The new UK business secretary, Kwasi Kwarteng, is moving ahead with legislation to establish a new research agency modeled on the US Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Financial Times reports.
The UK proposed the new agency — currently dubbed "British ARPA" — last March as part of its 2020 budget package. The US agency, now known as DARPA, was formed during the Cold War to compete with the Soviet Union on scientific fronts.
FT says the UK has authorized £800 million in funding for the British agency, which will fund artificial intelligence and data. It notes that legislation is needed to establish the British ARPA, as it will be separate from UK Research and Innovation.
"The UK's new blue-skies research agency will have the independence to experiment with new funding models to back cutting-edge, high-risk, high-reward science here in the UK," the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy says, according to FT.