Mariam Halstian
Alright, so let’s let’s move on. I’m really excited to introduce the second panel discussion, building a future capable allied defense. And for this discussion, please welcome His Excellency Kristjan Prikk, Ambassador of Estonia to the United States, Mira Resnick, Senior Director for Global Policy and Defense Cooperation at Saronic Technologies, André Loesekrug-Pietri, who’s President of the Joint European Disruptive Initiative, and Birger Steen, who’s the CEO of NORSAR, and this session will be moderated by Matthew Kaminski, a board member of CEPA. Matthew, thank you so Matthew, and all the speakers. Thank you so much for being with us. And over to you.
Matthew Kaminski
Thank you so much. Good morning to everyone, and thanks for joining for this conversation about defense and technology, and where we are and where we’re headed. I’m Matthew Kaminski. I am very honored to be a member of CEPA’s board. I’m also an Editor at Large at the Arsenal, which is a new Kyiv-based publication that covers defense technology. Now, I think we are handing out what is the report that we’re all very proud, and I was also part of the group that put it together, the International Leadership Council at CEPA on unleashing defense innovation. This, the Ukraine war, but also what’s going on in Iran has revealed some, let’s say, weaknesses or challenges in our NATO, I think both European and American industrial base. We have been wedded to a conventional centralized force for a long time, and to quote the report, it is not my line, but it is a good line. I think the difficult reality is that a 21st battlefield is being supplied by 20th century defense architecture, and what we want to discuss here is how are we narrowing that gap between the 20th century and the 21st century. Maybe I can just, and this is also an occasion to hear from each of the panelists very very quickly and have have them introduce themselves, but my question to you is, what has, what’s the biggest thing in your mind, what’s the best thing that has happened over the last four years in terms of how we are set up to defend ourselves as a Western alliance. Give me one example, and I want to start with you, Ambassador.
H.E. Kristjan Prikk
All right. Thank you, Matthew. And thank you all for being here today. Very much appreciate this opportunity to talk about this very timely and relevant topic. Now, this is the …
Matthew Kaminski
One example?
H.E. Kristjan Prikk
The war in Ukraine is, is the kind of framing, framing topic here. This tragic, tragic event, one of one of the things that it has brought about is simply the understanding that we have to defend ourselves. I mean, there is, there is no forum these days that actually discusses about the need to defend ourselves, but I think if there is this one thing that connects to today’s audience, it’s about the fact that when it comes to interoperability, technical interoperability, and connectivity, this is not just a technical issue, but it’s actually a strategic necessity, and without that, the everything else that we might think of of our own strategic strategy logistics and war fighting with large won’t work.
Matthew Kaminski
So we have a new consciousness. Okay, Mira, as they could come to you, you spent four years as Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Biden administration working on military political affairs, was very much involved in helping arm Ukraine, and now you are in the private sector at Saronic, so you’re closer to the ground in terms of the hardware of this stuff. What’s the thing that jumps out for you that is that has changed?
Mira Resnick
Sure, sure. Thanks so much for having me. Really appreciative of the opportunity to be here. I think that one of the things that is was really fascinating to watch was the transition in technology. I think that the United States was really stunned with the cycle of of innovation in Ukraine, and that really helped spur our own adoption of new technologies. Obviously, from a from a company perspective, we are looking at the adoption of autonomy, but but the adoption of AI to help us move faster and more efficiently. That really started, I think, with with the Ukraine, with the further invasion of Ukraine.
Matthew Kaminski
It’s amazing to think of Ukraine has gone from being the victim to being a kind of model for where we’re going. I want to come to André Loesekrug-Pietri, who runs JEDI, which is one of the coolest sounding organizations I’ve heard of today. You are a foundation based in Europe, focused on, I guess, European figuring out how to bring the bring Europe into the 21st century in defense terms. What do you think is either the realization or the or the greatest change that you’ve seen?
