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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 17 March 2026 on Monocle Radio.
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The Donald Trump method of how to lose friends and alienate people. Ukraine's efforts to keep global focus on its war and advances in the dissuaded of pigeons. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts. Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Alex von Tunzelman and Philippe Malia will discuss the day's big stories and we'll meet the country profiting from satellites getting smaller. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Alex von Tonzelman, historian, author and screenwriter and Philippe Marlier, professor French and European politics at University College London. Hello both.
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A
Hello.
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B
Hello, Alex. You have again as you so often seem to been in Morocco.
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A
Yes, I teach twice a year creative writing course out there in Marrakesh, which is, you know, a completely awful place to be in ghastly March and November, the two worst times of the year to be in London. So indeed we've had two weeks. Well, mostly in the sun. There was actually some cold and rain if you want to feel slightly better about it, Andrew.
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B
I do now feel slightly better about it. Assuming people tuning in think that sounds great. Where can I get a piece of this? Does. Does your writer's retreat have a website?
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A
It does. Silk Road, Slippers dot com.
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B
Okay.
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A
Slightly bizarre name. There's a long story.
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B
Are you taking bookings for October?
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A
We are. When we will be joined by the legend that is Barbara Trapido. And by Maggie o'. Farrell. Sorry. And by Michelle Sayn.
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B
Okay. Well, that you would think is abundant enticement, Philippe. It will become germane to a later part of the show. But you recently been not just in France, but in highly le penist France.
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C
Absolutely. I was back to a small town called Henin Beaumont. Probably no one's heard of it outside France. And you have even there? Yes, It's a short journey by train from Lille and it has been the bastion of the French far right for the past ten years or so. And Marine Le Pen, the party leader, is an MP in this place. So I had first hand experience to look at the situation and also looking at the prospect of the far right. France is voting. We're going to discuss the issue soon. He's voting for the local election soon. The second round will take place Sunday. And I think that's the last important election before the the big one, the presidential election in a year time.
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B
Well, more on that later in the show, but we start with the war in the Persian Gulf and with US President Donald Trump's difficulties persuading anyone else to join in. Trump has repeatedly suggested in recent days that those countries dependent on the free egress of tankers via the Strait of Hormuz should saddle up and help keep it free of Iranian predation. This outreach has followed a refusal on the part of ship owners, crews and insurers to heed Trump's call to show some guts and steer what essentially large, slow floating bombs through a shooting gallery. Nobody seemed keen, however, prompting Trump to erupt within the last couple of hours a lengthy and randomly capitalized social media outburst, cresting with speaking as president of the United States of America, by far the most powerful country anywhere in the world. All caps for this bit. We do not need the help of anyone. Back to lowercase thank you for your attention to this matter. Listeners can probably imagine me doing that invisible accordion thing that he does. Philippe, first of all, should he be surprised that nobody else is much interested?
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C
Well, I know that in his latest tweets or whatever it was, Trump says he doesn't need the support of anyone then, and the next thing he does is exactly that, asking the support. So I think a bit of a contradiction there. No, I'm not surprised. I think Trump started an illegal war together with Israel and it's not going well. I think you will not get regime change if that's what you want, through bombing a country. You need more than that. So it's a highly risky exercise. And of course I can understand why European partners are unwilling now to cooperate, or that means to get involved in what looks more like a war which could of course generalize and involve Europe, but also other countries in the region.
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Alex, would it actually be any different? I mean, there's a lot of somewhat gleeful suggestion that this is an amount of blowback. But even if he hadn't spent recent months demeaning the Afghan veterans of America's allies or threatening to invade Denmark, would anybody be any keener on this?
