, to access and acquire sensitive knowledge and expertise from UK universities. At the most serious end of the threat spectrum, individuals acting on behalf of foreign states may engage in illegal economic espionage, cyber intrusion and IP theft, including the targeted extraction of proprietary research data, unpublished findings and commercially sensitive technological information.
However, intelligence and security agencies consistently assess that the malign transfer of sensitive S&T knowledge predominantly occurs through the use of ‘non-traditional collectors’: that is, individuals who are not formal intelligence agents, but who are nonetheless directed or (wittingly or unwittingly) incentivized or leveraged by foreign states to acquire sensitive S&T information on their behalf. These actors largely operate within the bounds of legitimate academic, commercial or research activities. By using legitimate vectors, adversarial foreign state actors remove the need to mount sophisticated covert espionage or cyber operations to acquire sensitive S&T knowledge and expertise.
The scale of this activity is inherently difficult to quantify. The theft or malign transfer of dual-use S&T knowledge, expertise and IP is difficult to identify and rarely disclosed publicly, while universities may have strong reputational and commercial incentives to manage potential security concerns internally. Consequently, publicly known cases are likely to represent only a small proportion of the overall research security challenge. This limited visibility further complicates efforts to assess the prevalence and scale of non-traditional collection across the UK research sector.
In practice, non-traditional collection is enabled through a wide range of legitimate academic and professional vectors. These include formal collaboration mechanisms such as joint research programmes, international consortiums, visiting-scholar arrangements, talent recruitment schemes, industrial partnerships and overseas research institutes. Such vectors also extend to less formal but highly consequential channels of knowledge exchange, including conference participation, peer-to-peer collaboration, co-authorship networks, and the circulation of pre-publication or early-stage research findings.
China as the primary threat actor
Within the broader landscape of state threats to UK universities, China presents the most significant and systemic research security challenge. On the one hand, it is one of the UK’s most significant partners in scientific collaboration. On the other, the UK Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has characterized China as a ‘strategic threat’, warning that UK universities provide a ‘rich feeding ground’ for China to acquire IP and accelerate its technological development through unauthorized means.
While China is not unique in seeking access to foreign S&T ecosystems, it is distinguished by the scale of its ambitions, the resources it can mobilize, and the centrality of S&T to both its economic model and military modernization agenda.
Key to the security challenge is not simply that China poses an unprecedented espionage risk to UK S&T, but that it operates a ‘whole-of-state’ approach to S&T development. Civilian researchers, universities and firms are increasingly mobilized alongside defence and security actors to transfer knowledge and expertise gained abroad back to China in support of CPC objectives. The UK intelligence community assesses that China is ‘agnostic about the means employed to achieve its objectives’, willing to use a combination of lawful, grey-zone and illicit methods simultaneously to acquire strategic advantage, and able to adapt its methods to avoid detection. During Xi Jinping’s presidency, S&T policy has become increasingly centralized under party-state control, and explicitly framed as a core instrument for achieving the CPC’s strategic objectives, including military capability development and the achievement of national security outcomes. This agenda has been operationalized through China’s military–civil fusion strategy, ensuring that civilian S&T developments can be rapidly adapted or mobilized for military use.
Alongside dedicated People’s Liberation Army (PLA) research institutes and defence laboratories, a wider network of state-linked research organizations such as the Chinese Academy of Science and defence-linked universities – including the so-called ‘Seven Sons of National Defence’ – maintain extensive links to China’s defence-industrial base through military laboratories, defence research programmes and talent pipelines. Despite the apparent risks China’s system and agenda present, a 2026 report by UK-China Transparency found that the UK maintains the largest number of collaborations globally with Seven Sons of National Defence entities. Based on data reported by China’s Ministry of Education in June 2026, the UK accounted for 19 such partnerships, followed by Russia with 10 and France with eight.
Beyond identifiable PLA-linked entities, the distinction between civilian and military institutions has become increasingly blurred as dual-use research programmes expand and as the work of civilian universities and companies is integrated into national strategic priorities. This creates risks for UK universities engaged in research collaboration with Chinese entities, as due diligence assessments will become more difficult over time, and the security risks posed by Chinese universities and companies harder to mitigate.
