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Local Sweden
2 days ago
- Business
- Local Sweden
Podcast pioneer to drone destroyer: Swedish founder's defence start-up
Karl Rosander is best known as co-founder of the world's largest independent podcast hosting company, Acast. But in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, he has entirely reinvented himself, co-founding the drone interceptor start-up Nordic Air Defence. Advertisement Karl Rosander takes a break from his lunch to show off the Kreuger 100 interceptor on the conference table in front of him. "It's actually here," he declares, picking up a model a little larger than a Toblerone bar or a cardboard tube for kitchen roll. "This is a prototype. It's not larger than this. This is the actual size." The interceptor is "unjammable", he says, "because today, drones can be autonomous, which means they don't have any range of signal between the drone and the operator." The company, he says, has developed "a special technology we're pretty secret about", with two patents pending. "What we do is that we take away expensive hardware and replace it with software and clever aerodynamics. That means we bring down the costs a lot and we can mass produce it." Advertisement The Kreuger 100 uses an innovative method to control and propel itself. Photo: Nordic Air Defence When I ask, however, if Nordic Air Defence, the company of which he is CEO, has produced a working prototype capable of flying at the speeds required to take down an Iranian Shahed drone, he avoids the question. "I always start a company by building hype around it. Nice design. You build hype, you have a couple of angles for the press. And what that means you will be attractive to capital but also to talented people that want to work with you." "What we're doing now it's we are getting production ready, and we're not there yet, but we are moving really fast, much faster than the old legacy industry that builds a very expensive, huge systems that take ten years to develop." Advertisement Karl Rosander is the co-founder of Acast. Photo: Malin Hoelstad/SvD/TT Rosander is one of Sweden's most prolific tech entrepreneurs. He co-founded the podcast platform Acast in 2013, leaving the board five years later. He then co-founded the media micropayments platform Sesamy. The idea for Nordic Air Defence was brought to him in late 2023 in his role as an angel investor. Three people, one of whom was "a very technically skilled person", presented to him with a plan to use "software and clever aerodynamics" to make a cheap drone interceptor. "I said 'okay, is this going to work for real? Because if it does, it's going to be huge success, and we need it fast to meet the threat'." Advertisement They hired a physicist involved in defence research, who used "advanced simulation software" to check that the idea would work, and when they concluded that it would, he decided to go all in. "In the third meeting with investors, it suddenly came to me. 'I've spent the last 27 years learning how to be an entrepreneur just to do this project'. So I told them in the meeting, 'I'm going to be the CEO'. Since then I've been working day and night." For him, there is no essential difference between launching a media software platform like Acast or Sesamy, and developing military hardware. "An industry that's about to change. That's my sweet spot," he says. "It doesn't matter what area it actually is - it's fun to work with defense and also with tech, because you can scale a lot. When I started with the company 15 to 16 months ago, you could see that this is an industry that has to change rapidly." Rosander is not the only tech investor looking at defence. Daniel Ek, the Spotify founder, has become a major investor in the German drone company Helsing. He argues that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has transformed the perception of the defence industry. "Before that happened, as an entrepreneur in tech, or any kind of entrepreneur, it was not nice, it was ugly. It was sort of better to work with gambling," he says. "Now I get a hug when I tell people I'm working in defense. So it's an industry about to change. That's why I'm here." The fundamental idea behind Nordic Air Defence is simple. A single Patriot missile costs $4 million, and even the cheapest air defence missiles cost $200,000, Rosander explains. This makes stopping drone attacks prohibitively expensive. In Ukraine, Russia now brings drones to their targets at very high altitudes so that they cannot be shot down by machine guns, which are much cheaper, and then makes them dive. If someone can develop a drone interceptor that can take out a swarm of drones at a low cost, it would be a game changer, particularly if it could be easily manufactured in Europe. Whether Nordic Air Defence can achieve this feat is another question. On their website, the company displays an image of a box containing nine interceptors. Rosander is vague, however, when asked exactly what hardware his company is able to replace with software, or on how the revolutionary electrically driven "pulsed air" propulsion system will work. "We are taking away a lot of controlling mechanisms, like servos, things that are expensive. On an aeroplane, you have a lot of flaps and systems. You have to do tests, tests, tests. And we take away that. We have this innovation in our way to control this little vehicle. No one has done this before." Perhaps this is because he is the CEO and frontman rather than the technical leader. But he is still confident that his company can execute its vision faster than established defence giants like Saab, Lockheed-Martin, or BAE Systems. "Those big companies have great innovation, but they are slower