2IC - Improving Digital Interoperability in The Battlespace
In this episode, we talk with Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments.
We discuss how data moves through the battlefield, how 2IC created a new software architecture that acts as the “glue” between unmanned platforms, What the UK-controlled sovereign stack, SCEPTRE is all about and how to make legacy systems work with new defence tech.
Find out more: https://2icworld.com
Production, Design & Artwork: https://www.hiatus.digital
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00:00:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hi, welcome to the Future Frontiers podcast from millilux.io.
00:00:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In this episode, we talk with Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments.
00:00:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We discuss how data moves through the battlefield, how 2IC created a new software architecture that acts as a glue to unmanned platforms, what the UK-controlled sovereign stack sector is all about, and how to make legacy systems work with new defence tech.
00:00:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hey Graham, thanks so much for joining us on the Future Frontier podcast.
00:00:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
To kick us off, please can you give us a really concise one-minute introduction to yourself?
00:00:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, so I'm Graham, I'm the Chief Exec and the co-founder of 2IC.
00:00:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I founded 2IC a good number of years ago from a background where I've always worked in the tech industry.
00:00:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So unlike many of the people I work in defence, I've never served in the military.
00:01:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I started life as a computer programmer.
00:01:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I've worked around the UK and internationally in various tech roles, from a programmer running teams to running software companies, and very much ended up in defence, which is an environment I enjoy.
00:01:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And more recently, over the last few years, I've got quite involved in both running the company, but also involved in the MOD side of things, such as I used to chair the Tech UK SME forum.
00:01:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I sit on the Defence Industry Joint Council, top council, along with Secretary of State, representing UK small businesses at the highest level of defence to try and help MOD better engage with the brilliant, innovative SMEs we have in the country, of which I'd like to think we're one, but we're one of many.
00:01:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it's to try and help with that as well.
00:01:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Fascinating stuff.
00:01:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, I'm going to throw you a bit of a challenging question next.
00:01:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm interested to hear what your take is on the current events in Ukraine and Middle East.
00:01:54 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So please, give us your thoughts.
00:01:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, I think it's an interesting one.
00:01:59 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think I'll start with Ukraine because Ukraine's very interesting with where I live in London.
00:02:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I've got a lot of people who are very used to grown up in that very sort of liberal peace world where they're not used to why you'd work, why you'd even have a military.
00:02:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think in the invasion of Ukraine fundamentally changed a lot of people I see it, a lot of the media types, et cetera, I know locally.
00:02:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It changed people's perception.
00:02:23 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The very first question a lot of people ask me because I work in defence was,
00:02:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Why would anyone do that?
00:02:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that was that way.
00:02:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It was like, why would anyone start a war?
00:02:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's illogical.
00:02:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think what we've seen now is that waking up of a lot of people going, Ukraine doesn't make sense.
00:02:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's the whole point of a military.
00:02:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It doesn't make sense.
00:02:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think what we're now seeing is the result, both Ukraine and the Middle East is the fact that we've had 30, 40 years of the peace dividend.
00:02:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We haven't had a strong deterrence in the UK.
00:02:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
and therefore we're now seeing the consequence of underinvestment over many years is the fact that what would be our adversaries now feel they can do things.
00:03:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I think both the Ukraine and Middle East is largely a reaction to a long period of peace where adversaries now feel they can do stuff because we won't do it.
00:03:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I think that means as well the other big one I think is my big take, my bigger worry about it is what we're seeing in both the Ukraine and the Middle East is our would-be adversaries
00:03:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
have an excellent training around now.
00:03:23 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They're training, they're innovating, they're developing.
00:03:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we're not.
00:03:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So while we have underinvested for years, we're now being left behind as well.
00:03:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it's a slightly controversial take is war's happened, and obviously not a good thing, but there's not much we can do about that.
00:03:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What we are seeing though is our would-be adversaries are really accelerating a pace much greater than we can, meaning that not only did we start behind the start line of underinvestment,
00:03:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think we're actually getting further behind.
00:03:52 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And when people say we need to learn the lessons from Ukraine and everyone gets hung up on drones, I think they're trying to learn the wrong lesson.
00:03:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Drones may be the answer.
00:04:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What we're leaning, particularly Ukraine, it's the pace of change.
00:04:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's that ability to iterate in one turn of darkness.
00:04:06 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That is the lesson we need to learn that, you know, TTPs, et cetera, change overnight, not over decades.
00:04:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we're used to working in decade cycles in particularly the UK, not
00:04:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
24-hour cycles of a particular industry environment.
00:04:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it's a sort of wrong way round, but a lot of my takes on that one is that it's the war will be war, but what we're doing is we're being left behind by not learning the actual lessons of and putting those lessons into practice of innovating, etc.
00:04:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:04:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You've highlighted some really good points there in terms of, I mean, the British military now, we were training the Ukrainians, when Russia invaded the country, and now it seems to be the other way around.
00:04:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Actually, the Ukrainians are training us in terms of innovation, in terms of TTPs, you know, tactics, intelligent procedures.
00:04:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And we're learning more from there now than obviously we're able to give.
00:04:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Absolutely.
00:04:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We have nothing other than being able to offer them some space that's away from the front line.
00:05:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think we can offer them very little, but they can offer us a lot.
00:05:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that shouldn't be the case.
00:05:10 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We have a very good professional military, but we need to get ourselves back onto the front foot of being ready.
00:05:16 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Hopefully we don't ever need to fight, but at the moment we need to make sure we are ready to fight.
00:05:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And again, Ukraine's a very good example.
00:05:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
When friends of mine say, why do I fundamentally think Ukraine, Russia invaded Ukraine?
00:05:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
My very simple take is because Putin thought he could get away with it because he didn't see a deterrence.
00:05:31 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And it's as simple as that.
00:05:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If he didn't think he could have got away with it, he probably wouldn't have tried.
00:05:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's where we've been lacking for years.
00:05:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's where we've got to get ourselves onto a much stronger footing.
00:05:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But I do see the one positive is the UK, the general populace attitude to defence is changing.
00:05:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You know, people at schools, I've got teenage kids, they are talking about the military at school, whereas 10 years ago, five years ago even, those conversations would not have happened.
00:05:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So at least
00:06:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
what Ukraine and Middle East and with COVID sort of shaping some of that together, our supply chains has really woken up, I think, people's view that the world might not be quite as safe and lovely place as they thought it was and therefore we might need to do something about it.
