National Cyber Strategy will lead to BritChip for mobile devices by 2025, claims UK.gov

The British government has launched a £2.6bn National Cyber Strategy, intended to steer the state's thinking on cyber attack, defence and technology for the next three years – and there's some good news if you run a tech company. Today's strategy document runs between now and 2025. A major piece of political policy, it is big …

[Binraider]

The more they squeeze their grip, the more systems will slip through their fingers.

Can we have a RISC-V phone please with open source hardware implementation so you can determine what is going on. Or, don't tell me, the interfaces needed to drive 5G and beyond require one of these nation state proprietary specific units.

People thinking this is a good idea proves we are past peak internet as far as I am concerned. The construction of 1984 can bugger off.

[Pascal Monett]

Construction ?

We are long past 1984. The Panopticon is here, and Google, FaceBook, TikTok, Instagram and others have put it in place. Global surveillance is a thing, but the irony is that it is not any Government that is guilty of it, it's just the carrot that the sheeple are blindly throwing themselves at for their own convenience.

Some time in the future millenia, exoarcheologists will determine that we are the first intelligent civilization to have convenienced ourselves to death.

[Steve K]

Re: Construction ?

..except all of the digital archive will be encrypted and inaccessible to them for their research (unless quantum decryption has been perfected by the Hive Queen - in which case "All Hail to the Hive Queen")

[katrinab]

Re: Construction ?

Remember back in the early 2000s when Mike Corley was spamming usenet with claims that the BBC was spying on him through his TV set?

Everyone thought he was completely crazy. Now, this sort of thing actually happens, maybe not the BBC, but certainly some of the other TV providers.

[amanfromMars 1]

Re: Construction/Extrapolation/Systematic Event Imputation*?

Remember back in the early 2000s when Mike Corley was spamming usenet with claims that the BBC was spying on him through his TV set? ..... katrinab

Strangely enough, katrinab, anyone nowadays can spy on governments via the nonsense the BBC broadbandcast about them and their programs and proposed projects daily.

It is a constant wonder that such tomfoolery is tolerated and even voted for, although Winston Churchill [PBUH] had that mystery well enough sussed many moons ago .......

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

* SEI ....... https://www.theregister.com/2021/12/15/log_file_event_imputation/

[Binraider]

Re: Construction ?

Yep, Samsung traffic (from the TV) is the most blocked item in my PiHole.

[oldtaku]

security 'features'

"The BritChip will, so the strategy says, contain UK-designed security features – though it didn't go into depth about what those might be."

The biggest security feature the UK (and the FBI) want and have been fighting for for over a decade is the fabled encryption that the Home Office can easily decrypt (but only when Bad People are using it) but no bad guys can possibly exploit. That is of course impossible, but I would bet you my bottom dollar it is somewhere on the complete classified list.

[Howard Sway]

new strategy is to produce "a new microprocessor design" for smartphones by 2025

So, the question then is why, exactly?

I can see two options :

1) An utterly dim idea that by throwing some cash about, they'll produce some world-beating blah blah, having neglected to realise that there is no lack at all of perfectly good existing designs for smartphones.

2) An even worse idea, where government-mandated "features" are required for all UK phones, so they can be used entirely for our own protection of course, no need to worry it'll be misused, etc, etc.

[iron]

Re: new strategy is to produce "a new microprocessor design" for smartphones by 2025

In the end it will be a 28nm design with 2 cores that no-one will be able to build because all the fabs for that node size will have shut down before the design is finalised some time in the 2040s.

[katrinab]

Re: new strategy is to produce "a new microprocessor design" for smartphones by 2025

No, design it for the 180nm node, then Newport Semiconductors can manufacture it.

[Robin Bradshaw]

Re: new strategy is to produce "a new microprocessor design" for smartphones by 2025

I cant wait for the blazing performance of the 100MHz dual core 6805 they will come up with, perhaps they will see great sucess running the no doubt fantastic mobiles they will use for the Emergency Services Network handsets when they finally switch off airwave some time in the mid 2050's

[Strahd Ivarius]

Re: new strategy is to produce "a new microprocessor design" for smartphones by 2025

Or they will come with a beer powered version of the aqualator

[Dan 55]

Three decades later

A UK civil servant went to the US, found a clipper chip down the back of the sofa, and thought it was a good idea.

Also, if they try and stick it in ARM, then there couldn't be a quicker way of killing off the UK's CPU success story and making every manufacturer flee to RISC-V.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Three decades later

And that would be a bad thing why ?

[Steve K]

BritChip?

How is a BritChip going to help if you can't force everyone to use it (unless it has a feature set so compelling that it sells itself..)?

Apple/Google/Xiaomi/Huawei/etc. will use their own designs in mobile devices, so exactly which mobile devices will the BritChip be used in?

[Binraider]

Re: BritChip?

Sell it at a loss in order to generate uptake and "benefit" from the mass surveillance? China PLC of course will be doing the same with it's own, so none of the big producers are going to touch them even if we were to sell at a loss.

Chips have quite enough exploits of their own without needing to design more in.

If you want to bring chip design and manufacture home; we need to address energy and labour cost. Only then can we compete in a volume market. The phrase HAH comes to mind!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BritChip?

As others have noted, why would any manufacturer incorporate the BritChip into a smartphone ?

I am sure that other countries, even our allies will not want such a device in their citizens mobile. Especially the EU after all the Brexit shenanigans.

This is just the UK (current) government throwing £2.6bn at a "project" to make the UK look like it is world leading, prospering mightily, building back better, with a bit of levelling up, taking pot shots at "technology" as per One Web to show that the UK is a techno-centre.

Maybe the BritChip will be installed in people, such that voter fraud can be eliminated.

[iron]

Re: BritChip?

