EDT Ventures - Supporting and Scaling Critical Technologies
In this episode, we talk to Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures.
We talk about the current geopolitical situation, the trends in defence investing, the dangers of innovation theatre, the NATO emerging technologies strategy and the need to think internationally.
Find out more: https://www.edt.vc
Production, Design & Artwork: Hiatus ↗ The Defence Design & Communications Agency
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Transcript
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 to Hugo James, former British Army officer, former managing partner of the UK's National Security Strategic Investment Fund, NSIF, now general partner EDT Ventures.
00:00:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We talk about the current geopolitical situation, the trends in defence investing, the dangers of innovation theatre, the NATO emerging technology strategy, and the need to think internationally.
00:00:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Hey, Hugo, thanks so much for joining us on the Future Frontiers podcast.
00:00:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How is it going in the sunny South West?
00:00:44 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty nice, you know, nice to be working from home today, and yeah, pleasure to be joining you.
00:00:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, great stuff.
00:00:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Thank you again.
00:00:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Thank you so much for giving up your time.
00:00:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realise you're super busy right now.
00:00:57 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I guess to roll into a crunchy question to kick us off, you sat on the operational side and now on the investment side as well.
00:01:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How do you interpret the current strategic situation in the Middle East and what does that mean for the direction of modern conflict, would you say?
00:01:10 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, I think it's a good question.
00:01:12 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Obviously, a lot of people are trying to process what's going on.
00:01:15 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I think what we are seeing in the Middle East is really a confirmation of something that Ukraine has clearly been telling us quite loudly and volubly.
00:01:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, the character of conflict has quite clearly fundamentally changed, you know, perhaps irreversibly.
00:01:31 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, the layering of drone swarms, precision strike, electronic warfare, you know, cyber operations,
00:01:37 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
alongside conventional kinetic activity means we're basically no longer talking about distinct domains.
00:01:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
They're all fusing together.
00:01:45 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
They're fully integrated, and they're integrated at a pace that legacy acquisition systems simply weren't built to match.
00:01:52 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so I think what strikes me most about the situation in the Middle East today is definitely the role of non-state and proxy actors, you know, operating with increasingly sophisticated technology, you know, and operating it effectively.
00:02:06 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that's a significant shift.
00:02:08 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, the barrier to entry for high capability systems has really fallen dramatically.
00:02:14 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
that has profound implications on, the way we think about deterrence, the way we think about escalation, the kind of technology we need to compete.
00:02:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And it tells me really that there is a premium on speed of adaptation, on resilience, on asymmetric capability that
00:02:33 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
it's not only the most expensive platforms that are going to make the difference, and clearly this is now really concentrating minds, in every European defence ministry and frankly in every defence-focused or defence-adjacent investment firm.
00:02:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
From an analysis perspective and looking in, it looks like a completely different picture from where we were 10 years ago.
00:02:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Although, albeit, Russia invaded Crimea and there was that early indicator that things were changing from the conventional state on state to the counter coin up tactics that we were looking back from the Iraq and the Afghan era and into more now a situation where both friendly forces and enemy forces are kind of moving much further away from that front line given the adaptation and development of technology into more kind of critical battle winning technologies.
00:03:17 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So an interesting thing to observe and also a little bit intimidating as well from the other perspective as well and how things are changing.
00:03:24 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I do want to capture a different question.
00:03:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In terms of which parts of the defence technology landscape do you think will see the biggest growth over the next two years and which of those might also struggle?
00:03:36 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I think, again, I suppose the most excited area I'm focusing on today is really that intersection where you find commercial technology that's generally matured to a point where its defence application is becoming obvious and indeed urgent.
00:03:52 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, autonomous systems is the, you know, the one that everyone will point to, and it's definitely in the uncrewed domain across both land, sea, air.
00:04:03 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, it's seeing enormous growth.
00:04:06 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
it's not just drones in the hobbyist sense, it's the full stack.
00:04:09 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It's autonomy, it's edge AI, it's human and machine teaming, it's the command and control architecture that manage all of that at scale.
00:04:17 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Electronic warfare again is, you know, another area that I'd highlight.
00:04:22 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, we've under-invested in this.
00:04:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
area basically for two decades, during the counterinsurgency era, and Ukraine has been a pretty brutal reminder of that.