00:06:15 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that consciousness is sadly, but it's a positive.
00:06:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, I agree.
00:06:20 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I mean, if you look back at 2020, when a lot of investments were being made in sustainability, like green biotech and that sort of stuff, and defence was very much the, you were the probably the lesser liked person in the room at the time, where it's gone full circle now since 2022.
00:06:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Actually, now there's more events kind of showing defence as an investible space, isn't it?
00:06:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The slight joke is my wife works in pharmaceuticals, I work in defence.
00:06:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So in the area we live in, where most people are in media and charity,
00:06:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It was seen, she was the drug dealer, I was the arms dealer.
00:06:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
COVID came along and suddenly people's views of big pharma changed fairly rapidly.
00:06:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Ukrainian invasion happened and people's views of, actually we do need a military, so defence views changed.
00:07:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So in very quick order, a couple of major world events changes people's perceptions very, very quickly and wakes up people to actually, while we don't need to use, we don't want to be using the military by not having one, we don't have that deterrence.
00:07:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That's woken up a lot of people.
00:07:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think
00:07:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think that's where we're at.
00:07:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think there is lessons to be learned.
00:07:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But I think here in the UK, we're slow to learn.
00:07:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think what we are seeing is a lot of our European neighbours really have adapted much quicker.
00:07:31 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You look at German changes.
00:07:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Germany has gone from a tiny defence nation with tiny defence spend to a global powerhouse, probably, in probably two years, three at the most, which is a remarkable turnaround.
00:07:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
In that three years, I think we've discussed what we might want to do about it in the next decade.
00:07:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
There's a difference in comparison.
00:07:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I know which one I think is probably more useful.
00:07:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Agree.
00:07:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I think definitely in the last three years, we've seen a number of like UK, German companies, you know, set up or span off and, you know, producing manufacturing hardware, which is now being used obviously in theatres.
00:08:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it's an eye-watering pace, isn't it?
00:08:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Is, yeah.
00:08:15 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's a change.
00:08:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I want to come to the main reason why I've got you here.
00:08:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I want to understand what is 2IC and how did it come to be.
00:08:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So again, in your own words, give us a rundown, please.
00:08:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, so very easy to look at myself and my co-founder.
00:08:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We worked together many, many years ago in defence at IBM as it happened.
00:08:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I then left defence and in fact left the UK and lived in New Zealand, worked in Australia, all working in tech.
00:08:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so I had nothing to do with defence.
00:08:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I left the defence industry totally.
00:08:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I then came back to the UK working for a FinTech company and I was running a software development company focused on FinTech.
00:08:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Nick had stayed at IBM, very much working into the defence space still.
00:08:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we went on a ski holiday.
00:08:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's a long short story of it.
00:08:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And over too many beers on a ski holiday, Nick would be explaining a lot of the problems in defence that the tech that we were used to using outside of the tactical space, the stuff you'd see in big enterprising cloud environments, just doesn't work at the last mile when you've got fractured comms,
00:09:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
when you've got low-powered computers.
00:09:15 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It just doesn't work there.
00:09:16 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so we talked about it and as techies at heart, we can solve that problem.
00:09:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we decided to build a product set that tackles exactly that problem.
00:09:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So how you would do enterprise level integration, but where you don't have enterprise IT and communication systems.
00:09:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Now, you sort of touched on it back 12 years ago or so, nobody would invest in defence.
00:09:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We were the pariahs, we were treated the same as gambling and *********** just less custom.
00:09:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so you couldn't get investment.
00:09:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we bootstrapped the company through contracts, through all sorts, a few little bit friends and family investment, but primarily winning business that was on the right line and then reinvesting all the profit and the development into building a product set that eventually we then now have launched as a full product set with all the IP, having bootstrapped it.
00:10:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So what might have taken three years with a big chunk of investment probably took us more like 8 or 9.
00:10:09 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
because we had to bootstrap it all the way through.
00:10:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so that's where we've got to now.
00:10:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And really, what we wanted to try and do is address those issues.
00:10:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's where we are now.
00:10:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So that's really what the company tries to do.
00:10:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
How do we provide that tech tooling to help businesses integrate where they don't have good infrastructure, particular way, often called the last mile or legal environments, denied, degraded, intermittent and limited networks, such as you find away from built infrastructure.
00:10:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But we also, our same software, oddly we work in defence, we use, the software is used in quite a few defence applications.
00:10:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's also the same core software is used in old people's homes to keep older people in remote areas safe at home for longer because they've got some similar problems where phone lines drop, etc., drop.
00:10:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You need to have reliable comms where you've got unreliable links to keep
00:11:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
old people at home longer, safely.
00:11:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it's exactly the same core software, just a very, very different use case.
00:11:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But our main focus in the business is the defence use case.
00:11:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So you know, we're always interested to hear from organisations that want to contribute their thoughts to our articles.
00:11:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If this is you, send it to the e-mail newsletter to stay up to date on what we're working on.
00:11:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
There's a link in the show notes.
00:11:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Otherwise, back to the episode.
00:11:26 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:11:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In our research, the main thing that came out to us was actually you're not a hardware company, so you're purely software, but actually essentially you create the software glue that binds together the drone platforms with the operators on the ground, the headquarters that are back
00:11:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
kind of further out through a range of missiles and such.
00:11:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And actually, it's the thing that keeps everything running together.
00:11:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So that single software layer, I guess, essentially.
00:11:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Does that sound about right?
00:11:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Have I done you a disservice?
00:11:56 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
No, you've done a perfect sum of it, yeah.
00:11:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I often describe it, and some of my shareholders and my colleagues are not getting away.
00:12:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We do really, really boring software.
00:12:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So the software we do is incredibly boring.
00:12:06 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I started a presentation last year to a senior officer, and I started the presentation with, sir, what you're about to see is none of our software.
00:12:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But what you get everything you see working is because our software is behind the scenes making it work, but you won't actually see any of our software.
00:12:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we often describe it as plumbing software.
00:12:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You can go to a fancy showroom, you'll see lots of sinks, toilets, showers, baths.
00:12:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They look all really good, but none of them work.
00:12:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If you take them home, store them in your house and you haven't thought about the plumbing, don't put the plumbing in place.
00:12:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Nothing works.
