Border Profiteers

The Austrian Institute of Technology, headquartered in Vienna, is the successor organisation to the Austrian Study Society for Atomic Energy. On Wikipedia, AIT is described as one of the largest non-university research institutions in Austria, giving the impression that it is a public institution. In its web presence, however, AIT presents itself as a company and in fact it is a limited liability company with several "subsidiaries", only 50.46% are owned by the state. The rest of the shares are held by the "Association for the Promotion of Research and Innovation" of the Federation of Austrian Industries.

Aselsan is one of the most important quasi-state owned Turkish arms companies and produces mainly electronic components for the core Turkish weapons systems. In the war over Nagorno-Karabakh in autumn 2020, which was fought mainly with combat drones, weapon systems from Aselsan were also used by Azerbaijan and are said to have contributed significantly to its victory.

Atos has a €11 billion revenue and more than 111,000 employees in 71 countries.

CEVISIO is a provider of "business software and services for German mid-sized companies" based in Torgau, Saxony. It emerged in 2003 as an independent company from the software department of an IT system house.

Deloitte is a global consulting firm headquartered in London and is one of the so-called "Big Four" auditing firms. It advises many offices, authorities and ministries and has already worked for almost all EU institutions - primarily in strategy consulting and human resources management tailored to this.

Everis is a global company dedicated to the "disruption" and "digital transformation" of government agencies and enterprises, i.e. helping them move their data and services to "the cloud". Everis has been part of the Japanese NTT DATA Corporation since 2013.

Giesecke & Devrient goes back to a company founded in 1852. Since then, the company, headquartered in Munich, has specialized in printing banknotes and identity documents. Accordingly, it was also involved in fascism and colonialism. In recent decades, it has expanded its activities to include digital payment processing, identification systems and databases.

Indra has its roots in the infrastructure and defense industries. Accordingly, Indra has also benefited extensively from several EU armaments research projects (including Ocean2020), positioning itself, by its own admission, as a "key player" in siphoning off EU armaments funds. Again, the company's focus is on information networks, cybersecurity, near-shore surveillance and unmanned systems.

In the 2021 financial year, Indra achieved revenue of € 3.390 million, had 52,000 employees, a local presence in 46 countries and business operations in over 140 countries.

Safran is one of the largest manufacturers in Europe in the aerospace sector. The company is a supplier to Airbus and is involved in many of the major armaments projects, especially in Germany and France, including the Tiger combat helicopter, the A400M military transporter and the French multirole combat aircraft Rafale (together with Thales and Dassault).

Sopra Steria is a result of the merger of the two French companies Sopra and Steria in 2014. Sopra began as a software company, while Steria was initially active primarily in research and development and increasingly in IT infrastructure. However, from 2000 onwards, both companies acquired other companies on a large scale and expanded their portfolios. Today (as of 2020), Sopra Steria describes itself with "46,000 employees" as a "leading European management and technology consultant" with the goal of "driving digital transformation." The German homepage lists a total of 13 business units, including "Aerospace", "Defence", "Government" and "Homeland Security".