OTTAWA — Canada’s exclusion from new alliances among its traditional friends puts it at risk of being left in their wake as they develop critical new military capabilities, officials in the Department of National Defence (DND) warned in an internal memorandum last summer.

The document, which The Logic obtained through an access-to-information request, was nominally a summary of a sweeping update to the United Kingdom’s policies on foreign affairs, national security, defence and development aid that was rather dully called the “Integrated Review Refresh 2023.”

The DND document, prepared for assistant deputy minister and head of policy Pete Hammerschmidt, was officials’ take on what the new British direction means for Canada. Amid the grave danger of worsening isolation, they wrote, there’s opportunity in Canada’s cyber skills.

The U.K. is very keen on science and technology, and especially cyberwarfare, as “vital sources of national power,” the memo said. Britain is prioritizing artificial intelligence, quantum computing, semiconductors, telecommunications and engineering biology as fields that are “crucial to delivering its objectives, including its cyber power agenda,” intending to spend the equivalent of $33 billion a year on research and development starting this year.

Canada’s cyber capabilities give us a way to work closely with Britain, and that’s not a chance we can afford to pass up, the document said: “Canada must not risk being further excluded from collaborative opportunities that can enable enhanced national security and military capability through shared development of emerging technologies.”

The warning comes at a time when Canada’s hard military power is small, which has reduced its visibility and influence in global geopolitical events. The Canadian Forces are short thousands of service members; increasing the number of Canadian troops deployed in Latvia to deter Russian aggression from 1,000 to 2,200 is a years-long project. Navy commander Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee posted a video in November saying the navy might not be able to meet its commitments this year. When the U.S. sought allies to combat Houthi attacks on merchant shipping in the Red Sea, Canada sent three staff officers and strong language.

Canada’s not part of the Quad, an Asia-Pacific security body that includes the United States, Australia, Japan and India. Created in its current form in 2017, the Quad is mostly concerned with China’s influence and has a working group on critical technologies.

Nor is Canada a member of AUKUS, formed in 2021 by the U.S., U.K. and Australia. AUKUS is explicitly about sharing security tech; it starts with getting Australia a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines (which Canada doesn’t want), but the agreement forming the group covers cooperation on quantum computing, cybersecurity, AI, autonomous subs, hypersonic weapons and defences against them, and electronic warfare.

Cyberwarfare is an important area where Canada can work with allies, including Britain, the DND document said. Cyber threats are exploding and Canada has a “shared interest with the U.K. in building the cyber capacity of partners in the Indo-Pacific region,” the spring memo said, so DND “should engage with the U.K. to discuss opportunities to burden-share and synchronize efforts.”

Britain’s cyber agency thinks highly of its counterpart in Canada and multiple departments work together on both policy and technology, Global Affairs Canada spokesperson Pierre Cuguen told The Logic in an email. He pointed to a Dec. 5 report from the U.K. Parliament on British intelligence cooperation, which quoted testimony from an unidentified leader in its cyberspying agency that Canada is “with us at the head of the pack on cybersecurity and our relationship on cybersecurity is extremely strong and deep.”

Cybersecurity is part of Canada’s grand Indo-Pacific strategy, released in November 2022: it included a five-year, $47.4-million project to help “select partner countries” (which it didn’t name) with cybersecurity and deploy cyber attachés in Canadian embassies and high commissions.

We don’t yet have any of those on the ground in the region, Cuguen acknowledged. We have two in total—one in Washington and one assigned to international bodies in Geneva—but the foreign ministry “is in the process of staffing five additional cyber attaché positions in the Indo-Pacific region,” he wrote.

Canada has made some concrete progress there nonetheless, wrote National Defence spokesperson Andrée-Anne Poulin, answering separate questions from The Logic, “including participating in cyber exercises led by regional partners and conducting initial security cooperation activities.”

Investing in fields that are important to our allies, and communicating that we’re doing it, are key, the DND document said. The United States and United Kingdom have published strategies for advancing key technologies, which tell domestic industries what their governments will want to buy, promote technical compatibility with allies, and highlight the areas where allies with similar interests could work together, it said.

Canada has done a little of that. It has a defence strategy for quantum computing. An implementation plan commits to prototyping radar and lidar systems and a long-range communications network that all use quantum technology, and to demonstrating a quantum algorithm that solves a defence or security problem better than “classical computing” can—all by 2030.

The Defence Department is working on its artificial intelligence strategy, Defence Minister Bill Blair told The Logic in fall 2023. The department also has its own guidelines for the military use of generative AI on the way. After that, the list of defence-specific technology plans gets thin.

Poulin pointed to a general update to Canada’s 2017-vintage defence policy, promised in the 2022 budget, as a big upcoming step. (Now over a year late, it’s to be released “in due course.”)

National Defence published a data strategy in 2019 and a “digital campaign plan” in 2022, Poulin added, though neither of those has the specificity of the quantum plan. Canada also has a national cybersecurity strategy, last updated in 2022, though it’s mainly about defending Canadian systems and is led by Public Safety Canada, not Defence.

The Quad and AUKUS aren’t everything, Poulin wrote; Canada works with allies through other partnerships and forums, such as the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group (with the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand), the North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) and NATO.

“Acquiring capability platforms that are operated by our closest allies and partners, such as the F-35 fighter jet, P-8 surveillance and anti-submarine warfare plane and the MQ-9 remotely piloted aircraft system, also helps ensure that we stay technically aligned and interoperable,” Poulin wrote.