00:04:33 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You then look at some of the slightly further out technologies, things like quantum sensing, quantum communications, areas where Europe again, and the UK in particular, has world-class research in.
00:04:44 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think we'll start seeing that translate into deployable capability within the sort of investment horizon I'm working to.
00:04:52 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
where I think things will struggle, quite clearly, it's kind of legacy suppliers who haven't necessarily restructured around software and data.
00:05:03 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And there's a lot of innovation, you know, theatre happening.
00:05:06 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
There's impressive pitch decks, there's innovation labs that aren't actually connected to, you know, procurement pathways.
00:05:13 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And lots of startups have clearly built, you know, interesting technology.
00:05:17 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
but they can't necessarily navigate the pathway from prototype to programme of record.
00:05:22 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that's obviously very challenging for them.
00:05:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so, you know, the value of death hasn't gone away.
00:05:26 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, if anything, it's widened and it's become ever more competitive.
00:05:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, fascinating.
00:05:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I love the term, the innovation theatre.
00:05:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's
00:05:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's interesting, as a sort of an outsider sometimes, to watching through LinkedIn and listen to the mood music, see what's happening.
00:05:44 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think that you'll kind of understand what's happening underneath the hood to see who's saying what, messages are getting out there, and then obviously...
00:05:51 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
the US President will come in on Truth Social and say something which may then pivot everyone's attention to a very different part of, part of defence.
00:05:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So just get me on to my next question, and we're pivoting slightly now.
00:06:02 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Interested to hear more about kind of your background, how EDT Ventures came to life.
00:06:06 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What was it?
00:06:06 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Can you talk us through the journey of that?
00:06:08 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yes, but you know, quick bio, you know, started my adult life as a soldier in the British Army, and I think you know that
00:06:16 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
That gives you a perspective on, capability requirements, operational realities, things that I don't think you can really get any other way without having put on uniform or being in the national security ecosystem.
00:06:29 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, had the privilege of working across a range of roles alongside, allied partners in different tasks and guises.
00:06:39 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, ultimately, it kind of helps you understand what the end user actually needs, which is very different from what potentially
00:06:46 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
the procurement system might think it needs, or indeed the market think it needs.
00:06:51 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So when I left the military, I then moved into the world of finance.
00:06:55 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I started off in the world of corporate finance and then eventually into venture capital, where I became the managing partner of the UK National Security Strategic Investment Fund, which is really the UK government's vehicle for accelerating the adoption of advanced tech and ultimately disrupting how we have
00:07:14 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
traditionally engaged with the venture ecosystem more broadly.
00:07:17 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It is very much around partnership and ensuring that we can spot emerging trends and technologies as they emerge and hopefully then work with those founders, those entrepreneurs, those investors, really to kind of increase our own strategic advantage.
00:07:33 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And EDT, what I'm working on now, really came out of that kind of learning process.
00:07:40 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
it's clear that Europe needs a genuinely kind of dedicated, pool of capital that can support dual use and defence technologies.
00:07:49 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that's what we're very much focused on now.
00:07:52 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It's A pan-European strategy.
00:07:55 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, you know, we really want to be able to operate at this intersection of government, industry and venture.
00:08:01 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And when you can bring those things together, you can create very, very powerful outcomes, both in terms of financial returns, but
00:08:08 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
quite clearly in terms of developing deterrence capability and hopefully economic prosperity.
00:08:18 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 shirts below.
00:08:25 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.
00:08:29 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What we say about kind of having the end user voice within this, pulling in these three different kind of disparate parts in terms of the end user community, the venture capital market, and also government as well, which sometimes it does feel like there can be a bit of a gap, or certainly probably over the last 10 or 15 years, I suggest, it's felt like a bit disparate in terms of
00:08:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think we were both in, UOR, Urgent Operational Requirements was the main procurement method for getting anything in to go to the British military and that was connecting it to operations.
00:09:00 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And now actually it feels a lot more like there's a longer term view of things as opposed to just getting it in because we've, you know, operations dictated we need to solve this problem.
00:09:09 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right.
00:09:11 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I think you know a lot of the.