00:12:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We do that digital plumbing that glues together all those different things and disparate vendors.
00:12:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
all working in different environments and make it all work together so you can share information between the systems and work across those digital stovepipes, which if you think an analogy would be Amazon does it in the enterprise environment where when you go on to Amazon to buy something, you have no idea who's actually selling it.
00:12:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
For the new supplier, they can lock into Amazon, add their products to it, and then customers can buy it because you've got a sort of glue layer that sits behind the scene at Amazon.
00:13:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We do exactly the same, but where you don't have high-powered computers and you don't have the internet, where you've got tactical radios, where you've got SATCOM, you've got long-range HF, which is very, very low bandwidth.
00:13:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we make exactly the same things work, but in those far more challenged environments.
00:13:23 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's what we do.
00:13:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So again, when our stuff's working, none of our customers see our stuff working.
00:13:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's just it's almost like the magic behind the scenes, which, and as a software company,
00:13:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That's really hard to work in defence because defence tends to buy hardware and they like things that are very visible.
00:13:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So our challenge is we have something that is software and not visible at all, which is one of our real, real challenges, but that's exactly where we fit.
00:13:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so yeah, your summary's good of it.
00:13:49 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, apart from when it goes wrong, because obviously if you think of software as a single layer, you know, especially with the release of Court Claude Mythos,
00:13:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
and new next generation AI software is that rather than trying to attack the platforms or the computer systems, I think we might be seeing adversaries who are actually attacking the software layer to prevent the uplink to the satellite, for example, or the communications back to the operator or the, or just blanking out.
00:14:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We're seeing it obviously in Eastern Europe at the moment in terms of,
00:14:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
denied areas and RF jamming and that sort of stuff.
00:14:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I'd imagine the next thing at some point will be trying to deny the software layer that keeps everything working.
00:14:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Absolutely.
00:14:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And trying to infiltrate the supply chain, infiltrate onto the software.
00:14:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Absolutely.
00:14:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So again, security is an important part of it.
00:14:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
As I say, we are slightly unusual in this sector.
00:14:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Me and my team's about equally split military veterans and non-military.
00:14:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The non-military side of us all come from software backgrounds.
00:14:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we're software people doing the military side and our military colleagues who I've brought into the business are ones who come from that bring the military perspective to help us make the software as appropriate as possible.
00:14:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it's trying to blend that team.
00:14:59 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think I'll probably, I think we'll probably come back to it later.
00:15:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I see collaboration wherever it's within the team, across teams is the most key thing.
00:15:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You know, it's my whole career working in software is get the right people together, working together and
00:15:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
mixing different skills, different backgrounds, different mindsets, you get a much better outcome.
00:15:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If you get five people who have all got the same background, same skill set, and all do the same thing in the room, you're going to get a really dull outcome because you're going to miss some things that, because you're all going to come up with the same problems and the same opportunities.
00:15:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What you want is five people who have got really randomly different views because then you're going to get some really interesting stuff.
00:15:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I'm a big fan of that.
00:15:37 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And within, we're a small company, and I really do encourage that sort of behaviour.
00:15:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think, again, your own background.
00:15:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I've got a frustratingly large number of Royal Marines in the business.
00:15:46 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But interestingly, that Royal Marine mindset is a very similar one, small teams with a bit of autonomy, but people not afraid to share their opinions and question is it exactly what you want.
00:15:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Because then I think actually that drives a much better outcome.
00:16:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that applies to software particularly.
00:16:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think the more mind, the more thinking you have and the more dialogue, the more you can mitigate some of those risks of what the adversary might look to do next as well by just
00:16:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
having taken a more perverse mindset of, well, if I was trying to break this, how would I break it?
00:16:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Because that's what someone else is going to try and do.
00:16:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And for me as a software guy, through and through, it's always been, how do you make sure the software solves the problems?
00:16:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Not build software for software's sake, it's how does the software fix the problems.
00:16:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And ideally, the end user shouldn't ever see software.
00:16:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If you've got your private soldier or the old lady in the old people's home going, well, the software,
00:16:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
if they start a conversation with the software does, you've failed already.
00:16:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You want to be invisible.
00:16:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, agree.
00:16:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Which I imagine probably introduced its own problem set to how do you get into front of your client, how do you get out, how do you make yourself memorable, and all those sorts of things.
00:16:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I didn't want to jump on to a question, just ask, if you can, are you able to say who you work with and what problems you solve for them, like realistic case studies, for example?
00:17:09 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah.
00:17:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I'll be slightly anonymized, but I'll try.
00:17:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we focused, when we first started, when for many years, we mainly focused actually on the end users of the defence departments in primarily the UK, Australia, and the US.
00:17:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we were really looking at the digitally drivability, so how they would make systems that weren't designed to get work together, work together, such as when you've got a bunch of systems on an aircraft, including things like camera systems, they have a whole bunch of very complex settings.
00:17:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If the guys on the ground want to view the video settings or understand what payload the aircraft might have, typically they have to jump on the radio, do a voice communication, hope someone at the other end is listening, and that person can then have a sort of structured radio conversation to share that.
00:17:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And if it is something like a video setting, then they've got to hand type it into their receiver.
00:17:56 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
while under pressure, so it never works.
00:17:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So one of the projects we did with our customers, we took all the existing systems, we didn't add any new hardware, and we added some software onto the aircraft, some software onto the ground system.
00:18:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And using our software and whichever bearers, network bearers they had, we queried our own versions of our software at each end, went, hey, right, the aircraft has these video settings, this is how they're set.
00:18:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then we pre-filled all the video receivers on the ground guys, so all you had to do was press a button, everything worked behind the scenes magically.
00:18:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
When the aircraft then changed frequencies or different aircraft came in, that stuff all happened magically behind the scene.
00:18:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And the user had exactly the same experience they'd always had.
00:18:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But they didn't have to know about settings.
00:18:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And when we did the trial with the individuals, they said the best thing they had to do is they didn't have to write anything down.
00:18:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They didn't have to write IP settings and frequencies.
00:18:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we tried to automate that, which for us normal people who use an iPhone or whatever every day, that's just normal.
00:18:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
None of us know what our IP setting is our iPhone.
00:18:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But in military kit, our customers tend to have to know IP settings, frequencies.
00:18:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We automated that.
