Europe’s defense tech debate is happening at a moment of war on the continent, strategic dependency, and a generational investment gap. Dual-use complexity and the ethical burden of innovation in a world shaped by conflict are all real topics – yet accountability, compliance, and robust guardrails are non-negotiable in defense tech. Any credible investor or founder in this space accepts that. The pace of VC may pressure traditional processes – but that’s precisely what venture capital exists to do. Speed does not equal recklessness.
While the ethical questions raised by Elke Schwarz are important and deserve attention, the debate also needs context: practical insights about industrial capacity, decades of underinvestment, and the role private capital now plays in closing urgent capability gaps – gaps that governments can no longer address alone.
The ecosystem will separate shortcuts from standards
As in every industry, there will be players who look for shortcuts. And there will be those who choose to build with rigorous assessments, ethical boundaries, and a long-term view. The ecosystem will sort them. Serious teams already hold themselves to a higher standard.
That distinction matters, and it applies to founders and investors alike. In this sector, accountability is the starting point, not an afterthought. Responsible venture teams and established industrial partners already treat compliance, export controls, and sanction regimes as foundational – for instance, our close cooperation with the Czechoslovak Group helps ensure strict compliance and practical industrialisation pathways.
Nothing about the venture model changes this. Venture capital compresses timelines, as it should; but speed in this sector is less about impatience and more about overcoming a system that has long been defined by heavy bureaucracy and multi-year procurement cycles.
One of the article’s central points – the discomfort around dual-use innovation during wartime – is more complex than the piece suggests.
The uncomfortable truth is that war accelerates technology. It always has.
Jet engines, cybersecurity, satellite systems, radars, medical imaging, drones, and the modern internet all emerged or matured under the pressure of conflict. This doesn’t make those conflicts any less tragic; it simply reflects the reality that urgency compresses development cycles. Acknowledging this does not make innovation less legitimate or less necessary.
Building for the long term, beyond any single war
Similarly, most of what’s being built today – autonomy, advanced sensing, secure data infrastructure, cyber protection, next-gen manufacturing, robotics – will serve Europe long after the war ends. Any war.
Serious players don’t view these advancements purely through a defense lens; they see them as part of rebuilding Europe’s strategic industrial capabilities. These technologies are the backbone of what Europe will need to remain competitive, resilient, and strategically independent in the decades ahead.
And this connects to a broader issue that is often missing from the debate: Europe has spent two decades outsourcing much of its industrial and technological base.
Not only defense: manufacturing, materials, semiconductors, robotics – we have allowed critical capacity to migrate elsewhere. In today’s fragile geopolitical climate, we find ourselves dangerously dependent on others for technologies that underpin our security and our economies.
We cannot enter an AI- and autonomy-driven era without rebuilding these capabilities at home. That requires investment – significant, fast investment – and collaboration across public institutions, established industry, and the innovative capacity of startups. Defense tech is one part of a much wider industrial re-foundation that Europe urgently needs.
The €1.1 trillion reality behind today’s capability gaps
To understand why private capital is stepping into this sector, we should acknowledge an uncomfortable structural reality:
for more than twenty years, European countries have underinvested in the foundations of their own security.
If EU member states had consistently met even the minimum guideline of 2% of GDP in defense spending since 2006, Europe would have invested roughly €1.1 trillion more into its protection and resilience. That missing trillion did not just open a capability gap; it created a technological gap between the systems Europe has – and the systems Europe needs to operate safely and remain strategically autonomous in this world.
Europe faces a structural dependency problem – and reversing it requires investment at a scale and speed that public budgets alone cannot deliver.
That’s why the debate shouldn’t be framed as a moral binary between ‘public good’ and ‘private opportunism’. And defense tech is one part of that effort. It intersects with civil infrastructure, manufacturing competitiveness, digital security, energy resilience, and the capacity to build complex systems on European soil.
Responsibility and innovation are not mutually exclusive.
In our part of the ecosystem, serious actors are not putting ethics aside or chasing growth at any cost. We know what is at stake, and we are committed to doing this the right way – transparently, within the rules, and with respect for both the risks and the consequences.
Conversation is welcome – and necessary. But to be constructive, it must sit within the full context: the €1.1 trillion underinvestment, the accumulated industrial and technological debt, the reality of wartime acceleration, and the simple fact that Europe cannot rebuild its strategic capabilities without the involvement of both public and private actors.
This is not about profiting from conflict. It is about ensuring that Europe is not left exposed, dependent, and unprepared in a world that is changing faster than many expected.
