The ongoing war in Ukraine has exposed a gap between what modern conflict demands and what traditional defense industries and procurement systems are set up to deliver. Closing that gap is now a priority for militaries, industry and investors on both sides of the Atlantic.
This effort is familiar to Admiral Pierre Vandier, who spent decades in uniform, most recently as Chief of Staff of the French Navy, before taking command as NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation. In this role, he served as the Alliance’s senior leader charged with ensuring NATO continues to adapt faster than the threats it faces. Today, he works at the intersection of national security, technology adoption and coalition execution at scale.
In conversation with Daniel Rudnicki Schlumberger, head of the Security and Resiliency Initiative for EMEA at J.P. Morgan, he explained what it will take to transform the transatlantic defense industrial base at the speed modern warfare demands — including the lessons learned from the conflict in Ukraine, the shift from platform-centric to data-centric systems, and the role private capital must play.
“It’s a specific role of banking today – to finance the world of tomorrow, and not the world of yesterday.”
Admiral Pierre Vandier
Supreme Allied Commander Transformation, NATO
J.P. Morgan’s Security and Resiliency Initiative is a $1.5 trillion, 10-year plan to facilitate, finance and invest in industries critical to national economic security and resiliency. It includes direct equity investments for an initial amount of $10 billion. The initiative covers five focus areas, including supply chain and advanced manufacturing, defense and aerospace, energy independence and resilience, frontier and strategic technologies, and pharma and health tech.
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