Latest news with #Helsing
Middle East Eye
2 days ago
- Business
- Middle East Eye
Spotify faces boycott calls over CEO's investment in AI military startup
Spotify, the world's leading music streaming platform, is facing intense criticism and boycott calls following CEO Daniel Ek's announcement of a €600m ($702m) investment in Helsing, a German defence startup specialising in AI-powered combat drones and military software. The move, announced on 17 June, has sparked widespread outrage from musicians, activists and social media users who accuse Ek of funnelling profits from music streaming into the military industry. Many have started calling on users to cancel their subscriptions to the service. 'Finally cancelling my Spotify subscription – why am I paying for a fuckass app that works worse than it did 10 years ago, while their CEO spends all my money on technofascist military fantasies?' said one user on X. On Reddit, a user wrote: "When tech is weaponized, our subscriptions become bullets. Spotify's hands aren't clean – boycott the silence, boycott the blood. No art should fund destruction." New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters This isn't the first time Spotify has faced boycott calls over Ek's invesment in Helsing. In 2021, many users and artists called for a similar boycott after Ek announced a €100m investment in the company. Middle East Eye contacted Spotify and Ek for comment, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. so instead of paying artists livable wages for their art, the ceo of spotify decided to invest hundreds of millions of dollars into an ai military start-up company? and is now currently chairman of said company…? right, okay, fuck daniel ek and fuck spotify. — apple (@applezbian) June 25, 2025 Many users drew attention to Spotify's payment system, which has been criticised for years – by both major pop stars and independent and emerging artists and labels – due to its royalty rates. Many users expressed frustration that Spotify's CEO was pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into warfare technology while continuing to pay artists notoriously low royalties. The United Musicians and Allied Workers, a union of musicians who have organised and demonstrated for better royalties at Spotify, called Ek "a warmonger who pays artists poverty wages". "The people running our music industry are the same people 'doubling down' on AI military technology. To build a fair and just music industry, we also must dismantle imperialism in all its forms," the union said in a statement on X. Another user said: "Your streams are paying for military drones, while artists starve. This is evil. Ek cashing in on public stock value (which artists see none of) and reinvesting his profits in murder machines." I had just made a spotify premium account this month but I was now informed that the ceo is using the money to support a military ai startup so I cancelled my subscription and put that as my reason. Disarm spotify — zoe (@daisyjonesswift) June 25, 2025 Singer-songwriter Laura Burhenn addressed the issue in an Instagram video, stating: 'For as long as they've existed, [Spotify] have grossly underpaid musicians, but the money they've been making from subscriptions has been lining their pockets, and now we know where it's gone.' She urged artists and listeners to cancel their subscriptions, saying: 'Your labour, your money has gone directly to fund the war machine.' As the backlash grows, many said they are turning to alternative streaming platforms and urged others to support artists directly as a form of boycott. not just festivals—seeing the spotify CEO now heading up a so-called "military start-up", at some point musicians and listeners are going to need to really reckon with and confront the ways our music is being used to usher this shit ahead. — lelu (@lelulolololol) June 25, 2025 "Stop using Spotify. It sounds like they treat artists like shit, and this guy [Ek] is obviously another wannabe tech-broligarch trying to make big bucks off keeping shitheads in power," said one Reddit user. "Defund the broligarchy! Buy music from artists on Bandcamp or use a lesser evil like Tidal.' Another user on X agreed. "Officially switched back to tidal for music streaming. spotify bought a military ai company for $690m while still paying jack shit to artists and my pennies aren't going towards that anymore once and for all."
