THE UK’s economy grew slower than expected in the third quarter of the year, with just a 0.1% increase, but one AI and technology expert warned the figure we should be really concerned about is the 0.5% fall in production caused by the cyber attack on Jaguar Land Rover.
UK real gross domestic product (GDP) is estimated to have increased by 0.1% in Quarter 3 (July to Sept), compared with growth of 0.3% in Quarter 2 (Apr to June) 2025, official data published today showed.
Liz McKeown, Director of Economic Statistics at the Office for National Statistics, said: “Across the quarter as a whole manufacturing drove the weakness in production. There was a particularly marked fall in car production in September, reflecting the impact of a cyber incident, as well as a decline in the often-erratic pharmaceutical industry.
Colette Mason, Author, technology expert and AI Consultant at London-based Clever Clogs AI, was unequivocal that “today’s 0.1% GDP figure is a distraction. The real headline is the 0.5% production fall caused by a single cyber incident. Cybersecurity, or the lack of it, is now impacting entire economies at scale”.
Mason continued: “We now have statistical proof that a single point of digital failure can create a measurable drag on the national economy.
“The “JLR effect” moves cybersecurity risk out of the IT department and proves that a lack of systemic resilience is now a core macroeconomic vulnerability.”
Mason also warned a government desperate for growth should be wary of achieving it through AI, as that will further expose the economy to cyber threats and growth drags.
She said: “With unemployment already at 5%, we must hope the Budget’s fiscal measures to boost AI adoption don’t just become a blank cheque to “automate cognitive, white-collar work” at scale. That threat makes our economy even more fragile to cyber attacks.”
Only last month both Microsoft Azure and AWS were also victims of cyber attacks, hitting businesses and consumers globally.