André Loesekrug-Pietri
Hello everybody, thanks for inviting me. Yes, so JEDI, we are funding the technology bricks. I mean, the mission is to make sure that Europe and free societies are ahead of the game, and that we build the competitiveness and the sovereignty of tomorrow, so we are a DARPA-type organization, high risk, high reward. I think I’m going to double down on Ukraine, and with a bit different twist, yes, of course, it’s the courage of these incredible both soldiers, but also the whole population that is fighting so bravely there, which is, which is remarkable, but I would always argue that the next primes in Europe and maybe in the Western world might very well come from Ukraine. I think what we are seeing right now is that everything that makes a successful defense company and industry in general is applying what the Ukrainians are learning the hard way. Mass does not beat but is at least as important as sophistication. Industry is an integral part of defense capability. We too often have focused on the product, the capacity to produce it, to produce it at scale is as important as the product itself. The importance, obviously, of speed, something that I’m sure has been repeated many times, but that we are not completely realizing. I mean, Brave1 cycles now at what I heard 16 days between the order and the delivery to the war fighter, so we’re talking orders of magnitude, not just one, but two orders of magnitude faster than what we know here, and I would argue that once the Ukrainian war is over, and that’s that’s, and we all hope in a good way, and well, we will have companies who are war tested, who have an incredible nimbleness and agility and immense overcapacities, and guess what’s going to happen, they’re going to flood the market. So, I think there is really that was that is my biggest takeaway from the last months is how much Ukraine can become. I mean, maybe Ukraine from a European perspective, and take a European perspective, now is the defense or future industry Silicon Valley that the Europeans have always been dreaming of.
Matthew Kaminski
I think we want to pull a lot on that thread in this panel, but let me turn to Birger Steen. You are in charge of an organization that, for me, seems like it is tracking earthquakes, and maybe that’s something you are want to kind of explain to the audience, because I know you also are seismological organizations also track different things, but from where you’re sitting in Norway, what, how does the world look different to you now than let’s say on February 23rd, 2022.
Birger Steen
Yeah, first of all, my day job is CEO of NORSAR. I just said thank you to the DARPA representative, because we were started in 1970 with a gift from the US government to the Norwegian one, which is the biggest seismic array in the world, and we’ve managed that gift well. So we are still among the leading seismology detection seismology institutions, and we listen for man-made seismic signals, such as nuclear, such as nuclear explosions.
Matthew Kaminski
Mostly coming from the East, right?
Birger Steen
Also, they used to be in Novaya Zemlya, but now, unfortunately, there are many other places, but we also, we monitor threats, that is, missile hits and artillery hits close to the Ukrainian nuclear power plants. We document war crimes in Ukraine with seismic signal, so, so we have quite a business in Ukraine that’s that’s not to do with nuclear weapons, luckily. So, touch wood. I have a night job, though, which is a lot different with some friends who have background in military intelligence and investing. I run a small network that’s invested about $10 million in Ukrainian defense tech the last year, and we’ve just raised the funds, going to be more public about it. It’s about 10 times that size, so we’ll, we’ll be investing, continue to invest only in Ukrainian defense tech that is in need of a million or 2 dollars to scale. So, only things that works, and only things that are used at the front, but that need more money, because that’s the biggest resource we think we can bring to Ukraine. So, that’s sort of my vantage point here. And I was very happy with your handover here, because I think Silicon Valley 2.0 is the answer to your question. What’s the most positive thing that’s happened last four years? 1.0 started when David Packard and James Hewlett started out in David Packard’s garage, 39 built oscillators for the Walt Disney Company, that was consumer tech in a sense. One year later, in 1940 the US Army Signal Corps became their biggest customer, and they did the first hockey stick in Silicon Valley history on the back of the need for oscillators and oscilloscopes for the Pacific Theater, so that’s the first, that’s the birth of Silicon Valley. It’s really born dual-use. And then the last 87 years we’ve sort of gone separate ways. You have one very fast, very agile, very practical sort of side, and you have one very increasingly ossified, hidden behind secrecy and weird acronyms and slow processes, that’s become the world of the primes, as you described. So I actually hope that it won’t be the primes. I hope it would be much more dynamic than what’s the current world of the prime now that Silicon Valley has landed in Europe as Silicon Valley 2.0 in Kyiv.
Matthew Kaminski
That’s some, let’s stay with Ukraine for a little bit. It’s landed in Europe, although Ukraine is not in the European Union, it’s not in NATO, it’s not in any of the institutions yet. I was, I was on a stage earlier this week with Oleg Rogynskyy, who’s the CEO of UFORCE in Los Angeles, and that’s the first, I guess, Ukrainian unicorn that has emerged from this war, and I think the question that’s still that we discussed then, but is still kind of left hanging, is what will this industry look like beyond the conflict? What makes you confident that actually you will get proper global players coming out of what began as I guess the CEO of Rheinmetall said inelegantly, you know, housewives building drones in their kitchens, but and what stands in the way? Let’s just start with the positive case. What, what is why? Why do you think that the next prime, that the primes in Europe will emerge from Ukraine at scale? Let’s start with André.