Los Angeles Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Los Angeles Times
Wary of Washington, Europe frets it will be left behind on an AI battlefield
THE HAGUE — Days before NATO was set to convene in the Netherlands, one of its top commanders, Pierre Vandier, tasked with transforming the alliance for the next fight, put out a call: Britain will need to step up its intelligence contributions to the alliance going forward. 'The UK has this in its DNA,' Vandier said. It was an acknowledgment that the United States, pivoting toward a far greater intelligence threat from China, may leave its European allies behind in their own existential fight with Russia. A lack of reliability on the world's leading AI superpower, European officials say, will render the continent vulnerable in a race for intelligence superiority set to revolutionize global battlefields. The rush toward artificial intelligence has been a strong undercurrent at the NATO Summit in the Hague this week, serving not only as a gathering for leaders of the alliance, but also as a defense industry forum for emerging power players in Silicon Valley, treated in Holland's gilded halls as a new kind of royalty. 'AI is going to be an important part of warfare going forward, but it's still very new, and NATO tends not to be at the tip of the spear of innovation — and there is some division within the alliance on how to develop AI, when it comes to AI regulation and safety,' said Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. 'Tech companies don't hold the same pride of place in the European economic system, and they're not consumed with the need to compete with China militarily — they are much more focused on Russia,' Bergmann added. 'While the U.S. is about winning the AI race, Europeans are watching what's happening in Ukraine and saying, 'we just need to deter Russia.'' So far, for European capitals, that has meant incorporating powerful data collection and processing systems into defense departments and improving the performance of automated surveillance systems and drones — skills well within Europe's capabilities. Several German and French companies, such as Helsing, Azur and Quantum Systems, are already developing products based on what they are seeing in Ukraine. But the next fight will require technologies that dwarf existing drone capabilities, experts said. 'We've been predicting for a while that there would be integration of AI into military research and development and defense systems, and I expect, for example, that advanced cyber capabilities will play an important role in the coming years,' said Jonas Vollmer, chief operating officer of the AI Futures Project. 'Europe has influence, but it is grappling with the difficult reality that they don't have access or strong domestic development of frontier AI systems, and they are pretty far behind.' Last year, NATO allies agreed to speed up the adoption of artificial intelligence in its operations. There are signs the bloc senses urgency to do so, signing an agreement with Palantir, a U.S.-based technology company, to incorporate AI into its warfighting systems after just six months of negotiations. The United States and China are far ahead of competitors in the race for AI superiority, measured in raw computing power and proximity to general artificial intelligence — AI that has human-level cognitive capabilities to learn and develop on its own – and ultimately to superintelligence, surpassing the human mind. Still, the United Kingdom is a serious player in the field. The kingdom ranks third in government investment in AI research anywhere in the world and maintains strong partnerships with some of the most powerful U.S. players. In its most recent defense strategy, also published shortly before the NATO summit, Britain committed to integrate artificial intelligence into its 'NATO-first' national security approach. 'Forecasts of when Artificial General Intelligence will occur are uncertain but shortening, with profound implications for Defence,' the document reads. Europe's race for intelligence capabilities is driven, in part, by lessons learned on the battlefields of Ukraine. But Russia is not seen as an AI powerhouse in and of itself. Moscow instead uses low-cost tests of drone incursions and cyberattacks to keep pressure on the alliance, Vandier told the Times of London in an interview. 'The aim, I think, is to consume all our energy in purely defensive actions, which are very costly,' he said. Whether Russia can enhance its own AI capabilities is an open question. 'The key ingredients of being at the frontier with AI are talent and data centers,' said Vollmer, of the AI Futures Project. 'Russia lags far behind on both,' he added, 'but they can collaborate with China, of course.'