00:09:13 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
impact of organisations like NSIF, but frankly other defence or national security innovation departments, is really on cultures and behaviours where we need to be able to look up and out, which is not only what is coming around the corner, but what is maybe slightly further down the line, so horizon two, horizon three technologies, and ensure that not only are we tracking those, we're able to understand how they might enhance our operational effectiveness,
00:09:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
But critically, how can we adopt those technologies?
00:09:46 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think that awareness has been growing significantly since the days that you and I were putting on uniform, and it's encouraging to see.
00:09:54 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I.
00:09:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Think, certainly, when I when I left 16, I think we begin to learn the lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan and take them, really take them to heart and decide, like, what did the future of the British militaries look like?
00:10:06 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Not, seeing the Russia land grab of Crimea still focus on that kind of
00:10:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I want to call it navel gazing, but it felt it did feel a bit like kind of navel gazing at the time, what the future might look like.
00:10:17 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It was, super muddy from there, but it feels more like more like that the future looks a little or the next five years looks a lot clearer than what it did maybe from 2016 onwards, you know, particularly where defence is investment focus defence wasn't really a, you know, an area which many VCs or PE actually focused on, because it was more like the like the green energy transition it was.
00:10:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
was the kind of maybe some of the space technologies, but less so defence.
00:10:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And obviously 2022 happened and that slowly exposed everyone to this whole rearming Europe movement.
00:10:52 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And then obviously with the second Trump administration as well, I think that's just reinforced our kind of understanding that there's a capability gap here or there's a, you know, certainly something which we do need to solve in the short term.
00:11:05 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.
00:11:06 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And you know, if you just localise it to Europe as a continent,
00:11:11 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
the imperative is quite clear.
00:11:13 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
the benefits of globalization were fantastic, but we're not really in that world anymore.
00:11:18 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, from a continental perspective, we need to have our own strategic autonomy.
00:11:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
We need to have our own strength and depth in terms of, supply chains and the kind of industrial strengths that, we've benefited from over many decades.
00:11:34 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, Europe has woken up to that reality.
00:11:37 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So you're now starting to see historic levels of
00:11:40 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
of public funding going into innovation.
00:11:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
it's almost a trillion euros before the end of this decade that will be deployed in that space.
00:11:48 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And by innovation, you can read dual use.
00:11:51 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And then by extension of that, there's defence, because the whole focus is around rebuilding not only the industrial base across Europe, but clearly the defence industrial base.
00:12:00 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that's a, you know, that is, you know, that's the backdrop that we're investing against.
00:12:07 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, 100%.
00:12:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
we had it, we did a podcast last week about an expert in data sovereignty, and he, we went into the deep dive on to, just how much, how important data sovereignty is, especially we want to leverage new technologies like AI, the strategic communications, the low earth orbit, satellite communications for controlling uncrewed vehicles on sea, on land, particularly if we want to have, you know, particularly if we have something that resembles Ukraine conflict, heaven forbid for
00:12:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
in the near future.
00:12:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So I definitely say people, I say myself, is starting to understand more about the longer term needs of defence, how it's moved on from just the bombs, bullets and beans of the pointiest end actually now is that the supply chain, you know, defence now is something that a lot of people are talking about.
00:12:55 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So yeah.
00:12:56 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It just came on to my next question.
00:12:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Obviously, working with defence startups, what
00:13:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What makes them stand out to you?
00:13:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And when you're evaluating investments, how do you kind of look at them as a complete unit?
00:13:09 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, good question.
00:13:10 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I suppose, you know, for us, you know, assessing founders, assessing entrepreneurs, you know, we're really looking for them to have a genuine, deep, almost obsessive understanding of what the problem is that they're trying to solve.
00:13:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, you know, clearly in defence dual use, you know, the strongest founders
00:13:28 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
have real proximity to end users, whether that's through prior service or, their previous roles in other sectors.
00:13:36 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, they've actively sought out direct exposure to, areas like Ukraine, where they can learn very much from, what is the sort of cutting edge of modern warfare, and that then helps shape and inform their product choices and the platforms that they're building.
00:13:53 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
for us, we're focusing on foundational technologies in a lot of cases.
00:13:58 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So these are things like quantum technologies.
00:14:01 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
This is edge AI, this is advanced manufacturing, it's space, it's engineering biology, it's semiconductors.
00:14:07 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, these are areas where Europe has world-class leadership.