André Loesekrug-Pietri
First, on the comment of Papperger. It’s very unfortunate, because when you look at the company, yes, it’s making billions by selling equipment that will be totally worthless on the on the on the combat zone, but it’s also extremely agile, because you probably saw just in the last six months they made, they made very agile deals with drone companies like like Destinus, they made a deal with the Polish-Finnish company called ICEYE, I mean they are very agile in some way, and then you have these comments, which is a bit surprising sometimes. You know, the old DNA comes, comes back. First, because you know we always had for example in Germany, you have two innovation agencies, that’s a pre-2022 mindset, one for the civilian side and one for the military side. They do exactly the same thing. They don’t, they don’t talk to each other, they hate each other. But this is typically the old mentality of thinking. When you hear this word, you’ll use, I think, these people who have not understood the new reality that actually everything is weaponizable. We saw that during Covid that masks and vaccines became becoming weapons. So, I think what, what Ukraine is today doing, yes, for military use is completely applicable to the rest of the industry. And think about, I mean, I’m here with a, with a, with a, with a delegation of our partners, and one of them said, I mean, the future is very much on an unmanned, it’s an unmanned economy. I mean, drones is the example, but you could say robotaxis is the other, and if you think that we are an aging population mentality trend, increasingly robotics and unmanned will be a way to actually reduce the costs of an aging population and give a lot of people much more way to be independent much longer. So, there’s a huge opportunity from a reindustrialization point of view. There’s an opportunity to be finally strategic. I mean, let’s face it, I’m very proud to be European, but the Europeans, if they have a strategy, it’s at the Member State. There is no common strategy, and we are very reactive. We are a bit the continent of strategic surprise. We are surprised by OpenAI, we are surprised by Stalin, we are surprised by our French president was surprised by the war. Well, nobody can predict the future, but at least in this very uncertain world, I think it’s the duty of states to, as much as possible, anticipate. Otherwise, you are what the Brexit is used to call you, lose control, and that’s what I citizens are telling us, with it, but coming back just on Ukraine, one word, I think a lot of the industry that is built there, fast scaling, going from 100,000 drones in 2022 to 9 million, apparently this year, doing times 100, reshoring some critical components like batteries or engines, in order not to be dependent on Chinese producers, putting all in on robotics, which could be a pull, like automotive was a pull, because it needs new material, it needs components, it needs semiconductors, so it could be a huge game changer for reindustrialization of Europe and of Western countries like the US, so I think on that one, on that way, I think Ukraine is a playbook that that is interesting to follow, and hopefully scale.
Matthew Kaminski
Let’s, let’s keep on the positive case. I want to get back to some skepticism that I’ve also heard, Mira or Birger, which, where could the Ukrainians really stand out for you? What are they especially good at? Where could the, where they, where are they at the leading edge right now?
Mira Resnick
They are at the leading edge when it comes to what works for them, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that that is going to work for other partners. So they are what we witnessed with FPG, FPV drones is incredible. What we’re witnessing with remote controlled boats, what some might call USVs, and that’s what Saronic produces as well. It is amazing for a Russian fleet in the Black Sea, so they are producing for themselves in order to win, which is critical. I mean, they are fighting for their lives. In order to address the previous question, though, is what is what does this look like in the future? We have to look at scale, and therefore Ukrainian industry is going to have to think beyond its borders for what other partners need, and that is going to be, I think, a little bit more challenging. The testing environments are different in the North Atlantic than they are in the, in the Black Sea. There, it’ll be different in an American context as well, where we’re looking at power projection, so as Ukrainian industry thinks about what the future looks like, they’re going to have to think about how to attract more private capital. I think one of the things that Ukrainian industry is really good at is dual use, absolutely, I think that this is the future of defense technology. From an American perspective, dual use allows scale without the ITAR. It allows exportability without licensing, and that, that is, that is going to attract private capital, because, because of the commercial, the commerciality.
Matthew Kaminski
One of my favorite examples of a Ukraine dual-use technology was before the war, as Ukraine entrepreneur set up a created a laser system that you set up in your house to stimulate your cat if it gets bored, and so there was sort of pushing him around, and and then you saw this become highly useful on the on the on the battlefield. Birger, please.