The Hill
3 days ago
- Business
- The Hill
Hackathon teams race to solve defense tech challenges as Europe boosts military capabilities
SANDHURST, England (AP) — Hunched over laptops, the team of four raced to solve a challenge: how to get a set of drones to fly themselves from one place to another when GPS and other signals are jammed by an enemy. Elsewhere around the hall, groups of people — engineering students, tech workers and hobbyists — gathered around long tables to brainstorm, write computer code or tinker with more drones and other hardware. Most of them were strangers when they first gathered last month at Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy to compete in a 24-hour 'hackathon' focused on defense technology. Many were drawn to the event because they wanted to use their technical skills to work on one of the biggest challenges confronting Europe: the continent's race to beef up its military capabilities as Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to widen global instability. 'Given the geopolitical climate, defense tech is relevant now more than ever,' said Aniketh Ramesh, a startup founder with a Ph.D. in robotics in extreme environments and one of the drone team members. The hackathon, he said, 'is a good place to sort of go and contribute your ideas.' 'Robotics and drones are having their iPhone moment' because costs have come down and the hardware is widely available, Ramesh said. That means building drones to do new things is more a 'thinking challenge' than a technical one, he said. Ramesh already knew one teammate, a former British army paratrooper, from a previous event. They recruited two others — one engineer and one with a Ph.D. in computer vision — through the event's group chat on Signal. The drone problem was just one of the many challenges the teams could choose to solve. The tasks were proposed by defense startups like German drone maker Helsing and robotics company Arx, the British military and Kyiv-based venture capital firm D3. Some worked on software, such as an algorithm to predict which way a target would move. Others came with their own ideas. One team made a plastic cup packed with sensors that could be produced in large amounts to be scattered across a battlefield. Another team built a scale model of an autonomous medical evacuation aircraft. Similar competitions have been held regularly across Europe since last year, inspired by the Ukrainian military's on-the-fly wartime innovations to fend off the larger Russian army. The grassroots meetups are part of a wider network of defense innovation that organizers hope to foster in Europe, underscoring the continent's scramble to churn out weapons that have been turbocharged by U.S. President Donald Trump's persistent threats to withdraw from the NATO trans-Atlantic security alliance. The idea is to 'go build a prototype, take your prototype to become a product, and go build a company' that can 'deliver stuff to the frontline and hopefully save someone's life,' said Benjamin Wolba, who organizes a separate but similar series, the European Defense Tech Hackathon. Wolba's group has held tournaments in about 10 cities in the past twelve months, including one in Lviv, Ukraine, in May, and has scheduled more this year in Sheffield, England; Gothenburg, Sweden; Marseilles, France; London; and Berlin. The European Union-backed EUDIS Defence Hackathon holds simultaneous competitions at eight universities twice a year. Meanwhile, NATO has launched DIANA, an 'accelerator' program to speed up defense innovations. The competitions are producing real-world results. The winners of one European Defense Tech Hackathon were a team of Bulgarian high school students who came up with a de-mining solution that they used to found a startup. At last year's London event, the winning team devised an idea for an anti-drone system. They went to Ukraine for more testing, and then were bought by a startup that went on to raise millions in venture capital funding, said Richard Pass, co-founder of the London hackathon. This year, instead of a trophy, some London teams signed term sheets with investors. Hackathons have their origins in the software industry. Small teams of programmers and developers are pitted against each other in marathon brainstorming sessions to write programs that could become new products. 'The beauty of the hackathon is you get a mixture of people who never normally meet,' said Wolba. 'Engineers are 'paired with actual investors who understand something on the commercial side, but also, critically, military end users.' Organizers want to foster a culture of nimble startups to join Europe's defense ecosystem, traditionally dominated by a handful of big 'prime' military contractors such as Britain's BAE, Germany's Rheinmetall and France's Thales that are focused on building pricey hardware. 'There's definitely been a shift in the industry from the purchase of more exquisite, high-cost capabilities, such as fighter jets, or submarines, or expensive tanks, towards more low-cost systems that can give you scale advantages,' said Pass. A recent aerial confrontation between Pakistan and India further highlights how Europe is at risk of losing its edge against adversaries, he said. Pass said reports that Pakistan used Chinese-made fighter jets armed with Chinese air-to-air missiles to down Indian air force planes, including three French-made Rafale jets, came as a big surprise. Not only does it show 'technological parity between the Chinese and leading Western industrial nations like France,' but it also hints at China's advantages in mass-producing fighter jets that could overwhelm Western forces, he said. Fostering a broader European defense tech start-up ecosystem is a way 'to regain that technological advantage,' he said. Defense tech startup founders can ride a wave of investment as Europe moves to beef up its military capabilities. Leaders of NATO, which includes 30 European nations, are meeting this week to endorse a goal to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense. The European Union has sought to mobilize 800 billion euros ($927 billion) to boost the 27-nation bloc's defense, with priorities including drones, AI, autonomous systems and quantum computing. Britain, which left the EU, has meanwhile pledged to spend 10% of its defense budget on new technologies. Europe still has a long way to go. The continent's defense tech startup ecosystem is young and about five years behind the United States, consulting firm McKinsey said in a recent report. But it's growing rapidly as investors flock there. Venture capital investment in Europe's defense tech sector for 2021-2024 more than quadrupled from the previous three-year period, according to Pitchbook. At the London hackathon, teams worked into the evening, fueled by chocolate bars, energy drinks, fruit and a late-night pizza delivery. Army cots were available for those who wanted to catch a few hours of sleep. Soldiers in camouflage and defense company reps hovered on the sidelines to provide advice and answer questions. Andrii Solonskyi, CEO of Soloma Avionics, which fielded a team, said defense hackathons are 'a bit of a novelty.' The industry has traditionally been more structured and formal, because 'it's a serious business and there's a lot of things that can go wrong,' he said. But, 'what we definitely feel is that you can be very agile in defense right now.'
