given there's a debate in Parliament today on defining 'sovereignty', a brief response to @samfr's piece last week, Sovereignty for Sale: i write as someone who cares a lot about sovereignty, but particularly sovereignty that comes from winning, not just sovereignty from preventing competition to that end I think @samfr's piece was interesting, but made the wrong conclusion imo sovereignty in procurement is about a trilemma between speed, capability & domestic resilience so if partnering with a US company gives UK soldiers an advantage, quickly, that is good for sovereignty! there *are* Qs about whether the short-term benefit is worth it in the long-run: do you erode your own procurement leverage? do you snuff out fledging domestic competitors? I do think we need much more domestic 'production-smoothing' over decades, rather than allowing globalisation & outsourcing to erode industry entirely & increase costs of rebuilding eventually but if US suppliers provide superior capability, the answer isn't to block them from tenders