The White House has released the National Security Science & Technology Strategy (NSSTS), setting out current U.S. priorities in the race to apply technology to national security and defense.
From AI and space to quantum, biotech, drones and underwater technologies, Washington is prioritizing faster development and adoption to avoid being overtaken by China.
Why it matters: As the United States and China compete for technological leadership, Europe still appears to be struggling to recognize that the technology race is a heavyweight contest.
- Decode39 spoke with Marco Braccioli, Co-Director Cybersec at Fondazione Icsa. Braccioli argues that technological deterrence now depends not only on innovation, but also on the speed of adoption, industrial capacity and Europe’s ability to overcome national fragmentation.
Q: What are your first impressions of the new U.S. technology strategy?
A: The first thing that strikes me is actually the choice of the document’s name. When technology evolves this quickly, it may be more accurate to speak of a tactic than a strategy. I can understand the idea of a strategy for technologies such as directed-energy weapons or hypersonics, but with AI, quantum, satellites and digital technologies, the picture can change radically every six months.
- The current volatility makes it difficult to speak of strategy in the traditional sense. The document is also strongly policy-oriented and reflects an increasingly explicit clash of cultures between the United States and China over technology. There is an interesting paradox: in some respects, Europeans are closer to the Chinese approach than to the American one.
Q: In what sense?
A: In China, the state exercises strong influence over the technology sector. In the United States, by contrast, private companies have enormous influence over the country’s military and technology policy.
- The difference is substantial, even though in both cases the chain of power is relatively short. In Europe, our models are closer to the Chinese one, with state-owned or state-participated companies contributing, directly or indirectly, to defense policy.
Q: The document, like several others, explicitly focuses on speeding up the development and acquisition of military technologies. Is this a shift from the past?
A: Yes, very significantly. Today, particularly when it comes to military spending, we should almost be doing the budget every six months because technologies are constantly changing. The pace of innovation makes traditional planning tools increasingly difficult to use. The American approach seems to be “quick and dirty”: give me what you can do, but give it to me now.
- In the past, if a product failed to meet all the requirements set by the military, even if it was missing only one percent, it would lose the competition. Today, there is a greater willingness to lower some requirements in order to accommodate off-the-shelf solutions. This is a major paradigm shift. It brings the United States closer to the logic of a country that considers itself to be in a state of war.
- When you lower the thresholds and requirements imposed on the market in order to accelerate the deployment of military technologies, you are thinking like a country at war — not like Ukraine, of course, but with the same need to have a capability available quickly.
Q: How different is this approach from the European one?
A: The difference is significant. In Europe, we are trying to build a system of rules while also accelerating processes — but accelerating within those rules. We also have procurement delays, both at the national and NATO levels, but the response is to make processes more efficient rather than simply remove constraints.
- A NATO European document from several years ago had already addressed disruptive technologies, so the issue itself is not new. What is new is the radical way in which the United States now appears to be addressing it. We can also see this in a recent presidential memorandum encouraging cybersecurity companies to act directly against malicious actors.
Q: Do you see risks in giving private companies such a role?
A: The risk is creating a kind of Wild West. If private companies are asked not only to develop technologies but also to act directly against the country’s enemies, the question becomes: who sets the rules, and who presses the button?
- Having lighter rules to accelerate innovation is one thing; eliminating rules is another. We cannot assume that private actors can be given unlimited freedom of action in such a sensitive area.
Q: Meanwhile, Europe is falling behind in several emerging technologies. Is this a problem that concerns defense alone?
A: No, it concerns the system as a whole. Europe is behind in some technologies and, in certain sectors, even behind Russia. Hypersonics is one example. We cannot think we can build a military economy based solely on drones, as if they were the only decisive technology.
Q: Drones, however, are changing the way wars are fought.
A: Certainly. They are a very important technology because, with populations becoming increasingly elderly, we will need unmanned systems on land, at sea and in the air to counter potential attacks. Doctrine is changing as well: in the first 30 kilometers of the battlefield, combat is increasingly being entrusted to unmanned systems.
