 Thank you everyone for attending my talk. I thought I was going to have to fly 34 hours and have nobody sort of sit here And that would have been more sort of mostly tragic for me and maybe a little bit sad So my name is John. I'm going to be talking about Our latest project project Athena where we're looking to sort of blow open the lid on defense Sort of information defense and military information particularly with the focus on Africa because you know We're all african defense review all four of us or sort of all five of us involved with it are Africans and it's our sort of wheelhouse and our sort of sort of area of expertise We do sort of leverage a other team of researchers, but for all intents and purposes. It's the five of us I should say having seen and attended some of these talks now I am a journalist first and foremost. So the you know, I'm not a developer They're actually two of my my colleagues are my brother and the other director actually The the developers who have developed the platform and dashboard that we're working on Hopefully I can answer some of your questions if you have questions about the software itself But if I sound like an idiot about that when I do give the answers I just know that's coming from a place of complete and utter ignorance So what what am I doing with all this? We're attempting to create a dashboard that's going to create a layer of transparency in the African defense sector There's very little transparency in the sector at the best of times I mean those of you who work we even sort of you know Tangentially sort of related or sort of interested in defense affairs even in the United States There's a lot of secrecy over this and it's even more so in compounded. So in Africa The defense sector is the least open worldwide and Africa is the least open of that least open sector You know that and that's creates a massive massive sort of fog of war if you will on terms of sort of a lack of information a creation of secrecy and thus a sort of vulnerability to corruption to arms proliferation and sort of illegal trafficking So we're essentially trying to break open that lid on defense data make it open make an open source platform where we can sort of look at Who is selling what to whom and where are these arms going those are two of the sort of fundamental questions? The consequences of this Of not doing this. I should say are pretty obvious I mean the the inability to accurately measure or catalog or sort of find this information Can essentially be measured in human lives, which I'll sort of be getting touching on a little bit as I go Just a little brief content warning in case you had noticed we're doing defense stuff here There's going to be images of war zones of conflict hardship You know, there will be some military equipment guns and tanks and things like that Nothing graphic in terms of sort of graphic or gratuitous violence, but just just a sort of heads up as we go So I'll just start right here This right here is a tank, but it's a specific tank as you can see in the top left It's a vickers mark one main battle tank and it was produced in the United Kingdom by BAE land systems way back when in the 1980s Nigeria bought 36 of these in 1981 At a price in sort of today's dollars of nine million per per tank not a bad price but 36 of these were bought back then and This has a major significance I'm going to use the tank as a vehicle excuse upon of Transporting you through how we're going to develop project Athena because this tank actually is essentially the sort of The main way that we can have explained what we at ADR are going to do or are doing I should say So how am I going to do this? We've got this tank and we're going to sort of talk about it in two major silos Okay, the first we're going to talk about The sort of minesweeper approach those of you played minesweeper back in the day or still do We'll know what I'm talking about those of you who don't we'll get there. Don't worry And that will relate to the sort of state-centric side of the defense research we're doing And then we have the scratch patch Side of things which I'm very curious to see if any of you know what a scratch patch actually is But again, we'll get there as we go And then finally I'll look at the actual tech of what we're doing and how all this information is going to be sort of placed into Something that can slice and dice this information into a useful and coherent fashion For for pretty much anybody who's interested mostly we're aiming this at journalists at humanitarian organizations Who would or should or need to know about these kinds of risks in terms of the areas of where they're going in terms of corruption risks? And so on So that's what we're going to do. So with this vickers mark one main battle tank on the left-hand side here We got the the nice sort of shiny version of it in the Nigerian armies warehouse Those are obviously just what have we got there? We got four of the 36 sitting in their warehouse What we have on the right is exactly the same tank But it's this is a photo captured sort of it's been recaptured from Boko Haram insurgents or terrorists depending on your politics in northeastern Nigeria this tank was purchased legally from BAE land systems in the United Kingdom and You know for all intents and purposes was purchased with a completely open and transparent