Birger Steen
Yeah, we also discovered we, when we did due diligence on one of the Ukrainian laser anti-drone companies, we got the technical expert who’d been spending last 15 years developing lasers to kill parasites on salmon in salmon cages. Turns out it’s very similar, you have to have very good auto focus and very good tracking, and then you have to exactly the right amount of energy in a right time, so but I wanted to suggest, in addition to your question, what’s being done uniquely well, and I think it’s upstream of the specific technologies, because there’s we talked about Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader here, right. So I grew up in Microsoft, where we prided ourselves for being very good in building large communities, large moments, Microsoft doesn’t, maybe have that cache anymore, but 90s and 2000s we, we had the biggest communities of developers, of system integrators, so people who came to vast conferences, and for that you needed the, you needed a narrative, you needed a, you needed to want to be there, you know, was a club you wanted to join, and Ukraine has just masterfully built that, so that everybody who gets in touch with you guys, congratulations on it, just want to continue to contribute, and I think that’s an amazing thing. And on the inside, this incredible thing with speed – we’re just taking what works commercially off the shelf, really, whatever is at hand, because there is no alternative, and you ask for forgiveness and not for permission, and I think to your point earlier, the rest of us, we can say we have learned from Ukraine, we don’t have the right to say that until you can see it in our structure, our process, and our speed, and frankly, you can’t see it yet.
Matthew Kaminski
So, this skeptical note here is, and I’ll use the example of UFORCE, which is a competitor, I guess, competitor of yours, but that’s something very similar. It’s sort of naval autonomous weapon systems, they’re registered in London, and, and that’s partly because they, you know, want to develop outside of Ukraine, but also I think it is a signal of concerns about rule of law in Ukraine. Until very recently, I think days ago, you had, you couldn’t export from Ukraine, you still cannot export very easily from Ukraine. We are all aware of the corruption challenges in Ukraine. I think getting better, but, but, but still there. And I wonder if any of you would either elaborate or strongly push back against that, that kind of cautionary note on Ukraine becoming the next Silicon Valley 2.0 or the place that saves Europe.
André Loesekrug-Pietri
You know, we have a French expression saying, when you are excessive, that’s insignificant, Matt. So, of course, often we put our ideas, but there are always counter examples, but I don’t know enough Ukraine to comment specifically on the, on the, on the challenges, but I would say in all societies you have huge inertia. You don’t have a country that goes from 150 I don’t know, 120 ranking in anti-corruption to zero in one day. So it takes, it takes time. Sometimes people say it takes generation. What sometimes the European Union forgot when we went very, very fast with, with accession. I mean, scale is important, but if you dilute the decision capability, then there is a real risk that that note being a part now. The one thing that I think is interesting for Ukraine is also the way they do change. I was very interested to see that now the Minister for Digital, which apparently is the longest serving member of the government since the war of Ukraine, has now become Minister of Defense. And look at what happened with their defense industry I mean we should not say it’s all positive, I mean they realize that it’s very difficult to restructure the state-owned companies, so instead of trying to restructure that, that’s what all we’re all trying to do, the Department of War, the French Ministry of Defense, the German Ministry of Defense, etc. They said, okay, spending time trying to reform, and it’s not a cynical point of view here, would waste a lot of our resources. Let’s just create something new next to it, and that’s that’s how basically you have two procurement streams currently in Ukraine. And I think this is a learning for the transformation of our organizations, even of our governments, and by the way, we apply that at JEDI, we realize that doing a disruptive innovation agency at the commission level, we would spend 90% of our time fighting the bureaucracy, and again, I’m, I’m a proud European, and I think we need European institutions, but if, if, if we don’t change our institutions as fast as the world is changing, then increasingly we will be in a defensive or compared to autocratic systems, which we don’t want to live in, but which have two advantages: one, they think long term, and two, they are ultra pragmatic. I mean, China is not ideological anymore. They are the most pragmatic people on earth, like probably the Ukrainians, like. Like you said, so I think what we can learn from Ukraine is how you change a country in a very pragmatic way, in a very fast way.
Matthew Kaminski
Kristjan, you come from a country we were talking before this panel that I was there in 1993 as for you, and Estonia in the early 90s. Estonia today is another planet, you’re now going to NATO as ambassador this summer. Is for you the key thing was joining the EU and NATO? Is that the key for Ukraine? Are you going to get them into both institutions by the end of 2027? And if not, how can Estonia help push? How can Eastern Europe and Ukraine’s allies help push Ukraine or pull Ukraine rather in to the European system?
