Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Friday\u2019s blistering spat in the White House produced one winner. On Monday morning, European defence stocks including Germany\u2019s Rheinmetall, France\u2019s Thales and BAE Systems shot through the roof. Expectations of government spending have pumped up prices. But war\u2019s rebranding \u2014 think national security, supporting downtrodden allies and resilience \u2014 has been paying dividends for a while. Ethical investors are slowly starting to shed their squeamishness about the sector: the 1,856 European ESG funds with no exposure to the sector at end-2023 had been whittled down to 1,614 a year later. Indeed, holdings of defence stocks by environmental, social and governance-focused funds had swollen to \u20ac8bn by the last quarter of 2024, up from \u20ac2.7bn in the first quarter of 2022. That\u2019s partly a factor of the sector\u2019s massive outperformance. Stocks in Europe\u2019s aerospace and defence sector have risen 2.5 times since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, multiples of the benchmark gains.Big national investors are likewise reassessing their aversion. Take Norway\u2019s $1.8tn sovereign wealth fund, formally known as the Government Pension Fund Global. Those investing the bounty from the country\u2019s natural resources should note that \u201cwhat is considered to be ethically acceptable may change\u201d at a time of military rearmament and growing tensions, said central banker Ida Wolden Bache last month.Tech too is ditching its historic hostility to military applications. Google parent Alphabet \u2014 coincidentally one of the Norwegian SWF\u2019s top 10 holdings \u2014 last month last month dropped its opposition to using artificial intelligence to develop weapons or injurious technologies.Google was playing catch-up with AI peers such as OpenAI and Anthropic in providing models to US defence departments. Facebook owner Meta Platforms stopped quibbling about sharing its open-source Llama models with US departments working on defence, explaining that responsible use in this area would \u201cpromote global security\u201d.Again there is a financial subtext. Defence departments, which seeded Silicon Valley, dish out lucrative contracts. Peers of Palantir, a software consultancy that specialises in using data to make Western military forces deadlier, will want a slice of the spoils.There are props beyond greed and simple arithmetic that will drive sustainable funds\u2019 increasing exposure to defence. Governments are pledging to spend more on defence, but they want to make it easier for private investors to join in too. Highlighting this, the EU and UK have both noted that defence is not incompatible with ESG standards.Defence companies themselves are shedding their most noxious arms. Thales stopped delivering weapons containing white phosphorus \u2014 controversial if not directly prohibited incendiary weaponry \u2014 in 2022; BAE exited two years later.Sure, weaponry will never be a cuddly sector. But a combination of improved standing in the world and huge outperformance mean it will keep sliding into more ESG funds. After all, few things spell out sustainability like peace and security.louise.lucas@ft.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Friday\u2019s blistering spat in the White House produced one winner. On Monday morning, European defence stocks including Germany\u2019s Rheinmetall, France\u2019s Thales and BAE Systems shot through<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-228075","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228075\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}