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A
I think there are lots of reasons to be not keen, even on the merits or demerits of the case for war here itself, partly because it seems that it's now becoming increasingly clear, I think, that the US and Israel have quite divergent intentions of this war, not least because, I mean, today Israel announced that they had killed Ali Lad Jani in an airstrike, who's kind of really one of the leading figures in the Iranian regime. So sort of everybody who the Americans might negotiate with as a future leader is being systematically wip out by Israel because, you know, I think it's not really any mystery to anybody who's paid the slightest attention for the last few decades that what Netanyahu and by extension the Israeli government want is chaos, largely in Iran, as they do in Lebanon. And as in various other countries in the region, the United States does not seem to want necessarily that chaos. And so we're looking at potentially quite different intentions here. So I think one issue for other countries who, you know, often do fall in line, have historically often fallen in line behind the US Is what are we actually hoping to achieve here? I mean, everybody got quite badly burned who went along with the war in Iraq, the two wars in Iraq in the past. So I think there's also a great deal of resistance. You can certainly see it in polling as well in countries like the UK to getting involved in another Middle Eastern war where the, where the intentions are extremely unclear and the plans are very unclear, moving towards regime change, which also seems very undecided and unclear who, which regime would come in instead.
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B
All that said, Philippe, is Donald Trump actually necessarily wrong when he writes in the same social media outburst, and I quote this, despite the fact that almost every country strongly agreed with what we are doing and that Iran cannot in any way shape or form be allowed to have a nuclear weapon? I mean, he's not, he's not wrong when he says that nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon because nobody wants Iran to have a nuclear weapon.
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C
Well, on that point, he's right. He has a point because in the past, at least, European leaders and world leaders have said that, including Russia, which
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was a signatory to the original agreement.
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C
Yes, but, yes, Russia, but especially all European leaders have sort of rejoiced when, including when Trump bombed nuclear facilities that was, I think, one or two years ago, and to no avail, as it appears, because it has simply slowed down the making of a nuclear bomb, probably, and not erases altogether. So he has a point. But still, you know, again, to get back to the previous point about he doesn't need support, but in fact, we know that he does now because really, he put himself in a difficult situation. The fear is now is going to try to blackmail his partners, or so called partners or allies, by saying, well, if you don't help me here, I will stop helping you with Ukraine. And I think Zelensky who is touring Europe at the moment, knows that very well. So again, that might be, we'll see how European leaders will react ultimately. But they might have to give in just because they fear that they could be subject to blackmail and left alone when it comes to defending
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Ukraine domestically, as in domestically in the United States. Alex, we have had the first administration resignation over this war. This is Joe Kent, who is director of the US National Counterterrorism Center. Worth bearing in mind that Joe Kent is proper tinfoil hat magger. He has unpleasant associations with far right white supremacy. His resignation letter was fairly thinly veiled Jewish conspiracy theory. Trump, rather sweetly, within the last hour is doing that thing he always does when somebody leaves his administration of saying, that guy was a deadbeat and a loser. But this one is especially, it's especially glorious because Trump is saying, and I quote, I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security. It's a good thing that he's out. Which does, of course, beg the question is why you would hire someone weak on security. To director of the National Counterterrorism Center. The short version of that question is, is this going to make a difference?
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Well, not in and of itself, but I think the thing that I really picked up from Joe Kent's letter is, as you say, it's very, very much still praising Trump, saying that he believes in Trump, but that Trump has been misled by the Israelis. Now, you know, anyone from Europe is immediately hearing the filming of a stab in the back legend, you know, in front of us. And we can see it happening, you know, which is very much, you know, the czar was doing so marvelously until he started listening to his advisors who also guess what happened to be Jews. You know, there's sort of this is forming very quickly and of course, you know, in the kind of popular American mind, the kind of people Joe Kent is speaking to beyond Trump in this letter, the distinction between Jews and the state of Israel is, should we say, at best, fuzzy. So, you know, I think he's kind of really capitalizing on that as well from that point of view. So I think what worries me about this is that not necessarily that Joe Kent is in and of himself or particularly influential figure or that, you know, there's going to be kind of now a domino of such people. There may be, but that longer term, I mean, I imagine this letter is the beginning of him running for office on precisely these kind of terms and that we're looking at a very worrying long term effect.
