Events
The Future of Security
Annual Conference, June 2025, London
What is the Future of Security?
In an era in which economic security has become a critical part of national security strategies, this important event brings together international leaders to look at how economic policy needs to adapt to the new reality of its role in defence and security in the modern era. Participants will be senior players from defence and security, academia, financial services and corporates, and policy from the US, the UK, the EU, NATO and their allies. They will engage in collaborative discussions, thought leadership and economic scenario gaming to develop a shared approach to economic security: its critical success metrics, its credibility as a coercive and deterrence tool, and its role in modern conflict.
The event will cover vital topics of economic security including:
1. Supply chain resilience.
2. Sustainability, including climate-related financial risk and resilience, regulatory standards and climate security.
3. Strategic trade and trade finance.
4. Digital trade and security.
5. Strategic economic, financial, and technological power levers and deterrence by denial.
6. Effective organisational structures and networks for delivery of economic security.
Why The Future of Security?
Securing jobs, fostering opportunities for everyone, maintaining financial stability and securing economic growth have always been an important component of national security strategies. However, the combination of geopolitical tensions with Russia, potential for escalation of tensions in the Middle East, geoeconomic and strategic competition with China, and the pressures of climate change have altered the role that economic security plays in national security.
Economic security is policies to create domestic resilience in supply chains, innovation, food and energy. It is also the potential to create a strong enough economy to withstand the pressures of, say, a sanctions regime that might inflate energy or food prices, as we saw when Russia first invaded Ukraine. Therefore Economci Security is now both a defensive and an offensive aspect of national security planning.
More than this, economic security and economic deterrence are now associated with direct measures to coerce an adversary into different strategic behaviours or to deter them from engaging in those behaviours in the first place. Again, the coordinated use of economic measures on a scale not seen before against Russia have awakened us to both the strength and the weaknesses of economic measures as power levers in an era where financial systems, innovation and trade are globally interdependent.
This conference will be a multidisciplinary forum for examining the evidence, creating a common understanding of the meaning of economic security and statecraft in the modern era and catalysing action around the future of security with economic measures at its base.
Why attend the Future of Strategy?
If you are a policy maker, your policy goals will be affected by the capacity of economic actors such as banks and corporates to implement your strategies. If you are a financial services organisation you will feel like the foot-soldiers in a conflict that has not been declared or defined but that is affecting where you can allocate financial resources. If you are a corporate, you will be limited by your need to access finance and new markets that are, in turn enabled or restricted by policy measures such as sanctions. If you are part of the defence and security framework, you will be concerned about the capacity of critical supply chains to deliver goods where they are needed and when they are needed.
If you are any of the above, you should attend this event. It is a unique opportunity to hear about the challenges and opportunities that present themselves as economic measures are increasingly used to coerce and deter adversaries. You will be surrounded by like-minded senior leaders in policy, academia, defence and security, finance and business with a shared objective of moving forward the security of all nations who align themselves with the international rules-based order.
What to expect at the event
The event will combine the best of thought leadership, action-oriented workshops, seminars, and economic scenario gaming as well as space for formal and informal networking events.