Europe needs to emulate NATO’s approach to establishing a competitive sovereign defense and technology sector, Wendy Anderson and Martijn Rasser wrote in an opinion piece on Breaking Defense. Anderson is a national security leader with over two decades of experience, most recently as a senior vice president at Palantir and previously chief of staff at the U.S. Department of Commerce, while Rasser is senior director for economy at the Special Competitive Studies Project.
According to the two authors, NATO’s success is driven by a playbook grounded in a shared strategic mission. They noted that while the region has research institutions, a capable workforce and a strong foundation, it continues to face challenges in ensuring the competitiveness of European tech companies. They emphasized that the failure to duplicate NATO’s mission-focused playbook, which is driven by capital, procurement and urgency, is behind the problem.
They made four recommendations for fostering tech innovation to address the shortcomings. Among those is learning from the success of the alliance’s Project Maven, particularly its fast-lane procurement strategy, which used clear demand signals, fixed timelines and joint purchasing.
Other recommendations include expanding the alliance’s dual-use innovation pipeline, assuring investment in companies working on innovative and emerging technologies, and establishing a NATO-European Union Innovation Alignment to align investments, test infrastructure and adoption timelines.
NATO has been supporting several projects to ensure European leadership in several efforts, including the Innovation Fund and the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic initiatives, which have significantly aided Portugal’s TEKEVER program.