- We also need to look at robotization. In China, for example, companies such as Unitree are developing increasingly flexible robots capable of movements that until recently seemed impossible, including karate-like strikes.
Q: And a robot capable of performing karate moves can also pull a trigger…
A: Exactly. I consider this a very important development, and it will take us toward an increasingly automated form of warfare. We are moving toward something like Star Wars, toward clone warfare.
- At the same time, multidomain warfare is changing, and electronic warfare is moving from the air toward space. We are beginning to talk about space drones and data centers in orbit. The problem remains the same: how do you defend what you produce in space?
Here too, commercial and military interests overlap. A commercial object observing Earth can have military relevance, just as a satellite navigation system can. This is another example of what I would call a “fog war,” a gray zone between diplomacy, technology and espionage.
Q: You also speak of a “digital geopolitical tectonics.” What does that mean?
A: Global networks are progressively separating through a kind of splinternet. On one side we have a Western bloc; on the other, a Russian-Chinese area. Sooner or later, these networks could become increasingly autonomous and would have to be defended separately.
- To buy certain products in Russia, for example, you need a Russian account and a Russian credit card. These are signs of a progressive separation of digital ecosystems. In this sense, continents are digitally pulling away from one another.
- There are also countries waiting to see who will emerge as the winner. India, for example, can also be viewed from this perspective.
Q: How much are ongoing conflicts contributing to technological acceleration?
A: Very significantly. Technologies that were previously essentially laboratory or test objects are now being deployed in thousands of regional conflicts. This makes it possible to bring back an enormous amount of data on the real-world use of digital weapons and dramatically shorten development timelines.
- One of the most important features of the current phase is that the battlefield is also becoming a huge environment for technological experimentation.
Q: What lessons should Europe draw from this strategy?
A: The first, positive lesson is the constant attention paid to the issue. Producing documents regularly and maintaining an ongoing reflection on technology is vital. But we should remember that we are talking about a single state. The correct comparison is therefore not between the United States and Italy, but between the United States and Europe.
- The final section of the NSSTS contains a table of technological priorities that, in my view, is the most interesting element. Those priorities effectively concern the entire Western world.
Q: The problem is that the United States can rely on financial and industrial capabilities that Europe does not have.
A: Exactly. American technologies are also backed by U.S. finance. Without defense contracts, American AI companies would probably have had much greater difficulty developing. The same model could be repeated with quantum technologies and whatever comes next.
- The United States is addressing these challenges partly through its financial market. We Europeans need to do so by bringing our countries together and moving toward converging funds.
Q: So is this a problem of European fragmentation?
A: Yes. In the United States there is one tank model, while in Europe there are 12. That example captures the problem well.
- We cannot continue to manage defense as the sum of separate national policies. This is not an Italian or French issue. It is a European one. We can no longer afford to treat defense as a strictly state-national matter.
- Any reduction in the U.S. commitment to Europe would make the deterrence problem even more urgent. To be clear, I do not believe in a Russian push into Europe, but from a tactical and military standpoint, deterrence must be built. Today, we do not have sufficient deterrence.
Q: Does technological deterrence therefore carry more weight today than in the past?
A: Yes. If you do not want to appear to be building a defense industrial system for offensive purposes, you have to talk about deterrence. It is an instrument that can be supported by a government of the right or of the left.
- In the past, deterrence was measured primarily through nuclear weapons. Today, we need another benchmark. A country’s scientific and technological capability must become a measure of its level of development and, inevitably, of its deterrence capability as well.
Q: What, concretely, do our armed forces lack to address this transformation?
A: We need to take the relationship between technology and the armed forces much more seriously. I remain convinced that we need a genuine military academy dedicated to the technical and scientific component. A unit focused on innovation is certainly positive, but it is not enough, particularly because resources are limited.
- We need to train a new generation of military personnel with strong technological and scientific backgrounds, capable of understanding new forms of deterrence. And I believe this should also be the European approach: we do not talk about war; we talk about defense.
