The City Quantum and AI Summit 2025 Videos

Defence Panel Discusses How to Bring Quantum & AI to Bear in a Hostile World

Insider Brief

• Senior defense leaders and technologists at The City Quantum & AI Summit in London said quantum and artificial intelligence will be decisive in maintaining NATO’s strategic advantage amid rising geopolitical tensions.

• Panelists including representatives from Multiverse Computing, Aquark Technologies, BAE Systems, and MBDA highlighted how quantum sensing, AI assurance, and collaboration between startups and defense contractors are reshaping deterrence and resilience.

• Speakers warned that Europe’s quantum ambitions are constrained by funding and regulation, emphasizing the need for faster innovation, stronger public-private partnerships, and sustained defense investment before it is too late.

At a time when technology defines national power, senior defense leaders and technologists say quantum and artificial intelligence could prove decisive in maintaining strategic advantage across the NATO alliance. 

Speaking at The City Quantum & AI Summit’s defense panel discussion chaired by General Sir Patrick Sanders, the high-level defence panel explored how quantum sensing, AI assurance and public-private collaboration are reshaping deterrence and resilience in an increasingly hostile world.The summit, one of the premier summits bringing together Quantum, Defense and the Financial Sector, was celebrating its Fifth Anniversary in London.

General Sanders, who led the discussion,  framed the debate with a historical perspective. Drawing on thinkers from Gramsci to Kissinger, he warned that nations and institutions risk “a strange defeat” when they fail to adapt to technological and ideological shifts. He argued that defense organizations must avoid this fate by embracing innovation at speed:

To that end, Sanders convened four leaders working at the frontiers of quantum and AI transformation: Enrique Lizaso of Multiverse Computing, Andrei Dragomir of Aquark Technologies, Rob Flanders of BAE Systems, and Edwin Bowden-Peters of MBDA.

A Dual Challenge: Competing and Securing

Rob Flanders, Head of Threat and Incident Response at BAE Systems, described a defense environment shaped by what he called a “dipolar threat landscape.” He pointed to active conflict on NATO’s borders and long-term strategic competition with China as defining pressures.

“So we’re faced with a literal war on the border, combined with a much longer term geostrategic threat that essentially sits behind lots of the technologies that we’re looking at, discussing and adopting today,” said Flanders. “So I think it’s from our perspective, very much a dipolar threat landscape that we need to be aware of and be concerned about.”

Flanders said that emerging capabilities like AI-assisted quantum systems demand rigorous assurance before being fielded. “In defense, high assurance isn’t optional,” he added, explaining that engineers must know the provenance of data that trains AI systems.

 “If you put garbage in, you might well get garbage out – and that’s the last thing you want on a strategic program,” Flanders added.

Quantum Sensing and the Return of Deterrence

For Andrei Dragomir, founder and CEO of Aquark Technologies, quantum sensing is already transforming how NATO nations approach navigation, timing, and infrastructure resilience. His company, the first quantum investment of the NATO Innovation Fund, builds compact cold-atom clocks and sensors that work in GPS-denied environments.

Dragomir said that the key advantage of quantum sensing is its ability to “collect good data rather than bad data” – eliminating noise at the source rather than filtering it afterward. That accuracy, he argued, underpins both deterrence and resilience.

“So, having that technology and using it in a proper way can definitely be like the next bow and arrow of defense,” said Dragomir. “It’s also an indirect capability, where if you can navigate in GPS denied environments, eventually your enemy is going to stop spoofing your GPS, because it’s pointless, and therefore you can still rely on the existing infrastructure that you would otherwise have relied on today, and I think it’s going to have a huge impact.”

He forecast that deployable quantum navigation systems could begin scaling within 12 to 36 months, emphasizing collaboration as essential to success.

“I think it’s collaboration that is absolutely essential at this point in time,” said Dragomir. “There’s no single player that can build towards a vision like this by themselves. We need to have our doors very, very open.”

Europe’s Quantum Investment Gap

Enrique Lizaso, CEO and co-founder of Multiverse Computing, offered a candid view of Europe’s position in the quantum race. His firm develops hybrid quantum-AI algorithms for banks, defense manufacturers, and governments. Lizaso argued that Europe’s problem is not talent or ideas, but financing and regulation.

“We have the technology, maybe even better,” said Lizaso, adding, “But the way to convert – to transform – that into something which is more than that, by which I mean create companies that are big enough – is a different way. This is a financial problem at the very, very, very core of the situation, particularly in Europe.”

He also pointed to new defense applications of AI model compression, including lightweight multimodal neural networks that can run on small devices and recognize objects in the field. However, he warned that overly restrictive data-use rules could delay such innovations.

Bridging the Gap Between Labs and Battlefields

Edwin Bowden-Peters, UK Technology Watch Lead at MBDA, underscored how innovation is accelerating beyond traditional defense boundaries. “Access to technology has been completely democratized,” he said, noting that tools once confined to military labs are now commonplace in consumer electronics.

MBDA, which has invested directly in Aquark, is testing new models of collaboration with startups. Bowden-Peters recalled that Aquark caught his team’s attention when they demonstrated a ruggedized quantum device that could be carried rather than confined to a lab bench.

“They cared about it being ruggedized and real world and so immediately we knew that they cared about the same things as us,” Bowden-Peters said. “And so then what we did is we funded an experiment, and we said, can we push this further?”

