Recorded live at the Digital Ships Summit in Athens, Nick Chubb and Raal Harris debate whether shipping should prioritise efficiency or resilience as AI reshapes technology decisions.

From vendor dependence and workforce skills to governance and boardroom accountability, they ask how operators can embrace automation without surrendering control or flexibility.

CHAPTERS

• 00:20 IT's move from support to strategy
• 04:50 Episode partner: trusted fleet data
• 05:33 Efficiency or resilience?
• 09:42 Vendor lock-in and skills fade
• 15:14 Transforming organisations for AI
• 17:10 Leadership and AI governance
• 21:55 Measuring returns and building capability
• 27:11 Audience: data risks and shadow AI
• 32:29 Digital twins and human resilience

Live at the Digital Ships Summit in Athens, Nick and Raal begin with IT's move from back-office support to strategic decision-maker. What should shipping prioritise as technology becomes more central to operations?

Raal argues resilience must take priority over efficiency. Geopolitical disruption, recovery planning, vendor lock-in and skills fade can make efficient technology choices dangerously brittle. Nick calls this a false choice: resilience is unavoidable, while the bigger decision is how organisations transform for AI.

That requires informed leadership, practical governance, measurable returns and capabilities beyond IT. The audience confronts shadow AI, sensitive data and digital twins built from decades of institutional knowledge. They finish by considering how technology transformation can strengthen resilience rather than undermine it.

EPISODE PARTNER

Better decisions start with better data. But across maritime, fleet data is still fragmented, inconsistently standardised and uneven in quality.

A weak data foundation leads to unreliable decisions. The same is true for AI and analytics: they're only as good as the data they're fed. That's why getting the fundamentals right — data standards, structure and governance — has to come before scaling innovation.

When leaders trust the data, they move faster, invest with more confidence and turn digital ambition into measurable outcomes. Build trusted data foundations with insight. Follow the link in the episode description. Discover data solutions from Insight.

Two maritime conferences, one city, and two perspectives on shipping's future. Nick reports from Shipping UK, where geopolitics, resilience and digital investment dominated. Raal brings insights from Demystifying AI in Maritime, exploring trust, governance and seafarer wellbeing. Together, they examine the decisions maritime leaders can no longer afford to postpone.

CHAPTERS

• 00:00 Two conferences, one city: What you missed
• 01:12 Shipping UK: Geopolitics and national security
• 09:51 Resilience, decarbonisation and the true cost of shipping
• 14:01 Digital ROI: Measuring the return on technology investment
• 23:05 Demystifying AI in Maritime: From potential to practical application
• 27:47 The verification tax and AI's trust problem
• 30:24 Real-world AI applications and emerging risks
• 40:37 AI in the boardroom: Investment, accountability and people
• 50:31 Seafarers, shadow AI and the STEER project
• 55:14 AI bias and the importance of critical thinking

Nick and Raal compare notes from Shipping UK, hosted by the UK Chamber of Shipping, and Demystifying AI in Maritime, organised by Intent Communications. From national security to artificial intelligence, both events raised difficult questions about how shipping prepares for an increasingly uncertain future.

At Shipping UK, geopolitical risk dominated the conversation. A sobering keynote from Major General Paul Maynard highlighted the growing importance of commercial shipping to national security and the possibility that the UK may need to draw upon maritime expertise in a future conflict. But after decades of limited government investment in commercial maritime capabilities, is the industry equipped to respond?

The discussion turns to resilience and an uncomfortable economic reality: shipping may need to become more expensive. Building redundancy into supply chains, preparing for disruption and funding decarbonisation all require investment.

On a more practical note, Nick shares insights from his panel on digital return on investment. New benchmarking data reveals a significant jump in spending on AI and automation, while conventional IT budgets are being squeezed.

Across London, Raal attended Demystifying AI in Maritime, where the conversation has matured from excitement about AI's capabilities to more fundamental questions of trust and accountability.

Raal shares practical examples, including AI-powered food waste monitoring on cruise ships, alongside emerging threats from fraudulent certification, cyberattacks and information overload. A discussion with ABS also challenges the assumption that giving AI more context necessarily produces better answers.

The conversation then moves into the boardroom. How should directors evaluate AI investments when the technology is evolving faster than conventional governance processes? Finally, attention turns to seafarers, who are already adopting AI tools regardless of whether their employers have formal strategies in place.

EPISODE PARTNER

This episode is sponsored by GTT Marine.

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Eman Abdalla joins Nick Chubb and Raal Harris to discuss building SeaThrew Marine, why ownership matters for safety and seafarer welfare, and what meaningful maritime transformation demands. The conversation spans operational accountability, career reinvention, decarbonisation, collaboration, incentives, technology, and the challenge of turning ambition into everyday practice at sea.

CHAPTERS

• 03:31 Why ownership changes accountability
• 07:46 Commercial viability and seafarer safety
• 09:30 Using technology to reduce risk
• 11:58 Courage, culture, and difficult decisions
• 16:03 Why transformation fails at adoption
• 18:51 Transforming operations at Cargill
• 23:26 Turning operations into a P&L enabler
• 29:59 Leaving the corporate identity behind
• 33:12 Designing a career with intention
• 41:03 Decarbonisation beyond future fuels
• 47:55 Fixing incentives across the value chain
• 51:50 What effective collaboration requires
• 56:18 What comes next for SeaThrew Marine

Eman Abdalla joins Nick and Raal to explain why founding SeaThrew Marine was the culmination of a career spanning chartering, operations, logistics, governance and strategy, and why her original ambition was not simply to advise shipowners, but to own and operate vessels herself.

In Emans’s view, influence only goes so far. Charterers, managers and operators can set standards and shape behaviour, but ultimate responsibility for safety, seafarer welfare and investment decisions still rests elsewhere. Her aim is to build a business where commercial performance and operational accountability sit in the same place.

The conversation moves into the practical meaning of transformation. Eman argues that technology should do more than optimise fuel consumption: drones, better data, AI and redesigned processes should also reduce risk for seafarers and improve the quality of everyday decisions.

She also reflects on her time at Cargill, including the work of repositioning operations from a perceived cost centre into a function that protects and enables P&L. That required trust, stronger communication, talent development and a clear link between organisational values and daily decision-making.

The discussion then turns to career identity and Eman’s decision to leave the security and visibility of a major corporate role. She describes the vulnerability of separating her own professional identity from a large company name, alongside the freedom to pursue board work, entrepreneurship and problems where she believes she can have a direct impact.

Finally, the conversation examines shipping’s decarbonisation challenge. Eman argues that uncertainty over future fuels cannot become an excuse for ignoring operational efficiency today. Better voyage planning, port coordination, contractual incentives and data sharing could cut avoidable emissions now, but only if owners, charterers, ports, cargo interests and operators stop optimising their individual piece of the system in isolation.

EPISODE PARTNER

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