The UK has been too complacent about the risk of foreign attack, the boss of Europe's biggest defence contractor BAE Systems has warned. Dr Charles Woodburn told the BBC in an exclusive interview that the level of threat was the highest he'd seen in his lifetime. He welcomed the recent boost to defence spending but said much more would be needed to hit the government's commitment to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035. He also warned we were not far from the use of autonomous lethal weapons by countries that may not follow the UK's policy of maintaining human control. In a rare interview, Woodburn told the BBC the reality of modern warfare had changed quite profoundly and that UK defence spending had to change with it.

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The public will be urged to take small but important steps to prepare for food or water shortages in the event of a cyber-attack or severe weather, the government has said as it updated Parliament on its national resilience plans. Cabinet Office Minister Darren Jones said a public awareness campaign would be launched later this year to help people prepare for emergencies. He also said the government would carry out the largest UK home defence exercise in several decades next year to ensure the UK is ready should the worst ever happen. Separately, the national risk register, external has been updated with seven new risks including the threat of a cyber-attack on water infrastructure. The threat of digital resilience failure - such as the global CrowdStrike outage which crippled more than eight million computers - has also been added to the list of the most acute risks facing the UK, which totals 95.

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Since their listing in 2024, Kioxia's shares have surged on runaway demand for AI memory chips. Bain Capital has sold its entire stake in flash memory chipmaker Kioxia Holdings, closing a chapter on a deal that's transformed the Japanese tech and investment landscape. "We don't have a stake any more in Kioxia," Bain Managing Partner David Gross said in an interview. The U.S. private equity firm has logged record-setting returns after a global spending spree on AI catapulted Kioxia's shares more than 4,800% from their debut, transforming the chipmaker into one of Japan's most valuable companies. "It's worked spectacularly for all the stakeholders involved," Gross said.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte delivers the keynote speech at the NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, on the sidelines of the NATO leaders' Summit, in Ankara on Tuesday. NATO allies have agreed to at least $50 billion in defense industry deals, according to an alliance official, to show to U.S. President Donald Trump that Europe is heeding his spending demands. Secretary-General Mark Rutte revealed some of the contracts on Tuesday during a defense industry forum in Ankara, where the military alliance's leaders are meeting for their annual summit this week. Those included $12 billion in deals to buy next-generation drones, surveillance planes and military aircraft. Notably, some of the contracts show Europe moving to locally source some equipment it previously bought from the United States.

Parents warned not to publicly share children's images amid AI abuse risks Parents should not publicly post images of their children online due to the growth of AI-generated abuse imagery, the National Crime Agency (NCA) has warned. Along with the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), it said there is a growing threat of children's images online being used to create child sexual abuse material (CSAM). More than 8,000 AI-generated images and videos of realistic child sexual abuse were identified by the IWF in 2025, it said - adding this was a 14% increase on the year before. While we and policing colleagues tackle offenders, prevention remains vital, said Tim Wright, a senior manager at the NCA. In partnership with the IWF, the organisation has released fresh guidance for parents outlining steps they can take to help keep their children safe online.

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Cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology is poised to supercharge offensive hacking capabilities, and urgent action is needed to face up to the threat, US, UK, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand officials have said. "Frontier AI models are anticipated to exceed current industry expectations, fundamentally transforming both offensive and defensive cyber capabilities," the intelligence alliance commonly known as the Five Eyes said in a three-page statement on Monday. The statement was light on detail and mostly restated core cybersecurity advice, such as swiftly patching faulty software and not putting systems online unless necessary. The officials also urged defenders to use AI "to strengthen defence", for example by identifying weaknesses sooner or responding more quickly to incidents. The warning was another indication of officials' increasing concerns over models such as Anthropic's Mythos or OpenAI's GPT-5.5-Cyber, which are said to allow users to quickly execute complex - and potentially devastating - hacks.