He added that defense must increase its risk appetite for performance — but never at the expense of safety. “If you come second in war, someone doesn’t go home,” he said. “That’s why we have to test to extremes.”

Investing Before It’s Too Late

General Sanders closed with a reminder that defense spending is not an indulgence but an insurance policy. In 1936, he noted, the U.K. spent 2.9% of GDP on defense; by 1939, that figure had risen to 10%, and by 1945, to 50%.

“The sums we’re talking about today  – half a percent, one percent of GDP  – are nothing,” he said. “Prevention is a hell of a lot cheaper than cure.”

The City Quantum & AI Summit - Race for Growth

Q&A: The Race for Growth — Five Years of The City Quantum & AI Summit

Editor’s Note: Over the last five years, The City Quantum and AI Summit, which takes place in the Mansion House in the heart of the City of London, has earned a reputation as a quantum conference that not only keeps its finger on the pulse of the rapidly emerging quantum technology landscape, but also one that provides an accessible forum for the field’s diverse community. Celebrating the UN’s International Year of Quantum, the Fifth Anniversary Summit will take place on October 8, 2025. Here, we chat with Karina Robinson, CEO of Radcliffe Advisory and the founder of this summit, to learn a little bit more about the upcoming 2025 The City Quantum and AI Summit, as well as add context to the fifth anniversary of one of quantum’s marquee events..

This year’s Summit is themed “Race for Growth.” What does growth mean in the context of quantum and AI, and why is now the moment to focus on it?

Our democracies are under threat from external sabotage, misinformation and governmental inability to deliver. The only way to avoid falling into the lure of the populists is for our economies to grow. Harnessing Quantum and AI is a way of achieving productivity gains and revenue increases. 

To celebrate its Fifth Anniversary, the Summit is publishing Race for Growth, a report with contributions from CEOs, Chairs, and other board members on how to boost our economies through Deep Tech and international collaboration. 

The speaker lineup this year includes more CEOs from financial and professional services than ever before. What message does that send about where quantum and AI are heading? 

Board members of financial and professional services are aware that, generally, they lack enough knowledge of how Quantum and AI will disrupt their companies and sectors. That awareness has been growing over the last few years. By insisting on the Summit’s principle of ‘no lingo, no jargon, plain language only,’ top executives are comfortable talking and learning publicly about Deep Tech’s impact.

Geopolitical shifts have reshaped the global landscape. How do international tensions and alliances affect the collaboration — or competition — in deep tech sectors like AI and quantum? And how does the Summit expect to navigate these new waters? 

The City Quantum & AI Summit will walk through the complex, evolving geopolitical maze with a light step! We have companies from the US, Europe, the UK and Taiwan present. The Trump presidency has upended traditional alliances, but collaboration is still a pre-requisite. We are especially focused on the UK and the EU working together more closely, with the US and democracies like Australia and Japan involved.

Defence and finance are rarely seen on the same stage, but you’ve made that blend a defining feature of the Summit. What’s the logic behind that mix? 

There are two reasons for the unique mix.  From the moment Ukraine was invaded by Russia three years ago it became obvious that, firstly, we needed to fight for our democracies rather than take them for granted, and secondly, that defence spending would accelerate exponentially. This was a great, albeit tragic, opportunity to advance the science. The results will be dual-use applications – from logistics to navigation – on a par with what came out of the Apollo Space Mission. 

Additionally, finance is a pre-requisite for firms on the edge of innovation, while financiers need to be exposed to investing opportunities. 

The Summit was built on three founding principles: no jargon, gender-balanced panels, and accessibility. In an era of accelerating complexity, are those principles more relevant than ever?

In this day and age it is indispensable to be understood by those outside your group. Gender-balanced panels are even more crucial today than they were five years ago, when the Summit began. The backlash against the excesses of woke politics is being used as an excuse to undermine basic Diversity & Inclusion and that needs to be combatted. Lastly, the Summit is streamed for free and all panels are then posted on social media. 

How does the historic setting — the Mansion House and the presence of the 696th Lord Mayor — shape the tone and ambition of the Summit? 

It is great fun to host a conference on breakthrough Quantum & AI in a historic palace with gold table-settings and chandeliers-a-plenty, rather than the usual soulless conference centre! On a more serious note, the Mansion House’s convening power is legendary, and key to attracting senior leaders from a wide variety of sectors who are open to solving the world’s problems. The halls of the Mansion House represent the historic location where top financiers have met for generations to finance world trade and innovation, and is the perfect setting to combine both them and the future leaders of technology and science under one roof.

What role do you see for the UK, and The City in particular, in driving international leadership in deep tech over the next five years?

The City of London has been at the forefront of financing progress for centuries. This Summit keeps the flame alive!

Finally, with tech leaders, financial giants, and defence strategists all under one roof, what would you like attendees to walk away thinking, feeling, or doing differently?

The outcome is all about cross-sectoral collaboration and cross-national collaboration, both in finance and defense. I hope all of us joining together at the Summit, be it in person or online, are able to see the growth potential of connecting with people in all fields.

What have you been most proud of about previous iterations of the Summit?

I am most proud of bringing together such diverse sectors. And when people tell you they found a job, an investing opportunity, or funding for their company at the Summit, I couldn’t be happier!

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