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Well, we have that to look forward to here in London. Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Sakir Starmer is hosting President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, who is, as Philippe reminded us on a brisk European tour, attempting to remind everyone that the war in his country is closer to the one, closer than rather the one in, around and over Iran. The US Israeli action in Iran is bad news for Ukraine on two counts. One, that it deprives Ukraine of attention and likely such American aid as Ukraine was still receiving. Two, that it benefits Russia by compelling the US to relax some sanctions and driving up the price of oil. By some estimates, Russia has been making an extra 500 million euros per day since hostilities commenced. Philippe, is this an especially difficult moment for Ukraine?
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C
Yeah, and I know that Ukraine goes from one difficult moment to another, and that's not the first time any conflict. Remember when the bombing of Gaza was taking place? I think also that was another major distraction. And of course, the person who benefits from all that is always Putin. I think you just reminded us, you just told us about the economic benefit it's just made with the sort of easing of oil sanctions. And the fact that he was able to sell around a vast amount of oil and make huge profits is one sign. But also every time there is a major conflict in the world, that's a distraction from the war in Ukraine, which goes on. And I always remember Trump saying, we are working very hard on a peace, on negotiations. We're very close from securing a deal.
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And in fact, it was always in two weeks.
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Absolutely always in two weeks, if not by the end of the week. No, it never happened. So, yes, I can understand why Zelensky will sort of again come to Europe and try to get support. I think he's got the support from Europeans, not all of them, but most of them, the UK notably. But it's a very difficult situation for him because he knows that the eu, the European partners, not the eu, can't perform miracles on their own. You need the might and support of the US for that.
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If Zelenskyy is trying to look at this optimistically, Alex, is there any case that this is also damaging for Russia? I mean, Russia, I think, is now making most of its own Iranian design shahed drones. But Zelenskyy at least claims that Iran is still supplying Russia with shaheds. Presumably fewer of those will now be forthcoming. But there is. Is there not also a loss of prestige for Russia here in that Russia was supposed to have signed, well, did sign some sort of defence agreement with Iran late last year. And now here is Their defence partner getting smashed up at will by two countries which don't even have a land border with it.
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True. Although at the same time, Russia's obviously just had a lovely big windfall from all that oil now able, $6 billion worth of it. So they're probably feeling quite comforted by that, I would imagine. And pretty kind of vague response from Trump to the idea that Russia is encouraging Iran here and sort of clearly feeling quite even that Russia is kind of sharing information on the whereabouts of American soldiers. He was so kind of vague about whether that really mattered or not. And so, oh, that's the thing they'll do. So I don't know whether the of prestige of that really matters at all. I think it is interesting that, I mean, absolutely that Europe has always kind of been in this position where the United States has been the kind of necessary muscle, backup for sure. At the same time, just now, Zelenskyy's been addressing the UK Parliament and has said Europe is a global force, one the world cannot do without, and that no one can stand against. Well, people can stand against it. But clearly what he's trying to do is shore up the idea when America is, you know, very inconstant ally, shore up the idea of European unity and purpose here. And I do think that's something that, you know, clearly we've seen people like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Sama take pretty seriously and, you know, and push for increasingly that they, they do all realize that the United States is a bit of a problem right now and that perhaps that sort of conventional alliances is not, not as reliable as it may be. So I think, you know, it's now a question of how Europe responds to this, how much it can pull together and how much it can face up to the needs of potentially a world where the United States cannot be relied on and Russia is not very discouraged.
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But on that thought, Philippe, we are now nearly a month into the fifth year of full scale war between Ukraine and Russia. Does Europe, to the extent that Europe is able to make or stick to a collective decision, does Europe yet have a coherent idea of how it wants this war to end and what it is prepared to do to bring that outcome about?
