I want to thank you for inviting me this evening and for giving me this opportunity to talk a little bit about my day job.

I'm conscious as we sit in this splendid room that not very far away from here, 11 members of the armed forces, most of them

bandsmen, died in twin bomb attacks in Hyde Park and Regents Park in 1982.

London was repeatedly attacked by the IRA from the early 70s to the end of the 90s, beginning of the 2000s.

And since then, jihadi-inspired terrorists have added to the capital's death toll.

But for people of a certain age, and I'm sure I'm not the only person present to feel this way,

it's becoming increasingly the case to reflect that London, the UK, Europe,

are in the grip of a security threat,

which has perhaps not felt so chilling for decades.

Statistically, we're clearly in a better place now

than back in the dark days of the 70s

and the 80s across Europe.

So why is it that we don't feel safer now?

The first explanation is, I think,

the sense of insecurity and threat today

is reinforced

by the vast range of technological advances available to those who wish to harm us.

The catch-all word for this phenomenon is cyber, and I'm afraid we'll be hearing a lot more

about it in the future.

And I'm sorry, too, that we seem to have reached the end of an age

of innocence about technology and that we must prepare ourselves for an age in which we'll all

be required to be more clear-eyed about its costs as well as its benefits. Technology obviously

...