Swedish military joins Telia, Ericsson to boost defense tech
Telecom operator Telia and mobile gear maker Ericsson partnered in 2023 to start the NorthStar 5G innovation program to experiment on the latest 5G technologies and had focused on industrial customers.
"We need to speed it up due to the geopolitical situation in the last six months," Brigadier-General Mattias Hanson, chief information officer at the Swedish Armed Forces, told Reuters.
"We have talked about it for years, but now we have to start it up," he said.
European countries have been scrambling to boost their defences against a potential Russian attack after the Trump administration made clear since it took office that the U.S. was no longer willing to be the main guarantor of Europe's security.
Sweden, NATO's newest member, currently spends around 2.7 per cent of GDP on defence and said this year it would target 3.5 per cent of defence spending in 2030.
The Swedish Armed Forces would work with new players and startups to build new capabilities and solve military problems.
One of the areas of cooperation will be communication for drones, Hanson said. "We will try to figure out how to be faster in innovation and how to solve a military problem with civilian technology."
The military has its own communication system, but plans to use a combination of different technologies such as radio, satellites, 5G and fiber optics.
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CNA
2 hours ago
- CNA
IN FOCUS: Should Southeast Asian countries ramp up defence spending?
SINGAPORE: In President Donald Trump's second term, the United States has called on allies and partners in Europe and Asia to hike defence expenditures to 5 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP). Vigorous debate on the merits of such a target has ensued, among top-ranking government officials and faceless social media commenters alike. Those in favour point to countries embroiled in long-running tensions in their neighbourhood, such as South Korea; and cite Western countries spending close to the 5 per cent figure during the Cold War. In the opposing camp, some note the US itself spending 3.4 per cent of GDP on defence last year, even if it was the top spender globally in absolute terms. One particularly well-received online remark stated: "Why should someone tell you how and how much to spend for (your) defence?" Asia was drawn into the conversation at this year's Shangri-La Dialogue, when US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Indo-Pacific allies in particular should spend more on their defence needs to deter the likes of China and North Korea. The Pentagon chief said China was a real and imminent threat seeking to "fundamentally alter the region's status quo". He said it did not make sense for key Asian allies to spend less than European and American countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), whom he claimed were pledging to spend 5 per cent of their GDP on defence - a figure first floated by Mr Trump in January. In the president's first term, he said NATO members should raise their defence spending to 4 per cent of GDP. The need to match Europe's pace and level of defence spending was brought up again by the US Defense Department in June. Last week, NATO agreed to more than double its defence spending benchmark from 2 per cent to 5 per cent of GDP by 2035 - with the exception of some countries like Spain. The historic decision by the 32-member alliance comes amid a war in their backyard - the deadliest since World War II - prompted by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But it is a different picture in Asia despite Korean tensions, the China-Taiwan issue, friction between India and Pakistan as well as Thai-Cambodian clashes along a shared border. And in Southeast Asia, the posture of most countries towards China is markedly different from the US' assessment of Beijing as a threat, experts say. BALANCING OR LEANING? To be sure, Southeast Asian ties with China are not entirely without strain. Most prominently, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia have overlapping claims with Beijing in the South China Sea. Issues over the vital waterway for global trade topped a list of geopolitical concerns in the region according to a study by Singapore's ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute (ISEAS) think-tank. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China have long been in the process of negotiating a code of conduct to keep peace and security in the South China Sea. The ISEAS survey, published in April, polled over 2,000 thought leaders across the region. Asked who they would side with if forced to, 52.3 per cent picked the US while 47.7 per cent chose China. The narrow margin reflects the "delicate balancing act" ASEAN must maintain between the two superpowers, with economic dependence on China and security interests with the US, ISEAS noted in its report. The think-tank concluded that China remains perceived as the most influential economic and political-strategic power in Southeast Asia, outpacing the US by "significant margins". In a Jun 24 piece for American magazine Foreign Affairs, veteran Singapore scholars Khong Yuen Foong and Joseph Chinyong Liow observed that Southeast Asia was "clearly leaning towards" Beijing. This was based on their assessment of interactions between ASEAN countries and China and the US, though they also added that "alignment patterns are not set in stone". REGIONAL CONSIDERATIONS In 2024, the defence budgets of Southeast Asian countries ranged between 0.78 per cent (Indonesia) and 4.09 per cent (Myanmar) of their respective GDP. The US is concerned that Southeast Asian states are not contributing sufficiently to deterring or dissuading Beijing from using force to settle political disputes, said Mr Drew Thompson, a senior fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University. Defence spending is one measure of political will to contribute to deterring China, but in the absence of will to confront China's aggression, the US still seeks capable allies who can independently and competently contribute to maintaining peace and stability regionally, he added. This would require adequate spending on military procurement as well as training, to build up the capability to jointly address threats beyond individual state borders. The problem with the US casting China as a threat to be deterred is that few Southeast Asian states see Beijing in purely adversarial terms or consider it a singular factor underlying their defence considerations, ISEAS senior fellows Hoang Thi Ha and William Choong wrote in an analysis. "Southeast Asian claimant states in the South China Sea - particularly the Philippines and Vietnam - may stand out for a sharper sense of threat arising from Chinese maritime encroachments, yet even they do not define China solely as a threat," they said. Shangri-La Dialogue senior fellow Evan Laksmana also pointed out that in Southeast Asia, threats to security are "a lot more diverse", from illegal fishing to transnational crime. Even if there was an increase in the defence spending, it may not be directed towards conventional capability development the way the US would like, said Dr Laksmana, who is also the editor of the Asia-Pacific Regional Security Assessment at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS). He also cautioned against conflating what the US expects for its allies versus its non-allies. The US is a strategic partner of ASEAN, but only two in the bloc - the Philippines and Thailand - are treaty allies. It may be more "pressing" for them to have an answer to the US' questions on defence spending, said Dr Laksmana, who leads IISS' Southeast Asian security and defence research programme. After Mr Hegseth's speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue, visiting senior fellow Zack Cooper at the RSIS think-tank observed in a commentary that American engagement was overly focused on military cooperation, when what Southeast Asian countries really want was economic cooperation. Moreover, US leaders often view the region through the lens of its own competition with China, rather than recognising Southeast Asian countries as important and valuable in their own right, he added. GUNS VS BUTTER Putting aside the need to, just how feasible is the 5 per cent target? In NATO's case, it agreed that at least 3.5 per cent should be spent on pure defence, up from the current guideline of 2 per cent. The remainder would go to security- and defence-related critical infrastructure such as roads, bridges, ports and airfields. Emeritus professor of politics at the University of New South Wales' Carl Thayer noted, however, that a key difference was in Southeast Asia having no military alliance structure comparable to NATO. ASEAN has a Political-Security Community Blueprint which has not indicated what percentage of each member's GDP should be spent on defence, he added. The blueprint aims to provide a roadmap for member states to live in peace with one another and the world at large. Branding the 5 per cent figure "pie in the sky" for Southeast Asia, Prof Thayer said countries in the region could in fact undermine their own security if they shifted excessive resources to military spending. This, at a time when the global and regional economy has retracted and supply chains have been disrupted by tariffs imposed by the US. "A more prudent course of action would be incremental increases in defence expenditure to modernise their armed forces to keep pace with technological change," he added. Experts said Southeast Asian countries have typically grappled with the classic "guns versus butter" trade-off between allocating money to military or civilian goods. Tariffs aside, majority of the region is still trying to recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, said IISS' Dr Laksmana, concluding it would not be realistic to expect Southeast Asian states to increase defence spending over the next few years or so, whatever timeframe the US has in mind. It also should not be forgotten that the region has its own dynamics, he added. For instance, if Indonesia were to suddenly raise its defence budget by five times, it would spark concern among Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. "The bordering countries will also start to ask questions why my neighbour is suddenly increasing defence spending," he said. "(Those) kinds of conversations are very subject to local, historical context and all of the challenges of having neighbours in the region." THE SINGAPORE CASE Both Singapore's Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing and Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan have described the country's approach to geopolitical rivalries as not taking sides, but upholding principles such as a global order underpinned by law and sovereignty. China was the first country outside of Southeast Asia which Prime Minister Lawrence Wong visited, after assuming the role in May last year. During his trip in late June, he met Chinese President Xi Jinping and spoke of the "close and steadfast" partnership between both countries. With the US, though not a