At 7pm on Wednesday 11 March, Dominic Cummings welcomed more than two dozen tech executives into Downing Street. It was the eve of the government’s decision to move from the “contain” to the “delay” phase of its coronavirus strategy, and Cummings – Boris Johnson’s chief adviser – opened the meeting with a warning. Britain, he told his guests, was entering an unprecedented era.
Over the next 90 minutes, executives from Google, Facebook, Uber, Microsoft, Amazon and Peter Thiel’s controversial analysis company Palantir, among other firms, volunteered a range of resources, from engineering and transportation to advertising and data modelling. Government officials, a source who attended the meeting told Spotlight, said they wanted to move fast, but that they also wanted to act ethically.
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