NATO raises a billion to finance startups and frontier technologies
Diana and the innovation fund The accelerator networks in Europe and Italy Market approach The killer robot question NATO hunts for military startups against China and Russia Diana and the fund innovation As sportsgaming.win learns from a NATO official involved in the dossier, 2022 will be the year of paperwork to set up Diana. In 2023 the Alliance plans to launch the first tenders to select and finance startups. First, however, Diana must have a governance, a general manager, dedicated staff. And then of plans to face the challenges that technology and the geopolitical scenario pose, decided every two years. Diana will have to comply with NATO strategies on specific technologies. In 2021 the 30 allies have agreed on the one on artificial intelligence, in the coming months the dossiers on autonomy and quantum computers will be on the table. Then it will be the turn of biotechnology and engineering applied to human enhancement, another controversial frontier of innovation.
Unmarked agreements, memoranda and bureaucracy, the time will come to open your wallet. The NATO Innovation Fund travels in tandem with Diana, a sort of fund of funds to channel resources to selected startups: 21 of the 30 NATO governments participated in the creation of the framework agreement. The commitment of the chancelleries has brought the total commitment (from the initial 70 million) to one billion euros, spread over a period of 15 years. The sectors to focus on are artificial intelligence, biotechnology and bio-engineering for human advancement, innovative materials, quantum technologies, aerospace, cyber security, hypersonic motors, robotics, shipbuilding, telecommunications and electronics.
An artificial intelligence created 40 thousand new chemical weapons in six hours This is what emerges from a study conducted to explore the misuse of technologies in the discovery of new drugs. The computer has generated new molecules more toxic than the most powerful nerve agent ever developed The accelerator networks in Europe and Italy Diana (acronym for Defense innovation accelerator for the North Atlantic) will have two offices. In Europe, where there were various candidates, London won. Across the ocean, however, Diana will have a headquarters in Canada. In addition, 81 specialized centers have already been identified to test the technologies funded by the program and a network of accelerators for startups.
In Italy, according to what sportsgaming.win learns, the Officine Grandi Riparazioni (Ogr) of Turin, already candidates for the European headquarters of Diana, are the designated accelerator, in tandem with the future City of Aerospace , an area for businesses and research under development thanks to a one billion euro plan, as reported by Ansa. To sportsgaming.win Ogr confirms that it has welcomed a NATO delegation in the application phase but has not received, at the moment, official communications on the investiture as an accelerator of the Diana program. Test centers are located in La Spezia and Capua, which will cover technologies in the maritime, aeronautical, big data and new materials fields.
With seven and six centers, from cybersecurity to telecommunications, respectively, they are Poland and Slovakia to win the highest number of Diana accredited points in the Old Continent. Still at zero, however, France, which has not entered this first phase but will be able to join later. Through calls and challenges, the accredited accelerators, chosen for their proximity to the security sector, their global reach and the activities of mentors, will select the startups to be incubated, while the test centers will be entrusted with the validation of technologies.
Autonomous weapons take the field in the war in Ukraine Russia has been accused of using kamikaze drones, the United States is considering providing similar ones for defense. But internationally, for some time now, the ban on "killer robots" has been called for, before it is too late. Market approach Diana will have to make NATO catch up in sectors in which Russia and China have produced significant investments. Only in the cyber field, since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the European Cybersecurity Agency (Enisa) has observed a spillover of a wiper attack (a form of cyber attack that destroys the data on a device to make it unusable) in two Baltic countries, contained within a limited number of affected companies. Overall, the agency explained to sportsgaming.win, since the end of February "attacks against organizations and companies have emerged", which "have also targeted European operators as well as companies based in Europe but with .ru domains [the Russian one, ed. ]. The majority of the incidents so far have not been attributed or reconstructed a direct relationship with the conflict. "European experts need to raise their defenses.
In 2021, in an interview with the Financial Times , NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said: "For decades, NATO allies have dominated in the technology segment. But this is no longer so obvious." In addition, many European border startups also invest funds and companies outside the perimeter of the Alliance. Think of Tencent, the Chinese digital giant, which in addition to being a very active player on the European startup market, since last February is one of the two new investors in First Light Fusion, an Oxford spin-off engaged in development of a plant for inertial confinement fusion (a type of technology to achieve nuclear fusion).
As the official explains, Diana will not be a DARPA, the defense agency of the United States engaged in advanced research projects including the embryo of future internet networks. NATO wants to adopt a more agile market approach and rely on operators with a respectable curriculum. Diana will entrust her money only to accredited companies, which in addition to demonstrating their ability to do so must not be linked by entities outside the alliance. Although at the beginning the Innovation Fund will only be able to count on its one billion reserve, in the future even recognized private individuals or partners of the Alliance will be able to pool their funds.
Italy is spending on weapons and military technologies more than it says From euro drones to Tempest fighters, from funds for research on artificial intelligence to satellites for surveillance: the shopping list of the Ministry of Defense is long, the Parliament overwhelmed with programs to be approved and purchases require more funds of those allocated The killer robot question To sportsgaming.win, the official explains that NATO will not put preventive vetoes on the sectors in which to experiment, as long as they fall within the chosen categories and the ethical principles of the alliance on responsible use and development are respected . Diana's line is not to slow down research, but to decide downstream of experiments to guide market standards before a technology spreads. A formula that leaves the space open to finance autonomous weapon systems, known in jargon as killer robots.
In December, an attempt at an agreement at the United Nations to ban them did not go through. And Russia has been accused of using autonomous drones in Ukraine. According to the international campaign to stop killer robots, 30 countries and 140 non-governmental associations oppose these technologies.
