Increasingly young and skilled European engineers are looking enviously across the water to the United States.
Who can blame them? There, they would be working in a rich and highly developed defense industry – one where the Pentagon, the venture capitalists and the technology companies march in lockstep with the shared aim of making America’s defense the most advanced in the world.
Organizations such as the Defense Innovation Unit and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency drive the commercial embrace of technology like artificial intelligence (AI) and drones and promote the kind of long-term, high risk-research that can be transformative. The market is large, novel contracting mechanism are in place to speed procurement and funding is abundant.
Europe carries a cost, but it also holds deep reserves of strength. Its long tradition of empirical research, open debate and engineering excellence remains intact, supported by world-class institutions and talent.
The challenge is not capability but conversion: turning that intellectual and technical depth into sovereign technology companies that can grow. In a more volatile world, with conflict returning several theaters, the question is not whether Europe has what it needs, but whether it can mobilize and retain that talent early enough. If it fails to do so, it risks ceding certain advantages – not through weakness, but through the under-exploitation of its own strengths.
A fragmenting alliance
For many decades, Europe has been able to rely on its muscular American ally for support. American power and American political backing have formed the backbone of European defense.
We have fought together, for better or worse, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. And along the way, Europe has integrated American components into its defense systems – inadequate as they currently are. The software, encryption keys, satellite links, sensors and other advanced technology have originated in the U.S., which is the world leader in many of these areas.
The problem is twofold.
First, the transatlantic alliance rested on the assumption that broadly speaking, the U.S. and Europe would be aligned politically. At the very least, they would share a similar outlook about geopolitics. That isn’t the case any longer. NATO spending, the Ukraine war, the Greenland crisis, Iran – all revealed fault lines between the current U.S. administration and its counterparts in Europe.
The second problem, related to the first, is that if the U.S. disagrees with European action, and European technology is full of American components, then in theory, that technology could be rendered unusable. This is not paranoid thinking, but a basic principle that underpins modern technology supply chains.
One solution is for Europe to spend more on its own defense. It has at least pledged to do this, even if some countries are taking this responsibility more seriously than others.
But money alone isn’t enough. For all of Europe’s economic might, it lacks the conditions to support effective and fast rearmament – conditions which exist in the United States. There are signs that things are changing in Europe, but there are still stubborn and deep-rooted habits in the defense world in Europe that we have to break as a matter of urgency.
Rearmament requires a different model
Mindset is one part of it. Europe has grown used to thinking of war as distant, and that assumption no longer holds. But rearmament fundamentally requires not just urgency but a different model.
Rather than defaulting to large incumbents, Europe should carve out more space for smaller, faster firms already advancing critical tech in areas like photonics and advanced materials. One option is to dedicate a small share of defense budgets – say, one percent – to an innovation procurement function run by entrepreneurial teams operating across borders and with the mandate to find, fund and scale what works.
Communication and structure matter just as much. Europe has the engineers, but it underuses them. The issue has to do with access and incentives. Procurement remains parochial and inward-looking, which fragments demand and slows down scale. A more integrated approach, involving shared standards, pooled funding and cross-border programs, would help a great deal.
The aim should be simple: build capabilities strong enough that others depend on them.
The United States remains an ally, bound to Europe by history and interest. But alliances are strongest when they rest on joint ability, not dependency. Europe should aim to stand on its own feet and, where it can, set the pace.
And that starts with Ukraine. Europe must ramp up its support for the Ukrainians now – in volume, speed and ingenuity. The battlefield is already a test bed for new systems, from drones to electronic warfare. Europe has the talent to lead here. If it can translate that talent into active, deployed technological capability, and do that faster than others can, it will not only boost Ukraine, but will establish a form of deterrence that Russia will recognize and respect.
There are signs of movement in the right direction. But they are uneven and too slow. The gap between what Europe should do and what it is doing remains far too wide. Closing it is now a matter of urgency.
