Ireland's Neutrality and Defence
episodePreviously titled “IRELAND'S NEUTRALITY AND DEFENCE” — renamed by the publisher on Aug 8, 2026
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
It's a question.
What challenges does Ireland face regarding neutrality and defense?
Should Ireland spend more on weapons or build an arms industry? Or do we have the skills, the technology and the expertise needed to protect our own critical infrastructure and respond to the current global situation? As a prelude to our next guest, I want you to listen to this contribution from Rory Stewart, former diplomat, former Tory minister and, of course, co-host with Alastair Campbell of The Rest Is Politics.
Last week, the President of the United States did something that no technology company would ever have done. He took the most capable artificial intelligence that America's leading lab had ever built and he stopped it at the border on national security grounds, which means the latest frontier model from Anthropic is now, in effect, a weapon. Americans get it, but the rest of us, allies included, get whatever version they're willing to let out. So what if the central technology of the next century, in other words, the technology on which everything will depend, our government, our defence, our economy, turns out to be something we can only rent, something which America can withdraw whenever it wants.
Is Britain, is Europe still a power that governs itself? Or are we just quietly discovering that we've become a vassal? And if it's the second, then what do we do about it? And the answer, I've come to believe, is something very radical.
Now, that is Rory Stewart, former diplomat, former Tory minister and co-host with Alastair Campbell of The Rest Is Politics. But he's asking a very pertinent question about whether Britain or Europe become vassal states of the United States. It's often argued that we are already in defense terms, vassal states, depending on the good offices of the RAF to police our skies and the good offices of other EU countries to help us police our undersea cables. I'm joined now by Paul Davis, Associate Professor of Management at DCU, who's been writing about how we should proceed with our defence procurement, what precisely we need and what we don't need to spend money on and how best any money we have should be spent.
Paul, good morning and welcome. Good morning, Pat. Thank you for having me. Now, the traditional way of budgeting for these things is here's a budget. So many millions or indeed billions of euro. See the cheapest tanks you can get, the cheapest planes you can get, the cheapest ships you can get for that cash.
In many ways, yeah, value for money. We've traditionally done that. That's how we purchase. And there's nothing wrong with that, by the way. Let's be very clear.
How does the U.S. influence global technology and defense?
When we're buying, maybe staplers. But the significant difference is that when we're buying something like infrastructure, which is defense capability, we want to buy something that we have an ability to be able to manage into the next generation. Probably a decade, decade after. Here's the problem. We tend to think in the life of a contract, three years, five years. We don't think of the use of equipment or use of infrastructure for 20, 25 years and 30 years. And will we still have the capability to be able to run that when the contract finishes?
Okay, let's take a very practical example. We decide we need something of a jet fighter squad. So we buy F-35s from the Americans, but that requires American expertise to keep them in the air if there's a software update and they don't give it to us.
It's more important than even a software update. Let's take the basic maintenance problem. We buy F-35s and now suddenly we're dependent on parts and components that are sourced externally and that we have no control over. But if you take it even at a more simple level, rather than just the F-35s, let's think of the simple radar system that we're now sourcing. And the radar system we know is built around intelligence and interpretation. We have a defense force of about 7,500 people. So the chances are we've got a very limited capability to be able to support that going forward. So we'll have this fantastic system, but we won't necessarily have the capability to be able to support it over the life of that system.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–0:01
2
What challenges does Ireland face regarding neutrality and defense?
0:01–2:34
3
How does the U.S. influence global technology and defense?
2:34–8:17
4
What are the implications of relying on foreign defense technology?
8:17–9:35
5
How should Ireland approach defense procurement and budgeting?
9:35–11:55