H.E. Kristjan Prikk
Yes, I won’t speculate about the exact years, but, but I think in 2026 we, it’s, it should be clearer to everyone than ever before that, that getting Ukraine to join the European Union is something that I absolutely do agree, and can not be just beneficial for the for Ukraine, but but also for for Europe to revitalize the European economy to to help to speed up the industrialization where it matters, and to to kind of import the kind of attitudes and practices that actually are needed for for this current time. As far as NATO goes, obviously we do know that the, that the, let’s say, political conditions are not there at the moment. However, Estonia strongly believes.
Matthew Kaminski
Not here, rather.
H.E. Kristjan Prikk
Estonia strongly believed, believes that that Ukraine in NATO would, would benefit very much the rest of NATO as well. We believe that, that it wouldn’t make any sense to, let’s say, build a separate NATO for Ukraine, as the effort of collision of the willing or the security guarantees through coalition or willing would end up if if taken seriously, so to get Ukraine to NATO would also help us to defend the rest of NATO better than than we might be able to do today, and just to kind of connect with the previous question, I do think that, whereas everyone, including Ukrainians, do understand that the next major conflicts may look different than what is going on tragically in Ukraine right now, we all know that Ukrainians are great in problem solving, so they can also be part of part of the effort to solve the problems elsewhere than done in Ukraine, and they are absolutely great in streamlining when you, when you kind of streamlining the processes, stream streamlining or getting rid of the kind of processes and and institutions, if necessary, that don’t make any sense for the problems of today, if we combine this with their industrial potential, their really great engineering potential, and also business acumen, then that’s a combination that we should never, never miss, and we should never have them out of our team.
Matthew Kaminski
And on the other team. This could be a multiple choice question. What is the most important key to getting Europe? But I would say maybe the transatlantic alliance to get fully into the 21st century in military and security terms? a. money; b. strategic autonomy from the US and European integration; c. a stronger transatlantic alliance; or d. other. Who wants to?
Birger Steen
Other, we make a condition for Ukraine secession to NATO that they lend us either Minister Fedorov or General Budanov to run NATO.
Matthew Kaminski
Home crowd here.
Mira Resnick
I would say a combination of other. Certainly resources matter, and I think that that is that is something that we saw this year, starting in Europe, a real, like a real responsibility that we saw in announcements, but not necessarily contracts. So, I think that if, if this, if this is going to change the way that NATO does business, that that your, that the transatlantic relationship does business, resources are going to have to be a part of that, but I think adoption at scale is actually more important. I honestly think that most European governments, and frankly, sometimes in the United States also believe that building a future capable allied defense is experimentation and not adoption at scale, and that needs to change wholesale. Many of the technologies that exist in order to build a future capable allied defense already, they’re already, they’re already out there, they’re they have been experimented – autonomous systems, AI enabled targeting and decision support, resilient communications, uncrewed maritime systems, aerial systems, these these systems exist already and are not being adopted, so the not the problem is not technological innovation, the problem actually is institutional adoption, and I think that institutional adoption is the is the is the missing link there.
Matthew Kaminski
André, I want to maybe add an addendum to my multiple choice question, that, clearly there are political tensions across the Atlantic, but I also work…
André Loesekrug-Pietri
Now I’m getting worried.
Mira Resnick
Me too.
Matthew Kaminski
And I hear your president has been saying this for a long time, and French presidents have been saying this for a long time, going back to de Gaulle, that Europe has to stand on its own and not rely on the US, but then when I spend time with companies, when I’m with the venture capital firm that I work with, we see, you know, the deal flow coming through, half of them are Ukrainian firms, US firms, can Europe actually do this without the US, and maybe you can do it without the Trump noise, but can you do it without American capital? Can you do it without American know-how, and without American companies being as involved in Europe as they have since the end of World War II?