00:14:11 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And of course, there is a real drive to have European sovereign solutions here.
00:14:16 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And thankfully, you know, we have this most amazing, you know, academic, research, venture, industrial,
00:14:23 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
ecosystem that we can leverage.
00:14:26 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so we're really looking for, standout founders, building solutions to very, very large scale problems that have relevance to clearly the commercial world, but also very focused on where they can apply to national security and defense.
00:14:41 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And we can help on that.
00:14:42 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think this might lead into your kind of next question about where do you see founders in this space struggle?
00:14:49 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think, you know, one of the challenges, which is
00:14:54 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
which many listeners of yours will recognise, it's primarily in knowing who to engage in what order and what are the right questions to ask if you want to access a national security and defence customer set.
00:15:08 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And obviously just in defence, the innovation landscape is really complex.
00:15:14 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
a lot of the activity that does happen, and I'm sad to hear you say this, but a lot of the activity is performative rather than, connected to real procurement authorities.
00:15:25 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so you really need to have either the right advice or the right wherewithal to be able to navigate that.
00:15:30 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And then I think, you know, there is a structural mismatch between defence timelines a lot of the time and traditional VC models that can create these quite significant imbalances or misalignments.
00:15:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And then I think finally, a lot of founders haven't quite priced in or they've underestimated, the cultural differences between, commercial partners they may have worked in before or served before, and then defence customers, trust, security, credibility, these matter as much as technology and they take time to build.
00:16:07 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so this is not a market that you can come into without really having thought through
00:16:13 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
not only the kind of customer go-to-market strategy, but almost how you've built security in at the core of what you're building.
00:16:22 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 organizations that want to contribute their thoughts to our articles.
00:16:27 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.
00:16:31 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.
00:16:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Otherwise, back to the episode.
00:16:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Startups that have made a solution to a problem that have pivoted into defense without really understanding the problem or the ecosystem or the competing factors, push and pull factors into how it affects their products.
00:16:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, it sounds...
00:16:50 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Broadly, the same as what you're saying here, understanding your customer, the problem you solve, and just being prepared for those hard questions when people come in like yourself and do that due diligence, look beneath the hood, scrape away at the surface and see what's actually going on here, is this something that we can get behind?
00:17:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Because obviously there's reputational risk for you, obviously investing in something which isn't up to par, is there?
00:17:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And
00:17:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think more startups we've kind of talked to actually understand more that actually there's a reputational risk to people backing their idea, not saying it's necessarily like a bad idea to have like a moonshot, something aim for something really big, but making sure that it's backed up with good solid reasoning and you know you can hold the crowd and say, This is why I believe this solves this problem.
00:17:44 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, that's right.
00:17:45 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think, the reason why I love venture is, people talk about this a lot, but it's turning science fiction into science fact.
00:17:53 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I've, been very, very lucky to be involved in some of those seemingly impossible kind of breakthroughs.
00:18:00 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, you know, it's kind of truly magical when it all works.
00:18:05 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
But, you know, defence is that extra layer of complexity.
00:18:09 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I wouldn't necessarily expect a founder to have,
00:18:12 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
kind of complete depth in terms of their defence IQ and, have spent months just understanding defence procurement.
00:18:19 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
that's where, again, it comes down to ventures as a team sport.
00:18:23 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So you find the right partners, you get the right advisors, you take on the investors who can genuinely add value at the board.
00:18:30 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
who can open doors, who can advise you on what opportunities are going to be additive to your overall product development plan versus, you know, those that could be then labelled more innovation theatre and they're just distractive ultimately.
00:18:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, you know, the key message for
00:18:45 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
For startups working in their spaces, your most valuable commodity is time and money.
00:18:52 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so you only want to be working on projects and with customers that will lead to further revenue expansion or indeed be able to help you accelerate that product development roadmap.
00:19:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:19:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm trying to think of some examples of where.
00:19:08 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
where start-ups and scale-ups actually possibly get it wrong in terms of, for example, bringing on two bigger advisory board of, perhaps, end users or veterans or something like that.
00:19:22 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is there anything like that you could say this is perhaps not a very, or, a bad sign or some of the things that look a good sign?
00:19:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm thinking back to kind of,
00:19:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Some classic kind of Warren Buffett, quotes around, making sure that you're lean, that you, if you don't need an office, you don't have an office.
