UK and US intelligence chiefs commit to enduring combined cyber operations
Meeting at the Cyber Management Review hosted in Fort Meade, Maryland USA, Director GCHQ Sir Jeremy Fleming and General Sir Patrick Sanders, Commander of UK Strategic Command reaffirmed a joint commitment to disrupt and deter new and emerging cyber threats with General Paul Nakasone, Director of the US National Security Agency and Commander of US Cyber Command.
Cyberspace is an increasingly contested space. UK and US intelligence and defence agencies work in partnership as world-leading cyber powers to counter a full spectrum of threats, from sophisticated criminals to hostile states.
The annual forum helps to shape the world’s closest global intelligence relationship and enables both the UK and US to develop world-class cyber capabilities, improve cyber defences, and impose common costs for malicious cyber activity. The dialogue between leaders is crucial to protect our countries, our people and our way of life.
The UK and US are committed to carrying out operations under world-leading legal frameworks to ensure anything we do is legal, proportionate, and necessary.
At the forum, UK and US intelligence and defence chiefs provided the following joint statement:
“As like-minded allies for two centuries, the United Kingdom and the United States share a close and enduring relationship. Our two nations today face strategic threats in an interconnected, digital world that seek to undermine our shared principles, norms, and values.
“We agree that strategic engagement in cyberspace is crucial to defending our way of life, by addressing these evolving threats with a full range of capabilities. To carry this out, we will continue to adapt, innovate, partner, and succeed against evolving threats in cyberspace.
“We will achieve this by planning enduring combined cyberspace operations that enable a collective defence and deterrence and impose consequences on our common adversaries who conduct malicious cyber activity.
“As democratic cyber nations, the UK and US are committed to doing so in a responsible way in line with international law and norms, setting the example for responsible state behaviour in cyberspace.”