André Loesekrug-Pietri
I’m going to start with a little anecdote. We always quote a lot of politicians in France, and by the way, I’m both French and German, so imagine, imagine how schizophrenic I am today. But in the, in the 60s and 70s, we developed our nuclear program, civil reactors, and what is very little known is that General de Gaulle was offered the opportunity to use French technology, and we go back to pragmatism and realizing with his experts, not taking the decision by himself, that actually we were not there yet. We actually used Westinghouse technology to build our fleet of nuclear reactors. This is very little known. So, when you hear some people say, “Yes, we need to go back to the spirit of de Gaulle and do everything French-French”, they have not studied histories. So, so I think what we need here is pragmatism and impact driven and to your multiple choice question, I would have answered we need to have leaders both in the public but also in the private sector because we always expect everything from public leaders in our liberal democracies it’s a bit strange we need calculated big bets, that means, and let me unpack that one second, that means you need to have a real vision where you go to, and this, and come back to the narrative, I mean, that is the magic of the Apollo program, that is the magic, unfortunately, of the China dream for a lot of Chinese, because all of our population want to see an objective, if it’s just Europe that protects, it’s not a very exciting proposal, so we need to have second thing, you need to stop being a process organization, and today we are ticking the boxes, because we do this, this, this, this meeting, and then the money doesn’t flow, an example, the French military budget, we say we, we apply the budget to the euro, that’s the favorite expression, but actually we have not paid for 18% of the money has not been disbursed, because we have our budgetary issues, so of course then the industrialists are not, are not investing, because you cannot ask them to do that, third, you need to take the first risk. You need to do these calculated bets. Maybe we could revisit history and asking ourselves if we had been a little bit more courageous in 21 and and be a little bit more affirmative and more deterring, we would have avoided everything afterwards. I mean, we can. It’s easy to revisit history, but I think that should be a learning for next time that sometimes you need to show teeth a little bit more, because the risk and the cost afterwards is so much important. I mean, you could apply that to climate change, you could apply that to nuclear deterrence. Is sometimes you need to show strength, but in order not to apply it, and not to have the cost, and that’s this boldness that we need, and we need that in industry too. I unfortunately see very few European organizations and too few European companies doing these bold bets. We always love to criticize the big tech companies in the Valley, but you know, where are the bets? I mean, Metaverse was a 20 or 30 billion bet that went south, but OpenAI was a bet that, for Microsoft, paid off 1000 times. So, and we are in this world where you cannot have 100% of the information, it’s like the, you still have this fog of war. So, if you’re not able to take this calculated leap of faith, then you, you’re sure you, you lose. And so, that is, and my last point is, too often you hear this point about the 5% etc. Yes, more money is more important than less money, but to your point on the venture fund, I’m surprised you hear you say you are going to have a fund of 100 million, because last time I was in Ukraine, the largest fund was 35 million, so the Ukrainians are able to do things with one euro what would cost us 10 euro, and in this frugal environment in which we are, it is a complete strategic advantage.
Mira Resnick
Can I step into the strategic autonomy very trepidatiously?
Matthew Kaminski
Out of government, you can say whatever you want.
Mira Resnick
I don’t think that this should be framed as a decision between dependence and independence. I think it benefits all of us to frame this as allied industrial resilience, and the reality is that Europe needs access to mature US capabilities, and US industry benefits from broader manufacturing ecosystems and allied participation. When Europe articulates sovereignty when I was in government, now in the private sector, what I hear is that Europe wants agency, and I would love to hear differently if that is, if that’s the case. Apparently, someone disagrees.
André Loesekrug-Pietri
That’s the Brussels effect.
Mira Resnick
My, my understanding is that that our European partners want the what they want is the freedom to use the platforms and the systems that are from the United States to the effects that affect their national security, and I understand that. Coming from the private sector, like our platforms are modular, so that a European partner can put whatever systems they want to onto our platforms that where it can connect to their national c2 system that gives them better reach, and so I think that this gives partners their relevant national capability, and it allows all of us to build the arsenal that we need. I think we need more participation, not less.
Birger Steen
Yeah, and I thanks for getting back to the narrative level here. So, the, this dependence versus independence, I want to quote Sir Richard Moore, who just retired as head of MI6, and he was asked about how do you, how do you do your business with everything that’s going on on the sort of top level in the two countries, and he said: ‘Look, there are hundreds, 1000s, 10s of 1000s of personal and institutional bonds that cross the Atlantic. They worked for 80 years, so that’s that’s the substrate, that’s the reality we operate in. What goes on on top is relatively unimportant compared to that, and I think it just behooves us to consider that, that it’s not an option to cut those ties. If this is a marriage, it’s hit a few rocks. We just need to make up our minds that we’re going to do what it takes to stay in a marriage, and there is really no other good option.
André Loesekrug-Pietri
Can I slightly disagree, I I think framing it as a marriage is like with a French German couple, and then you, you, you, you try to do this big project and say yes, we’re going to do a future fighter.
Birger Steen
Are you the big project?
