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Marc C Lange is a strategic adviser who helps defense departments engage more effectively with emerging technologists and helps startups break through the barriers of traditional defense markets. From Google’s startup programs to advising space agencies and ministers, Marc’s journey spans two decades of building and scaling critical innovations across continents.
In this interview Tatiana Skydan is exploring defense innovation lead by Marc C Lange – an overview of global security meeting startup disruption.
When people think of war, they usually imagine something like a full-scale invasion – like what happened in Ukraine. Large armies crossing borders, tanks, jets – classic warfare. But that’s not how war is fought anymore.
Yes, we saw a traditional invasion in Ukraine – but even that wasn’t very successful. The reality is, modern warfare has moved far beyond boots on the ground.
Today, war is playing out in domains many people never imagined:
It's all happening right now – both beneath our feet and above our heads – often without us even noticing.
We're seeing a rise in gray zone warfare, where adversaries operate under plausible deniability. Think election interference. Think trade wars that inch toward real conflict. Think surveillance drones flying over sensitive sites – not dropping bombs, but gathering data. Next time, those drones could be armed.
This isn’t the kind of war our militaries were trained for. But it’s been happening – steadily – for at least 10 years.
You can’t really mark a clear starting point – it’s more like a slow ramp-up, escalating over time.
Today there are evidences that Russia is building up military forces near the Baltic borders. That’s not a de-escalation.
Meanwhile, China is becoming more assertive in the South China Sea. They recently took possession of a coral reef island near the Philippines—an area the Philippines claims, maybe rightfully so.
So no, this isn’t cooling down – it’s heating up.
And that’s just the physical side of things. We’re also seeing:
These are crisis indicators. We’re not heading out of this – we’re deep in it.
That proliferation is insane - especially across Africa. It’s like war used to be in the hands of just a few major powers for so long.
During the Cold War, we had this fragile balance of power – a bipolar world. But now, we’re witnessing an atomization of conflict.
Through the accessibility of commercial tech, open-source tools, the internet, and global connectivity, the means of warfare have spread far and wide. What were once pillars of warfighting, held by nations, are now dispersing around the globe. And as a result, conflict is emerging in more and more places.
As with most things, there’s good news and bad news.
The good news: EU and NATO nations are more prepared today than they were 10 years ago. Honestly, probably more prepared than they’ve been in two decades.
In just the last two years, the non-U.S. NATO members have collectively added around 100,000 troops to their forces. That’s a significant number—more than the entire current U.S. NATO troop presence in Europe. So we’re seeing real increases in manpower.
On top of that, there's been a surge in defense procurement—especially since the war in Ukraine began. The scale of rearmament is massive. For example, Lockheed Martin estimates that by 2040, there could be over 600 F-35s stationed in Europe. That’s an almost unimaginable number of high-impact, multi-role fighters.
Europe consists of many different countries, each with its own culture, parliament, government, and bureaucracy. But collectively, there's a growing seriousness about defense. I monitor this space daily – from data to strategy – and every morning I see fresh signs that Europe is taking this rearmament seriously.
The bad news: The progress isn’t consistent across the board.
Some nations are making major strides, while others lag behind. Spain, where you’re based, just agreed to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, meeting the NATO target. There are debates around whether this will come from new funds or be reallocated from existing budgets—but at least it’s moving in the right direction.
Contrast that with Poland, which is currently spending 4 to 4.5% of GDP on defense. The countries closer to Russia—who feel the threat more directly—are understandably more aggressive in their rearmament.
We’re dealing with a very uneven landscape.
There are notable exceptions, though. Germany has announced ambitious spending plans—it remains to be seen how effectively that money will be deployed. France and the UK are also taking significant steps forward, with the UK in particular doing some impressive work that we can dive into more if you’d like.
So that would be true for all of traditional defense. And by traditional defense, I mean the standard doctrines and methods we’ve followed for decades. That part is going fairly well - the speed of response, particularly in the early days, was absolutely pivotal. It was fast, and it worked.
Now, let’s move on to the bad news.
There’s a pink elephant in the room – a topic ministries of defense are beginning to acknowledge, but still not addressing seriously enough, especially when it comes to legal frameworks and structural change.
It’s not the war we’re seeing in Ukraine, at least not in its conventional form. In fact, it’s very likely we will never again see warfare in that conventional sense – not in any sustained or primary way.
Think about this: everyone remembers how Ukraine sank a Russian warship using a naval drone. It was a simple, relatively cheap system. And as of now, drones account for around 80% of all casualties in Ukraine – including wounded, killed, and material losses. That’s a staggering figure.
