On 20 June John Thomas, President of Euro-ISME, participated in an expert panel on ethical considerations in the defence industry at Eurosatory, a major defence equipment exhibition in Paris.
The panel was arranged by C&V Consulting, an institutional member of Euro-ISME, and moderated by Jean-Marc Vesco, C&V’s co-founder. The other participants were Inge Ceuppens, Project Manager at the European Commission, Eve Gani, Director of Business Development and Institutional Relations at Sopra Steria and Fernando Grávalos, EU & NATO Programmes Manager at Sener Aerospace & Defence.
John emphasised that it was clear that defence companies were taking a greater interest in ethics than before, but stressed that there were three reasons for an even greater emphasis in future.
The first reason was that major customers such as the US DoD, UK MoD, NATO and the EU were increasingly demanding that ethical considerations were ‘baked in’ to project proposals from the outset. Secondly, potential and actual employees of defence companies were also demanding the same. And thirdly that public reaction to the conflict Gaza had accelerated a wider debate within society on the ethics of conflict and the weapons used, especially on the future role of artificial intelligence.