Conversations around diversity in the UK’s technology sector have evolved over the past decade, from a focus on increasing the number of women in tech roles to the importance of making the sector an inclusive place for anyone to work.
Unfortunately, the numbers do not reflect the effort made. The past 10 years have seen the number of women in the UK’s tech sector creep up from 16% in 2015 to 22% in 2025, and black women still only account for 0.6% of people in tech roles.
There are countless reasons for this, including a lack of inclusive culture in the sector, limited visibility of career role models, insufficient flexibility in the workplace and misconceptions about the type of people who work in tech roles, along with the influence of unconscious bias.
Furthermore, the recent Lovelace report found that between 40,000 and 60,000 women are leaving digital roles each year, whether for other tech roles or to leave tech for good, with a quarter citing the reason as an absence of opportunities to advance their career in their current roles.
“We are seeing this happening across the industry – that’s what all the data indicates to us – and at every stage of a woman’s career. So we have to acknowledge that we are dealing with a systemic problem across the whole piece,” said Karen Blake, tech inclusion strategist and co-author of the Lovelace report.
The “becoming influential” theme of the 2025 Computer Weekly diversity in tech event, in partnership with Harvey Nash, highlighted a goal that many from underrepresented groups struggle to achieve due to industry challenges.
To tackle this, audience members comprising tech decision-makers and experts in the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) field shared advice on how tech career pathways can be changed to allow more underrepresented groups to move into the industry and make their way to becoming influential.
Focus on planting the seeds early
Start early with girls, and deliver a curriculum they feel part of
Children’s first exposure to various careers often happens at school, yet many feel technology is not accessible to them.
Several experts at the Computer Weekly and Harvey Nash event claimed education reform could be a key factor in ensuring young women and minorities are more likely to view a tech career as a path they want to follow.
The first piece of advice given was to ensure the curriculum is built in a way that makes everyone feel they can participate. For example, by including women and people of colour among the figures from computing history studied, as well as emphasising that not all tech roles require coding skills.
In many cases, girls and women develop an interest in technology because it solves real-world problems, so it would also be helpful if lessons included case studies of the applications of technology across a range of roles and sectors, and utilised the inquisitive nature of children by including fun and exciting examples of what the day-to-day role of different tech workers looks like.
A lack of knowledge about what tech roles involve is known to lead to misconceptions among young people about tech jobs and the type of person who pursues them, so experts in attendance also conveyed how important it is to make sure children know what pathways there are into technology.
As pointed out by one audience member, there isn’t currently a single dedicated pathway into tech, and unlike other well-known professions, such as becoming a doctor, lawyer or accountant, there are many different ways to become a tech professional, partly because the industry evolves so quickly.
Helping young people understand that there are many different routes into the sector and roles within it, and what those might look like, including the fact these roles may not necessarily be technical or involve coding, may contribute to more young people from a variety of backgrounds considering a tech career.
Having the right skills to engage in these roles, however, can be dependent on what school a child attends and where in the UK they come from, so curriculum reform to equip children with at least basic digital skills, regardless of where they are from, would be a welcome step forward.
Alongside this, experts recommended developing skills frameworks within businesses to map career pathways for employees, regardless of their background. Such an approach could help hiring managers identify existing skills, select candidates effectively and prioritise internal training to address skill gaps instead of hiring externally.
With such a large number of women claiming to have “fallen into” tech, experts also suggested that dedicated pathways could encourage underrepresented groups to intentionally pursue and thrive in tech careers, rather than stumbling into roles and leaving due to a lack of inclusion or advancement opportunities.
Individual efforts
Diversity is being invited to the party, but inclusion is being asked to dance
The way the technology sector has worked for years is that hiring managers – predominantly white men – hire people they already know or those who they identify with, perpetuating unconscious bias in the sector.
One way in which underrepresented individuals can address this themselves, according to experts in the audience at Computer Weekly’s event, is by building a strong network and utilising it. This involves being aware of the people who are willing to help you with your career and who will advocate for you in circles you’re not already present in.
These sponsors actively advocate for individuals, putting them forward for opportunities and using their influence to develop the careers of others.
Mentorship and coaching were also highlighted as ways to provide individuals with guidance to help them navigate the sector and make career choices.
Experts at the event claimed that while allyship for underrepresented groups is important, it means nothing without active participation to create an inclusive environment within a team and help others to have influence and use it.
