UK and France forge nearer cyber, tech analysis ties
British and French researchers are teaming as much as work on enhancing the resilience of assorted expertise instruments and techniques utilized by essential nationwide infrastructure (CNI) suppliers – together with utilities and emergency providers – in opposition to varied safety threats.
The expertise in scope of the settlement, introduced throughout a state go to from French president Emmanuel Macron, contains positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) techniques that such organisations depend on, and kinds a part of a wider suite of joint science and tech work being formalised between London and Paris.
From electrical energy infrastructure to move to monetary transactions, disruption to PNT techniques can have vital cascading results throughout societies, and the Division for Science, Innovation and Expertise (DSIT) mentioned the Ukraine warfare had proven how such techniques have been intentionally focused with signal-jamming by Russian menace actors.
“France and the UK each have large ambitions for expertise to spice up financial progress and strengthen nationwide safety,” mentioned science and expertise secretary Peter Kyle.
“It’s important we work with pure companions like our French neighbours in these endeavours, notably because the menace from hostile state actors solely grows.
“Immediately we construct on the Entente cordiale with an Entente technologique, celebrating and renewing our longstanding and historic partnership in order that collectively we will face down the challenges of tomorrow.”
GPS backup
One software already being explored by the British authorities, working with the Nationwide Bodily Laboratory and personal sector consultants, is enhanced long-range radio navigation, or e-Loran, which makes use of ground-based radio towers to offer a backup to international positioning system (GPS) satellite tv for pc navigation ought to it grow to be degraded.
E-Loran makes use of a tried-and-tested method known as hyperbolic navigation whereby a receiver determines its location primarily based on the timing of alerts acquired from varied factors.
E-Loran can compete nicely sufficient by way of correct positioning with GPS, and as such is coming to be thought-about a doubtlessly life-saving backup for the system, which is at the moment operated by the United States House Drive.
Wider than cyber
The Entente Technologique doesn’t, nonetheless, cease at cyber safety. Britain and France have additionally launched a supercomputing partnership between the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing on the College of Bristol – which is residence to the Isambard-AI undertaking – and France’s Grand équipement nationwide de calcul intensif, which helps roughly 10,000 high-performance computing and synthetic intelligence (AI) initiatives.
The federal government mentioned that nearer ties between the UK and France’s world-leading computing energy and the sharing of AI finest follow would construct on present collaborations, turbocharge future breakthroughs and remodel public providers, constructing on its AI alternatives motion plan.
Three additional agreements have additionally been signed as we speak, throughout a joint go to by Kyle and Macron to Imperial Faculty London, between Imperial and CNRS Ayrton Blériot Engineering Lab; College Faculty London; the Institut nationwide de recherche en sciences et applied sciences du numérique; Oxford; Cambridge; HEC; Institut Polytechnique de Paris; and Université Paris-Saclay.
Alongside the analysis agreements, plenty of non-public sector firms have additionally been highlighted. These embody collaborations between Synthesia, a London-based AI video specialist, and French sports activities retailer Decathlon, that are engaged on an AI avatar lab to allow the latter to speak with prospects and workers, and Darktrace, which is working with occasions operator GL Occasions, which performed a key function within the 2024 Paris Olympics, amongst different issues.
In the wrong way, French aerospace, defence and tech firm Thales is planning to pump £40m of funding right into a UK AI accelerator, CortAIx, whereas Comand AI, a Paris-based specialist in AI-based defence and safety, hopes to spend £35m between now and 2030 to determine a UK base of operations.
