Or how Rishi Sunak, former UK Prime Minister, has quickly taken senior advisory roles at Microsoft. He is working with Anthropic in a similar role. His nominations have put environmentalists on high alert. People are justifiably concerned that they might create pernicious conflicts of interest and the misuse of privileged information, thereby tipping the scales in Microsoft’s favor. From October 2022 until the end of 2024, Sunak served as the UK’s Prime Minister. Now, he’s venturing into the tech sector himself as a highly charged debate over the regulation of artificial intelligence rages on.
Earlier this year, 2023, Sunak announced a huge £2.5 billion agreement with Microsoft. This initiative, called the U.K. This collaboration raises a lot of critical questions regarding his advisory roles. The timing of his government’s actions towards their dealings with the tech giant only exacerbates the issue. The Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba) has expressed concerns over Sunak’s new positions, indicating that there is “a reasonable concern that your appointment could be seen to offer unfair access and influence within the U.K. government.”
So far, Sunak has committed to not recommending on U.K. policy issues. Instead, he’ll focus on offering big picture ideas about the most important macro-economic and geopolitical trends. He underscored his goal to avoid any solicitous pettifogging.
“There is a reasonable concern that your appointment could be seen to offer unfair access and influence within the U.K. government…given the ongoing debate about how to best regulate AI.” – The Parliament’s office of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments (Acoba)
This level of scrutiny of Sunak’s roles isn’t an anomaly. He is by no means the first British politician to make the jump into advisory roles to Silicon Valley tech giants. Nick Clegg was Meta’s president of global affairs until January 2025. His role reflects a larger industry trend of placing former establishment governmental mappers and wizards in tech companies to help them traverse convoluted governmental landscapes. The revolving door between Silicon Valley and government is particularly active in the United States, prompting ongoing discussions about transparency and ethics in such appointments.
Sunak’s new partnership with Microsoft and Anthropic has attracted the attention of major media outlets. Indeed, his move to Anthropic has been covered in-depth by TechCrunch and The Guardian. Discussions about AI regulation are ramping up across the world. Sunak’s appointments have made the priority of attracting talent to the UK an immediate concern for policymakers and industry leaders.