Individuals can be a huge support in advancing their own careers and the careers of others if they actively use what influence they have to give advice and build up other talented tech workers.
Do not wait for change to happen – be the change you want to see.
Who has influence?
Influential does not mean senior
Experts at the annual diversity event pointed out that influence is present at all stages of someone’s career, from student, to junior team member, to manager.
They said there is a need for inclusive tech leadership, whereby leaders use influence to grow and promote those in their teams, but also to make teams a space where members are encouraged to share what they want from their roles and from the firm, and where they want their career to go.
Firms can encourage this behaviour by making it part of leaders’ job descriptions to champion diverse teams, tying it into their performance reviews.
As discussed, influence is not reserved for those who are already in senior positions – people at every level can have a voice, and it’s likely there is always at least one person looking to you for guidance, whether you’re aware of it or not.
But whether or not someone is heard depends on the culture of an organisation. If employees know they will be listened to, regardless of their level of seniority, they’ll have the confidence to use their influence. If they don’t, they’ll probably find somewhere else to work where their voice will be heard.
To reach a point where everyone in the sector feels they have influence over their own career and the progression of diversity in the tech sector, those who are already in such a position need to use their platform to advocate for others, helping to build a technology industry that people want to work in and stay in.
Anthropic won a preliminary injunction barring the US Department of Defense from labeling it a supply-chain risk, potentially clearing the way for customers to resume working with the company. The ruling on Thursday by Rita Lin, a federal district judge in San Francisco, is a symbolic setback for the Pentagon and a significant boost for the generative AI company as it tries to preserve its business and reputation.
“Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious,” Lin wrote in justifying the temporary relief. “The Department of War provides no legitimate basis to infer from Anthropic’s forthright insistence on usage restrictions that it might become a saboteur.”
Anthropic and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests to comment on the ruling.
The Department of Defense, which under Trump calls itself the Department of War, has relied on Anthropic’s Claude AI tools for writing sensitive documents and analyzing classified data over the past couple of years. But this month, it began pulling the plug on Claude after determining that Anthropic could not be trusted. Pentagon officials cited numerous instances in which Anthropic allegedly placed or sought to put usage restrictions on its technology that the Trump administration found unnecessary.
The administration ultimately issued several directives, including designating the company a supply-chain risk, which have had the effect of slowly halting Claude usage across the federal government and hurting Anthropic’s sales and public reputation. The company filed two lawsuits challenging the sanctions as unconstitutional. In a hearing on Tuesday, Lin said the government had appeared to illegally “cripple” and “punish” Anthropic.
Lin’s ruling on Thursday “restores the status quo” to February 27, before the directives were issued. “It does not bar any defendant from taking any lawful action that would have been available to it” on that date, she wrote. “For example, this order does not require the Department of War to use Anthropic’s products or services and does not prevent the Department of War from transitioning to other artificial intelligence providers, so long as those actions are consistent with applicable regulations, statutes, and constitutional provisions.”
The ruling suggests the Pentagon and other federal agencies are still free to cancel deals with Anthropic and ask contractors that integrate Claude into their own tools to stop doing so, but without citing the supply-chain-risk designation as the basis.
The immediate impact is unclear because Lin’s order won’t take effect for a week. And a federal appeals court in Washington, DC, has yet to rule on the second lawsuit Anthropic filed, which focuses on a different law under which the company was also barred from providing software to the military.
But Anthropic could use Lin’s ruling to demonstrate to some customers concerned about working with an industry pariah that the law may be on its side in the long run. Lin has not set a schedule to make a final ruling.
President Donald Trump and top defense officials are reportedly weighing whether to send ground troops to Iran in order to retrieve the country’s highly enriched uranium. However, the administration has shared little information about which troops would be deployed, how they would retrieve the nuclear material, or where the material would go next.
“People are going to have to go and get it,” secretary of state Marco Rubio said at a congressional briefing earlier this month, referring to the possible operation.
There are some indications that an operation is close on the horizon. On Tuesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon has imminent plans to deploy 3,000 brigade combat troops to the Middle East. (At the time of writing, the order has not been made.) The troops would come from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which specializes in “joint forcible entry operations.” On Wednesday, Iran’s government rejected Trump’s 15-point plan to end the war, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the president “is prepared to unleash hell” in Iran if a peace deal is not reached—a plan some lawmakers have reportedly expressed concern about.
Drawing from publicly available intelligence and their own experience, two experts outlined the likely contours of a ground operation targeting nuclear sites. They tell WIRED that any version of a ground operation would be incredibly complicated and pose a huge risk to the lives of American troops.
