Strategic Context Global Britain in a Competitive Age 9. The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, published in March 2021, describes the government’s vision for the UK’s role in the world over the next decade and the action we will take to 2025. It recognises that for the UK to be better equipped for a more competitive world we must embrace innovation in science and technology to boost our national prosperity and strategic advantage. The National Cyber Strategy builds on this approach and its publication is one of the commitments under the Integrated Review strategic objective for ‘sustaining strategic advantage through science and technology’. The cyber landscape 10. The policy challenges presented by cyberspace are not solely technological in nature. The cyber domain is a humanmade environment and is fundamentally shaped by human behaviour. It amplifies such behaviours for better or worse, the impacts of which are usually also felt in the physical world. Cyberspace is owned and operated by private companies, governments, non-profit organisations, individual citizens and even criminals. This means that any strategic response to this context must link geostrategy and national security, criminal justice and civil regulation, economic and industrial policy and requires a deep understanding of the different cultural or social contexts and value systems interacting online. 11. Cyberspace also transcends national borders. Technology supply chains and critical dependencies are increasingly global, cyber criminals and state-based actors operate from around the world, powerful technology companies export products and set their standards, and the rules and norms governing cyberspace and the internet are decided in international fora. Cyberspace is also continually evolving as technology and the ways people use it change, requiring us to adopt an agile and responsive approach. 17

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