André Loesekrug-Pietri
I love it. I’m a direct consequence of sending a lot of Germans into France, and the opposite, you know, that happens. At the end of the panel you will decide if it was successful or not. No, but I think when you frame it as emotional, I mean, like Mira said, I think we need to be so much more blunt, I mean, it’s totally legitimate that countries and allies expose their core interests, and it’s totally legitimate that some on some of the core decision making everybody wants to be independent, but then you need to be pragmatic, like my example with the nuclear fleet, what we need, and strategic, so we use Westinghouse at the beginning, we learned, and now we have a nuclear fleet and nuclear operators, which are par, if not better. And unfortunately, what did the Chinese did in the last 20 years did exactly that with the joint ventures, and we were, it happened under our eyes. So, when I, when people say, “Oh, the Chinese”, I mean our fault, right? They were refining critical material for 20 years. The first embargo was in 2010 against Japan. What have we done in the last 15 years? So, what I want to say is we need to be much more pragmatic, expose our things, and know I think the posture has an impact. What I see since a year is the more, the more there is negative tones from the US, the more you are going to push a lot of people going the other extreme and trying to do everything alone, and that is bad for an industry. If we do not use the technology stack of the US, then we will be at a disadvantage. What we need is to use it, but then strategically in the points where we want to be independent, develop our own, our own assets, and I think that would be accepted. I’m sure by our American…
Birger Steen
Just like in a successful marriage, I would say.
Mira Resnick
Compromise.
Matthew Kaminski
By being more pragmatic. Do you mean also being open to working with China?
André Loesekrug-Pietri
I think we are so naive. I mean, first, I love not to talk about China. I love to talk about the Communist Party. Our systemic rival is not the Chinese people, because otherwise we have to be careful. The Chinese Communist Party uses it to say, look, they don’t want us to develop when it’s legitimate for a country that develops, no, I think we need to learn that these guys have found a way of aligning for bad reasons and for systems that we don’t want to be in, and to have a very clear industrial strategy, and we should be careful about the way we see it. It’s not old French style top down industrial strategy. It’s much more top down, bottom up, a lot of consensus building. There’s not one guy deciding everything. At the contrary, there’s much more listening to science, to technologists than in some countries in the West. So I think we need to we, we are still so naive in many countries about, about the Chinese influence. Look at Africa, look at how China may come out actually stronger of what is going on right now in the Middle East. So, I think we should contain any attempt to undermine our, our democratic values, and on that one we should make zero compromise, and I still see a lot of politicians in Europe who are doing a few compromises on that. That needs to change.
Matthew Kaminski
Kristjan, you are in government, but you are an Estonian, so you can give me a blunt answer. Can Europe survive without America?
H.E. Kristjan Prikk
I don’t think we have any other option, and, and actually, there was this marriage comparison, and, and in the past, where there have been transatlantic friction, this marriage comparison has been used many times. It’s, it’s been argued that in marriages thing, you know, the arguments happen, but ultimately everything’s going to be fine, and they can go on as in the past. I don’t think that the comparison with the frictions in the past is quite relevant. I do think that that the this transplanting relationship is coming through a fundamental change. I do think that in Europe we have probably reached a point where, where countries are about to emerge from, or have already emerged out of the state of denial, but unfortunately, and going back to your question, I think that the, the, let’s say prevalent attitude right now is that, oh my god, but we cannot live in a different relationship. I do think that we can, and and the key is to make sure that, and I do agree with my co-panelist, the key is to make sure that that we actually develop the let’s say the European capabilities and European autonomy in a way that is not stupid and where we where we retain what we can and what and what what serves both of us but. We work really hard to develop certain European capabilities, ability to plug and play with the American systems, and get stronger through it. I do also hope that US also reaches the understanding that opening up, for example, US defense industry, and all these regulations that we are talking about is actually also mutually beneficial. We see how American defense industrial base is not able to cope up with demand, yet we cannot produce the same weapons easily in Europe, but we have to go through all kinds of difficulties, even discuss about building some, let’s say, American ammunition for American systems, or American systems in Europe. I think we should change. I think we should think of, as Mira pointed out, kind of equal partnership where we have agency too, and where we have a truly transatlantic, and if, and why not also include Japan, Korea, Australia, and others, defense and security market, where we can use also the the lessons from Ukraine in a smartest way, like we do in Estonia, where we, we rather than defending our market, we actually set up a future transformation command, and we asked pretty much everyone and anyone to bring their technology to test out in Estonia and to see what works in a difficult and very relevant environment.
