544. How Trump Is Weaponising AI and Martial Arts at the White House

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Defence Spending and Economic Growth: Andrew Kinniburgh's Challenge

At 28:08 · chapter starts 26:00

A listener pushback from Andrew Kinniburgh, Director General of Make UK, takes on Rory's earlier suggestion that defence spending is not a productive economic investment. Kinniburgh points to Barrow, Plymouth, Yeovil and Clyde as communities whose economic vitality depends on defence contracts, and aligns with Healey and former Defence Secretary Ben Wallace in their frustration with a Treasury unwilling to consider the Defence Security and Resilience Bank. Stewart's response is nuanced: academic research does suggest that pound for pound, education, infrastructure and skills generate more economic growth than defence procurement. But he insists that framing misses the point entirely — the case for defence spending is the threat from Russia and the collapse of US reliability, not GDP optimisation ^{[1] — Rory Stewart "The reason to go for defense is not that it's the cheapest way of getting economic growth. The reason to go for defense is there's a threat…" 28:08 Play} . Campbell adds that Britain doesn't invest properly in education, skills or infrastructure either, making the trade-off somewhat moot in practice.