00:19:40 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Are you looking for those cost-saving measures as early as possible to signal to people that you understand it's not a quick thing to get into defence or get out that, you know, that sandbox across the valley of death as such?
00:19:54 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, so I suppose this again is your kind of next question.
00:19:57 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So I think, you know, businesses need to be operating as businesses from the outset.
00:20:02 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
non-technology demonstrators.
00:20:05 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
endless pilots without a clear adoption pathway or a commercial pathway are effectively a trap.
00:20:12 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so you need to be able to navigate away from those.
00:20:15 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think founders ultimately need to have very honest conversations with customers about routes to procurement, which maybe they're slightly more nervous of asking those questions in national screening and defence than they might be with commercial customers.
00:20:29 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I think on fundraising, again, you see, there are many, many traps here, but you've got to understand your audience.
00:20:36 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So if it's a defence-focused investor you're speaking to versus a generalist VC, you know, they are going to evaluate the opportunity very differently across both of those kind of lenses.
00:20:51 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so, ensure that you've done your own research on the investors and, you do the narrative in a way that's going to be easy for them to understand the value.
00:21:04 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
The thing that I do see quite often, and this is problematic in national security and defence, as you will appreciate, is
00:21:11 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
focusing on one, maybe it's your domestic market alone, that can be great and that can be very good for kind of de-risking early on the technology and getting that validation, but...
00:21:22 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I would encourage founders to think internationally, from the outset.
00:21:26 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So whether or not that's pan-European, whether or not that's Five Eyes or the wider NATO alliance, that just dramatically expands, your market and indeed your investor potential and gives you so many more entry points to target.
00:21:41 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I think in a way, it's one of the ways we kind of assess, the companies that come to us in terms of, how scalable are they?
00:21:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
What's this technology going to look like in the next kind of five, 10, 15 years?
00:21:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is it a cul-de-sac of a new idea or is it something which actually could scale into a lot more, many other directions?
00:22:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I think, yeah, that international expansion is something you can tell very early or something we can certainly look at very early on.
00:22:11 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
understanding the market, understanding or predicting the future character of conflict in the next kind of five years.
00:22:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So it's, I guess, how could they demonstrate their thinking internationally?
00:22:27 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
from your perspective, how can they demonstrate their thinking internationally?
00:22:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is that like bringing hard data from, say, other markets, other environments?
00:22:34 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is it demonstrating geopolitical awareness?
00:22:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is it, what would it, what would it kind of look like?
00:22:40 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, I think there's a whole load of different options here.
00:22:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
it could be as simple as, applying for a NATO, sponsored innovation programme.
00:22:50 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It could be, participating in the NATO Diana Accelerator.
00:22:54 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It could be applying for some of the EU Defence Fund funding and programmes.
00:23:00 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It could be actually just partnering with other other kind of supporting actors within other markets.
00:23:08 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So, you know, if you need to integrate
00:23:10 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
within a particular, prime or tier one system, then you find one that could be in France or Germany or indeed in the US.
00:23:18 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
and that can really help accelerate, again, the kind of internationalization of these companies.
00:23:23 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think often, particularly in Europe, the home domestic market is often too small to sustain a really, scalable kind of revenue profile.
00:23:34 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So actually sort of de-risking your own commercial and go-to-market strategy, it makes total sense to try and find aligned partners that might not be in your home market.
00:23:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
One of the key defence problems we've been looking at recently is the challenge of subsea, protecting subsea cabling, particularly from a, you know, from a passive detection ISR perspective, but then also response, you know, if you do see something that is about to happen, how do you then
00:24:01 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
act accordingly, or rather than just sitting around gathering evidence and saying, This has happened, this is something that we've that we've done about it, particularly in the Baltic Sea region.
00:24:12 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
That's, you know, a close politically, it's a sensitive area, given everything that's going on right now.
00:24:21 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I know there'll be lots of start-ups and scale-ups who'll be taking this, to heart and thinking about how they can repurpose their strategy, or change their strategy, repurpose their communications, and just do that introspection that's vital for getting out of that sandbox.
00:24:37 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, I think that's right.
00:24:38 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, you know, one of one of the challenges that I'm involved in and another defence innovation kind of pathway at the moment is around counter drones.
