Yvette Cooper is a British Labour politician who served as the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary from September 5, 2025 to July 20, 2026, when she was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Source: gov.uk). As Foreign Secretary she published a July 2026 essay calling for international agreement on AI safety principles.
Ministerial roles
Cooper was Secretary of State for the Home Department from July 5, 2024 to September 5, 2025, and Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs from September 5, 2025 to July 20, 2026. She was appointed Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on July 20, 2026. She was elected Member of Parliament for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley in July 2024 (Source: gov.uk). Her move to Health took effect on the same date as the ministerial reorganization under Prime Minister Andy Burnham that abolished the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (Kanishka Narayan; CDEI and DSIT (UK)).
AI governance position
In a Chatham House essay published July 6, 2026, Cooper warned that "we cannot afford to wait for an AI equivalent of Hiroshima before we act," calling for global regulatory guardrails on AI. The essay also called for a more European NATO and reduced dependence on the United States as it "pulls back from its traditional role as guarantor of global security" (Source: aa.com.tr).
The essay, titled "Britain's place in the new world order," was published in full in Chatham House's The World Today and republished by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office the same day. Cooper described the profound new global risks posed by AI as possibly "the greatest security challenge of the next decade" and argued that the UK should use its convening power to address them. She wrote that the opportunities of frontier technologies can be exploited only with sufficient international consensus on safety and guardrails, and described the UK as the third-most developed country on AI, after the US and China, and the leading voice on AI security. Drawing a parallel with the international consensus on nuclear safety that followed the Second World War, she argued that no comparable agreed principles exist between global powers on AI. She cited the 2023 AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park (The Bletchley Declaration (AI Safety Summit, 1–2 November 2023)) as evidence that the UK can rally other countries, and called for bringing together the US, China and other major AI powers to build consensus on safety principles and standards (Source: gov.uk).
The essay also addressed AI outside the governance question. Cooper wrote that on a visit to Shenzhen, China, she had seen AI and robotics used for life-saving healthcare, while the same technologies were reshaping warfare, crime and social cohesion; that technology firms now wield more power than mid-sized nations; and that China poses significant threats to UK cyber security (Source: gov.uk).
The essay placed the UK's then most senior diplomat among government voices urging international AI governance ahead of the UN's Global Dialogue on AI Governance cycle, alongside the UK's existing institutional role through the AI Security Institute. Cooper left the Foreign Office two weeks after its publication (Source: gov.uk).
Relationships
- related: UK AI Safety Institute (AI Security Institute) — UK AI-safety institutional context
- related: Global Dialogue on AI Governance — contemporaneous international-governance push
- supports: AI Governance (umbrella) — advocacy for global regulatory guardrails
- related: The Bletchley Declaration (AI Safety Summit, 1–2 November 2023) — 2023 summit cited in the essay as precedent
- related: Kanishka Narayan, CDEI and DSIT (UK) — July 20, 2026 UK ministerial reorganization