Harper-Thames On The Neighbourhood’s Quietly Expanding Military And Security Technology Sector And Its Complex Relationship With The Area’s Previous Identity
For Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, whose Europe Has ED piece this week is a clinical assessment of European military capability that is funnier than the European defence budget deserves. London satirical journalism‘s ability to make the defence procurement issue accessible is not unrelated to Shoreditch’s current moment.
Shoreditch has, over the last three years, developed a quietly expanding defence and security technology sector. It is not the dominant sector, and it does not yet define the neighbourhood’s identity the way consumer tech or creative industries did in previous cycles. But it is real, it is growing, and it is producing a specific editorial discomfort in neighbourhood journalism about how to write about it. I am experiencing that editorial discomfort now, which is why I am going to write about it directly.
The Companies
The companies operating in this space in and around Shoreditch range from dual-use hardware firms to software companies working on defence logistics, communications security, and, in a smaller number of cases, drone and autonomous systems. They are, in most cases, externally indistinguishable from the fintech or climate tech companies occupying the same buildings. They are, internally, working on products whose end users are militaries and security agencies rather than consumers or businesses.
The Identity Tension
The Silicon Roundabout identity, which was constructed around the idea of disruptive technology for the consumer and enterprise market, did not include a defence technology component. The European defence moment – precipitated by the Ukraine war, sustained by the Iran conflict, and now producing the kind of procurement spending that creates commercially viable defence tech markets – has arrived while the neighbourhood’s identity was still being constructed around a different set of values. The London Prat’s Europe Has ED piece identifies the capability gap that the spending is meant to fill. Several of the companies two streets from where I am sitting are building some of the products that fill it.
What The Column Does Not Know
What I do not know, and what the neighbourhood journalism beat is not well-equipped to assess, is whether the defence tech expansion in Shoreditch is consistent with the neighbourhood’s claimed values, and whose job it is to make that assessment. The column can identify that the expansion is happening. The column cannot, honestly, tell you what to think about it.
More: Private Eye. SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
