This week, the PLuS Alliance Joint Steering Committee (JSC) meeting took place in London. The PLuS Alliance is a global partnership combining the strengths of three leading research universities on three continents – Arizona State University, King’s College London, and UNSW Sydney – to solve global challenges. Security & Defence PLuS is the flagship program of PLuS Alliance, advancing research, education, and policy to support statecraft in the spirit of the AUKUS trilateral agreement.
On Thursday morning, the three university Presidents, Prof Michael Crow, Prof Shitij Kapur, and Prof Attila Brungs, along with PLuS Chair Sir Malcolm Grant, were joined by the wider PLuS leadership and Security & Defence PLuS team for our second JSC meeting of the year in the exquisite Maughan Library at King’s.
Following a brief history of the venue from host Prof Shitij Kapur, Sir Malcolm Grant delivered opening remarks and introduced the panel discussion. On the panel, guests Prof John Bew, No 10 Downing Street Foreign Policy Advisor, and Faye Murray, Minister Counsellor of the Australian Submarine Agency, provided valuable insights into the UK and Australia’s priorities regarding AUKUS and the Indo-Pacific.
Dr Ian Langford presented the Security and Defence PLuS (S&D+) segment of the meeting, where the JSC was asked to note the progress and overall assessment of the S&D+ 2024/25 Strategy, receive updates from the Working and Delivery Groups, and agree on providing additional oversight and support where necessary. The discussion then moved to Artificial Intelligence, led by King’s Executive Dean of the Dickson Poon School of Law Prof Dan Hunter, where emerging collaborations and joint working options between the three universities were noted and reviewed.
The engagement was an opportunity to reconnect as a trilateral partnership, reinvigorate our commitment to the Security & Defence PLuS mission and vision, and accelerate progress in fulfilling the strategy.