00:18:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So that is an example of what we've done for end customers.
00:19:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So removing a lot of that mandrolic processing and a lot of that human interoperability, swivel chair interoperability at someone's goal.
00:19:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So one human looking at 2 screens trying to make everything make sense.
00:19:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We just automate that without changing the underlying systems.
00:19:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But then we made a, as a business, we sort of pivoted about 18 months ago and decided to focus much more on OEMs and suppliers.
00:19:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So rather than go to the end customers, while we still do that, it's a very slow burn.
00:19:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we've really focused on the end customer, the OEMs.
00:19:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So people particularly who make radios, so where what they want to be doing is certain business software like ATAC, they want to make ATAC work over a very narrow band radio or a very intermittent radio.
00:19:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We then effectively sit in between the radio and the applications and make applications that weren't designed to work over poor links, work seamlessly over poor links.
00:19:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So therefore their radios automatically integrate.
00:19:59 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And now we've taken a lot of that into uncrewed integration.
00:20:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Again, people, a lot of our customers seem to be into the uncrewed space.
00:20:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Typically, the uncrewed companies, as you see coming through, are really good at something, they make really good propellers or really good hulls or really good engines.
00:20:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:20:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What they don't, what they don't have skills and they don't.
00:20:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So how do they make this really cool new platform they've got integrate into a military environment where you've got degraded comms, broken comms, multiple bearers.
00:20:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We do all that piece for them.
00:20:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
There's basically plug and play to you make a really good platform, we'll handle the comms piece for you.
00:20:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And whichever radios you want to put in or your end customers to put in, don't worry about the radios, you get the radios in there.
00:20:37 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But the software that manages all of that together is what we do.
00:20:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So that's where we've really ended up focusing on, particularly OEMs of radios and uncrewed platforms is the majority of our business now.
00:20:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:20:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I've just been writing some notes down in the background.
00:20:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It sounds like 2 very different problems that you solve.
00:20:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So the cognitive load on the end user, for example, in that first example, because operators in an active conflict zone, for example, don't want to be writing down
00:21:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I kind of think back to the days of back, where you'd have to write down a long, complicated, excerpts before you could even get translate the message into what you wanted to write.
00:21:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It would take, 20 times as long without, without current technology.
00:21:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And then the second one was essentially kind of
00:21:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You could invest, you've got clients who could invest in, say, millions of pounds worth of autonomous platforms, but if those platforms can't talk to each other or integrate with the end user or the command headquarters that are located somewhere else, essentially it's a waste of money and it's a redundant platform, which, you know, I'm guessing the outcome is you either have to deny it or it sits there and just gets mothballed and
00:21:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
unused.
00:21:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So there's two very different problems there, but two very vital problems I can see that you feel for the end user.
00:21:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And where they do overlap is, again, if the new supplier comes along and they've got this really exquisite piece of really cool kit, but actually integrating it in is going to require a huge amount of manual use from the end user, like you just described.
00:22:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You've got a very strong military background, you know your average soldier, but it's really hard to use.
00:22:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They simply don't use it.
00:22:15 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So now you've built this really exquisite platform that could be brilliant, but because it becomes too hard and too manual to use, actually no one uses it as well.
00:22:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So they are very separate problems and certainly very separate customers, but there is some overlap.
00:22:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And the important one from us is exactly the same core software.
00:22:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We're not doing different software for each.
00:22:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The software we use on the aircraft for that integration scenario, the software we're using on uncrewed platforms and the software we use in a care home, the core software is exactly the same core software in all three, just different configurations, different applications of it.
00:22:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But the core core software is the same.
00:22:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so it gives that flexibility.
00:22:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And again, if we go back to the plumbing analogy, the plumbing pipes
00:23:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
that you would have in-house, whether or not it's connected to the kitchen sink, the toilet, the hose pipe.
00:23:05 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They're very different applications, but it's effectively the plumbing that makes it work.
00:23:09 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You've got to use some very similar bits of plumbing.
00:23:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But again, if you don't put the plumbing in, none of those things would work anyway.
00:23:15 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So that's kind of where, as an analogy goes, I think it's quite useful.
00:23:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Real quick, if you want to hear when new episodes and articles are released, be sure to sign up to our newsletter at the Mililux website or find a link in the show notes below.
00:23:29 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But now, back to the episode.
00:23:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:23:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I mean, we're developing at the moment a user experience service to kind of roll into the events in the future, which means a lot of understanding methods for diagnosing, understanding and creating data from human factors.
00:23:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So that is, you know, measuring stress of the end user, measuring the heart rates,
00:23:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
the biometric data to see where you can pull out as much cognitive load to make that experience more seamless, easier to use so the end user is then able to think for wider and less stress.
00:24:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Interestingly from the glue point, that reminds me, we did do an integration project in Australia a number of years ago where what they want to do is a future digital helmet, lots of bits of kit, lots of other people involved in it.
00:24:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
One of the proofs of concept bit they want to do is as the human stress levels increased,
00:24:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
such as through detecting through the Garmin.
00:24:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we did the integration piece.
00:24:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We didn't care about any of the endpoints.
00:24:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You could then, in terms of their heads-up displays, you had a heads-up display, you give information.
00:24:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And as the human stress level increased, you decreased the amount of information being displayed to the user to reduce that cognitive burden.
00:24:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So as the stress level increased, such as in contact, you've reduced down to at the extreme end of contact, all you really need to know is where's my mate's blue force side.
00:24:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
everything else can disappear off.
00:24:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But as your stress level resides, you've come out of contact, you can start saying, where's my next waypoint?
00:24:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Where's my friendlies?
00:24:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Where's this?
00:24:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Where's that?
00:24:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But a process by which you could automate that by the stress level of the individual.
00:24:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That was an innovation project in Australia, but our piece on that was bringing together all of the underlying, everyone's got all cool bits of that.
00:25:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If you can't join them all together, you've got lots of cool bits and you've got like a, it's basically like a Lego set where you've got all the bits.
00:25:10 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We just made the bits all fit together, and that was exactly 1 there to try and do automated stress loading, and it was a very, that was an innovation project, it was a very interesting project to try and see how.
00:25:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
that you could do some of those things based on human stress.
00:25:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:25:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Lots of interesting things.
00:25:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
No, fascinating.
00:25:26 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I was thinking we published an article on human machine teaming literally a few days ago.