3 days ago
- Science
Hackathon teams race to solve defense tech challenges as Europe boosts military capabilities
SANDHURST, England -- Hunched over laptops, the team of four raced to solve a challenge: how to get a set of drones to fly themselves from one place to another when GPS and other signals are jammed by an enemy. Elsewhere around the hall, groups of people — engineering students, tech workers and hobbyists — gathered around long tables to brainstorm, write computer code or tinker with more drones and other hardware. Most of them were strangers when they first gathered last month at Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy to compete in a 24-hour 'hackathon" focused on defense technology. Many were drawn to the event because they wanted to use their technical skills to work on one of the biggest challenges confronting Europe: the continent's race to beef up its military capabilities as Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to widen global instability. 'Given the geopolitical climate, defense tech is relevant now more than ever,' said Aniketh Ramesh, a startup founder with a Ph.D. in robotics in extreme environments and one of the drone team members. The hackathon, he said, 'is a good place to sort of go and contribute your ideas.' 'Robotics and drones are having their iPhone moment" because costs have come down and the hardware is widely available, Ramesh said. That means building drones to do new things is more a 'thinking challenge" than a technical one, he said. Ramesh already knew one teammate, a former British army paratrooper, from a previous event. They recruited two others — one engineer and one with a Ph.D. in computer vision — through the event's group chat on Signal. The drone problem was just one of the many challenges the teams could choose to solve. The tasks were proposed by defense tech companies like German drone maker Helsing, robotics company Arx, the British military and Kyiv-based venture capital firm D3. Some worked on software, such as an algorithm to predict which way a target would move. Others came with their own ideas. One team made a plastic cup packed with sensors that could be produced in large amounts to be scattered across a battlefield. Another team built a scale model of an autonomous medical evacuation aircraft. Similar competitions have been held regularly across Europe since last year, inspired by the Ukrainian military's on-the-fly wartime innovations to fend off the larger Russian army. The grassroots meetups are part of a wider network of defense innovation that organizers hope to foster in Europe, underscoring the continent's scramble to churn out weapons that have been turbocharged by U.S. President Donald Trump's persistent threats to withdraw from the NATO trans-Atlantic security alliance. The idea is to 'go build a prototype, take your prototype to become a product, and go build a company' so that you can 'deliver stuff to the frontline and hopefully save someone's life,' said Benjamin Wolba, who organizes a separate but similar series, the European Defense Tech Hackathon. Wolba's group has held tournaments in about 10 cities in the past twelve months, including one in Lviv, Ukraine, in May, and has scheduled more this year in Sheffield, England; Gothenburg, Sweden; Marseilles, France; London; and Berlin. The European Union-backed EUDIS Defence Hackathon holds simultaneous competitions at eight universities twice a year. Meanwhile, NATO has launched DIANA, an 'accelerator' program to speed up defense innovations. The competitions are producing real-world results. The winners of one European Defense Tech Hackathon were a team of Bulgarian high school students who came up with a de-mining solution that they used to found a startup. At last year's London event, the winning team devised an idea for an anti-drone system. They went to Ukraine for more testing, and then were bought by a startup that went on to raise millions in venture capital funding, said Pass. This year, instead of a trophy, some London teams signed term sheets with investors. Hackathons have their origins in the software industry. Small teams of programmers and developers are pitted against each other in marathon brainstorming sessions to write programs that could become new products. 'The beauty of the hackathon is you get a mixture of people who never normally meet,' said Wolba. 'Engineers are 'paired with actual investors who understand something on the commercial side, but also, critically, military end users.' Organizers want to foster a culture of nimble startups to join Europe's defense ecosystem, traditionally dominated by a handful of big 'prime' military contractors such as Britain's BAE, Germany's Rheinmetall and France's Thales that are focused on building pricey hardware. 