Dr Keith Dear

Dr Keith Dear is Managing Director of the Centre for Cognitive and Advanced Technologies at Fujitsu, working on technologies to revolutionise decision-making, and on bringing the UK and Japan closer in business and Government. Keith has served as an Expert Advisor to the Prime Minister on Defence Modernisation and the Integrated Review, leading also on UK space strategy in No 10, and advising on national strategies on emerging technology.

A former Intelligence Officer in the RAF, he has served in Iraq, completed three deployments to Afghanistan, deployed to Abkhazia (Georgia) with the United Nations, to Mali alongside the French, and served as the Russian Air Force SME on exchange with the US Air Force. He now continues his service as a Group Captain in 601 (Reserve) Squadron, leading on Science, Technology and academic liaison.

An undergraduate alumni from the University of Lancaster (BA Hons, History, Politics and International Relations, 2002), Keith also holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge (2023), a DPhil in Experimental Psychology from the University of Oxford (2018), and an MA with distinction in War Studies from King’s College London (2011) where he won the O’Dwyer-Russell prize for the highest graded MA, published as ‘Beheading the Hydra’ – still the most viewed article published in the Journal of Defence Studies.

He is an Associate Fellow at RUSI, where he guest-edited the Special Edition on AI in November 2019, a Chief of the Air Staff’s Fellow, and a Fellow at Oxford’s Changing Character of War Programme. Keith was selected in 2021 as the Director’s Fellow at the Cambridge Judge Business School, where in 2023 he won an award for the highest graded essays across Strategy, Macroeconomics, Corporate Governance, and Philosophy of Business and was selected by the 120-strong Executive MBA cohort for the award for the class member contributing the most to the 2021-2023 EMBA.

Keith advises, speaks, and writes widely at the intersection of emerging technology with business, economics, military, and national security strategy. You can find him on X: @kpd_musing