“I personally think a ground operation using special forces supported by a larger force is extremely, extremely risky and ultimately infeasible,” Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Science and International Security, tells WIRED.
Nuclear Ambitions
Any version of the operation would likely take several weeks and involve simultaneous actions at multiple target locations that aren’t in close proximity to each other, the experts say. Jonathan Hackett, a former operations specialist for the Marines and the Defense Intelligence Agency, tells WIRED that as many as 10 locations could be targeted: the Isfahan, Arak, and Darkhovin research reactors; the Natanz, Fordow, and Parchin enrichment facilities; the Saghand, Chine, and Yazd mines; and the Bushehr power plant.
According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Isfahan likely has the majority of the country’s 60 percent highly enriched uranium, which may be able to support a self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, though weapon-grade material generally consists of 90 percent enriched uranium. Hackett says that the other two enrichment facilities may also have 60 percent highly enriched uranium, and that the power plant and all three research reactors may have 20 percent enriched uranium. Faragasso emphasizes that any such supplies deserve careful attention.
Hackett says that eight of the 10 sites—with the exception of Isfahan, which is likely intact underground, and “Pickaxe Mountain,” a relatively new enrichment facility near Natanz—were mostly or partially buried after last June’s air raids. Just before the war, Faragasso says, Iran backfilled the tunnel entrances to the Isfahan facility with dirt.
The riskiest version of a ground operation would involve American troops physically retrieving nuclear material. Hackett says that this material would be stored in the form of uranium hexafluoride gas inside “large cement vats.” Faragasso adds that it’s unclear how many of these vats may have been broken or damaged. At damaged sites, troops would have to bring excavators and heavy equipment capable of moving immense amounts of dirt to retrieve them
A comparatively less risky version of the operation would still necessitate ground troops, according to Hackett. However, it would primarily use air strikes to entomb nuclear material inside of their facilities. Ensuring that nuclear material is inaccessible in the short to medium term, Faragasso says, would entail destroying the entrances to underground facilities and ideally collapsing the facilities’ underground roofs.
Softening the Area
Hackett tells WIRED that based on his experience and all publicly available information, Trump’s negotiations with Iran are “probably a ruse” that buys time to move troops into place.
Hackett says that an operation would most likely begin with aerial bombardments in the areas surrounding the target sites. These bombers, he says, would likely be from the 82nd Airborne Division or the 11th or 31st Marine Expeditionary Units (MEU). The 11th MEU, a “rapid-response” force, and the 31st MEU, the only Marine unit continuously deployed abroad in strategic areas, have reportedly both been deployed to the Middle East.
The WIRED Reviews Team has been covering Amazon’s Big Spring Sale since it began at on Wednesday, and the overall deals have been … not great, honestly. So far, we’ve found decent markdowns on vacuums, smart bird feeders, and even an air fryer we love, but I just saw that Cadence Capsules, those colorful magnetic containers you may have seen on your social media pages, are 20 percent off. (For reference, the last time I saw them on sale, they were a measly 9 percent off.)
If you’re not familiar, they allow you to decant your full-sized personal care products you use at home—from shampoo and sunscreen to serums and pills—into a labeled, modular system of hexagonal containers that are leak-proof, dishwasher safe, and stick together magnetically in your bag or on a countertop. No more jumbled, travel-sized toiletries and leaky, mismatched bottles and tubes.
Cadence Capsules have garnered some grumbling online for being overly heavy or leaking, but I’ve been using them regularly for about a year—I discuss decanting your daily-use products in my guide to How to Pack Your Beauty Routine for Travel—and haven’t experienced any leaks. They do add weight if you’re trying to travel super-light, and because they’re magnetic, they will also stick to other metal items in your toiletry bag, like bobby pins or other hair accessories. This can be annoying, especially if you’re already feeling chaotic or in a hurry.
Otherwise, Capsules are modular, convenient, and make you feel supremely organized—magnetic, interchangeable inserts for the lids come with permanent labels like “shampoo,” “conditioner,” “cleanser,” and “moisturizer.” Maybe you love this; maybe you don’t. But at least if you buy on Amazon, you can choose which label genre you get (Haircare, Bodycare, Skincare, Daily Routine). If this just isn’t your jam, the Cadence website offers a set of seven that allows you to customize the color and lid label of each Capsule, but that set is not currently on sale.
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