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C
The trouble is, no, I don't think so. And there are, of course, various views on how to end the conflict. You know, first of all, they are very difficult partners. And I'm thinking here of EU relations. Of course, the usual suspect, Orban of Hungary, makes it very difficult indeed. It's close not only to Trump, but also Allegedly to Putin. So that makes it very hard. There's no, if you like, unity, full unity in Europe with regard to that. As for plans on how to end the war, I think it remains quite elusive and quite vague. And I think it seems that Europeans are concentrating on the issue of the war as such, on keeping arming the Ukrainians, because as for the peace negotiations, I think they probably realize that without the input of the US it will not happen. So that's a very, very complicated situation. And in the meantime, the man who doesn't need any support from anyone asked Ukraine to rescue some countries and the US itself involved in this Iranian, this intervention in Iran, you know, to combat drones, you know, because of the expertise they gained during the war, which is, I think we're really living a very crazy, crazy moment when you think about it, just calling Ukraine to rescue the US in Iran because of the expertise on drones.
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Well, just on that thought and finally on this one, Alex. Yeah. Ukraine has sent experts in the last couple of weeks to Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to advise them on drones. One of the upshots of Zelenskyy's visit to London is the signing of a new UK Ukraine defence partnership. Are we in a position now, in fact, have we been in a position for a while where it's fairly likely that these partnerships are actually of more value not to Ukraine, but to the other country, because whatever version of Ukraine emerges from this conflict is going to be a military powerhouse.
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I mean, it's certainly possible, isn't it? And it's quite an interesting twist on the usual view of the story that they are gaining huge amounts of battlefield experience and you know, and often at a kind of an almost sort of guerilla level rather than necessarily always high tech as well, which is also very interesting, I think. But I mean, at the same time, the problem you've got, and you know, to come back to Philippe's points, is also that Russia straightforwardly does not want to make peace and does not want to end the war. So at the moment, it is complicated to end because it's just something that Putin doesn't want to do. So fundamentally, until that changes, even with pressure from the U.S. it's hard to see how you move well to France
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now, where counting, negotiating and assorted horse trading is ongoing amid municipal elections being widely interpreted excitedly or feared, as views dictate, as a preview of next year's presidential election in which French citizens will be asked yet again if they really want a Le Pen or a Le Pen Proxy in the LSA Palace. In the first rounds of voting in these elections, with second rounds still to come this weekend, Le Pen's far right National Rally have done pretty well. But so have various elements of the far left, suggesting either that France is becoming ever more radically polarised or that we have not as yet identified the Macron like Le Pen buster figure. Philippe, as you were saying at the top of the show, you have recently been visiting the National Rally heartlands. From these results as we understand them so far, what leaps out at you?
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C
I think you're right to say that the far right, the National Rally of Marine Le Pen, has done well, but it has done well in its bastions. And that's really the funny aspect of this election. The same applies to the radical left. Jean Luc Melanchon's Francis Sumis and Balfrans also done well. But in its bastion, the bastion of the radical left, are city centers where you find a population of highly educated students who vote en masse for this party. But when you get out of those bastions, I think the two parties are rather sort of average or if not insignificant parties. So it's a funny electoral map, if you like. You still have in the middle the sort of center left party, Socialist Party and the Republican Party. Republicans. The Macron Party is in free fall, doing very badly, but they're still there. So in fact very, very hard to predict from that election, which is a very popular election. It's normally quite a dull affair in the uk, the electoral election here, the French municipal elections are very politicized. And so it's also the last election before the big one in a year time, the presidential election. So it's very hard to draw any conclusion from it and say, I think I would say that the two parties, it's true the situation is very polarized. It's also very fragmented. Hence all the negotiations that finished today at 6pm French time, because you have to submit the list. So there could be mergers between lists. That is allowed and sometimes parties refuse to merge. And of course, if you don't merge, the smaller list and party will stay put and run again. So of course you run the risk of being defeated. So all that is happening. Let's see next Sunday how it happens. And I think it will be still very hard to draw very clear conclusions from this election, which is quite in fact complex.