00:24:48 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And if you think about how you might mitigate that as a threat, there's the detect piece, there's the identify, there's tracking, there's some sort of kill or capture aspect of that, and then there's an assess piece.
00:25:01 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And there could be lots of different technologies involved in that.
00:25:04 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
could also be different, you know, integration partners with that.
00:25:07 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And maybe you're only doing the sensor network, maybe you need a hardware partner, you know, and that hardware partner could be local to you, or it could be in a different market.
00:25:16 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Maybe you're hardware agnostic and you work with
00:25:18 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
a whole range of different partners across different geographies who can help you access different customer opportunities.
00:25:25 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I do think you've got to think very broad, particularly if you're just starting with defence rather than commercial use cases.
00:25:32 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You've got to think more laterally than just your own market generally.
00:25:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
In terms of kind of the defence spectrum, I guess, if you think of everything from the kinetic end where you've got the lodging munitions and the very obvious kind of bang, pointy end through to
00:25:47 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
the resilience and where you're maybe protecting subsea cabling, biosecurity solutions, ISR stuff, defence, defence supply chains, for example.
00:25:58 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Where would you see EDT working along that kind of continuum?
00:26:03 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is it, I guess, is it across the whole thing?
00:26:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Is it that the latter more towards the front end, the kinetic end of it?
00:26:11 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, so I think dual use
00:26:14 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
as a venture strategy makes a lot of sense.
00:26:18 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
so focusing on use cases both in national security and defence and commercial markets that can generally reinforce each other, again, helps de-risk your strategy.
00:26:29 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, it can enable much faster iteration, you know, much broader funding, and then of course being able to engage, you know, a range of different organisations than potentially if you were only
00:26:41 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
producing a capability that can be sold to a monopsony, which is generally a government, that can be obviously a long sales cycle.
00:26:49 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You obviously have a lot of the time a lack of visibility on what those budgets look like.
00:26:55 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And maybe you don't even have direct communications to the programme director or indeed the end users.
00:27:02 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So I think dual use
00:27:05 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
just gives you a much broader investment universe to go after.
00:27:09 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And from a company perspective, a much larger kind of market opportunity to go after.
00:27:15 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And I think for Europe, we have this imperative to not only scale our deterrence capability, which we're more than capable of doing, but we also need to grow GDP.
00:27:28 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that means that we need to be backing technologies that have
00:27:33 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
this commercially viable pathway as well as, hopefully some form of strategic deterrence relevance.
00:27:41 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, that's really where we're focusing is finding these kind of breakout growth companies building very disruptive solutions that we can then help become international category leaders.
00:27:56 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.
00:28:04 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.
00:28:11 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.
00:28:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Few overlaid.
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 continuum across kind of the Europe, I guess you probably see the more kinetic kind of pointy end, obviously a lot further east, and then maybe the resilience kind of dual use stuff, I guess, probably closer to us, where we're a bit kind of further away from direct threat.
00:28:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
But yeah, it's always good to hear this kind of thinking.
00:28:36 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It does give me on to my next question, though, without giving away too much secrets, what trends are you seeing from companies you've already backed at the moment?
00:28:46 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So I think this definitely goes back to, new founders, new entrepreneurs working on, this as a problem space, defence, dual use solutions as a problem space, that is very much going through a serious growth period, which is excellent to see.
00:29:04 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, I think that the thing that is definitely noteworthy is where, companies very early on trying to get some level of battlefield validation,
00:29:14 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
either supporting partners in Ukraine or indeed working in some of these competitive processes with genuine frontline commands and end users.
00:29:27 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, that is that's the kind of near-term validation that's very difficult to get, but when you can achieve that, it really helps create much stronger companies.
00:29:39 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And yeah, I think Europe again has this huge advantage in terms of, you know, very, very deep
00:29:44 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
deep tech kind of heritage, a lot of those technologies have been maturing over the last probably five years as this kind of theme has been building and now starting to see real world impact.
00:29:59 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that's incredibly exciting.
00:30:01 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
One of the areas that I'm particularly focused on at the moment is kind of new
00:30:06 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
the new world of camouflage and concealment, signature management, which as we've learned through Ukraine, you know, this is a really, really difficult problem.