defense deal And then wound up in the hands of what is now the most violent terrorist organization Worldwide they have forget about ISIS Boko Haram has killed more people in the world as a terrorist group than anybody else And that's kind of an alarming thing when you think about the fact that nobody at least on Twitter when we found this picture Actually knew what on earth this thing was in terms of what the tank was or where it comes from so immediately you start to see that there is this Lack of sort of real specific information about this and obviously I've seen this in the journalistic sphere as well people will see a tank and they don't actually understand what specific tank that is and It's not just a question of nerding out on the sort of technical details, especially if you know if you're an engineer You love that kind of stuff. I suppose It's important. It's important to know what the details is or are in terms of that that sort of tank So that tank even an old tank even a tank that was purchased 30 years ago by the Nigerian Army and completely above board Can still become a problem in the modern sort of a security environment say northeast Nigeria northeastern Nigeria If it falls into enemy hands, it has a hundred and five millimeter cannon It has been used in propaganda videos by Boko Haram as sort of firing said cannon You know, and that's that's an alarming thing when you have a terrorist organization or a militant group using a tank Anytime you have a non-state actor using a tank. That's quite alarming So to take this back to the two silo approach what I'm going to talk about is how This relates firstly to the state side on the on the left hand side and then the non-state side In the Boko Haram example that they're on the on the left. So minesweeper Project Athena and minesweeper is how we're going to make African military or African Department of Defense organizations Somewhat accountable or at least somewhat transparent whether or not they like it It doesn't matter and the same for sort of some of those global arms importers or exporters providing those sort of systems Okay The minesweeper approach is kind of what we're basing this on because a lot of this information is if it's not Easily available. It's just really really tricky to find that's not to say it's impossible But it is just really really difficult to find accurate data on what sort of what tanks or what? Rifles or what bombs are being purchased by what states and when and more importantly for how much? Okay So what we're trying to do is gather that research and gather that data You know just by sort of you know steady diligent patient research We all have at ADR. We have an expertise in actually doing this for our sins back in the day for the sort of dark side of you know, sort of For for profit consultancies. So we have an idea of how to find these procurement Sort of lists tender documents, you know, sort of open-source News coverage and things like that. There is another database the Cypri database Which is a useful sort of bottom water or the sort of lower watermark that we can use Which provides some export data for defense things But not all of it that tank that I mentioned for example is listed in the Cypri database But it's not listed as a mark one vickers mark one eagle main battle tank It's just listed as a main battle tank exported to Nigeria in 1981 So now we had to sort of make that research link between okay, it's a main battle tank But is it the one we want? That's just an idea of how we're trying to do that. So we're you know to take it back to Minesweeper We're never quite going to get Exactly the mine that we want But we're hoping through project Athena on the state side of things to eliminate as many of these gray boxes of Sort of confusion or of lack of transparency on that procurement side In order to give you as the researcher or citizen journalist or Humanitarian organization a better idea of what's going on in terms of that the sort of defense procurement space Okay, so what are the flags? How do we know that there's a flag there? You know, what's a corruption risk because obviously all militaries buy equipment, you know, we're at ADR We're not we're not pacifists. We do understand that states are going to buy tanks. They're gonna buy aircraft These things are gonna happen. So what is what what's the big deal? So how to raise those flags is when you start to look at the sort of things such as for example Underspending or overspending, you know, did that tank cost too much? Did it cost too little? Did it arrive way way later than it actually was sort of supposed to arrive all of these things are markers that weird We use to indicate possible risks in terms of malfeasance in terms of misconduct and in terms of potential corruption with the project Athena sort of purpose is not to Say this is a corrupt deal But it's to create those sort of things around which you can sort of start to raise the flag as a research and say This might be corrupt and let's look into it further and we're providing that sort of springboard that you can actually look for Okay So that's an essential the mind sweeper sort of things. I'm really blitzing through this but we're gonna get there Here's the fun part. Who knows what the hell this is This is a scratch patch. Does anyone know what it raise a show of hands? Does anybody