00:25:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I was just thinking already we should have had you adding your kind of expertise into that article.
00:25:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I'm going to make sure we get in touch when we've got the next one on the go and say, right, let's go.
00:25:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Let's get your thoughts on the future of human machine teaming and where, you know, where the human is the human on the loop versus the human in the loop.
00:25:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
in terms of the levels of operation.
00:25:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That sounds fascinating.
00:25:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And certainly as a techie, I've always been of the view that you always should design every system around a human.
00:25:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's the one challenge I've had coming back into the military world is we do a lot of training of people to use systems.
00:26:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yet every single one of our soldiers, sailors and air crew these days will have a smartphone.
00:26:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I doubt any of them have received a minute of training on their smartphone.
00:26:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But on your smartphone, you can do more stuff on the smartphone than most military systems are capable of doing.
00:26:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yet one of them requires months often of training.
00:26:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The other requires 0 training.
00:26:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we've got to get more towards the iPhone.
00:26:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I call it the iPhone model of systems where it's just intuitive.
00:26:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But the way you do that is you design for the user 1st and you make the tech work for the user and not try and make the user work for the tech, which is what we've traditionally done in defense.
00:26:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's where we are seeing
00:26:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
this change in approach with more startups coming into the fence, there's very much an approach of how do we make it work for the user 1st and let the tech follow, which I think is a good thing.
00:26:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's the iteration that the tech industry went through in the late 1990s.
00:26:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's just a shame that we're now catching up.
00:26:56 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And maybe going back to the earlier question, I think this is where the war in Ukraine is actually accelerating that because they have to work so quickly.
00:27:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They are just using COTS technology, familiar technology.
00:27:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
How do we then
00:27:09 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
How do we get stuff quickly and then how do we fight it?
00:27:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
As opposed to what we tend to do in the UK is work out how we want to fight and then build technology to support how we want to fight.
00:27:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Go, well, what technology can we get now?
00:27:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then how do we best fight that to maximize impact?
00:27:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's more the Ukrainian model.
00:27:25 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's the one we really want to learn is how we quickly get tech.
00:27:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Because the tech will get obsolete very quickly.
00:27:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Let's worry about how we fight tomorrow.
00:27:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
as quickly as possible so that tomorrow we win.
00:27:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Well, today we win, tomorrow we win and we keep winning.
00:27:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's use the tech best rather than trying to build tech to solve the problems, how to best employ the tech.
00:27:46 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's where we're at the moment.
00:27:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And what we try to do sitting behind the scenes going, well, actually, if you've got this thing, this thing, this thing, and the best use is you join them, cool, we can make it so you can join them in hours and days, not months and years.
00:27:59 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then you get the joint effect.
00:28:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And if it doesn't work, that's the other thing we need to do more is iterate.
00:28:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If it works, do more of it.
00:28:05 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If it doesn't work, do something else.
00:28:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
In the tech industry, that's what we've done for 30 years.
00:28:10 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
In the defence industry, I think we're starting to learn that that's a good way to work.
00:28:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, exactly.
00:28:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That kind of agile design mindset.
00:28:17 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Something we've been using for a number of years now is more like this double loop learning for creating, rather than creating kind of big prestige systems, is actually sorting off of what's already exists, try and making it, you know, 1 to 5% better, seeing how that's
00:28:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
how that lands, and if not, keep on pushing higher, rather than going for a really high-end prestige system, which is out of date within a month, already gone.
00:28:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it's, I think, kind of everyone in defence is learning from that more agile mindset of what's happening in Ukraine at the moment with 3D printers hacking to create new methods of protection of offensive systems and everything.
00:28:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's really interesting to watch.
00:29:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And again, I've been a software nearly 30, about 30 years working in the software industry.
00:29:05 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I know I've talked to a lot of my colleagues and friends ago, name me a big programmable project that started as a successful big projects and programme that started as a big programmable project.
00:29:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I've yet to find one in my entire career that was started big and was successful.
00:29:23 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I've got a list of ones that were started big and failed.
00:29:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And ones that started small and became big and successful, there's a few of those.
00:29:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But ones that started big and stayed big and were successful, the list is 0.
00:29:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's the tech one.
00:29:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's the lesson that's coming through is start small, iterate, build on success and pivot away from failure.
00:29:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And failure is just part of the learning journey.
00:29:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You don't know what doesn't work half the time until you try it.
00:29:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then all you've got to do is be honest and go, it didn't work.
00:29:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Let's try something else.
00:29:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, that's the tech industry.
00:29:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's almost like the lean startup methodology, isn't it?
00:29:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Where you do small, small experiments, see, you know, see what's working, what isn't, quickly get rid of those that aren't working, expand and develop those that are working and scale it if, you know, from there rather than doing it.
00:30:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Scale what works and move away from what doesn't.
00:30:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And learn as you go and scale what works.
00:30:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, that's it.
00:30:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, definitely.
00:30:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Brilliant.
00:30:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Fairly obvious, really, but we just.
00:30:23 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, I was going to say, my experience in defence has definitely not been that method, but I'm glad to see it's moving in direction.
00:30:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But anyway, I want to jump onto a slightly different subject now.
00:30:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Can you tell us a bit more about SEPTA, like what it is and what parts do I see plays in it?
00:30:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Because I'm not entirely sure myself.
00:30:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, so it's a SEPTA.
00:30:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
SEPTA was largely as a concept that came around nearly a year ago between a conversation between one of my team and
00:30:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I'm one of the teams at a company called Hadian.
00:30:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Hadian is another UK SME.
00:30:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And the two companies got talking.
00:30:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And in response to some of the SDR requirements for we want to have better SME engagement, we want to see SMEs working together.
00:31:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We looked at, well, as SMEs, we always work together.
00:31:06 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So most SMEs have a network of other SMEs we all know and work together.
00:31:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So what we decided on the back of that was
00:31:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Actually, as companies, we liked each other, but we could see some common ground.
00:31:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we created something called Sceptre in May, June last year, and then launched it at DSCI in September, just to see kind of how well it landed.
00:31:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we were all surprised at just how well it landed.
00:31:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The real interest, we had people clambering to join, we had MOD working, how they engage with us.
00:31:37 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And at that point, it was more of a, it was almost a concept of
00:31:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
formalizing the informal conversations we have.