than we are. Until a year ago, the procurement agencies were buying systems on a ten-year scheme. So they've already bought what's going to be delivered. "But now everything has changed, because we need new stuff. And those large companies, they want to partner up with the companies like us. Sometimes they buy companies like us." Advertisement Rosander's colleague, Jens Holzapfel, who previously worked on security for the Swedish public sector, chips in to add that the Swedish Armed Forces are belatedly realising the strategic significance of drones. "We're in the middle of that reform at the moment. Before the second Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Swedish army and many other European armies considered drones to be something very exclusive. You had low numbers. They were reusable. You used them for reconnaissance rather than for strikes. You basically thought of drones as unmanned aircraft. You didn't look at drones as ammunition, which we're seeing in Ukraine today." Even so, his says, it will still take several years before the Swedish Armed Forces start to approach the drone capability of the Ukrainians. "They have innovated out of necessity, fighting for their lives. We have the luxury of not having to do that yet." So, back to the question of what current prototypes of the Kreuger 100 can actually do. Nordic Air Defence is not yet allowing journalists to visit its research and prototyping unit. "But do you have something that can actually fly?" I ask. "We can fly," he responds. "Yes. We can say that."
New Statesman
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Solvej Balle's day without end
Photo by Judit Nilsson / SvD / TT Tara Selter runs an antiquarian books business with her husband, Thomas. They live on the outskirts of a town in northern France, although Tara often travels to book fairs here and there, as she has done – to one in Bordeaux – when her life changes. On her way home she stops in Paris to collect some books for clients. She checks in to a hotel on the evening of 17 November, keeps numerous appointments on the 18th, burns her hand while spending the evening with friends and calls Thomas from her room before going to sleep. But the newspaper she picks up at breakfast the next day is dated the 18th. A simple mistake, she thinks, until someone in the dining room drops a slice of bread and hesitates over what to do with it, just as she watched him do the day before. She checks other newspapers at a kiosk; withdraws cash and studies the receipt; calls her husband, who doesn't remember the previous night's conversation. She still has the burn, but everything else she did on the 18th, including the purchasing of books, which she finds back on the shelves of the shops where she bought them, has been reset. For Tara, the 18th of November is happening again. In fact On the Calculation of Volume begins on Tara's 121st 18 November, which enables her journal entries to recount her outlandish situation with a degree of calmness and clarity (these, as becomes clear, not being the same as acceptance or understanding). By this point she has returned home – while the date resets at some point in the night, physically she remains wherever she has travelled to – and is living secretly in the spare room of her house. She knows each of her husband's movements, when he will go out and return home, when he will make a noise that will mask her own, and so can inhabit the day like a ghost, keeping her journal and working on theories while remaining unseen and unheard. Solvej Balle herself has been largely unseen and unheard since stunning literary Denmark with her 1993 story collection According to the Law. She downplays accounts of reclusiveness, protesting that all she did was leave Copenhagen. But On the Calculation of Volume nevertheless represents an extraordinary late-career success: the first five self-published books (with two to come) became a sensation in Denmark, the first three together winning the 2022 Nordic Council Literature Prize, and attracting publishers around the world. In the UK Faber & Faber has published the first two books simultaneously (translated by Barbara J Haveland), with the third following in November. The first has been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize. When we meet Tara she is keeping herself apart, but there was an earlier time when she would tell Thomas, every morning, what had happened to her, convincing him with her uncanny knowledge of the day ahead: ' I could tell him when the rain would stop and when it would start again, I could tell him that the postman would come by at 10.41 during a light shower, I could describe how soon after that a long-tailed titmouse would flit about the branches of the apple tree, and I could predict that at 5.14 in the afternoon, in the pouring rain, our neighbour would hurry past the fence at the bottom of our back garden, turn right and jog down the path between our house and his own.' Together they discuss what has happened, formulate possible solutions, and carry out experiments. But as time goes on, or in Tara's case doesn't, she tires of having to explain things anew each day. She is also disappointed by Thomas's refusal to accompany her to Paris, thinking the door leading out of this loop in time must be located where she entered it. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The first two books of Balle's project achieve a compelling balance of action and thought. Tara thinks a lot but also does while she thinks. As well as being good at this, Balle is also preternaturally gifted at answering questions just as they start to form in a reader's mind. The first that occurs concerns how Tara got from Paris to Clairon-sous-Bois (those indoctrinated by the Harold Ramis film Groundhog Day might expect her to return to the same place each time she wakes). She cannot move in time, but she can move in space. This opens fields of possibility. One of the dominant episodes in the second book involves a scheme to manufacture a year by travelling to different latitudes: following a chance meeting with a meteorologist she travels to Sweden and Norway for winter, Cornwall for spring, southern Spain for summer. If there's a kind of madness to the idea, it's a madness that helps keep her sane. As for all these different climates coexisting on a single autumn day, it's a great advert for the Schengen Area. Another involving subplot concerns what Tara can hang on to versus what disappears when time resets. Through experiment she learns the rules are knowable but not immutable: 'We bought things and left them lying in the kitchen. We opened them or left them unopened. We observed and we kept notes. Usually, the items that we hadn't opened disappeared during the night and went back to where we had bought them. We took things up to the bedroom with us at night, I bought a jar of olives and placed it on the windowsill, I put a toothbrush, unopened and still in its box, under my pillow. The following morning the toothbrush was still there, box and all, but the jar of olives was gone and a packet of tea which Thomas had put in a kitchen cabinet had also vanished.' Tara adapts her behaviours as she becomes more familiar with what is and isn't possible. If she wants to keep a new dress she must wear it immediately, with nothing underneath, to 'train' it to stay with her. She also learns that the food she consumes stays consumed. If she goes to a café and orders the same dish several days in a row, eventually that dish disappears from the menu. She finds this fact deeply disturbing. It makes her 'a monster in a finite world'. One of the most impressive things about Balle's project is the care she has taken in thinking about Tara's predicament both practically and philosophically, and the sedulousness with which she explores it. The book Thomas is (repeatedly) reading in Clairon-sous-Bois is called Lucid Investigations, the title of which works for Balle's novel, too: even when the logic becomes head-spinning, the prose maintains its methodical, elegant pace. And while individuals might differ from Tara in their priorities (I imagine some would consider a fling earlier than day 578), her situation says something universal and profound about loneliness and depression, as well as the monotony that characterises certain stretches of our lives. By the close of book two, three years have passed and Tara is in Düsseldorf, where she seems to have a pretty nice time. She squats in an old architect's studio, spends days reading in cafés, watches a local football team win promotion (actually impossible in Germany in November) and attends university lectures. She knows she is privileged, 'that my cage is gilded', but on the final page its bars are rattled: the next 18 November, it seems, will be very different from the last. On the Calculation of Volume Solvej Balle, translated by Barbara J Haveland Faber & Faber, 192pp, £12.99 Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from who support independent bookshops [See also: The second birth of JMW Turner] Related This article appears in the 30 Apr 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The War on Whitehall
Local Sweden
25-04-2025
- Politics
- Local Sweden
Sweden launches inquiry to safeguard academic freedom at universities
The government has appointed an inquiry to look into whether legislative changes are needed to strengthen academic freedom – a topic which has grabbed headlines after the Trump government's attempts to crack down on diversity and inclusion initiatives at universities. Advertisement "Sweden must stand up for academic freedom when other countries dismantle it," said Education Minister Johan Pehrson in a statement. Since Donald Trump was sworn in for a second term as US President, the situation for academics in the US has worsened. The White House has made moves to control research funding and demanded that universities eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, as well as changing their processes of hiring and admissions. Trump has even frozen billions of dollars in federal funds to Harvard after the university refused to bow to White House demands. Advertisement Even Swedish universities, most of which are state-run, have raised concern about a deteriorating situation in terms of academic freedom at home. Four out of ten employees report having been subjected to threats or harassment, according to a statement from Uppsala University. "We can see how researchers in the US, one of the world's leading research nations, are now looking to leave the universities. We think that researchers should be free, curious, and a little bit irritating," Pehrson told a press conference on Thursday. "That's how we get world-class research which builds a Sweden we can believe in." Back in 2023, the government received criticism from academics responsible for teacher training courses for "micromanaging" courses and not giving researchers enough academic freedom when it proposed a new curriculum. "It's hard to see this as anything more than an extremely hard attack on Swedish schools, teachers and teacher training – on primarily ideological grounds with no strong empirical support," read an article in SvD from two leading academics within teaching. "I'm listening closely to that discussion," Pehrson said on Thursday. The inquiry will be led by Anna-Sara Lind, professor of public law at Uppsala University, and has until June 30th 2026 to report.