It will be part of the all-new Feranti GEC phone!

https://techcentral.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Vodafone-VM1-640.jpg

[katrinab]

Re: BritChip?

But you don't understand. This isn't about making something that people will actually use. It is about funnelling lots of money to Tory donors

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: BritChip?

Because it will have hardware support for feet and inches and the new post-Brexit global Britain currency.

Once the US comes to its sensitive and switches to Pound-Shilling-Pence to go along with its other patriotic measurements, the chip will be a great success

[katrinab]

Re: BritChip?

This is something I don't get about Brexiteer types.

The metre was a British invention, originally the length of a pendulum that swings once per second, now related to time via the speed of light. Yes, it was the French that went with the idea and implemented it.

Feet & Inches were invented by the Romans.

Which means that Brexiteers want to replace a sensible British invention with an Italian invention so crazy that the Italians want nothing to do with it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: BritChip?

I would like to see you pop along to the D Express and D Mail (online versions) and point this out to the commenters.

It will be very enlightening as to the Brexiteers logic and ranting response, on how they actually think about such a quandry.

[amanfromMars 1]

A Titanic Holywood Task to Master and Driver/Seed and Feed to Media Moguldoms

The government-backed UK Cyber Security Council has also been awarded a Royal Charter to coincide with the launch of the strategy today. Civil servants told the press they hope the UKCSC will "lead" the British cyber security profession.

Any "lead" is/will be directly proportional to, and it may be exponentially advantageous and beneficial too, the input for programming with novel content to output from a competent Director General such as was probably surely initially envisaged in appointments/anointments of a C or an M or a Q.

Such though is a role which is suitable for only a very few and always surely best served and servered securely anonymously and as secretly as is possible in these days of revealing 0days.

[Steve Davies 3]

And pigs might learn to fly

It is all well and good having a chip what that is just one small part of the solution.

What about all the other chips that are needed to make a mobile device especially the bit that does the 4g/5G stuff

Then there is the little matter of the software needed to make it function.

Add to that the total lack of apps that people want then...

Money will be spent. A few [cough][cough] friends will get very rich and nothing worth a penny will be produced at the end of the day.

You only have to see what happened with the Windows Phone to see the writing on the wall here.

Yes, a few fans will buy a RISC-V CPU based device but in comparison to the millions of devices sold by the likes of Samsung and Apple, it will not be significant.

This is more akin to Harold 'Gannex and Pipe' Wilson declaring that Blighty will be at the centre ot the white heat of technology (or words to that effect)

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: And pigs might learn to fly

They'll be British porkers wined and dined at Westminster Restaurants and Bars

[Doctor Syntax]

"Having a coherent national cyber strategy will be essential if UK wants to be recognised as a science and tech superpower for scientific research, innovation, and leading edge in critical areas such as artificial intelligence."

Having some achievements might do that but the usual tub-thumping strategies never seem to produce those.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

But they have a quantum national cyber strategy - which loses coherence as soon as anyone looks at it

[Anonymous Coward]

"Having a coherent national cyber strategy will be essential if UK wants to be recognised as a science and tech superpower for scientific research, innovation, and leading edge in critical areas such as artificial intelligence."

I wish they wouldn’t produce statements like this, it hurts when I laugh this hard.

Zero chance of the current UK government achieving anything like this, Walter Mitty level delusional.

[Anonymous Coward]

in general

the gov have a long record of failure, so I have zero trust. Talk is cheap.

[Anonymous Coward]

britchip

to be mass-produced by cheapo (robo?)-brit-hands, so superior that everybody (particularly those 'friends' over the English channel) will furiously want to implement in all their handheld devices. A true mark of a truly Global Britain, successful delivery built on brexit blueprint. Shame though.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: britchip

The BritChip will be fabricated on the UK's new homegrown 0.1 thou technology node.

[EnviableOne]

it'd Cost an ARM and a Leg

Surely we had one and UK.gov let Softbank buy it ...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're reading it wrong!

"Civil servants told the press they hope the UKCSC will "lead" the British cyber security profession."

Lead is not meant to be pronounced 'Leed', it's meant to be pronounced 'Led' and its weight will drag this initiative to the bottom. Again.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The BritChip will, so the strategy says, contain UK-designed security features – though it didn't go into depth about what those might be."

Oh, you mean the backdoors for the spy agencies that will be usurped by the "bad actors" within a year? Those security features?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

But the chips wont be available to foreigners and so those naughty people wont be able to program any exploits for British computers

[Clausewitz 4.0]

With all due respect, that is up to other countries Intelligence services.

I promise you some are really good at reverse engineering.

Some Latin American countries for example.

[Anonymous Coward]

How time flies!

Is it April 1st already?

"Silicon chip design, supply chains and manufacturing"

Good luck with any of that other than the design aspect. Everything else, from EDA to manufacture, will end up being foreign. And by foreign I mean US sourced.

[Anonymous Coward]

Chips -- Cost of Entry not mentioned!!

Link: https://www.theregister.com/2021/05/04/tsmc_arizona_fabs/ (May 2021)

Quote: "TSMC expects to invest about $100bn through the next three years"

This quote is about the proposed TSMC investment in five foundries in Arizona, USA.

So, by comparison, the UK is PROUD, PROUD I TELL YOU about investments in the £100 million range.

£100 million ....... $100 billion ...... this comparison tells you just how second (or third) rate the UK is in this future.......

.........but our government was never interested in the facts! Sad!!

[Aussie Doc]

No sensible title here

But Shirley this is a great strategy that's been laid out.

It's got some cybering, a bit of quantuming, a couple of cyber offensivenesses, some proud 'UK designing', lots of threats/promises of money being spent, a catchy name (BritChip) and, of course, some security-ing.

Plenty of buzz words.

What more could you ask for?

Oh, it's for real?

Had me there for a minute.