Matthew Kaminski
That’s a very good note that I want to continue on very briefly. Let’s discuss how we unlock capital, but how do we unlock innovation, unlock the potential that transatlantically in the US and in Europe you’re all involved in some way or another in the private sector, giving you a magic wand for one minute each. What would you do to change what regulation would you change? What, what tax regime do you think needs to be changed that would kind of actually have a disproportionate positive impact right now?
Birger Steen
Yeah, so top-down management is oftentimes at least insufficient. Could be a really bad idea if the top has the wrong impression or plan, but if we could, I mean, we in our little guerrilla operation, the hoops we have to jump through to get cash transferred from Norway to Ukraine, you know, the KYC loops, and there’s a new Norway, we have snow, we go skiing, and before you have a track machine, you know, do the grooming, you walk your own path, it’s literally like that, you have to create your own tracks in the forest, so if we could just do a top down review of everything that stops us from bringing the money and the talent to where the biggest problem is and where it’s being solved most successfully, which is Ukraine, and just do a top down review on that, and you said it’s got to go, it’s got to take one day, not one year. President Zelenskyy famously said, I don’t need a ride, I need more ammo. 912 days later, the Norwegian Finnish ammunition producer Nammo shares their recipe for the 105 millimeter extended range grenade with Ukraine. It could have taken nine hours, it could have taken nine days, nine weeks, it took 912 days. It’s just unforgivable.
André Loesekrug-Pietri
Can only do better. Just one point before answering your question on what Ambassador said, to double down NATO, that we didn’t talk a lot about, I mean, the magic weapon of NATO is obviously interoperability, and when you think about the world of business, the world of industry, it’s all about scale, especially in this technology-driven world, the risk is everywhere the same, but if you have national markets, the risk reward does not justify, so having very large markets is absolutely critical to make these calculated bets justified, and this is why also Europe is lagging behind because of this fragmentation. So, I think that is an unlock. On the magic wand, I would say one thing is we don’t – we always jump into projects without, for that’s my only comparison with the marriage, without formulating our vows, our strategy. If on the joint fighter we had clearly said, what do we want as a mission, that’s why I’m so convinced about this mission driven, then you align the industrialists, but if you just say to two competing airplane manufacturers, make a plane together, what do you, what do you expect is going to happen? We don’t think join strategy together, and I don’t think it’s enough happening between the US and Europe together. I think that is what the European Commission should focus on instead of meddling into all the nitty gritty of procurement, etc., but what are the joint projects that only work at the European or at the transatlantic? If you have a joint project, if a joint vision, a joint narrative, then the rest flows relatively naturally, and you also show you are in control again. I come back to this democratic imperative, and our citizens feel that we decide our future, and it’s not decided by others.
Mira Resnick
I, we could do a whole panel on export controls. I won’t go, I won’t get into that, but what I, what I will say is, talk about in order to get to a resilient defense industrial base, there has to be sustainable procurement pathways, that is the signal to the commercial market, that is the signal to the investment community that will invest in in some of these new technologies, but it’s not just about clear requirements, I don’t mean like the height or the length or the payload capacity, I mean what is their desired effect, and and it is very difficult to do that with just one country. To do that multinationally is very, very difficult. We saw this with AUKUS pillar 2, but there has to be a sustained commitment on a transatlantic basis in order to be able to look at the at the threats in the future.
H.E. Kristjan Prikk
It’s difficult to add anything to that, I but I, and there are nitty gritty things that that people who deal with budgets or or regulations can talk about for hours, but I think what is right, we have to understand that the mission at this point of time, 2026 for the West collectively is to survive. It’s not abstract, you know, to have a strong defense or something, but it’s about taking care of our existential interests, and in order to do that, and to also take care of some of this nitty gritty, how to, how to, to get the market to, to get center right market signals, and so on, so forth. I like the idea of bringing in Minister Fedorov to take it to maybe take a look at some of the processes and organizations that we have, and give some friendly advice to us how to streamline them to extreme to get us to fulfill the mission.
Matthew Kaminski
I think, as part of your magic act, you need to make a clone of him, because he’s probably still needed in Ukraine. Well, that comes more to the end. I will have failed in my duties if I did not tell you that this report from CEPA, Unleashing Defense Innovation, it was spearheaded by H. R. McMaster and Annegret, and here I have Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer. The double double barreled German names are harder for me than French ones, and to thank this excellent panel for a really great discussion. Thank you all.
