How French Tech Aims to Influence Defense and Innovation界.

A discreet but significant signal to security circles. While General Fabien Mandon, Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, explained on April 9 to the Defense Commission of the National Assembly that an “open war” with Russia was his “first concern in terms of military preparedness,” the association France Deeptech was putting the finishing touches on its project for a commission dedicated to defense and innovation. On April 17, as reported by L’Opinion, it indeed created a fifth working group for this purpose.

The association has a sense of timing: the Military Programming Law 2024-2030 allocates 5 billion euros for drones and robots and 10 billion towards innovation. The text also emphasizes that “a transformation must be undertaken to anticipate technological leaps.” One question remains: who, in this ecosystem, actually has access to this windfall? The answer, according to a member of the new working group interviewed by L’Opinion, is unequivocal: “Today, strategic innovation is almost exclusively driven by the ‘primes’ [Editor’s note: the giants of the defense industry]. Start-ups tend to be left out.”