formal treaty ally, experts said Singapore is considered a "solid" security partner. Defence spending for the country has stayed within the range of 3 per cent of GDP over the past decade. During its Ministry of Defence's (MINDEF) Budget debate earlier this year, former defence minister Ng Eng Hen said he expected growth in defence expenditure to "taper down" from the 2026 financial year, and to keep within the 3 per cent range over the next decade. This is, of course, barring major conflicts or severe economic uncertainty. Given rapid changes in the external environment, if the need arises, Singapore "must be prepared to invest more to further strengthen our capabilities", Dr Ng told parliament then. UNSW's Prof Thayer said that if Singapore were to up its defence spending to meet the US' target, it would raise the possibility of "entrapment" in the event of any armed conflict between the superpowers. Singapore's interests lie in "mitigating the vulnerability of its small size rather than expeditionary warfare", he added. Dr Laksmana said: "If there is some artificial benchmark in terms of the growth in defence spending, it will be on Singapore's own terms, not the US. "It will be on Singapore's own calculations and interest." SPENDING ON THE FUTURE Above and beyond what appears to be an arbitrary 5 per cent metric is a more fundamental logic, as RSIS military studies senior fellow Bernard Loo put in a commentary: "It is not how much a country spends on defence that truly matters, but what that spending actually procures for the country's defence needs." Several militaries in Southeast Asia have been refreshing their assets of late. Indonesia in 2022 purchased 42 French-made Rafale jets for US$8.1 billion, with deliveries starting next year. It is also mulling over China's offer of J-10 jets, which were battle-tested in Pakistan's clashes with India. In the Philippines, a US$35 billion, decades-long modernisation initiative is underway, with Manila looking to buy advanced fighter jets, submarines and missile systems amid periodic face-offs in the busy South China Sea waterway. As for Singapore, it announced earlier this year that two more Invincible-class submarines will be added to the navy's current fleet of four; while the air force looks to replace its maritime patrol aircraft and the army upgrades its long-range High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher, among other moves. Ongoing conflicts around the world have also reshaped thinking around the future of warfare, in particular highlighting how unconventional tactics can challenge stronger and more traditional opponents. In early June, more than 100 Ukrainian drones struck air bases deep inside Russia in a surprise attack known as Operation Spider's Web. In an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, researcher Kateryna Bondar said the operation was proof that low-cost, open-source drones can effectively destroy high-value military platforms. Spider's Web also reflected the growing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in battlefields. For the operation, AI systems were trained using decommissioned Soviet aircraft displayed in museums, which enabled Ukraine's drones to strike with surgical precision, wrote Ms Bondar, a fellow with the American think-tank's Wadhwani AI Center. The attack also demonstrated the need for dedicated countermeasures against threats from unmanned aerial systems - something which Singapore, for one, is already planning for. All of these recent trends point to a future where technological agility, not just industrial scale, determines strategic advantage, said Ms Bondar.
CNA
5 hours ago
- CNA
US Senate strikes AI regulation ban passage from Trump megabill
WASHINGTON: The Republican-led US Senate voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday (July 1) to remove a 10-year federal moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence from President Trump's sweeping tax-cut and spending bill. Lawmakers voted 99-1 to strike the ban from the bill by adopting an amendment offered by Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn. The action came during a marathon session known as a "vote-a-rama," in which lawmakers offered numerous amendments to the legislation that has now passed through the upper chamber of Congress. The Senate version of Trump's legislation would have only restricted states regulating AI from tapping a new $500 million fund to support AI infrastructure. The AI clause is part of the wide-ranging tax-cut and spending bill sought by President Donald Trump, which would cut Medicaid healthcare and food assistance programs for the poor and disabled. Vice President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote in the Senate to pass the bill, which now moves back to the House for consideration. Major AI companies, including Alphabet's Google and OpenAI, have expressed support for Congress taking AI regulation out of the hands of states to free innovation from a panoply of differing requirements. Blackburn presented her amendment to strike the provision a day after agreeing to compromise language with Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz that would have cut the ban to five years and allowed states to regulate issues such as protecting artists' voices or child online safety if they did not impose an "undue or disproportionate burden" on AI. But Blackburn withdrew her support for the compromise before the amendment vote. "The current language is not acceptable to those who need these protections the most," the Tennessee Republican said in a statement.