know what a scratch patch is? Oh Thank you. There's one. Thank goodness. I used to think everybody knew what a scratch patch was But it turns out this is just a sort of artifact of my own childhood memory a scratch patch is basically a giant Sort of playground if you will For people to go into a sort of bed of semi-precious stones and you get a bucket you pay sort of I don't forget at what the price was and you get to sort of literally scratch around and pick the stones you want And sort of put them in your bucket and now you've got your sort of what you at least think are precious stones They're not precious. They're basically worthless, but you're picking you're picking what you think is sort of precious to you You then take it home and then annoy your parents forever by sort of leaving these things under the sides of couches and that When we were discussing, how do we start looking at the sort of bokeh rum tank tank side of things? How do we look at weapons that are not catalogued or not announced through the arm is sort of an arms deal or a procurement deal? How do we start to sort of look at that? And this is how we started to visualize things in terms of a scratch patch and then sort of ran into difficulties explaining that to anyone Who wasn't sort of a sort of child in sort of apartheid South Africa's or white South African with access to the scratch patch Nobody else knew what the hell we were talking about but now that you know you're part of it. So welcome You'll never be able to unsee this What the scratch patch essentially is is we're going to be cataloging and gathering as much Possible data that can be found social media Sort of you know by sort of we do sometimes get tip-offs and submissions of what you can see has weapons and and arms and explosives from captured stockpiles You know often on on social media You'll see militant groups and rebel organizations themselves post almost as a sort of form of propaganda The the various weapons they're using and those are very very good telltale signs for what What weapons are being used and more importantly where they came from? But this is just the tip of the spear what we're trying to do with ADR is we're actually sort of planning Almost as a bit of a product. Well, it is a prototype is to go to the DRC ourselves We're sending two researchers in country with the blessing and sort of embed of the the UN peacekeeping forces there Within a bed with the South African military and we're going to be stock or not stockpiling, but we're going to be cataloging armed sort of arms that have been captured or sort of recovered from armed groups and Sort of cataloging in terms of what are these weapon types? What are the serial numbers in the barrels in the receivers? And so start looking the ammunition types looking the little stamps sort of serial numbers and that the reason being is if you have a serial number You have an idea of where this thing was produced and you can start to actually track and trace Just where these weapons sort of came from and more importantly now how they've wound up in sort of a sort of non-state actor's hands Providing you know I talked to initially about sort of peeling the lid open on defense transparency We do that on the state side, but defense permit procurement data. This is how we peel it back from the other side By cataloging this data, so we're making this open source We're going to sort of open it up in terms of crowdsourcing trying to figure out You know if the internet can help us those of you are aware of Bellingcat a major sort of OSINT research group Have done this to great success in sort of Syria and the Ukraine as well So we're kind of hoping to do something similar For Sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa if we can get enough information on it So now very briefly in the space of about a minute The tech which is probably what a lot of you are mostly interested in This is just a screenshot from the scratch patch side of things Where we're looking at sort of trying to map and catalog Weapon instances and sort of objects as and when and how we gain sort of gain them Obviously when we go to the DRC, we're going to have a big sort of even deeper red color there once we've got a whole bunch of information there But we're trying to essentially create this searchable Index for researchers to basically say I want to know how many Chinese aka pattern Assault rifles for example have been cited in Central Africa That information doesn't exist. It just does not exist not in any coherent sort of way So we're trying to actually create that coherent sort of pattern about it The the sort of details about it the sort of stack obviously our database will be built. We're using a thing called Elastic search. I think which uses archival and logging information, which is kind of its speciality So that's going to be a sort of a big help with this stuff Especially with the procurement data because that's literally just logging and archiving documents And then using kibana as the the visualization tool From that so yeah, that's pretty much in a very very quick sort of nutshell what we're doing with project Athena You know and again Hopefully you guys have got some questions about all of that stuff because I'd love to talk about it some more. Thank you Yes, the Yes is the answer to Where's it gone? Here we go This little