00:31:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So what we ended up doing is we then brought together as a bunch of companies, we actually did do some practical integration and we demonstrated, we did run a demonstration at DSEI, we've done some subsequent ones more recently.
00:31:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And it's affected that consortium model of SMEs coming together and the, you know, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts time mindset because we're all good at what we do.
00:32:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But MOD tends to want to buy a far bigger capability.
00:32:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So what we wanted to then do is bring ourselves together and really present what would happen when you get UK sovereign SMEs working together and be able to present a sovereign UK stack.
00:32:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so better give MOD one point of entry rather than often, because a lot of the work I do with MOD, they often complain about, well, we don't know how to engage with, you know, 1000 SMEs.
00:32:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
what we've ended up doing is putting a way of engaging with one entity that actually represents about a dozen SMEs already, but in an absolutely non-exclusive way.
00:32:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it gives a mission-led, user-centered way of MOD being able to engage.
00:32:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Our role on it, very simply, is AB were one of the two companies that sort of founded it, and then a third one came in very quickly.
00:32:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So there's sort of three tech companies at the heart of it who will make software, so we'll have some similar challenges.
00:33:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then what our role is that the integrator, because as you bring more and more bits of capability and technology, droves other systems, and you are at the tactical edge, then you need to be able to do that digital plumbing and bring them all in together.
00:33:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That's our role.
00:33:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we are the sort of integration glue layer at a technical level.
00:33:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then also the glue layer at the personal level, because we know a lot of these other companies, there's a lot of the people we would work with anyway.
00:33:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So there's that two level of
00:33:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
how you glue things together, it's on the personal level and at the technical level.
00:33:31 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's kind of our role in it.
00:33:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But it is very much a team and a very much a consortia, very loose consortia.
00:33:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Very interesting one MOD asked us recently, go, well, what's the legal framework between you all?
00:33:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's not the CEOs of each of the companies.
00:33:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Looked the other in the eyes, shook hands and said, let's do it.
00:33:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:33:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Which is how SMEs tend to work.
00:33:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's like, yeah, I can work with you.
00:33:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
can work with me.
00:33:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Let's get on with it and figure it out.
00:33:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And back to that iterative point.
00:33:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
When we started, we didn't know where we'd be by now, because who knows?
00:34:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we try, reiterate things that work, we do more of them, things that don't work, we do less of.
00:34:06 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But it's almost building a consortia using that agile model as well as our own business.
00:34:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And from a purely selfish point of view, it's actually really useful because if you lean in and put effort in, others do, you get more value than you put in.
00:34:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it becomes that multiplier of effort
00:34:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
which is what any good collaboration or any good team does, your country, as long as you pull your weight and do your bit and others do theirs, you all get a greater benefit.
00:34:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it's that, how do you bring us together as a group to get benefit for all of us, but lean into all of us as well?
00:34:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's really what SEPTA is all about.
00:34:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And it's, I'll be honest, when we started, let's see how it goes.
00:34:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Ten months, eight months in now, I've been genuinely surprised as how well it's working.
00:34:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And
00:34:52 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We have done joint efforts together, we've done joint bids together now, and it's a team of UK SMEs sharing just how good the UK defence industry can be when we come together.
00:35:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, brilliant.
00:35:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it reminds me of that metaphor about the rising tide raising all ships.
00:35:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But it sounds a bit cheesy, better than the flywheel metaphor anyway.
00:35:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
No, I'm a massive fan of that, and it's one of the reasons why I do quite a lot into the SME community, because I genuinely do.
00:35:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But I actually believe that one is, yeah, rising tide raises all ships.
00:35:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Hopefully that includes me, but actually others as well, because, and then if others are doing the same, that collaborative effort helps everybody and it helps more than you can do.
00:35:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So you put one unit of effort in,
00:35:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Four other people put in for one unit of effort each, suddenly you've got 5 units of effort for the same thing.
00:35:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You've created a much greater impact for the same amount of work you would do, but you have a multiplier of impact.
00:35:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So it only comes down to, it's that team mentality of how you, as long as you've got common values and common goals, the rest you can make up as you go along, because you're pointing in the same direction.
00:35:59 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, for sure.
00:36:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I guess, I guess you're able to, I presume you're not able to speak on behalf of SEPTA, but I mean, are you able to kind of highlight any gaps at the moment that we'll be able to put out to new members, for example, one-way effector drones or trying to think of like US USBs or something else that's missing for the moment?
00:36:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Not specifically, but that's the next bit we're now looking at is what we now want to do is take it to the next level with both the Army and the Navy attacking specific problem sets they've got.
00:36:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And absolutely that if whatever, we don't want to be tied to specific capabilities.
00:36:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So if for example, working with Navy, following on some stuff we've been there recently, they wanted one way attack boats.
00:36:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Absolutely.
00:36:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We would like to have as many options as possible because then it allows the customer to go, right, well, actually I want that one for that use case, that for that.
00:36:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Or I need 100 of them and you can only make 20 and you can only make 20.
00:36:52 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Well, I need a grouping.
00:36:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's exactly that's the sort of mentality of going, well,
00:36:57 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
As the problems come in, we've got a sort of baseline grouping, but actually the specific effectors, et cetera, would be as use case specific.
00:37:05 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we're always keen to engage others into that.
00:37:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So very deliberately, it's not a closed shop.
00:37:11 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We want to keep it.
00:37:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Others who want to lean in, brilliant.
00:37:14 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We're always keen for others.
00:37:16 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And as we make the use cases, as we can.
00:37:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
get the customer, so the end user driving what problems they've got, that will drive what gaps we will have.
00:37:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Because it's like, well, if they suddenly said, what we need is somebody that does X, and no one in the team does X, it's like, right, well, who does that?
00:37:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Please come in and help.
00:37:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But then it means that other SME who does that has immediately got the rest of the structure around them that they can just dock into, and then they can do more than just their bit as well, which is exactly why we sort of created the structure.
00:37:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Just to jump in for a moment, if you're based in London, we'll soon be running a series of informal free events to bring the community together which we're calling the Defence Sessions.
00:37:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Expect founder stories, investor insights, government agencies adding their thoughts to the relaxed settings of our Central London presentation room.
00:38:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Dates to follow later this year.
00:38:06 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating so far.
00:38:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think we're very keen to get kind of two members or three members, multiple members of SEPTA on at some point to do a combined podcast.
