David Richards

Tommy Flowers built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, and used it to help Britain read German communications during the Second World War. Despite its importance, the machines were dismantled, the designs destroyed and Flowers was bound to secrecy, preventing Britain from turning the breakthrough into a commercial computing industry. By contrast, the United States shared and developed comparable technology through ENIAC, helping create a powerful domestic industry. The piece argues that Britain repeats this failure when homegrown companies such as DeepMind and ARM operate under foreign ownership, and warns that the country must ensure it retains ownership and economic value from its ambition to lead in artificial intelligence.