The Privatisation of Strategy and Defence Innovation

The centre of gravity in defence innovation is shifting from public laboratories and prime contractors to a wider, privately led ecosystem embedded in digital capitalism. Computing, cloud, AI and data-extractive platforms have become the backbone of contemporary doctrines and operations, and these capabilities are overwhelmingly developed, owned and iterated by private firms. This does not merely alter procurement channels; it reconfigures how strategy is made. When deterrence and multi-domain integration depend on architectures of data collection, processing and distribution, the owners of those architectures shape the menu of what is operationally possible. The consequence is a progressive displacement of decision-making power from public institutions to the companies whose technologies mediate command, sensing and effects. This dynamic is most visible in cyber and data-centric warfare, where the private sector designs tools that states then adopt as doctrine enablers. For defence finance, it implies that capital formation in tech now intersects directly with strategic design, creating new dependencies and new levers of influence.