thing. This isn't just something we found on the internet This is from a previous project we did where we sent journalists to South Sudan to uncover reports of human engineer or repop you human Repopulation or human engineering by the South Sudanese government It's you if you sort of just Google South Sudan African defense, so it's on our website pretty good story I think you should all read it is great But anyway point being is we had hundreds of gigs of footage and data and research in a country where it's illegal to photograph military personnel It's risky, but at the same time we encrypted the data we kept sort of USB Sticks in our socks and you just sort of you you take that risk with something like the DRC There's less of a risk because we're kind of doing it at the sort of invitation of the United Nations So that that does help a lot We're not expecting the Nigerian military for example to be friends with us You know if we uncover Nigerian sort of procurement, you know talking about that tank for example Weirdly we're doing this, you know We're also focusing on South Africa as a case study as well for this because that Africa is not you know despite You know South Africans consider themselves the Texans of Africa We think we're the biggest thing there and everything everything else kind of pales and significance We're kind of like the narcissists of of the world, but We're taking a look at South Africa because we're not immune to defense corruption either And we were sort of looking at that and weirdly we have got a bit of cooperation actually with the South African military nothing official But but certainly there's there's no pushback We do expect that to kind of change as we go into other other areas. Yeah Sorry You just mentioned that you Project Athena reason slacks are not be since in corruption I didn't mention that you know you check to see what say the price was sold what you know How the arms are sold and what I'm just curious as to like how do you how hard how does the project know that? so You will often find That I'm just trying to think of a good example, but something like a an aircraft for example I'm thinking of a recent thing we worked on in Angola where Angola purchased. I think it was seven su 32 flankers something like that for the princely sum of a billion dollars, which is way too much for that thing the jets were obsolete and all that Angola boasted about it They literally sort of were quite happy to say hey, we're spending a billion dollars on arms because for them It was a way of projecting military power. Hey, we're spending all this money in military means we're serious about it Other ways as often defense companies themselves will advertise it In the case of that tank for example BAE land systems the producer is obliged by their country's export law to announce Their their export destination and how much they're they're paying for it. That's not always the case particularly in sort of Russian exporters and Chinese exporters you often find that data is just Way more difficult to find And in that case that we kind of have to go a little bit further There's often local blogs where we have to go and use Google translate to figure out what Russian or Chinese is for This amount of money for this thing and it's not perfect. It's not accurate, but it's it's it's better than nothing And then we need to sort of extract or sort of compare that to the market cost for that class of weapon Which is generally quite well known within the defense industry Yeah There are people there is the the five of us and we have a network of researchers that we're using because it's it's incredibly niche research To be able to sort of know your Marco and vickers from an you know Sort of t72m from a t72k from you know It's it's very difficult research and we I mean if if anybody has any ideas about how to automate So please come talk to me. You will save me so many gray hairs in the future. Yeah Yeah, yeah, I was just wondering if you are developing using a That standard for modeling all that that you have Because I can see that to be very useful I mean beyond the the scope of the geographic scope that you you are working on but yeah America with all the war on drugs for instance. Yeah all the trafficking and so on even though That information that might not be open now. Yeah, it's text on there's some standard So at least is something and that people can just look into that and kind of Evolve from from that and it is available. Yeah, that's a good question actually So we're we're not project complete just yet We're hoping to sort of get this ready and rolled out by the before the end of the year But actually as we've been working on this it's actually South Africa's elections today I'm South African in case you hadn't noticed and we're having our national elections and we when we're working on So we're thinking this would actually be a great tool To visualize elections because essentially instead of sorry. I'm just trying to flick to it There we go, you know instead of tanks and weapons as being the objects your objects could be voters They could be constituents. It could be drug dealers in in South America. There could be Any kind of sort of object database and I think to answer your question is yes We certainly intend to make this available. We are in partnership with Code for Africa who