Ukraine tech sector goes to war | FT Film
[Music] we have to be Innovative man because we would like to survive technology is absolutely crucial to Ukraine's Battlefield success people understand that they are not fighting only for the business for the prosperity they are fighting for the country the stake is All or Nothing [Music] the tech sector here is a crucial part of Ukraine's economy even during the Russian invasion last year it's the one sector that has continued to grow well the first thing the tech companies did was to carry on working for their customers and that's been vitally important for Ukraine's economy because other sources of income from exports of steel or grain have been choked off in terms of Technology playing a role in the war there really is no element of it where technology isn't at play and I think you're seeing technology workers with almost dual activities serving their customers but also serving uh Ukraine's war effort at the same time thank you the text Scene just scratched the surface in Ukraine it's it's gonna blow up we have to support it we have to show that no matter what happens to us we still are able to be operational and that's exactly what I am proud of we have this speech to speech AI voice cloning system that lets one actor perform not just say things in the voice of another so what's happening what's happening is my voice my voice and yeah it gets converted to multiply to a different person's Voice's voice and I have and I have not just not gender or gender but also a different accent we work quite a lot with film studios TV studios uh video game creators so that's the film and eventful disaster we did together with MIT Center of advanced spirituality [Music] we created a Nixon speech that was written in case of Apollo 11 Mission goes wrong Fates has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace we were awarded with Amy right before the full-blown invasion as a company we were preparing so we had contingency plans so we were delivering Hollywood projects like Kobe one Kenobi it was delivered from bomb shelters we actually had several generators in order to supply office and Sterling's in case if internet connection would go down as well as Sterling's were shipped to people who are not in queue in other regions of Ukraine and batteries generators all that stuff and our drill was about 35 seconds to switch office to generators now is the best time to invest in Ukraine because those who were able to survive no matter what are exceptional currently I'm mainly involved with two military-related projects and one of them is this book yeah essentially it's a distributed network of acoustic sensors they're built for air defense for like detecting Airborne threats I got connected through the engineering community to a team who was already by that time like pretty far in terms of hardware [Applause] [Music] we have installed the 64 sensors as per now and plan to install a lot more here's the parabolic acoustic mirror that focuses the sound on the microphone and the box with the single board computer the sound is then processed by AI algorithms yeah because like in Ukraine you have we have this like huge territory which is really hard to cover with like radar and air defense efficiently they're they're always these gaps that need to be covered with something cheap the AI team needs a lot of samples to train the model [Music] because you need to be recognizing acoustic Fingerprints of things thank you [Music] from a ton of noises like cars Birds flies like thunder pretty much any other entrepreneur that I know they they do have either like a side project that's building like drones or or they're like donating a lot or their business is donating there's an argument that if you have a lot of experience and a skill you know to make an impact technically is probably what you should do yeah if I travel to Ukraine and you have this idea of this place being a post-soviet Eastern European Backwater you would arrive here shocked to find that a lot of the economy and the country itself is more digitally focused than much of Europe and the United States the Ukrainian Tech sector has moved Beyond just servicing the needs of foreign I.T companies and you're beginning to see some real homegrown stars in the in the technology Universe like grammarly the Ukrainian Tech sector has grown immensely in the last 10 years I would say especially following the 2014 euromaidon Revolution where there was this real burst of Pride and patriotism there was a lot of foreign investment that came in a lot of young people who founded very successful tech companies to understand how Ukraine's Tech sector has been so focused on helping the war effort and innovating for the Ukrainian military you have to understand that this is a country that is really focusing on digitizing its processes they see Tech as a way of expanding the country's footprint growing their country's economy and I think the best possible example of that is probably Michael federov who is Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister is foreign information [Music] so brave one is a government initiative that allows companies with Innovative and projects to pitch them straight to the government the Ukrainian government hopes that this will give rise to a huge number of new military technologies that they can harness for the war effort in in record time [Music] enormous numbers of drones are being used in this war by both sides for all sorts of purposes whether it's reconnaissance or whether it's attack drones [Music] our game changer at this war we've seen since the full-scale invasion in February last year is a sort of explosion of creativity in this industry Ukraine does not have long-range missiles or not very many long-range missiles so it needs to try and build up its own Force if you like of longer range attack drones [Music] this plane has a model of construction to make more simple Transportation their overall time for preparing playing for flight is about two or three minutes foreign this is a test explosion of this plane at the first explosion ever everything worked after this test we can be sure that the battle test will be successful [Music] in 15 minutes we can make one win so it is very fast very strong wind and very lightweight you know the total cost of the construction of the plane is about 200 dollars with all carbon expensive glues form and all CNC Machining is how many details have a lot of holes that's why the plane overall weights about just one kilo they maybe don't look as Boeing or Airbus but for chemical as a plane it is very important there the quality of the construction it's a decent Ukrainian specialists [Music] uh [Music] um [Music] what's happening on your phone yes yes so what what's going on it's immiscible I mean you you're laughing like ukrainians are so useless now yeah foreign right now the number of the products the new products coming to the market it's really huge OT is Ukraine has every interest in developing its own drone industry one because this war may go on for a long time and it needs resilience in its Supply chains and secondly because it thinks it could become a real player in the world in military technology so this is a great way of nurturing that industry as a drone UA our main focus is agriculture when The full-scale Invasion started almost from the day one I was mobilized I served in the army drones are very important because first of all they