'There's definitely been a shift in the industry from the purchase of more exquisite, high-cost capabilities, such as fighter jets, or submarines, or expensive tanks, towards more low-cost systems that can give you scale advantages,' said Richard Pass, one of the co-founders of the London event. A recent aerial confrontation between Pakistan and India further highlights how Europe is at risk of losing its edge against adversaries, he said. Pass said reports that Pakistan used Chinese-made fighter jets armed with Chinese air-to-air missiles to down Indian air force planes, including three French-made Rafale jets, came as a big surprise. Not only does it show 'technological parity between the Chinese and leading Western industrial nations like France,' but it also hints at China's advantages in mass-producing fighter jets that could overwhelm Western forces, he said. Fostering a broader European defense tech start-up ecosystem is a way 'to regain that technological advantage,' he said. Defense tech startup founders can ride a wave of investment as Europe moves to beef up its military capabilities. Leaders of NATO, which includes 30 European nations, are meeting this week to endorse a goal to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense. The European Union has sought to mobilize 800 billion euros ($927 billion) to boost the 27-nation bloc's defense, with priorities including drones, AI, autonomous systems and quantum computing. Britain, which left the EU, has meanwhile pledged to spend 10% of its defense budget on new technologies. Europe still has a long way to go. The continent's defense tech startup ecosystem is young and about five years behind the United States, consulting firm McKinsey said in a recent report. But it's growing rapidly as investors flock there. Venture capital investment in Europe's defense tech sector for 2021-2024 more than quadrupled from the previous three-year period, according to Pitchbook. At the London hackathon, teams worked into the evening, fueled by chocolate bars, energy drinks, fruit and a late-night pizza delivery. Army cots were available for those who wanted to catch a few hours of sleep. Soldiers in camouflage and defense company reps hovered on the sidelines to provide advice and answer questions. CEO Andrii Solonskyi said defense hackathons are 'a bit of a novelty.' The industry has traditionally been more structured and formal, because 'it's a serious business and there's a lot of things that can go wrong,' he said. But, "what we definitely feel is that you can be very agile in defense right now."
San Francisco Chronicle
3 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Hackathon teams race to solve defense tech challenges as Europe boosts military capabilities
SANDHURST, England (AP) — Hunched over laptops, the team of four raced to solve a challenge: how to get a set of drones to fly themselves from one place to another when GPS and other signals are jammed by an enemy. Elsewhere around the hall, groups of people — engineering students, tech workers and hobbyists — gathered around long tables to brainstorm, write computer code or tinker with more drones and other hardware. Most of them were strangers when they first gathered last month at Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy to compete in a 24-hour 'hackathon" focused on defense technology. Many were drawn to the event because they wanted to use their technical skills to work on one of the biggest challenges confronting Europe: the continent's race to beef up its military capabilities as Russia's war in Ukraine threatens to widen global instability. 'Given the geopolitical climate, defense tech is relevant now more than ever,' said Aniketh Ramesh, a startup founder with a Ph.D. in robotics in extreme environments and one of the drone team members. The hackathon, he said, 'is a good place to sort of go and contribute your ideas.' 'Robotics and drones are having their iPhone moment" because costs have come down and the hardware is widely available, Ramesh said. That means building drones to do new things is more a 'thinking challenge" than a technical one, he said. Ramesh already knew one teammate, a former British army paratrooper, from a previous event. They recruited two others — one engineer and one with a Ph.D. in computer vision — through the event's group chat on Signal. The drone problem was just one of the many challenges the teams could choose to solve. The tasks were proposed by defense tech companies like German drone maker Helsing, robotics company Arx, the British military and Kyiv-based venture capital firm D3. Some worked on software, such as an algorithm to predict which way a target would move. Others came with their own ideas. One team made a plastic cup packed with sensors that could be produced in large amounts to be scattered across a battlefield. Another team built a scale model of an autonomous medical evacuation aircraft. Similar competitions have been held regularly across Europe