Governments should crowdsource defence innovation

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The writer is adviser to Gallos Technologies and author of ‘Goodbye Globalization’

A couple of years ago, Russia announced it would hold a naval exercise in Ireland’s exclusive economic zone. The Irish government was unhappy but couldn’t think of a way to stop the exercise. Ireland’s fishermen, though, devised a clever and peaceful scheme to see off the mighty Russian Navy.

Patrick Murphy, chief executive of the Irish South and West Fish Producers Organisation, declared that the country’s fishermen would be going out to water as usual. And “when one boat needs to return to port, another will head out so there is a continuous presence on the water”. Under international maritime rules, the Russians would need to avoid harming the fishermen: with their boats out at sea, this could prove a major hassle. Moscow cancelled the exercise.

Bright national security ideas are not the monopoly of those holding national security jobs. With threats against western countries intensifying, governments should crowdsource solutions.

Russia’s war game could have been highly embarrassing and potentially damaging for Ireland. The Irish government had already politely asked Moscow not to proceed with its naval exercise, declaring it “not welcome”, but the efforts were in vain. Countries have the right to conduct exercises in other countries’ EEZs. What could Dublin do? It meekly instructed Ireland’s fishermen to stay away from the waters.

They had other ideas. “This is the livelihoods of fishermen and fishing families all around the coastline here,” Murphy told RTE in January 2022.

Others have followed their example. Norwegians took similar action when Russia planned a naval exercise in their waters. In August last year, the country’s fishermen in the Arctic remained where they were when Russia announced a naval exercise there.

Countries are full of people with innovative solutions to the threats we face, and they don’t always work in ministries of defence or think-tanks. They may be fishermen, teachers, engineers. A few classical musicians from the west and Russia, for example, are contemplating how they can build on classical music’s strong cross-border collaboration to establish channels through which their governments could exchange unofficial messages. Famously, in 1971, US and Chinese table-tennis players helped shatter their countries’ icy relations through ping-pong diplomacy.

How many of our citizens are sitting on potential solutions to some of today’s national security threats? We don’t know, because we’ve never asked them. If invited to offer solutions, quite a few would do so — and many of their ideas would probably be extremely useful. Involving wider society in defence innovation would make security a joint undertaking, not just a matter for those in the military.

The need for innovative solutions is increasingly urgent. In recent months, western countries have been afflicted by disinformation, Russian sabotage, break-ins at water treatment plants and much else besides. On October 8, MI5 director-general Ken McCallum warned of Russian plans to use “arson, sabotage and more” to create mayhem in the UK and on European streets.

We need to spread the net wider when looking for answers. In 2006, Wired published an article about a new phenomenon: crowdsourcing. It was described as “the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, large group of people, generally in the form of an open call”.

Since then, we’ve taken to crowdsourcing all manner of things. But not national security. To be sure, citizens will have little to add to matters of infantry formations and tank design. But they may well conceive solutions to the problems now destabilising our countries. Just ask them.