save lives instead of sending soldiers to check what is going on in the in the battlefield you just send the small drone of Separation analysis [Music] you have drone that cost five or six hundred dollars and you can destroy tank that cost two or three million dollars without drones the war will have very very different character which is very close to what we saw in Bahamut this war include all these practices from the first world war the Contemporary war of 21st century we have to be Innovative man you know why because we would like to survive [Music] to see foreign [Music] we are like a part of a woman veteran movement you can see the engineers who work here every day creating drones for our army it can be a big birds with payload less than eight kilograms we can create small one and we always in communication with guys from Battlefield to have strong and useful stuff to win a war foreign [Music] than loots people you might think that in a country at War missiles are still falling down on the capitol people would be staying at home they'd be in bomb shelters in their basements but ukrainians are extremely resilient there's a Defiance to going out to populating restaurants to essentially trying to live as normal as possible foreign these events sometimes do get interrupted attention air raid alert the air alert app was downloaded more than 21 million times and it's more than 5 million active users traditionally it was deciding on the street there were no model mechanism and we delivered this modern mechanism like within one or two weeks from the beginning of the war you can see there is no alerts in Kiev now also you can see the map of alerts all the region where alerts is on will be marked in red our group of companies we deliver their security systems for intrusion protection system flood alarms fire alarms this is Ajax Hub it is a brain of a system we sell in 169 countries at the moment where biggest intrusion manufacturer in Europe and we are actively scaling now outside of Europe but the war is not an excuse not to deliver for example for 2022 our plan the growth was around 70 we achieved 35 to 40 percent because of the war suppliers started to worry uh if they will be paid back you need to relocate the manufacturing into a safe place because my factory is one Kiev and Russian Nazis but we are very lucky in case of Fredericks the team United a lot so now it's not a company is more like army style people understand that they are not fighting only for the business for the prosperity that they are fighting for the country they understand if the company grow more jobs like less unemployment more taxes more power to the government more power to the Army [Music] and now we're seeing in front of Banksy artwork which is protected by Ajax systems and our devices over there you can see it on the wall if someone tries to get closer or touch the glass the sirens start to screaming really loud it's important for us to save the signs which can bring more attention to Ukraine this artwork help us to understand the contrast between the real life and the war what is a total uh disaster this is an unbelievable price to pay however people who are paying this price with their blood I truly believe they built a better future this is not a country about other drugs this is not a country about political issues this is not a Russia this is a new country emerging country with a lot of opportunities with smart people we can deliver good products made in Ukraine design in Ukraine it was a very important on the beginning now we take it for granted technology is going to be fundamentally important for Ukraine's counter-offensive it's not only about drones and Aerial Technology it's also about mobile applications that are used by the military for spotting and correcting artillery fire Battlefield Management Systems which the ukrainians load up onto cheap tablets and they can give to thousands of Frontline troops to give them much more awareness of battle plans also there's a big role being played right now by electronic warfare or anti-drone systems for taking down enemy drones what's up this is a anti-drum rifle because it's lightweight and it's backpack size any Soldier can take it with him to the trench it's developed together with our partners and as a drone UA we are helping to bring this product to the market and actually develop it from the commercial part no of course it's not shooting bullets it's uh it's a meat uh radio frequency which blocks the signal between operator and the Drone right now with the war we have it's not possible to survive if you have no such Solutions on the on the front line Russia is also very strong in Battlefield technology for the many of the same reasons has that long tradition of uh technical education and it's used it well on the battlefield who's winning this technology battle between ukrainians and the Russians much better prepared and equipped for this word the only we can do uh as an encounter action is to use resources we have in more efficient way unfortunately Russians have superiority not not only in fighter jets but they have this superiority in Technologies first of all because they have Supply chains from China and the second point Western Technologies in Russian rockets in Russian missiles in Russian UAV systems they also have used drones in very large numbers whether it's reconnaissance or attack they've taken vast numbers of iranian-built a low-cost attack drones and sent them flying into Ukrainian cities they have not been vastly successful at hitting targets necessarily but they are successful at depleting Ukraine's more expensive air defense systems if you develop something you don't need to wait months or years just to try if this technology efficient or not So within one day it is possible to reach the front line to understand if the technology works and how it works foreign [Music] government aspires to turn their country into something like Israel with super sophisticated military Technologies and we think about how many products and Technical products related to miltec has been created so far and how many of them would be not just created but also tested and Polished through the course of war and those products would be a basis of other sane countries being able to protect themselves [Music] the reality is Ukraine is decades behind Israel in terms of building up the depth of scientific and technological knowledge or the financial ecosystem that nurtures these companies or the exchange of scientific knowledge with Partners particularly the United States this war has changed us you see the death all the time you become way more straightforward it is everyday job to donate right now this water is touching everyone if they have one dollar they donate one dollar one million dollars they donate one million dollars life now is tougher more stressful a lot of pain but also a lot of Hope [Music] I have two kids I'm fighting for the future foreign [Music] the World Bank is estimated that the cost of reconstructing Ukraine and restoring its economic losses is 411 billion dollars and that number will have gone up since they came out with that estimate earlier this year we know from watching the development of Ukraine's Tech sector that it's absolutely going to play a major role in its country's Redevelopment and likely be the leading factor in just how quickly and efficiently Ukraine is able to rebuild after this war foreign [Music] foreign
2023-07-28 17:26