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B
Alex, if you are any sort of, of populist, insurgent kind of party from the right or left, how important are elections like this for helping to establish what we might think of as a permission structure. That is, if the National Rally, for example, managed to get a mayor up to the gate in Marseille or Toulon, which was two of their targets, how important would that be in sort of giving the wider electorate, if you like, a kind of permission to vote for us? These people have. You're allowed, it's okay.
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A
Well, in most countries that's sort of how radical parties have often crept up, is through local politics. I mean, that's a pretty established route and so of course that can work a bit. But I mean, something I was interested to read about these elections is that the first round, you know, and what must remember these are local elections, which can be quite different from national ones, of course, is that turnout was really quite low in the first round. So like, obviously you're going to turn out if you're a super committed voter who makes massively cares about your party, which means it's far more likely that they are far to the extreme of somewhere or other, because those are the motivated people. I think the second round will be interesting because in some places now that's quite a sharp radical contrast. And you know, certainly what we, what we've seen in France already in the last few years is actually voters, as they are actually in the uk, are often turning out to prevent something, not necessarily to vote positively for something. And they can be very motivated also by that. So I think the second round will be very interesting actually, in terms of what we see the pattern there, what it means for the national election. Will it promote some of these parties towards a kind of more of a national stage? I mean, maybe, but I do think national politics are very different. And yes, of course it's only a year away, which is very soon. But also, this doesn't necessarily map perfectly onto that.
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B
Philippe, One thing that does fairly frequently undo populist movements is when they actually get into government, discover that it's hard and boring and nobody ever says thank you. And it's much more fun standing on barricades making defiant speeches than making sure the bins get collected. There is one city where the National Rally have already been in charge, which is Perpignan. Louis Alio, the mayor there, was re elected quite handily. This despite or given the nature of populist voters, perhaps because of a criminal conviction for fraud, which, which, which he is appealing. But, but if we think of him as a test case, have the National Rally, when they've been given a chance to actually govern, been actually any good at?
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C
Depends. I think we've had in the past mayors of relatively big cities in the south of France governing and doing very badly. You know, there was corruption, they were incompetent, so they were kicked out after one term. I think the case of Perpignan is a case where probably Louis Allieu is a rather popular mayor. It's a solid. It's a rock solid bastion. The population there really supports the far right. The same in the north of France, where I did my field work last week, where you formerly a socialist bastion and since 2014, it's a very working class area, post industrialized. Now they appear to be extremely strong. The mayor was reelected in the first round with 80% of the share of the vote, which is quite amazing. So I think the reason being, and that's part of the. What has been called in France the de demonization process of the far right, the fact that it works both ways in a way is that at least the facade appears to be more and more mainstream. So that you don't put off, you don't scavenge, you come across, rightly or wrongly, as more moderate than you used to be. And that's why you do that by making sure that your discourse is moderate. And I think that's what I could observe in the north of France. Clearly there's a tendency to depoliticize a number of issues and to just introduce oneself as someone who runs the town in a competent manner for all. And that's very much what he does. And it seems to work in certain cases. So Perpignan and Edain Beaumont are two cases in point, but they are the places where in the party you still find the same old extremist, racist, anti Semite. So it's very hard again to work out. There's not one trend, but they're different depending on where they are elected and the type of people running cities or the type of candidates, you get different outcomes.
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B
Well, to Tokyo and an attempt to discourage pigeons. This is a challenge faced by many conubations and more difficult than it may seem. Discharging shotguns in crowded urban environments is generally frowned upon. Turning lynxes loose in streets and squares is liable to cause more problems than it solves. And erecting signs saying pigeons unwelcome doesn't work because pigeons can't read. So one Tokyo design firm has festooned a couple of afflicted spots with photos of large ginger ca. Teeth bared, eyes replaced with silver discs for some reason. Alex, first of all, to address the nature of the problem, where are you on pigeons?
