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.Europe\u2019s rush to beef up defence capabilities has opened a lucrative market in security technology for Ireland, a country that prides itself on having been neutral for decades.Irish scale-up companies in radar, artificial intelligence and surveillance tech are pivoting to new opportunities in defence and security and seeking to cash in on the EU\u2019s huge spending splurge in the sector, prompted by US warnings that it will not protect its allies forever.\u201cDemand has always been difficult to crystallise but the market is there much more now,\u201d said Fintan Buckley, co-founder and chief executive of Ubotica Technologies, which uses AI-enabled satellites to track dark vessels and other threats in real time. Ireland is not a Nato member, has the EU\u2019s smallest defence budget and has no plans to change its policy of military neutrality. But the country\u2019s armed forces have a long tradition of taking part in international peacekeeping missions. The country\u2019s favourable tax regime has attracted the world\u2019s largest tech companies, spawning local businesses and good jobs for skilled workers. All that provides an opportunity to \u201chelp with Europe\u2019s resilience\u201d, said Malcolm Byrne, innovation spokesperson in Ireland\u2019s biggest government party, Fianna F\u00e1il.\u201cWe\u2019re never going to see Ireland investing in tanks and weapons. But certainly it makes a lot of sense for Ireland to develop our capabilities in areas around cyber security,\u201d he said.And Ireland has plenty of skin in that game: it has a maritime area to protect that is seven times the size of its landmass and criss-crossed by transatlantic data cables facilitating internet activity. An estimated three-quarters of cables in the northern hemisphere lie in or close to Irish waters, and Russian ships have repeatedly been found lurking nearby \u2014 as recently as this month. Yet Ireland\u2019s navy can only deploy two ships on patrol at a time, with one on standby. The nation relies on co-operation with the UK for air defence. The Irish government, which is running a huge budget surplus, has faced criticism from analysts and other nations for \u201cfreeloading\u201d in defence. Mark Mellett, a retired Irish Naval Service vice-admiral and a former chief of its defence forces, said there is an \u201cacknowledgment that Ireland has to lift its game\u201d.Several niche Irish tech companies told the FT that they had seen more interest from potential clients since Europe\u2019s move to boost military spending.Safe-driving company Provizio makes sensors, using chips from US company Nvidia, that prevent accidents by detecting obstacles. Its founder and chief executive Barry Lunn said interest in his technology has grown tenfold in the past couple of months, in part thanks to an emerging defence market, including identifying safe routes for military convoys and self-driving equipment.Lunn has been approached about military applications in the past, including for use with Ukrainian drones. But he had always declined. Now, \u201cwe\u2019ve started answering the door a bit more\u201d to \u201cnon-weaponry-based\u201d queries, he said. \u2018\u2018Deep-tech needs money and what we do needs money \u2014 well then, you have to follow the money,\u201d Lunn added.Like the space AI company Ubotica, which Buckley said is \u201chaving conversations with relevant government and other bodies in Europe\u201d, Lunn said Provizio is also talking to a \u201cnumber of larger companies\u201d in Europe and the US about security uses for its technology.VRAI, a Dublin-based company that uses AI to crunch data to train employees in the offshore wind industry and aviation, can also pivot its applications from the civilian to the military sphere, its chief executive Pat O\u2019Connor said.\u201cWe\u2019re not a defence company, we just happen to have a lot of demand coming at us from the aerospace, defence, security sector as well,\u201d he said. \u201cThe opportunity is clear\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009We [in Ireland] could be the leaders in the area of dual-use technology.\u201dUnderwater imaging company Cathx Ocean, whose AI-enhanced analysis has slashed the time needed to survey critical seabed infrastructure for companies such as oil major BP, says a third of its business is already focused on protection and security. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely a growth industry,\u201d said chief executive Adrian Boyle, noting the underwater autonomous vehicle market was already expected to increase by 20 per cent in the next four or five years.That forecasts was \u201cbefore any of the current changes happened\u201d, he said. \u201cIt could move much bigger than that.\u201d Green Rebel, a company based in Cork near Ireland\u2019s southern coast, uses robot submarines across Europe to map and monitor the seabed including for offshore wind infrastructure. Deploying more Irish tech \u201cwould go a long way to reassuring the rest of the European Union that we\u2019re doing something productive in this area\u201d, said its director of science and new markets Jared Peters. \u201cIt\u2019s a great way to bridge the gap between being a neutral country but not being defenceless.\u201d<\/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.Europe\u2019s rush to beef up defence capabilities has opened a lucrative market in security technology for Ireland, a country that prides itself on having been neutral<\/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-293713","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\/293713","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=293713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}