00:38:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So that's something on our to-do list to try and get work around the group to get them to.
00:38:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We'd love to do that.
00:38:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And again, because the real SMEs, and again, it's all founded from the CEOs sort of leaning in as well.
00:38:29 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
All the companies work very well together and we often, we have pitched together.
00:38:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We've done government pitches as a team.
00:38:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And we've won, there's a couple of things I can't announce yet, but we've won a couple of framework contracts that internally, when we look back at it, went on our own, none of us would have been strong enough to win that.
00:38:46 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
As A consortia, we won.
00:38:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And you go, that demonstrates the value to it, going, that teamwork.
00:38:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And again, the team, all of us agree with that view, because we do what we each do what we do really well.
00:39:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But actually, together, we can do so much more as that.
00:39:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
grouping, and that's kind of the focus we have at SEPTA.
00:39:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Fascinating, sir.
00:39:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Brilliant.
00:39:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'll move on to my second to last question, because I realise time is slipping away from us.
00:39:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What do you see as the current problems and opportunities when working with NATO countries?
00:39:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I'll start with the problems first, because I think that's the easy one.
00:39:23 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
When trying to work from the UK into any nation, it's not just NATO, one of the first questions anyone's always going to ask is, what do you do in your home country?
00:39:31 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What do you do with the MOD?
00:39:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And with the MOD being in a fairly poor state at the moment, quite slow, the answer is, well, nothing.
00:39:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And a lot of people know that the MOD is in a poor state, but it means you don't have your home customer as a reference case, which makes it really, really difficult.
00:39:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So then when we as UK companies are trying to work into NATO partners, they're all protecting their own industry and working locally, which is then a challenge for us because we're trying to then compete against a biased market.
00:40:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I'm actually not versed, I understand that.
00:40:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
When they're coming the other way, we don't do that.
00:40:05 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So in fact, in many ways, we're almost competing against a market where it's biased against us in our home market because they have now got their own government support.
00:40:15 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Germany, you mentioned before, the German army has funded a lot of startups.
00:40:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The MOD has done nothing like that.
00:40:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Those German companies can come over here and they've actually got German army trials funded on their run rate, giving them a strong position here.
00:40:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Whereas going the other way,
00:40:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
we don't even have MOD trials on our scorecard because the MOD hasn't done it.
00:40:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So that's, I think, one of the biggest challenges we've got.
00:40:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think there is definitely an opportunity for better collaboration across Europe, particularly with the changes in the relationship with the US.
00:40:48 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think across Europe we're getting better.
00:40:51 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And when I get on my soapbox as a for a techie background is in the UK, we have the best
00:40:59 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
technology sector per capita in the world.
00:41:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If you look at software, both in the universities right the way through to the startups, to most big banks have one of their main global dev shops here in the UK.
00:41:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We have an excellent technology industry, software in particular.
00:41:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:41:17 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
As I say, probably the best per capita.
00:41:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We also have one of the biggest defence budgets in the world.
00:41:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You know, we're still, well, we don't maybe don't spend as wise as we could.
00:41:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's still a fairly eye-washing large number of number to get spent.
00:41:28 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:41:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
In terms of defence technology, we are not even in the same league as most of our European partners and most of the rest of the world.
00:41:37 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that frustrates me.
00:41:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If we've got the best techies, we've got the best industry and we've got the money, why are we such a poor player in the defence technology industry, particularly both at home and export?
00:41:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's because we don't work as a single industry.
00:41:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We work very fragmented.
00:41:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Whereas in Germany, Rhein Mattel dominates what they do in Germany, Leonardo in Italy.
00:42:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They treat their primary defence companies as national assets and we don't.
00:42:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I think that's one of the challenges and the opportunity though is if we were to treat our defence industry more as an asset and in better collaboration with particularly European part of NATO, I think there's a huge opportunity there.
00:42:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We're just not quite
00:42:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
able to make the bits joined up.
00:42:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's not to blame government or industry.
00:42:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's no one part of that is wrong.
00:42:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's a whole lot.
00:42:28 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
We as a defence enterprise have to get better at that.
00:42:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And if we don't, I think we're going to fall behind at night.
00:42:36 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I think that's sort of the call to action is how do we get government, large industry, small industry, the venture market, et cetera, all working together for that common good of UK defence and then being able to really lean into our NATO allies as well.
00:42:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating so far.
00:42:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I was at a presentation with the UK Defence Exports team last night, actually, and I think they kind of understand the same pain points, getting that fragmented
00:43:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
grouping together into something more unified.
00:43:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And they were saying that they've got a number of solutions to be able to kind of promote UK defence exports, on the global, on the VIP stage, on a much kind of higher range.
00:43:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I was thinking, I wonder how many UK SMEs actually realise this, because some of the ones we work with, I would imagine they probably don't even realise that actually they've got this team they can call on.
00:43:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
for ask a question about user experience, for example, and a team were like, brilliant, we'd love to throw kind of UX, military service eye into, if you guys are doing websites, if you're doing user interfaces, that sort of stuff.
00:43:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I was thinking, like, we need to get more of these messages out there.
00:43:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it's, you know, on our to-do list at Mililux is to amplify these opportunities more to SMEs and kind of help
00:43:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
build that cohesion, almost like you being the glue of defence.
00:43:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We want to kind of like glue the defence SME community together a bit more.
00:43:56 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It is absolutely.
00:43:56 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's one of my things when I'm talking with senior M&D quite a lot.
00:44:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's one thing that's almost annoys me most about MODs.
00:44:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They're very good at, and the industry is very good at bagging MOD and saying what they're bad at.
00:44:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What MOD is really, really poor at doing is actually presenting what they're really good at.
00:44:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
There are some really good things.
00:44:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They've got, they do do some things really well and some of their export stuff and some of the expert teams.
00:44:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's brilliant.
00:44:19 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's absolutely spectacular what they can do.
00:44:22 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They're just not very good at telling good news stories.
00:44:26 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The MOD's marketing department is massively undergunned for the size of the MOD in the market they're trying to get to.
00:44:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
There's like two or three people trying to spell a good news story out to, you know, 5,000 companies.
00:44:40 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So actually anything to help MOD be better at actually getting their good messages out because they do do some really good stuff.
00:44:46 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that's particularly some of that support that's there for export, support for other things.