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A
Well, you know, as a Londoner kind of on the rats with wings spectrum. I think I do understand this. While at the same time, you know, I mean, they're still animals, you know, they're therefore precious part of our creation. But. But yeah, there are an awful lot of them and I do understand and they do kind of. Of obviously create quite a lot of mess and, and can be a bit gross. I did see the picture of these lovely ginger. I very amazed they picked a ginger cat because anybody who has a cat knows that all ginger cats just share one brain cell that they sort of pass around between them. So I mean, if there's any cat least likely to catch a pigeon, I'm telling you, it's a big ginger tom.
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B
But do pigeons know this?
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A
Well, I think they might work it out. I actually suspect that one of the problems. Problems with this, with this plan, which inherently is sort of quite charming and sweet, you know, why not have a big mural of some cats with some glittery eyes and see if it works. And they do say that that worked better than various other animals that they put murals up of, which implies quite a high level of image comprehension from the pigeons.
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B
Yeah. Apparently pigeons were non plussed, verging on unimpressed by hawks, bears, owls, snakes and crows.
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A
Right. I mean, you know, just braving all of that. But I think the pigeons will probably figure out quite quickly that nothing really happens to them if they hover around the cat pictures. And you know, even if it works for a few weeks, I'm not sure how long it will really endure.
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B
Well, we did want to close by asking you each in turn. I'll ask you first, Philippe, Is there some aspect of city life that you would like to try scaring off? And if so, how would you do it?
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C
I think I'd like to scare off some human beings sometimes. I like, I like the quiet in public transport. And I think probably it would be a good idea, you know, on the underground or trains to placards. Some big brother is watching your posters, you know, with a simple mention. No phone calls, no loud music. I think that would be. That would be quite good. I don't know if that would stop people from misusing their phones or playing the music on their phones.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I have in this particular area myself, previously in this chair, advocated tasers. But you would be happy with just big placards.
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C
Yes, yes, yes. Yeah, I don't know if it would work the same thing as, you know, with the cats and pigeons in Tokyo.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Alex, you're much more moderate than me. I was thinking for the noisy mobile phone users a sort of, perhaps a sort of hatch that could drop them down to a shark tank beneath the underground horror bus this would present.
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B
I mean, I'm absolutely on board with the sentiment, but I foresee engineering difficulties because you're going to have to find a way to fit shark tanks below London underground carriages.
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A
Look, we sent a man to them,
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B
so they would need to be raised from the rails, which means the tunnels would have to be tall. I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible.
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A
No, I mean, you know, just come on, be creative and a good supply of sharks.
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C
Also, recommendations that would help ease overcrowding on trains and.
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A
Yeah, yeah, it would.
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B
If people would like to do any sketches of a potential underground carriage fitted with a shark tank,
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A
it's a proportionate response.
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B
Again, not just, not at all disagreeing with the intent here. I'm just, I'm thinking about the practicalities as always. Alex von Tauntelman and Philippe Malia, thank you both for joining us. Finally on today's show, micro satellites are changing the world from disaster management and environmental monitoring to security and defense. The global market for small satellites is set to grow to more than $20 billion over the next six years. And one of the fastest growing companies in the sector is the Finnish firm eyeseye, which has emerged as a key player, counting clients such as NASA, NATO and various forces. Our Helsinki correspondent, Petri Birtsoff visited ISI's headquarters in Espoo in Finland. He sent us this report.
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D
In just over a decade, ISI has grown from a small startup at Espos Aalto University into a global player in the micro satellite market. The company now employs around a thousand people, has secured more than 600 million euros in funding and expanded into countries including the United States, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea, the UK and the United Arab Emirates. In an industry traditionally dominated by government backed organizations and large multinationals, ISI has established a strong foothold working with major clients such as NASA and NASA, NATO, along with various national defense forces. To understand how the company achieved this and how microsatellites are reshaping industries, I visited ISI's headquarters in Espoo, where I met Damon Ollerman, the company's vice president of missions. He began by explaining how ISI satellites differ from conventional.