since last year, inspired by the Ukrainian military's on-the-fly wartime innovations to fend off the larger Russian army. The grassroots meetups are part of a wider network of defense innovation that organizers hope to foster in Europe, underscoring the continent's scramble to churn out weapons that have been turbocharged by U.S. President Donald Trump's persistent threats to withdraw from the NATO trans-Atlantic security alliance. The idea is to 'go build a prototype, take your prototype to become a product, and go build a company' so that you can 'deliver stuff to the frontline and hopefully save someone's life,' said Benjamin Wolba, who organizes a separate but similar series, the European Defense Tech Hackathon. Wolba's group has held tournaments in about 10 cities in the past twelve months, including one in Lviv, Ukraine, in May, and has scheduled more this year in Sheffield, England; Gothenburg, Sweden; Marseilles, France; London; and Berlin. The European Union-backed EUDIS Defence Hackathon holds simultaneous competitions at eight universities twice a year. Meanwhile, NATO has launched DIANA, an 'accelerator' program to speed up defense innovations. The competitions are producing real-world results. The winners of one European Defense Tech Hackathon were a team of Bulgarian high school students who came up with a de-mining solution that they used to found a startup. At last year's London event, the winning team devised an idea for an anti-drone system. They went to Ukraine for more testing, and then were bought by a startup that went on to raise millions in venture capital funding, said Pass. This year, instead of a trophy, some London teams signed term sheets with investors. Hackathons have their origins in the software industry. Small teams of programmers and developers are pitted against each other in marathon brainstorming sessions to write programs that could become new products. 'The beauty of the hackathon is you get a mixture of people who never normally meet,' said Wolba. 'Engineers are 'paired with actual investors who understand something on the commercial side, but also, critically, military end users.' Organizers want to foster a culture of nimble startups to join Europe's defense ecosystem, traditionally dominated by a handful of big 'prime' military contractors such as Britain's BAE, Germany's Rheinmetall and France's Thales that are focused on building pricey hardware. 'There's definitely been a shift in the industry from the purchase of more exquisite, high-cost capabilities, such as fighter jets, or submarines, or expensive tanks, towards more low-cost systems that can give you scale advantages,' said Richard Pass, one of the co-founders of the London event. A recent aerial confrontation between Pakistan and India further highlights how Europe is at risk of losing its edge against adversaries, he said. Pass said reports that Pakistan used Chinese-made fighter jets armed with Chinese air-to-air missiles to down Indian air force planes, including three French-made Rafale jets, came as a big surprise. Not only does it show 'technological parity between the Chinese and leading Western industrial nations like France,' but it also hints at China's advantages in mass-producing fighter jets that could overwhelm Western forces, he said. Fostering a broader European defense tech start-up ecosystem is a way 'to regain that technological advantage,' he said. Defense tech startup founders can ride a wave of investment as Europe moves to beef up its military capabilities. Leaders of NATO, which includes 30 European nations, are meeting this week to endorse a goal to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense. The European Union has sought to mobilize 800 billion euros ($927 billion) to boost the 27-nation bloc's defense, with priorities including drones, AI, autonomous systems and quantum computing. Britain, which left the EU, has meanwhile pledged to spend 10% of its defense budget on new technologies. Europe still has a long way to go. The continent's defense tech startup ecosystem is young and about five years behind the United States, consulting firm McKinsey said in a recent report. But it's growing rapidly as investors flock there. Venture capital investment in Europe's defense tech sector for 2021-2024 more than quadrupled from the previous three-year period, according to Pitchbook. At the London hackathon, teams worked into the evening, fueled by chocolate bars, energy drinks, fruit and a late-night pizza delivery. Army cots were available for those who wanted to catch a few hours of sleep. CEO Andrii Solonskyi said defense hackathons are 'a bit of a novelty.' The industry has traditionally been more structured and formal, because 'it's a serious business and there's a lot of things that can go wrong,' he said. But, "what we definitely feel is that you can be very agile in defense right now."
