Eight companies wrote to the Prime Minister this week asking for £20 billion of sovereign compute. David Richards argues that Britain already owns most of what it needs and sets out a plan to join it up, starting at a steelworks on the edge of Sheffield. A 400 kV grid node at Stocksbridge heading into public ownership. Oxford's Lumai, whose optical processor runs the first stage of AI inference on roughly a tenth of the power. A £750 million national supercomputer with no host yet named. And a gigawatt queue that the grid cannot connect this decade. The seven-point proposal: a ninety-day power audit, a paid pilot, the state as first demanding customer, a modular build, sovereignty written into the contract, GB Grid used for what it was announced for, and judgement on output rather than megawatts. Then what Britain would actually keep, from DeepMind's accounts to Ireland's electricity, the Chapelcross application, David's Yorkshire Post column on capital gains tax, and a fortnight of the layoff tracker. Full issue with every source at thesundaysignal.ai

Keywords:

sovereign AI, South Yorkshire, Stocksbridge, Lumai, optical computing, photonic processors, AI Hardware Plan, GB Grid, Great British Energy, data centres, grid connection queue, Ofgem, NESO, Chapelcross, DeepMind, UK industrial electricity prices, capital gains tax, Budget 2026, tech layoffs, Yorkshire Post