London Calling for Military Tech Cooperation INTERNATIONAL 2/18/2021 Royal Navy photo With extra money in its coffers for modernization, the U.K. Ministry of Defence is looking for additional opportunities to work with the United States on high-tech military capabilities. The British government in November announced that it had approved about $22 billion in additional defense spending over the next four years, including a major plus-up for research and development. “It will represent an increase of around 10 percent in defense spending as a whole,” Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, said during a discussion hosted by the Washington-based Center for a New American Security. “It’s about strengthening NATO, but it’s also about taking us into these new areas of defense, these new areas of weaponry and technology like AI, like quantum, like cyber and … space, where we are going to have to do a lot more thinking in the years to come.”