Torsten Reil
speaker
213 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Dec 2024
Torsten Reil’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, I mean, it's usually not done in a way that there's some kind of sequestered field and, you know, you work it out and then whoever wins the conflict. Obviously, it tends to be related to, obviously, physical proximity to areas that matter, you know, whether it's ports, certain routes, obviously, or other important landmarks. That's where battlefields tend to be located.
Yeah, I think it should be disconcerting to all of us. I think we should think about it and think about the implications. And we should think, and I don't think this is happening enough, I think we should think about how we want this technology to work so that we can still stay safe, but we don't have to compromise on our ethical standards.
Are we seeing a change in public perception around defence spending? I think so. So if I look at polls now, I think for most countries, population agrees that more needs to be spent on defense. I think when it then comes to looking at what is going to be cut, I think people probably will differ. And being very concrete will make, I think, that kind of view a little bit harder.
I think overall, populations get it. Whether politicians currently have the courage to actually implement it is a different matter. I think in some countries, probably that's going to happen. We talked about Poland earlier. In others, it's taking longer.
Again, 20% to new defence. It sounds self-serving, but it's absolutely required. If we just keep buying the same kind of equipment that we've bought before, if we don't network it, if we don't give it AI, if we don't produce precision mass, we won't be able to deter and we won't be able to defend ourselves in a conflict.
They probably do take too long. I think they're incentivized in different ways. The US is different to other countries. Every country is different and the various primes are different as well. In general, they're not incentivized to spend a lot of their own money on R&D. It's probably less than 5% or so. For a company like Helsing, it's almost all of it. I mean, we pre-finance almost everything.
That's why we raised quite a bit of money because we need to be able to spend on developments before we actually, because first of all, we have to prove that it works and we can't wait for governments to eventually get it and then fund it. And then in eight years, we have a system. We need a system in eight months, basically, or let's make it a year or two years.
So one, we have 20% in new defence. What else? I think, again, procurement needs to be reformed. Everyone knows that. The reason we don't talk about it that much is because it will take a long time to do it.
It needs to be obviously faster, probably less constrained, and the incentives need to be aligned more again towards speed, which are not right now, which makes it harder for the individuals there to do what's right for that particular society.
First of all, I think you simplify the processes, but you also make sure that you actually set deadlines that are quite tight in terms of when do you actually produce something. And then you try to work with companies that want to work very hard and fast, and you incentivize other companies that maybe have a different way of working to do the same.
Primes and hardware need to work together with software to be really effective for future conflicts.
I think it will be similar. There will be primes and then there'll be suppliers.
A very small number, extremely small number.
So I think what happened is that the VCs that really get defense, and there are a number, have already kind of made their bets on defense companies. There is now kind of a second or third wave of VCs that go into defense and fund technology teams, which is fine in a way. But my question to those VCs would be like, what is the exit route for those companies? Who's going to buy them? You or Andrew?
Yeah, but we can't buy all of those companies. And also the question is whether we would buy them at VC valuations. I mean, the exit opportunities for companies are either an IPO. For that, you need to be a prime. You need to be multi-domain.
You have to have all of the foundation of having built software infrastructure, everything around security, physical security, cybersecurity, government relations, export law, compliance, and everything else. That all has to happen. And then you have a shot. I thought building a customer success team. It is. Defense is so complex.
Like having built a games company, which I thought was pretty hard, defense is just on a different level. Impossible, I think, if you don't have a founder team that already has experience in some of the areas.
I think for some of the more fragmented tail, maybe not to zero, but I think they're going to go down. Where is the biggest opportunity to deploy dollars in defense today? I mean, I'm biased, but I think it is around those companies that have got to scale, that have programs of record, and that are basically active in a conflict.
The difference between a company that, first of all, maybe R&D contracts and has a program of record, that is already a big difference because getting over that hump of getting a program of record is huge.
It's an official program by a government that has a certain size, rather than, I mentioned the Eurofighter electronic warfare upgrade, that was officially awarded, companies pitched for it, and eventually consortia pitched for it, and eventually consortia won it, which is SAP and us in the end. Those happen regularly, and they tend to be quite large. They run over several years.
Showing 121–140 of 213 · page 7 of 11
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