But it’s deeper than just drones. These drones wouldn’t be nearly as effective without the integration of AI, electronic warfare, and cyber capabilities. This includes everything from signal intelligence to spoofing, jamming, signal strengthening, data collection, and more. All of these components feed into larger digital systems that inform both commanders and soldiers on the battlefield.
Russia, Ukraine, and now NATO are all deploying these battlefield management systems. They're becoming essential for modern warfare.
So while the traditional side of war is improving – Europe is placing orders, increasing readiness – the modern, high-tech dimension of warfare is still a massive vulnerability.
These are technologies that most European militaries are not trained to use, let alone counter. There are virtually no NATO soldiers currently trained to survive on a battlefield as transparent and contested as Ukraine’s. Every movement is tracked. Every formation is vulnerable. That’s not a scenario anyone has trained for in our forces.
And here’s the core of the problem: our systems aren’t built for this kind of warfare.
Western militaries – particularly the non-U.S. NATO members – still use procurement processes and defense structures that are bureaucratic, slow, and outdated. They are not built to integrate rapidly evolving technologies, nor are they equipped to work effectively with small, innovative startups or younger companies outside the traditional primes.
This is not just about innovation anymore. It’s about constant adaptation, and our current frameworks aren't keeping up. If a country like Russia were to attack the Baltics today, we would be facing an adversary who:
We're not ready for this kind of warfare. That’s why reform in procurement, and creating real collaboration between traditional defense contractors, governments, and startups, is one of the most critical challenges I focus on.
Ukraine just introduced a points system for drone operators, effectively gamifying kills. Operators earn points based on their targets. This isn’t just automation anymore – it’s gamification of war. And when you add autonomous systems to the mix, the ethical dilemma becomes even more urgent.
We're already seeing a steep rise in what's called killbox automation. That sounds pretty drastic, right?
Killbox automation means that if a weapon – say, a drone – comes within range of its assigned target, the system itself takes over and executes the strike, with no human decision-maker involved at that final moment. It just destroys. So yes, I completely agree with your concern about ethics.
And we’re seeing similar detachment in cyber and information warfare. People can now cause massive disruption, even death, while being completely removed from the consequence – —physically and psychologically. You're absolutely right: the ethics of warfare and the battlefield have shifted dramatically.
But I want to be very clear here so there’s no misunderstanding. It’s not like we were fighting with sticks and stones yesterday, and today suddenly we have AI robots on the battlefield. That's not what happened.
This has been a long, gradual evolution. We’ve had autonomous systems for decades.
The big change now is twofold:
This shift – especially in accessibility, affordability, and ease of deployment – has been drastic in how modern conflicts are fought.
When we speak about modern defense, we must consider the entire ecosystem – a fully connected network of everything humankind has built: space infrastructure, satellite networks, cyber dependencies, vulnerabilities – and the potential solutions we must develop to prevent terrorism and protect global society.
Space and cyber are some of the most underinvested and underdeveloped sectors in defense – particularly in Europe and among the NATO powers that aspire to be serious global players.
We're lacking critical capabilities in both areas, and, perhaps even more worrying, there’s a lack of fundamental understanding in policymaking circles about just how important these domains are.
Let me start with what should be obvious but still isn’t to many decision-makers: Space is the new high ground.
Just like holding the high ground on a battlefield once gave you a major tactical advantage – whether it was a hill or, later, air superiority – space is now that ultimate high ground.
Because almost any action in a domain below it can be disrupted or denied from space.
And here’s the thing: disrupting assets in space from the ground is very hard. Most nations simply don’t have that capability. But if you control space, you have the ability to affect everything beneath it – communications, GPS, surveillance, targeting, coordination. Everything.
And yet, despite all this – despite SpaceX, despite the commercial boom, despite the fact that the U.S. Space Force is now a real institution – I still see a staggering lack of seriousness about space security. I’ve been asking myself for over a decade now: Why don’t people in government take space seriously?
It’s baffling, because space is critical to everything from national defense to economic stability.
And we can absolutely use that as a bridge into cybersecurity, which is another massively underprioritized field.
The United States briefly denied signal intelligence (SIGINT) to Ukraine. What followed was a horrific bloodbath. Ukraine was effectively blinded, and the adversary gained the upper hand by orders of magnitude. That’s incredibly critical – and terrifying.
Right now, we in Europe – especially non-U.S. NATO—depend heavily on U.S. space assets. The moment that access is restricted or pulled, we are at a severe disadvantage. And let’s be honest: we’re already not seeing the full picture, since a lot of this is protected under national security restrictions.
Imagine not having early missile warning systems. That’s terrifying.
