London Defence conference to face protests

On Friday 10 April at 12:00 pm, students and activists will mobilise outside Bush House at King’s College London (KCL) to protest against the London Defence Conference and to condemn the genocidal companies and speakers invited to the on-campus event.

London Defence Conference

First launched in 2023, the London Defence Conference is held annually and often hosts political leaders, military officials, and the defence industry to advance military strategy, spending, and lobbying. Not only were genocide-enablers such as Keir Starmer, David Lammy and many more invited to speak at the London Defence Conference in previous years, but murderous companies such as Palantir, BAE Systems, and more also sponsor or support the conference. These conferences create an atmosphere in which people in power can discuss, justify, and promote an increase in military spending.

Despite criticisms of being discriminatory by the UN, European countries and rights groups, ‘Israel’ has recently legalised the death penalty for Palestinian resistance fighters whilst continuously bombing Gaza, Iran, Lebanon, and brutally murdering thousands of innocent people in pursuit of their colonial expansionist plan.

Meanwhile, Keir Starmer’s United Kingdom continues to license over £500 million worth of military exports to ‘Israel’ and provide approximately 15% of the components in the F-35 fighter jets, which are used in airstrikes across the occupied Palestinian territory.

Our government is complicit in genocide.

As students, we refuse to let warmongers conduct their blood business on our campus, making deals where every handshake results in the dropping of bombs on houses, hospitals and schools.

Corporate complicity in genocide

However, it is not just our government that is guilty.

London Defence Conference’s sponsors and partnership companies are the epitome of brutality, violence and war. For example, Palantir has been a supporter and sponsor of the conference, with its executive vice chair and head, Louis Mosley, invited on stage each year. Palantir is one of ICE’s top corporate collaborators. ICE paid Palantir $30 million to build tools which allow them to identify and find people they want to deport.

In 2024, Palantir renewed its contract with the IDF and continued to provide them with AI systems designed to support precise military targeting, which their CEO, Alex Karp, would call “digital kill chains”, boasting of their effectiveness.

Another key supporter of the London Defence Conference is The Pinsker Centre. It was founded using AIPAC money, and originally named The Pinsker Centre for Zionist Education. It was explicitly created to counter pro-Palestinian activism on UK campuses. AIPAC channels money through the Centre to reshape campus debate. After 7 October, they co-authored a letter explicitly acknowledging that “innocent Palestinians will die” yet called on the UK government to support ‘Israel’ regardless.

‘We will not be bystanders’

A spokesperson for students at KCL said:

We are not naive about what this conference represents. The cycle is not complicated: arms companies fund conferences, conferences legitimise arms companies, governments sign contracts, and bombs fall on Gaza, on Lebanon, on Iran. What happens in occupied Palestine does not begin at the border. It begins here, at the centre of the empire, in the lecture halls and conference rooms of our own universities. King’s College London is not neutral ground. Every sponsorship deal struck within Bush House, every handshake between a defence executive and a politician, is a link in a chain that ends in rubble and mass graves.

Students at KCL refuse to be bystanders to this. We refuse to let the London Defence Conference proceed as business as usual while the institutions and companies it platforms continue to arm and enable genocide. The struggle for Palestinian liberation and all peoples suffering under the violence that conferences like this one bankroll, that struggle is our struggle too. It does not stay overseas. It starts right here.

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KCL Stands For Justice (S4J) have organised a peaceful student-led protest outside Bush House at 12:00pm on Friday 10t April 2026, the first day of the London Defence Conference. This is in collaboration with over 80 other groups including Palestinian Youth Movement, Campaign Against Arms Trade, Defend Our Juries, and many more.

Featured image via the Canary