00:30:15 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Effectively, if you are a force element on the battlefield, you're going to be visible.
00:30:20 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that could be, you know, the kind of power source, that could be your RF that you're generating, that could be, you know, yourself as a force element moving around the battle space.
00:30:31 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And so signature management, has got way more complicated than when you and I were going through trading and having to think about, the seven S's of shaping shine and everything else.
00:30:42 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
now it is all around your digital footprint and, any kind of signature that would effectively compromise you.
00:30:50 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And there's some very, very novel solutions being built in that space, as well as, you know, some of the more conventional, traditional, you know, thermal cloaks and all that sort of stuff.
00:30:58 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So
00:31:00 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
these are big, big problems and they will end up shaping effectively how we operate as militaries.
00:31:08 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And we need to update a lot of our doctrine to reflect the new reality that, the battle space today is transparent and it's very, very difficult to achieve surprise or deception through conventional means.
00:31:24 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Just think back then to the 7S, I can barely remember them all these years ago, but you're completely right now.
00:31:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I wonder when, Sandhurst and Limpston and the, training units are going to, kind of acknowledge that actually that, the shape and the shine is probably the least thing you have to worry about, like the RF signal, like you say, the, thermal signature you're giving off, the varying levels of sensing ability you give off just by being in a conflict zone, whether it's your, you know, digital or physical.
00:31:53 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I've not heard yet heard signature management, but I'm going to definitely include that in the show notes because I think that's an important one.
00:31:58 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Well, I've got a got an article coming out on this, so you'll be able to read about it too.
00:32:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Well, we'll have to see if we can link up with you again at some point and get some get some quotes on kind of obviously tribute signature management to our conversation to you.
00:32:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So,
00:32:14 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
No, fascinating.
00:32:15 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It does make me think of, I think I saw on LinkedIn a few weeks back, this, I think it's a serious video, but I might be wrong, two guys on a battlefield with a TI equipped drone pop up there.
00:32:26 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
signature cloaking umbrella and then hide underneath it.
00:32:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And I was just thinking back to the jungle days, the umbrella was like a, nicer thing to have for, to keep a bit of rain off you and, when you're in the jungle for long periods.
00:32:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And now it's actually a cloaking device for the battlefield to protect from thermal imaging equipped drones.
00:32:43 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It feels a bit like a science fiction movie, I'll be honest.
00:32:47 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Well, this is exactly it, and I think hence why you're going to see this very, very rapid growth of unmanned systems
00:32:55 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
in the kind of close battle space, because it's going to be very difficult to maneuver in the ways that we've been maneuvering for many years.
00:33:07 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So, I think that just creates, again, these really, really difficult problems to solve, but often there is a technological solution that can help alleviate some of that.
00:33:18 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
some of that complexity, but the big drive is going to be, whether or not these systems are affordable and that they can be deployed en masse that can make up for how else we've been doing this particular...
00:33:36 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
particular tactical challenge.
00:33:37 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Training phase one recruits in the army and that cognitive overload where you'd be teaching them elements from kind of CBRNI, tactical training, the physical side of things and lots of other kind of areas.
00:33:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm thinking now, like, will basic military training become, will that extend longer to absorb all of this new technological requirements of the basic soldier or will they start being categorised into kind of like levels of proximity to the actual frontline?
00:34:04 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Especially as we're seeing, more solutions for striking deeper, deeper behind the behind the front lines, and yeah, it's the mind boggles.
00:34:14 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Well, I think that is exactly right, and I think you know the historical pattern is that obviously any new measure then begets countermeasures.
00:34:23 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, if you have new sensors, you know, littered all over the battle space, you know, that's going to drive new forms of camouflage concealment, but they will then need to be able to change how we
00:34:34 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
we train soldiers, sailors, aircrew.
00:34:40 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that will also then provoke new detection techniques.
00:34:45 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And effectively, yeah, if you don't have anywhere to hide and you don't know how to kind of manage those particular threats, then survival is going to be very, very short-lived.
00:34:59 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that's the reality.
00:35:02 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
we need to be investing accordingly in the right technological solutions.
00:35:06 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
we need to be updating our doctrine and we obviously need to be training our human capital appropriately.
00:35:12 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And that is, really focused on being able to survive for long enough to win.