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E
What ISI has specialized and become quite good at is creating SAR satellites So that synthetic aperture radar on it is a radar sensor that observes the Earth. Now what is the benefit of that? What does it do? As humans, we are used to seeing the earth with Our eyeballs. The sun shines on the Earth and the light reflects into our eye and we see it in the color of the world. World. And that is exactly the same how optical satellites observe the Earth. Now that is a passive sensor. What I mean by that is it needs the sun to be able to see what the Earth is. That also means an optical satellite cannot see the Earth at night. And if it is cloudy, but whereas SA is radar. So it emits a signal from the satellite to the Earth, it bounces back. The satellite listens to it and it can work out what height and what angle that that has bounced back at. And it does thousands of those in like milliseconds. And it can create a synthetic image of that surface that has come back. And that creates a synthetic aperture radar image. It means it can observe the Earth at night and through clouds. Given a pretty persistent observation of the Earth.
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D
You do produce the satellites here on site. We're not able to go where the satellites are made, but you have kindly brought a mock up satellite which we're looking at. It looks a bit different from a conventional satellite satellites. They're not nowhere near as big as your conventional optical satellites would be.
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E
You're quite correct. So the sort of main part of the satellite is like so about 1 meter cubed. When the radar panels and the solar panels sort of unfold. It's about 3 meters in length, 3.2 meters in length. So it very much looks like a right angle with a, with a box between it. And that's the sort of shape of our, of our satellites. And it's about 200 kilos. And when you compare that to what SAR satellites were five, 10 years ago, they were probably a thousand, 2,000 kilos. So what ISI has been really good at is making it much more smaller, much more lightweight. But the performance and the capability is not only on par, but in somewhat better. That also leads to the cost of it as well. It means we can produce a lot of these much, much lower cost. And, and we can, because they're lower weight, we can put more of them up there in space. And that means our customers can have a fleet of them rather than one or two. That brings all sorts of advantages of operational effect and observing the Earth more often and things like sharing of risk financially and operationally.
- [36:07]
D
Delivering near real time situational awareness faster and at significantly lower cost than before is transforming industries ranging from defense and security to environmental monitoring and humanitarian response. As Ollermann explains.
- [36:23]
E
To date we've launched about 64 satellites and that goes back from 2018. We will be launching sort of every two to three months right throughout this year and next year and beyond. How they are used, that's very varied. You can use them to monitor ice, you can monitor deforestation in the Amazon, which is what a Brazilian customers do. Emergency situations in the Mediterranean, that's with emsa, or in sort of defense and security situations. Whether it's monitoring borders, critical infrastructure, or supporting military operations or military troops for our nations, They used to be very expensive. They used to be hundreds of millions, if not billions, and they take five, 10 years to build. In the last five years, that kind of paradigm has completely shifted. And as I said, you can get one of ours in sort of 18 months and you get a fleet of them for probably a tenth of the cost of what it traditionally tradition is. So it's more accessible, it's rapidly there, you can have more of them now. This, in a sort of military context has moved it from a strategic asset to a tactical and operational asset. And that means a soldier can use task a satellite to do what he wants to do on the ground almost every day rather than having to go all over of bureaucratic command. Space has really become the sort of fourth operational domain. Space is now more widely and accessible for the other services. So the navy has all their ships and frigates and carriers, and the army has all their tanks and armored vehicles, and the Air Force has all the planes. But those assets can have be more effective and be multiple times more effective with the integration of space assets.
- [38:33]
D
Not long ago, the idea that people around the world could access highly accurate, near real time information about almost any place on the planet felt like science fiction. But microsatellites are rapidly turning, turning that possibility into reality with profound implications not only for governments and industry, but eventually for consumers as well. For Monocle in Espoo, Finland, I'm Petri Burtsov.
- [39:03]
B
Thank you, Petri. And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Philippe Malia and Alex von Tonzelman. The show was produced by Anita Riota and researched by Annelise Maynard. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.