Written for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change - a joint report by Tony Blair and William Hague.

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Science and technology have been the driving force of progress for much of our modern age. Our accomplishments have allowed us to live longer, healthier lives, to travel across the world and into space, and to generate food and energy at scale.

The United Kingdom has been at the forefront of many of these breakthroughs and was home to one of humanity’s great leaps: the Industrial Revolution. Another revolution is now taking place as developments in artificial intelligence (AI), biotech, climate tech and other fields begin to change our economic and social systems.

Each year the Moonshots series highlights new frontiers where breakthroughs in science and technology are being used to solve some of the biggest problems of our time.

Since the first publication in 2021, huge strides have been made in health, energy, resilient food systems and more, helping us to live healthily for longer, while responding to the most urgent climate challenges around the globe. As we look ahead to 2023 these themes remain.

Written for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

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Fundamental shifts in technology are changing the way we live, bringing progress to all reaches of life. Yet our ability to harness the opportunities that tech affords – fairly and progressively – hinges on a matter of trust. Trust in technology, yes, but also in national governments and the alliances that underpin the international order.

This year’s TBI Globalism Study, produced as part of a joint project with YouGov and the University of Cambridge called the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project, draws on polling from 26 countries as diverse as Australia, Great Britain, Kenya, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Thailand and the United States, to assess the relationship between technology and society – and the implications for policymakers worldwide.

Written for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

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Groundbreaking, ambitious and radical: our “moonshots” project was launched in 2021 to shine a spotlight on the visionary ideas of world-leading tech thinkers, entrepreneurs and practitioners in transformative areas of health, energy, space, food and more.

Since then, science and technology has delivered astonishing advances, for instance, in the exploding field of biotech where the fast tracking of alternative cancer treatments, with several trials already underway, has built on the success of Covid-19 mRNA vaccine technology. There’s been a new speed record of just over five hours for ultra-rapid genomic sequencing in a clinical-care setting, while DeepMind continues with its goal of publishing the structures of more than 100 million proteins on its database – having already solved the long-standing protein-folding challenge.

Written for the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

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Technology is reshaping our fundamental conception of place. We’re seeing the mainstream uncoupling of work and location for knowledge workers, the growth of megacities - particularly in Asia and the global south - and new forms of networks built initially online, facilitated by distributed ledgers and decentralised leadership.  

What does this mean for our communities? The next decade will mark the emergence of two trends.  

Work undertaken with Lord Johnson of Marylebone, King’s College London and the Harvard Kennedy School.

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The UK urgently needs to put in place a robust framework for engaging China in research and higher education (HE). China is set to overtake the US to become both the world’s biggest spender on R&D and the UK’s most significant research partner, raising pressing questions for policymakers at a time of rising geopolitical tensions. The extensive relationship with China across our university system, in both teaching and research, is inadequately mapped. The UK needs to do a better job of measuring, managing and mitigating risks that are at present poorly understood and monitored. The full report can be accessed below.

Op-ed jointly written with Rachel Lipson, Project Director of the Project on Workforce at Harvard University.

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On July 31, the clock struck midnight on the expansion of unemployment insurance benefits in the United States. The economic shock is likely to be profound. Families risked reductions in income of up to 64 percent overnight, leading to a large drop in consumer spending at exactly the moment when our economy can least afford it. By some estimates, the net effect of ending the payments in 2020 alone would amount to a 2% decline in US GDP and 1.7 million fewer jobs.