Business Times
13 hours ago
- Business Times
Markets are learning to keep calm and carry on
The first half of the year has been a geopolitical hot mess. US President Donald Trump's chaotic approach to tariffs, escalating military conflict in the Middle East, the continuing war in Ukraine and the existential threat posed to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) have left financial markets... largely unscathed? Global equities are in rude health, government bond yields are becalmed and oil is trading in line with its five-year average. The US dollar is the only casualty, losing ground against all of its peers in the past six months. So the remainder of 2025 will follow the same pattern, right? Well. The Taco – Trump Always Chickens Out – trade in equities will be re-examined early this month when the tariff pauses end. The independence of the Federal Reserve looks set to be sorely tested. The fiscal implications of Nato's 32 members belatedly agreeing to increase defence spending to 5 per cent of gross domestic product will reverberate around bond markets, particularly in Europe. 'The interplay of politics, economics and markets will make assaying the paths of stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies this year even harder than usual,' we wrote at the start of the year. The capriciousness of the world's most important person means that staying nimble and being willing to scuttle to the sidelines will remain the safest strategy. In short: Be careful out there. It's your currency – and it's becoming your problem The greenback has lost more than 10 per cent against its major peers this year, sending the dollar index to a three-year low. While that's broadly good news for a world that's suffered in recent years from the home of the world's reserve currency sucking in much of the available investment flows, it should start to worry US officials if it illustrates mounting concern about a burgeoning budget deficit. There's a reason gold is near a record high. In the same way as average government bond yields have returned to levels seen between 2005 and 2014 (more on that later), the greenback may weaken to historical norms. Its average for the past 20 years against the euro, for example, is around US$1.22 compared with about US$1.17 currently, while, versus the pound, the level is US$1.50 on average over the last two decades versus US$1.37 now. Though talk in Frankfurt of the euro playing a more global role sounds like wishful thinking, the dollar's crown as king of the currency world is definitely slipping. Higher for longer is the new mantra for US rates At the end of 2023, the futures market was anticipating a Fed funds rate of around 3.5 per cent by December 2024; instead, it got 4.5 per cent. At the end of last year, it was expected that the rate would decline to 4 per cent by now, but it's still stuck at 4.5 per cent. With the US economy – and the consumer – confounding the gloomy prognosis of economists, the US central bank has resisted increasingly strident calls from the White House (Fed chair Jerome Powell is a 'very stupid person,' according to Trump's latest broadside) to cut borrowing costs. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Powell's tenure ends in May 2026. With his replacement likely to be more craven/flexible (select according to taste) in acceding to Trump's demands – and potential successors lining up in recent weeks to affirm their dovish credentials – the Fed's independence in setting monetary policy looks worryingly compromised even before Powell's exit. For bonds, 3% remains the new 1.5% The average 10-year government yield for the members of the Group of Seven has been basically treading water all year – but that means the 1.5 per cent borrowing cost that prevailed for the past decade is a distant memory, with the 3 per cent level of the decade before becoming the new normal. Treasury yields are down a bit this year, while bund yields are up a touch – the latter a surprisingly modest gain given the enormous surge in borrowing planned by the German government to fund increased defence spending. Switzerland remains an outlier with sub-zero rates at short maturities (more on that later). The subtext for bonds is a little more complicated than usual. Rather than central bank action steering the market – the European Central Bank has been twice as aggressive as the Fed in easing policy – rising deficits and stubborn inflation are now the main bugbears for the bond vigilantes. So expect the focus to remain on what happens with the longer end of the yield curve; if investors fall further out of love with 30-year debt, fiscal alarm bells should start to ring. Negativity is back, baby Negative yields were supposed to have been banished, never to be seen again. At least that was the fervent hope of those who rightly fear deflation. However, 2025 has served up another unwanted surprise, with the Swiss National Bank cutting its policy rate to zero in June. In anticipation that the strength of the franc and the inflation rate slowing to minus 0.1 per cent may prompt a further cut to below zero in September, Swiss government bonds out to three years now have negative yields. The universe of negative-yielding bonds peaked at an astonishing US$18.4 trillion at the end of 2020. While we're unlikely to revisit that scenario, what's happening in Switzerland is a reminder that sub-zero interest rates will forever be part of the central bank toolkit. Stock market's animal spirits prove impossible to extinguish Resistance is futile: The 20 per cent-plus recovery staged by the S&P 500 index in the aftermath of Trump's initial introduction of tariffs in April tells all. Too many investors went underweight and are being dragged back in. And, this year, stock indexes in Europe and Asia are outpacing their US peers, broadening the gains and driving the world's stock-market value to a record US$133 trillion. What happens next with tariffs is anyone's guess, so the outlook for corporate earnings remains shrouded in doubt. But betting against investor appetite for stocks, no matter how overvalued they might seem to be, hasn't been a winning strategy. 'The world is swimming in oil' Global oil demand is rising gradually, but ever more of the black stuff is being pumped. Saudi Arabian supply is set to reach a two-year high of 10 million barrels a day as it chafes at its partners in Opec+ (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other oil-producing nations) exceeding their mandated quotas. 'The world is swimming in oil,' as our colleague Javier Blas wrote last week. Even the conflict between Israel and Iran produced just a short-lived spike in Brent crude that quickly faded, leaving it trading below US$70 a barrel. With the Opec+ cartel agreeing to increase production quotas and prices high enough for US shale producers to have locked in their output, oil prices are headed only one way – down. BLOOMBERG
