James Heappey Keynote Speaker

James Heappey is a British politician and former Minister of State for the Armed Forces between 2020 – 2024.

In his ministerial role he was the deputy to the British Defence Secretary at the time of greatest geopolitical crisis since the 1960s, overseeing the UK’s military response to the war in Ukraine as well as the work of the armed forces to support the civil authorities during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Kabul and Khartoum airlifts, the war in Gaza and the Houthi threat in the Southern Red Sea.

In addition to overseeing the operational policy of the UK Armed Forces, Heappey also led on the UK’s Defence Diplomacy visiting over 80 countries and establishing a strong network of senior military, political and policy interlocutors across the globe – particularly in the Global South. He has become a regular speaker at international conferences and is particularly expert on the changing nature of conflict and the chronic challenge from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea to the western interest across the developing world.

As the longest serving British Defence minister in twenty years, Heappey led the refresh of the UK’s defence strategy as part of the Integrated Review of Defence, Security and Foreign Policy published in 2023. The refreshed Defence Command Paper placed science and technology as well as people and skills ahead of traditional force structures recognising the rapid disruption of the battlespace with the arrival of automation, AI and, in time, quantum computing.

Heappey was the ministerial lead for the MOD taskforce for supplying Ukraine with ammunition and weapon systems in response to the Russian invasion. Here, he was responsible for both buying up usable ammunition and weapons from countries around the world as well as the identification and rapid scaling of technologies that could create novel weapon systems for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Prior to appointment as the Minister for the Armed Forces, Heappey served as the Minister for Defence Procurement and was Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the tumultuous six months before the 2019 General Election. He briefly served in the UK Cabinet under Liz Truss.

Before politics, Heappey served in the British Army deploying on operations to Iraq, Northern Ireland and twice to Afghanistan. He is a regular contributor in the UK media with his own show, Superpowers, on Times Radio’s YouTube channel in which he invites guests to consider the growing competition between east and west and the changing way militaries will fight wars.