AI, Defense & Sovereignty — French and Ukrainian Experience
I attended "AI, Defense & Sovereignty — French and Ukrainian Experience”:
An inspiring and fascinating event on the side of Euronaval 2026, organized by Hexa ( Guillaume Lerouge ) and Eastern Circles, and brilliantly moderated by Anastasiya Shapochkina in Paris.
--> Defense, resilience, fast tech iteration, and mass-production. This is where the party is at these days :)
Here are some notes I took:
- - Battle-tested vs. battle-worthy: Some defense products marketed in Europe for governmental tenders aren't even offered to Ukraine because they may not withstand actual battlefield conditions.
- - Supply chain sovereignty: Dependence on China and the US remains a major vulnerability, particularly when production needs to scale rapidly.
- - Agility over industrial size: Small, highly coordinated teams can innovate and iterate at a pace that traditional defense giants struggle to match.
- - Fit for purpose, not perfection: A recurring message was the importance of building products that are just good enough for the mission, with rapid iterations, fast production, and the ability to scale massively.
- - Production capacity over stockpiling: As one speaker provocatively asked, why produce 10,000 drones for the Belgian government to gather dust on shelves for a decade when you could develop the capacity to produce millions of mission-specific devices when needed?
- - A radically different product lifecycle: Some battlefield devices survive no more than ten minutes. In such an environment, traditional notions of durability, product development, and procurement need to be reconsidered.