00:44:52 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If you didn't know it's there, you're not going to go looking for it.
00:44:54 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Exactly, yeah.
00:44:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And if you don't go looking for it, you can't find it because no one's heard about it.
00:44:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So you get that chicken egg, but they've got the capacity and capability.
00:45:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's getting that message out.
00:45:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And then I think there's a lot of really good things that could be done.
00:45:06 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I think
00:45:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
it's not all doom and gloom and it's the one that I do a lot of work with the MOD because it's, I'm not worried about people saying, if everyone can sit and moan, it's easy to moan.
00:45:16 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
That is what you do about making it better.
00:45:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think there's a lot of people who want to make it better.
00:45:20 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I think the industry does attract people who have a natural service bent for the obvious reasons and actually some people who want to make it better and therefore you don't make it better by bagging what's bad.
00:45:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
What you do is you
00:45:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You try and deal with problems, but you focus on what works and doing that well and making sure that works.
00:45:37 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So I think that's a big part of it.
00:45:38 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think with MOD, we can help as industry, we can actually help MOD be better because they do do some really good things like the export side.
00:45:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
that most people just never heard of.
00:45:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Exactly.
00:45:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, I mean, we're going to be on the offensive hassling, everyone in UKDI, UK Defence Exports, the NAD, to get them on the podcast at some point and just be like, right, what do you guys do?
00:45:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What, you know, what can you provide to the sector?
00:46:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You know, what is it, what are the things that nobody's hearing about that you want to amplify?
00:46:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So we're kind of creating that more of a platform where they can come on there and say, well, actually, do you know, we do this, we've got this thing in Larkhill, you can put your physical product in front of like VIP, and that's like,
00:46:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I've never heard.
00:46:16 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I've been in defense for twenty-five years.
00:46:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm thinking, Oh, have I never heard this?
00:46:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, so the Larkhill facility is a great example.
00:46:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's been down there.
00:46:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah, soldier on the stand type thing at trade shows.
00:46:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Yeah.
00:46:31 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Unless you've happened to have known it, known or seen it, you wouldn't know it existed.
00:46:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So seriously, I can get a bloke in green to come to my trade show and talk about my product.
00:46:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And it's going to cost me next to nothing.
00:46:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Okay, thank you.
00:46:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Where do I sign up?
00:46:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And it is exactly that.
00:46:46 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so there's definitely ones, I think, within some of the other work I've done outside is of helping create the office for SME growth or small business growth.
00:46:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
There is these pockets.
00:46:56 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think MOD's challenge is they don't have the bandwidth to join up all the bits they're doing.
00:47:00 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's where there's an industry opportunity to help MOD be better and pull out the best of what they do.
00:47:08 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Then I think that does drive a much better output for everybody.
00:47:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, for sure.
00:47:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But I realize we're kind of pushing on with the afternoon.
00:47:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I've got my final question, let you go on with your day.
00:47:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What is the future of 2IC?
00:47:24 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The main one is to keep doing one of the things we're doing.
00:47:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So one of the things we really focus on is we want to make, use our software to make the world better for end users.
00:47:33 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And so by making a difference, it's worth us doing it.
00:47:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I think that's a core value to us and I want to keep doing that.
00:47:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And I've also one thing that's techie at heart in me is I want to do whatever we do.
00:47:42 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I want to do things very well.
00:47:43 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I want to do things that other people either don't do or don't do well.
00:47:47 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So that's an important one.
00:47:49 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And really it's helping that just joining things up together.
00:47:53 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I'm very happy being in the background, but really as a business to really grow our software as a company that where our software is embedded in lots of systems, UK, US, Australia, particularly in the medium term, NATO in the longer term.
00:48:07 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
and be just being that glue and the very, very boring glue that sits in the background.
00:48:13 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But then for me, that's the satisfaction that these things that otherwise wouldn't work now work because we've glued them together and then ultimately make it easier for the end user, which I think what part of that comes back to is don't try and build new systems for the end user all the time.
00:48:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
If they're familiar with the system, let them keep using what they're familiar with.
00:48:30 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Make the system work better under the hood so they don't have to keep training them.
00:48:35 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But once they're familiar with something, they can keep doing what they're doing.
00:48:37 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And the really important one is, ultimately, we've got to make life easier for our young men and women that we're sending into harsh environments.
00:48:44 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Their life has got to be easier.
00:48:45 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So they can actually focus on the tough part of the job they've got to do.
00:48:50 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Because then we can take away the tech and make the tech not the hardest part.
00:48:54 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
You know, we're seeing more and more soldiers having to be more and more tech experts, which is totally the opposite to what we see with our own mobile phones.
00:49:01 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And it's my
00:49:03 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
My mission as a techie is to make sure that our software helps solve that problem and make life easier for the end user.
00:49:10 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And obviously grow as a software company.
00:49:12 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
I want to build and have our software more and more deployed into more and more places around the world.
00:49:18 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So really it's more of what we're doing, but just really the next one's really the scale piece and more repeatable businesses where we really seem to go.
00:49:27 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But ultimately doing things, just keep doing things very well and keep growing the business.
00:49:31 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And
00:49:32 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
comes back to things like the consortium.
00:49:34 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Because we do the really boring stuff, we always have to work in teams, we always have to work with others.
00:49:39 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
And that collaboration piece is really important.
00:49:41 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
So we're always keen to work with whoever else has the problems, because that's where we really fit in.
00:49:46 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
The pivot 18 months ago or so to being embedded in the supply chains of big suppliers has really paid off, because we do what they can't do.
00:49:55 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
But now they can do some really cool stuff that they couldn't do before.
00:49:58 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It's A win-win.
00:49:59 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
They've got the hardware, they've got to route to market.
00:50:02 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
we've got the really good software.
00:50:04 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
It worked well for both and that's where we really see a lot of our scale coming from.
00:50:09 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, brilliant stuff.
00:50:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Great.
00:50:10 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, what a great place to end.
00:50:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Graham, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast and we'll be following your journey closely and wish you all the best.
00:50:21 Graham Booth, the founder of 2IC, a defence tech company getting digital platforms to communicate with each other in contested environments
Thanks, Al.
00:50:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It was really great chatting with Graham and hearing more about their work.
00:50:25 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
If you want to find out more about 2IC, check out the show notes below and we'll see you next time.
