Phil Osborn

Boards are being asked to take real positions on geopolitics, sanctions exposure, hostile-state cyber risk and supply-chain dependencies that used to be someone else’s problem. Most do not have an intelligence-grade read on what is actually changing, or how fast. The gap between corporate risk registers and the picture inside national security briefings is widening, and the cost of getting it wrong is no longer theoretical.

Phil Osborn is a former UK Chief of Defence Intelligence who helps boards and executive teams read geopolitical, cyber and security risk with the rigour applied at national level.

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Why organisations work with Phil Osborn

  • He ran UK Defence Intelligence at four-star level from 2015 to 2018, including the period covering Russia, China, Iran and the operationalisation of state cyber. Few civilian advisers have sat in that seat.
  • He led UK Defence’s offensive and defensive cyber capability, so the boardroom conversation about hostile-state cyber risk is not theoretical for him. It is something he commanded.
  • He sits inside the same problem from three angles at once: as Director of Universal Defence and Security Solutions, Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK, and Senior Advisor to DXC Technology. That triangulation is rare.
  • He established and ran the £2.5 billion annual Joint Forces Command Capability Portfolio, so capital-allocation conversations about resilience and sovereign capability are grounded in operating reality.
  • CBE, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, Chair of the RAF Charitable Trust. The credentials sit on substance, not the other way round.

Biography highlights

  • Air Marshal (Retired), Royal Air Force, 1982 to 2019; Tornado navigator, station commander, deployed operational commander.
  • Chief of Defence Intelligence, 2015 to 2018: strategic intelligence to UK Defence and Government, ISR coordination, counter-intelligence, and Defence cyber leadership.
  • Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group RAF, 2010 to 2012; Director Capability at Joint Forces Command, 2013.
  • Director, Universal Defence and Security Solutions; Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK and DXC Technology; Non-Executive Director, Inzpire.
  • Chair, Royal Air Force Charitable Trust.
  • CBE (2009 New Year Honours); Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society.

Biography

The boardroom conversation about geopolitics has changed. Sanctions, hostile-state cyber, supply-chain coercion, sovereign technology dependencies: these have moved from external context to first-order strategic risk. Most leadership teams do not have an intelligence-grade read on any of them.

That is the seat Phil Osborn occupied at national level. As UK Chief of Defence Intelligence from 2015 to 2018, he was responsible for the strategic intelligence picture supplied to UK Defence and Government, for the coordination of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and for Defence’s leadership of offensive and defensive cyber. He did this through a period in which Russia, China, Iran and non-state actors all changed posture in observable ways.

The career under that role matters. Thirty-seven years in the Royal Air Force, originally as a Tornado navigator, then through squadron and station command, then as Air Officer Commanding No. 2 Group, then at Joint Forces Command where he set up and ran the £2.5 billion annual Capability Portfolio that became part of Strategic Command. The capital-allocation muscle is real, not anecdotal.

Since retiring as Air Marshal in 2019 he has worked the same problem from the commercial side: Director at Universal Defence and Security Solutions, Senior Advisor to Lockheed Martin UK and to DXC Technology, Non-Executive Director at Inzpire, and Chair of the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust. Boards looking for somebody who can connect the geopolitical signal, the cyber threat picture and the sovereign-capability question, in language a Chair can use, find one of the few people in the UK who has run all three.

Key speaking topics

  • Geopolitics and national security
  • Defence intelligence and the strategic threat picture
  • State and non-state cyber risk
  • Sovereign capability and supply chain resilience
  • Force design, capability portfolios and capital allocation
  • Leadership and command in high-stakes environments

Ideal for

  • Boards and audit and risk committees confronting geopolitical and cyber exposure
  • CEOs, CFOs and CSOs in defence, aerospace, critical infrastructure and government-facing industries
  • Investors and capital allocators with sovereign-capability or sanctions-sensitive portfolios
  • Senior leadership offsites in regulated industries where state-level risk is now a board agenda item

Audience outcomes

  • A clearer read on the geopolitical and security drivers that will most affect the next planning cycle
  • A sharper distinction between hostile-state cyber risk and the generic cyber narrative
  • A practical sense of how national-level intelligence assesses adversaries, applied to corporate risk
  • A working view on sovereign capability, supply-chain dependency and what resilience actually costs
  • The vocabulary to brief a Chair or audit committee on geopolitical and cyber exposure with confidence

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