Local Sweden
18-02-2025
- Lifestyle
- Local Sweden
Swedish word of the day: mammakorv
Mammakorv is a compound word which literally translates as "mummy sausage" or "mum sausage". But what is it? It appears to have been coined in an article in Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) from February 2nd, 2025, by fashion writer Alice Aveshagen, who described them as 'a formless down cylinder that seems to be suffocating women of the Western world'. They are long, knee-length puffer jackets which, according to Aveshagen, seem to be particularly popular among 'new middle class mums born in the late 80s or early 90s'. She added that they are 'a type of standing bag, often in black, grey or beige, or yellow if you're feeling daring'. Aveshagen had originally dismissed them as a Stockholm phenomenon, until she moved to London and saw them everywhere. 'They're haunting me as soon as I dare step outside,' she wrote. The word can be used to describe the jackets by themselves or the people wearing them. After Aveshagen's article was published, usage of the word has, to say the least, exploded in Sweden, with strong opinions on both sides of the mammakorv divide. Author Maria Sveland, writing in Expressen, said the debate was yet another example of 'classic mammamobbning ' (another compound word meaning 'mum-bullying' or perhaps better translated as mum-shaming). In Kristianstadsbladet, Johanna Schreiber described them as 'a sign of liberation', representing the privilege mothers have of 'being able to glide between the roles of mother and woman'. Dagens Nyheter's Lisa Magnusson wrote an article with the headline 'all I want is to be an unsexy mammakorv ', before quickly adding that comfort has its limits – she could never sink so low as to wear a pair of crocs. Public radio station P4 Kronoberg counted 95 mammakorvar and even one pappakorv in an hour in central Växjö, while P4 Stockholm found 100 of the shapeless jackets in the same amount of time in the capital. Don't miss any of our Swedish words and expressions of the day by downloading The Local's app (available on Apple and Android) and then selecting the Swedish Word of the Day in your Notification options via the User button What about the women who wear them? Swedish media have carried out countless interviews with mammakorv -wearers (mammakorvbärare in Swedish), with most of the women praising their jackets for being cosy, practical, or warm. 'I don't want to dress like my children,' Johanna, who described herself as 'a proud mammakorv ', told P4 Stockholm. 'I want to dress like an adult.' Marie, who was the hundredth mammakorv to walk past the radio station's reporter during her count for the jackets, also praised them for their comfort. 'I love them, mammakorvar,' she said. 'Everything has to be comfortable now, I don't want anything that's tight anywhere. It's so incredibly comfortable and I'm never cold, never have to wear an extra thick skirt or thermals – it's all in one!' Example sentences: Jag älskar min mammakorv, den är så himla praktisk. I love my mammakorv, it's so practical. Jag hatar när jag får en kall rumpa när jag sitter och leker med mitt barn i sandlådan. Skaffa en mammakorv då! I hate it when I get a cold bum when I'm sitting by the sandpit playing with my child. Buy a mammakorv then!
