While in the US there is a civil war over military AI, a European one has sneaked into the French Armed Forces: Mistral

One of the big topics of conversation in recent weeks is the civil war in the United States. between two of the AI ​​giants and the Government itself. To sum up, Anthropic gave in his artificial intelligence Claude to the Pentagon to integrate it into all its systems along with Palantir. It is estimated that it has been a key tool for capture Nicolás Madurobut also to attack Iranbut since the US wanted to go further and Anthropic refused, OpenAI took its place.

It is a very strange situation because the result could be that The US blacklists Anthropic as if it were Huawei. It would be the first time they have done that to an American company and it is something that tells us two things. The first is that governments need big technology companies and their tools. The second is that technology companies also have a lot to gain.

And, while all that noise is happening in the United States, in Europe another AI company has ‘sneaked’ into its country’s security systems. We refer to a Mistral that, without making noisehas been building its portfolio of contacts in European defense systems for some time.

A local AI for the security of Europe

With all the spotlights pointing to ChatGPT, Claude and Chinese equivalents such as DeepSeekothers have been carving out a niche for themselves. Almost without a sound, and overnight, a French company called Mistral was building multilingual models that rivaled the American alternatives that captured all eyes.

Founded in June 2023, Mistral will soon converted in the French technological jewel, but also in the Europe’s AI gem. Its managers, engineers who came from Google (deepmind) and Meta, managed to attract the attention of NVIDIA, ASML, Samsung, IBM, Salesforce or a Microsoft that invested 15 million euros and incorporated Mistral models into Azure.

Mistral’s policy is to release the code of its models so that anyone can analyze, use and adapt it. According to them, it is something that will accelerate innovation and, without the muscle of the American giants, their approach is to a large model with other smaller and specialized ones. At the beginning of this year, the bombshell arrived.

The Ministry of the Armed Forces of France arrive to an agreement with Mistral AI to integrate the company’s models, software and services in public entities related to the ministry. For example, the Atomic Energy Commission, the National Office of Aerospace Studies and Research, the Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service of the Navy and, also, the Armed Forces.

It is the Ministry of Defense Artificial Intelligence Agency that will supervise all operations, but the idea is to “deploy Mistral tools in France’s infrastructure, ensuring full control over data and critical technologies.” From the Government, it was noted that, with these new tools, they can prepare the Armed Forces for the challenges of the future.

However, the fact that Mistral is the Defense model in France may matter little to us… unless we take two things into account. The first: shortly after this agreement became known, public information on how Mistral is seeking Defense contracts outside France.

They are getting more and more into this path, signing agreements with Helsinga German defense startup, and Arthur Mensch, CEO of Mistral, argued that its AI models will be “instrumental in the development of a new generation of defense systems.”

Here comes the second thing to take into account. Mensch himself commented that these tools “will ensure Europe’s strategic advantage on the global stage”. This is important because Europe is now at a point where it has realized that the partners and allies of the past may not be the same as those of the future.

European sovereignty

At the user level we see movements like those of independence from American technologiesbut at a political level, Mistral responds to that search for European sovereignty. Instead of leaving your Defense-related systems in the hands of a foreign company, these agreements mean that it is a European company that is on the inside.

And, in the end, this is not just about AI. In recent months we are seeing how Europe is moving to have a more powerful voice in terms of semiconductors, computing for artificial intelligence and even in the new space race.

For a long time it has been said that others innovate and Europe legislates, but the current situation It has caused Europe to continue legislating while doing everything else.

Images | Mistral AI, Amio Cajander

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