Economic sovereignty requires strategic independence, and that means having total control over certain technologies. This includes controlling everything from fundamental research to development and production.
In the past 50 years, countries in the region have worked towards achieving strategic autonomy across multiple industries through investments in industrialisation, innovation, and education.
As we progress through the fourth industrial revolution, the sovereignty of a nation or even an individual is based on a complex ecosystem, with technology now sitting at the very centre.
The pandemic has not just reaffirmed the need for digital transformation but has also placed a spotlight on industrialisation as key to ensuring the continuity of critical operations and functions.
As a result, technological sovereignty has quickly become a prominent issue, as governments and organisations seek ever greater resilience.
No single country acting alone can guarantee its strategic independence in every technology and every field.
Each country needs to decide which sectors and which technologies it considers sovereign, and regional cooperation programmes need to be designed on that basis.
In a world that is more interconnected than ever, and with economies that are so interdependent, it is of paramount importance for countries to preserve their technological independence in the sectors they consider to be strategic.
However, while the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution have provided us with endless opportunities to shape economies and businesses, they are largely dependent on data.
Every digital interaction results in the exchange of billions of data points. This presents two main challenges – a) securing this data to protect nations and citizens and b) ensuring the ethical use of it. This applies to defense in its traditional sense – protecting the land, air, sea, and space – as well as in the relatively new era of digital identity, security, and cybersecurity.
Securing data
The pandemic and the large-scale lockdowns have reminded us that digital technologies now form the backbone of our societies. They have shown us what a vital role the digitisation of our economies and public services has come to play in keeping our societies moving when travel is inadvisable or unnecessary.
However, the increasing reliance on digital technologies has led to a significant increase in security risks. And the risks become greater if nations and organisations are dependent on foreign digital infrastructures.
As an example, since 2019, the cost of cybercrime on the global economy has more than doubled. The number of cyber-attacks and ransomware has increased by over 150 percent in the last 12 months alone, and as digital tools are more present in our daily lives, threat typologies are constantly evolving.
To meet existing and emerging security challenges, a range of complex technologies will be needed to develop fluid, reliable digital protection and identification systems. These include biometrics (fingerprint, voice, iris, or DNA recognition), smart cards, contactless cards, and encryption to name a few.
As a global leader in data protection and cybersecurity, Thales addresses the entire information security lifecycle through building cybersecurity into solutions, systems, and architectures designed for the digital transformation of the most demanding government bodies, private firms, and critical infrastructure providers.
Key to this is supporting local ecosystems to ensure the development of future-proofed, localised industries.
Ensuring the ethical use of data
As new technologies become more powerful and intuitive, digital transformation is driving demand for greater commitment to ethical practices. It is imperative for a code of conduct to act responsibly when making use of new technologies such as AI and biometrics.
This was the premise of the Thales Digital Ethics Charter published in 2021 which outlines the Group’s commitments with respect to three societal challenges: the human dimension of digital technologies; safety and security; and environmental protection.
Thales sees these challenges as particularly important because most digital products and systems should enhance a human’s ability to make decisions at critical moments. They must be resilient and secure as well as take into consideration the imperative need to conserve the natural environment, to ultimately safeguard the future for generations to come.
It goes without saying that ethical practices should be exercised not just in the handling of data, but across the spectrum of digital technologies.
The digital revolution affords us a glimpse of the true potential of IoT, cybersecurity, Big Data, and artificial intelligence, and the threats they could pose. Of these four digital technology pillars, none are more evocative as Artificial Intelligence.
Humans tend to antropomorphise abstract concepts, to give them a voice and a face, and few have been more popularised in fiction as an existential threat, than the notion of machines rising against humans.
The Thales TrUE AI approach provides a glimpse of how AI should actually be viewed– not with distrust, but with an understanding of how it should be, Transparent, Understandable and Ethical.
The beauty of technology is that its use and benefits are far-reaching. In our safety-critical markets, we must adapt technologies such as AI to the constraints of the environments in which our customers operate, where there is no margin for error and where critical operations require safety, responsibility, and compliance with standards, laws and ethical principles.
Through investing in local innovation and education, countries will be able to harness the power of technology to accelerate the development of localized industries. In turn, this will support in building a future we can all trust.
Emmanuel de Roquefeuil, Vice President for Thales in the Middle East
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