00:35:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah.
00:35:19 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So essentially what we're kind of saying here actually is that there's going to be still lots of opportunities for innovation.
00:35:26 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
across all of these different multifaceted problems, I think, in the future.
00:35:30 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And it's not going to be just a prime or near prime.
00:35:32 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's going to be there coming with a solution.
00:35:33 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's going to be that kind of ground up innovation still pushing up to the surface.
00:35:38 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, I think so.
00:35:39 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We'll get on to my second to last question.
00:35:42 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
We're seeing the overlap between commercial tech and defence.
00:35:45 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
How important is the dual use technology in your investment strategy?
00:35:50 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Yeah, again, sort of it's critical, again, not only because it does open up, a much broader range of technologies that we can invest in, but also it's a kind of risk.
00:36:07 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
mitigation strategy.
00:36:10 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So rather than just focusing on, building a portfolio that can only sell to governments, you're building a portfolio of technologies that can ultimately have, multiple use cases and sell into multiple markets.
00:36:24 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And if you look at things like the NATO emerging and disruptive technology strategy,
00:36:29 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
the areas that we believe are going to provide, NATO partners with strategic advantage, they are the areas that I'm generally focused on.
00:36:40 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
So it's across AI, it's across space, it's across engineering biology, as I mentioned, semiconductors.
00:36:47 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
You know, these are fundamental technologies that, again, will have very, very large use cases across massive markets.
00:36:54 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, the national security and defence use case might be quite niche in some of these areas.
00:36:59 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It might be completely dwarfed by the commercial market reality, but they could still be very powerful capabilities to have at the hands of, war fighters, national security operators.
00:37:13 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
Yeah, If we're having this conversation again in five years' time, what major shift in defence technology do you think we'd be talking about?
00:37:20 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I think again, building on sort of previous or earlier conversation, autonomous systems, AI-enabled decision making is definitely going to be moving from, slightly more peripheral roles potentially now to the core of military organization.
00:37:35 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
It'll reshape doctrine, force structures, deterrence, and, you know, change the real-world reality of things like human-machine teaming.
00:37:45 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
I think we'll also be having a very serious conversation around engineering biology, particularly synthetic biology, which is advancing far faster than European defence thinking currently reflects.
00:37:59 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And then finally, on the investment side, you know, I think this particular period now will be remembered as the moment that European sovereign defence and dual use investment truly
00:38:11 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
started and hopefully matures.
00:38:13 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And in five years' time, we'll have an ecosystem that is capable of scaling, not only continental leaders, but international and global leaders, really benefiting from, the amazing heritage that we have here, but also the incredible talent.
00:38:30 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
And, you know, I'm very excited to see what happens.
00:38:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I'm glad you mentioned synthetic biology because that's something we've taken a huge interest in, obviously notwithstanding the pandemic that we only experienced over the last few years, but also seeing the recent meningitis outbreak in Kent and kind of south of London.
00:38:48 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It did focus very much, focus our minds, an obvious conflict, a hot conflict so to speak, you know, it's very easy to measure and obviously build solutions for when it comes to much more passive decision making, detection, surveillance of things like biological agents.
00:39:05 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
You're talking about a much harder, harder challenge, and you don't have to go back through the last 20 years to see, the release of rice in subways with the use of chemical weapons, also biological weapons.
00:39:18 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
as well as chemical weapons that are used in a much more kind of subtle way to inflict economic damage on a place.
00:39:26 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
And the Salisbury poisoning is the obvious recent example over here, but things are much more subtle than that.
00:39:31 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
So, but I think that's definitely a subject for a future podcast.
00:39:35 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I was going to say a huge thank you, Hugo, again.
00:39:38 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
I realise you're busy, so thanks again for giving your time today to give your perspective.
00:39:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Cheers.
00:39:43 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Awesome.
00:39:44 Hugo Jammes, former British Army Officer, former Managing Partner of the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF) now general partner at EDT Ventures
Thanks, Chris.
00:39:46 Chris Shirley MA FRGS, Website Developer, Communications Specialist and Brand Designer at Hiatus, The Defence Design and Communications Agency
It's really great talking to Hugo about what EDC Ventures is seeing.
00:39:49 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 their work, check out the show notes below and we'll see you next time.