generally Prefer us to have a github for everything so that you know everyone can sort of take a look see I hope I'm answering that sort of tech side again I'm not quite the developer but the idea is to develop this methodology as we go so that people can use this for other things We're kind of thought quite narrowly in terms of using it for defense outside of Africa But there's no reason if you think about outside the box why this couldn't be integrated into any number of other similar kinds of sort of projects where you've got procurement and you've got things that are Related to procurement, but perhaps sort of a bit off the books as it were Yeah, I hope that answers your question. I don't know a little bit Yeah, I did two questions One is why the name project Athena? It seems like to be like quite overloaded and it doesn't seem super relevant to Greek guide to to African homeland or whatever and to a lot of this data you're talking about has a Statistical like variance to it. It's not a hundred percent, right? So you point an image off Twitter that that is posted by somebody who might be related to some Entity that might be the thing you're looking at and I wonder if you thought about how to relate that in your Visualizations and how you explain this to the public. So I mean having worked in defense data in the past I've always been very careful to say like this is a weapon from this group at this point And I see a lot of assertions like that in your talk. I'm just curious how you Talk about that certainly so I'm glad you asked about the Athena name Our initial preference was actually for Oya, which is an African goddess of war and conflict and things like that But the idea is for this tool to be used sort of internationally And the sad thing is it's just Athena is a far more relatable, you know, sort of understandable term than Oya Unfortunately, oh, yeah, we've used now for another mapping tool that we've got I I would love to change it and it's not set in stone So we might depending Depending how we feel as we go further on actually sort of because we actually wanted to I should say that But we're also trying to get this tool as widely used as possible So it's it's kind of a catch-twint. What's not a catch-twint, too It's just a sort of cost benefit that we've sort of sort of decided to do on the data Absolutely agreed. It's you know, especially, you know, when I you know I am a journalist by day as well for for the normal political stuff And we when we're not being hacked by the Russians encounter sort of fake imagery and stuff like that as well And I would say as as much as social media is related It's sort of human-filtered as it were, you know, we have the five of us We're hoping I did mention crowdsourcing but perhaps only too briefly To adopt a sort of Bellingcat kind of model here where we sort of open this up To citizen researchers and say can you geolocate or sort of reference or sort of verify that this is actually This assault rifle from this area In the case of the DRC, that will be our own primary research So that's at least we we can use as a kind of like control study for them because obviously we want to have as clean a start as possible In in running this sort of project So we would like to have as sort of pure kind of research and material as possible So our catalog image of an assault rifle Could for all intents and purposes be a tweet because it's hey from this location This picture with this description We're just doing that ourselves instead of putting it on social media But the fields and objects that we would put into Athena in terms of the database would be more or less similar But then obviously as we go out information gets like it's perfect and then scrutiny needs to be a little bit more Sort of rigorous, I think as we go Okay Um So Please forgive me if this is if this is a very sort of naive question If you just abandoned kind of worries about like logistics and funding and all of the work that you have to do because this is a massive amount of work It's really impressive What what would be like the dream pathway to impact like if you if I asked you to just be like Like just imagine like the best case scenario for this project Well, who would pay attention and what would they do as a result? I mean honestly in a perfect world it would be if we could change this from project Athena to I thought it was me with that microphone change it from project Athena to wiki weapons You know and turn it into a sort of wikipedia level kind of thing where you have active sort of citizen engagement and contribution To this this knowledge Because it's it's it's our firm belief the whole reason we're doing this aside from we're not aside It's not the primary thing is not to nerd out on weapons The primary reason we're doing this is because we we genuinely believe this information needs to be made open source It needs to be Sort of opened up and made public domain whereas at the moment it absolutely is not Um, and that's that's the sort of mission we're trying to do this, you know, you mentioned funding and effort This is what we can do right now But again in a perfect world if we had more more sort of hands on deck and a little bit more funding and things like that Yeah, wiki weapons would be great. Also a cool name as well, I suppose. Yeah I think that's all we got for questions Thank you