00:05Speaking of AI, smaller countries in Europe can also play a role in the global AI race.
00:11That leases a message from Suvlakia's Secretary for Foreign and European Affairs.
00:16He's been speaking to our correspondent Li Jianhua at the Web Summit in Lisbon.
00:20AI is changing the game because it was never easier to grow your company faster.
00:27It was never easier to make your own products so accessible, so easily.
00:33You can have your cooperating companies or employees or partners all over the world with AI connecting you.
00:40So this is the time where you can really make the breakthrough decisions or breakthrough innovations.
00:46And this is something what I believe will help the competitiveness.
00:49Because, you know, especially in EU, we are kind of struggling with being competitive to China, to US.
00:54And this AI technology can be a game changer also for us.
00:58Europe has been saying that it is falling behind the United States into China, as you said just now.
01:04So from Central Europe's perspective, where do you think is the biggest gap?
01:10Talking about startups or digital economy, there was not enough capital in Europe or in EU.
01:16Big companies or the companies that wanted to grow the scale-ups were relocating to US in the past.
01:23This is not the issue anymore, but I believe Europe needs to be more competitive based on its regulation.
01:29That's a big hurdle.
01:31And also based on the available workforce.
01:34So we still have a lot of talent.
01:36We just need to capitalize on it better.
01:38I want to talk about the Three Cs initiative, and Slovakia has made artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure priorities of
01:46the initiative as a president.
01:48So does Central Europe and Eastern Europe have the energy infrastructure to support that?
01:53We want to focus more on digital and AI cooperation.
01:56Because these countries have a lot of competitive advantages.
02:00For example, Slovakia.
02:02We have a lot of or enough electricity supply for this type of projects.
02:07We are going to open a new nuclear power plant.
02:11Or actually, the power plant is already up and running up to some percentage, and it will be in full
02:16operation within a few weeks.
02:18We will have a lot of energy surplus that can be used for this type of companies.
02:22We have enough water supply to make the cooling downs.
02:26There is enough infrastructure in the optical fiber network.
02:30So Slovakia with neighboring countries can be a good hub for these data centers or AI factories.
02:36But there are also other areas where we are very competitive, where Slovak companies belong to number one, number two
02:42in the world.
02:43For example, for me, the future is post-quantum cybersecurity and post-quantum computing.
02:51Speaking about cybersecurity and Europe has been attacked recently, do you think it is a wake-up call for Europe
03:00now to step up cybersecurity efforts?
03:02It is something that Europe has to have in mind now with the hybrid wars and with the attacks.
03:08We need to be, we as a Europe, we need to be ready for all kinds of attacks.
03:12It's something that shows us that we need to invest more into cybersecurity and maybe develop the solutions that will
03:21make Europe safe again.
03:22How can you achieve that?
03:25Well, there is actually a lot of money from the EU structural funds.
03:29EU is supporting these kind of innovations.
03:32We just need to put more focus on it and think also for the future, not only for now, what
03:37is happening now,
03:38but also think what can happen in the three, five, seven years with this type of cybersecurity or cyber attacks.
03:45As I mentioned, the post-quantum cryptology will be the key.
