Welcome to the 64th Cable, our weekly roundup of British foreign and defence policy.
Last week, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) tightened export restrictions for rare earth minerals, with foreign companies now requiring a licence from Beijing to export magnets which contain Chinese-sourced rare earth material. The new measures also restrict Chinese firms from sharing magnet-making expertise with foreigners.
This escalation has the potential to cause significant disruptions to global supply chains, as the PRC is responsible for almost 70% of rare earth mining worldwide, and enjoys a near monopoly on rare earth refining. It is being seen as the latest move by Beijing in the trade war between the PRC and the United States (US), especially with the upcoming talks between Donald Trump, President of the US, and Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). However, it also provides valuable data to Beijing on the vulnerability within often opaque supply chains.
For the United Kingdom (UK), these restrictions will impact a vast range of industries, but will affect the defence and automotive sectors in particular. His Majesty’s (HM) Government’s response should be firm and made alongside allies and partners. More than anything, however, these export controls demonstrate the overreliance on Chinese critical resources and the need to develop resilient supply chains to ensure that the PRC’s influence over Britain and its allies is readily reduced.
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The leaders of the European Three (E3) nations – Britain, France and Germany – announced in a joint statement on 10th October that they are ‘ready to progress towards using…the value of the immobilised Russian sovereign assets to support Ukraine’ to bring Russia to the negotiation table. They added that the move would be made ‘in close cooperation’ with the US. Ensuring continued support for Ukraine has been a key element of British foreign policy since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, as a recent article by PISM, a Polish foreign policy think tank, demonstrates. The authors argue that the UK views Ukraine as a central pillar to European security and British defence policy, with London providing critical support to Kyiv and enhancing diplomatic and defence relations over the last few years.
Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, attended the signing ceremony of the Gaza Peace Plan in Egypt on 13th October, marking a potential turning point in the Middle East conflict. The Prime Minister announced £20 million of UK aid to provide water, sanitation and hygiene services for civilians across Gaza. Sir Keir also pledged Britain’s full diplomatic support to ensure the success of the peace plan, with the UK hosting a three-day conference on Gaza’s recovery and reconstruction starting on Monday 13th October.
On 13th October, the Royal Navy announced that HMS Agamemnon had successfully completed its first dive during trials at BAE Systems’ Barrow-in-Furness shipyard. HMS Agamemnon is the sixth of seven Astute class nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs), with HMS Achilles, the final boat of the class, expected to enter service by 2029.
The Ministry of Defence has issued a Request for Information (RFI) to industry for a fixed-wing drone capable of operating from Royal Navy aircraft carriers under Project VANQUISH. The Royal Navy is seeking to test the system, or Autonomous Collaborative Platform (ACP), at sea by the end of 2026. The information provided in response to the RFI will contribute to the future development of the ACP, which will be required to work with fighter jets on aircraft carriers and operate at high subsonic speed.
For additional defence news stories, follow this link to the DSEI Gateway news portal.
HM Government has announced the appointment of Rupert Pearce as the National Armaments Director (NAD). The NAD will implement the Defence Industrial Strategy and oversee a single new investment budget, consolidating eight separate procurement budgets across the organisation. Pearce previously was Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Inmarsat, a satellite telecommunications company, for nine years, and brings decades of private sector experience to the role. He has been appointed on a five-year fixed-term contract and started the position on 14th October.
New research carried out by Ember, an energy think tank, showed that renewable energy overtook coal as the world’s leading source of electricity in the first half of 2025, making up 34.3% of global output while coal made up 33.1%. In a mid-year global electricity insight report, Ember stated that solar and wind growth exceeded global electricity demand growth in the first half of 2025, leading to a slight fall in fossil fuel generation. The latest data for Britain shows that in 2024, renewables made up 36% of the UK’s energy mix, with fossil fuels providing 34%.
How competitors frame Britain
The Global Times published a response to the recent dropping of charges in the case of two men in Britain who were accused of spying for Beijing, stating that the incident was ‘political, not legal’. The article adds that anger at the decision in the UK does not ‘arise from a genuine concern for national security’, but rather because it has ‘stripped them of a convenient excuse to amplify the “China threat”’. The PRC might have got their way this time, but the threat to British interests from Beijing is both real and growing.
TASS interviewed Andrey Kelin, Russian ambassador to the UK, in which he claimed that ‘London remains determined to bring the Kyiv regime into NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation] and deploy NATO strike capabilities on Ukrainian territory.’ He went on to state that Britain has been ‘fanning the flames’ of war following Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour in 2022, with the goal of ‘inflicting a…strategic defeat on Russia.’ Britain’s support for Ukraine has always focused on ensuring the country remains a safe and sovereign nation, despite what the Kremlin says.
Why the UK-India deal matters for London
The UK-India relationship received a major bump this month as the two nations finalised a wide-ranging Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and several initiatives in technology and defence. The FTA is expected to boost bilateral trade by £25.5 billion annually, resulting in an added £4.8 billion boost to Britain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) every year.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister said that nine British universities will open campuses in India – a neat way of maintaining the UK’s education-as-export strategy, while delicately tiptoeing around the migration issues which beset domestic British politics with overstays. Given India’s drift back towards Russia and the PRC, the strategic importance of the outreach cannot be overstated. Keeping India friendly is as much a good thing for the US and European Union (EU) as it is for the UK.
When it comes to Britain’s current foreign policy, India provides the answer to London’s ‘China problem’. That ill-fated relationship is once again in the news this week due to the allegations in The Telegraph that Jonathan Powell, National Security Adviser, leant on the Ministry of Justice and Prosecution to drop a criminal case against two alleged spies for Beijing.
The dissonance inside Whitehall over the PRC is nothing new; it has occurred previously and has long been driven by the conflict between trade and defence – the dilemma between guns and butter. However, India’s rise presents the UK with an alternative market, a diversification from Beijing’s economic embrace and a safer source of technology cooperation.
Indeed, it is odd that HM Government insiders make so much of Chinese investment. India is second only to the US as a top source of inbound investment, while the PRC is not even among the top ten. True, the relationship between London and New Delhi is not without its complications; the colonial era and visas remain ‘sensitive’ for both sides. And, in terms of strategic alignment, India is still some way from the UK’s hawkish position on Russia. Indeed, New Delhi has long held an oddly soft position on Moscow in the post-invasion of Ukraine era, increasing its oil imports some 35-40%.
Despite all this, the London-Delhi bilateral is moving forward, and HM Government is to be commended. The growth of military-to-military cooperation and defence trade are marked successes. The UK-India bilateral naval Exercise KONKAN has been taking place since 2004 and its 2025 iteration was notable in featuring Carrier Strike Groups from both navies. Furthermore, a modest £350 million deal to provide the Indian Army with short-range missiles has been inked, providing a tangible deliverable in trade.
When it comes to technology cooperation, there is much which can be done, but the two countries must build the right frameworks for cooperation – ties between universities and research centres. All of this is very promising, and certainly provides a safer alternative to Chinese technology cooperation, which seems to offer multiple security challenges for its partners.
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