Space is one of the most important domains in defense, yet it remains critically underfunded – largely due to the long lead times required to build up core capabilities like vertical launch infrastructure. We urgently need to ramp up European capabilities – and fast. And that means a significant capital injection.
Here’s a key point – and this is a theme that runs across everything we’re discussing: Governments need to commit to purchasing.
Without reliable, multi-year commitments to buying technology, the defense industrial base simply won’t emerge. Why would a company take the risk if there’s no guarantee that government – its only customer – will still be there in a few years?
Regarding cybersecurity: Nearly every major disruption we’ve seen over the past decade has had a cyber element. Many people only began to understand the true power of cyber operations when Stuxnet hit – crippling Iranian nuclear centrifuges.
Everything is connected. And, importantly, connected through space – because global communications rely on satellites. That connectivity makes everything vulnerable.
And here’s the harsh truth:
Global adversaries of the Western world—Russia, China, North Korea – are the undisputed masters of cyber warfare. They’ve built entire armies of hackers, capable of anything from critical infrastructure disruption to election interference. That’s a massive threat.
And just like with space, the solution lies in innovation and entrepreneurship. We need to raise an army of companies – and there are entrepreneurs ready to storm the gates.
What they need is government assurance – that if they develop solutions, governments will actually test, adopt, and scale those technologies. That’s what needs to happen.
Cybersecurity and space domains work like others in terms of lifecycle: you’ve got early warning, detection, classification, countermeasure selection, implementation, postmortem analysis, and maintenance.
But here’s the problem: Cyber and space are invisible.
That invisibility has always been the biggest obstacle to getting people to take them seriously. That’s why what you’re doing—shining a spotlight on this space – is so important.
Let’s go back to the beginning of the Ukraine war – a few thousand wind turbines suddenly stopped working because of a Russian cyberattack via satellite systems.
Aattacks can happen to many more systems, easily. And most people don’t realize: These threats are like cancer. They’re already in our systems, lying dormant – waiting to be activated.
The reality is: There’s no time to waste.
Europe has phenomenal universities and exceptional research institutions. Sure, the U.S. has many of the highest-performing institutions, but Europe is right up there in terms of R&D, academic talent, and scientific innovation.
So here’s my call to action: If you're a student or entrepreneur looking to enter this field—don't wait. Yes, the governments are slow, and yes, the funding pipelines are uncertain, but momentum is building.
Industry is waking up. Governments are slowly realizing they must back their words with capital and legislation.
We need to harden critical infrastructure, invest in space resilience, and push forward with urgency. Even just look at the Russian spacecraft that’s currently tumbling in orbit – the so-called "nuclear ship."
No, it's not likely to be a literal nuke. More likely, it was a directed-energy weapon platform using ionizing radiation designed to deactivate entire constellations of satellites – effectively “turning off the lights” when needed.
That’s a massive threat. But also—one of the most exciting challenges to solve.
It involves:
People often tell me, “Governments need to move faster.” And I get that – but we also have to remember: Governments aren’t startups. They’re not designed to move fast. There are limits.
That’s why some countries have created "connector" entities. In the U.S., the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) is a great example. It’s part of the Department of Defense, but staffed with commercial minds, whose core mission is to bridge the gap between startups and government procurement.
That’s what we need more of in Europe – fast bridges between innovation and implementation.
It’s actually working. That entity is now sourcing technologies on a global scale for all of the U.S. forces. It's onboarding them one by one.
Young companies can now work with this organization, and it has a budget of $1.3 billion. I think this model can work – but you have to understand that government, procurement, policy, the startup world, and even the commercial world operate at very different speeds.
And when gears operate at vastly different speeds – as anyone with a bit of engineering knowledge will tell you – you need a differential. Something that bridges those speeds. That’s exactly what these entities are and what they do.
NASA has done this brilliantly through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program, which used alternative transactional authorities and streamlined funding mechanisms. It created a clear, transparent process with a public funnel. Companies knew what they were getting into, the government knew what it was investing in, and money was allocated step-by-step:
This approach bridges the gap between designing for a use case versus designing to strict specifications — a major issue in defense. Investments increase as certainty increases, using stage gates that also filter out unfit companies. Crucially, there was a clear commitment from the government to award multi-year purchase contracts at the end of the funnel. That motivated companies to stay in the game.
We’re starting to see similar, though smaller, moves in Europe – — for example, the European Space Agency’s launcher challenge. But we still lack an entity like this here.
Brave1 in Ukraine is a great example of a fast-moving collaboration between government and talent, delivering real results. When I mention Brave1 to people, I often hear, “Well, they’re not perfect.” My answer: sure, but let’s get to their level before we start criticizing.
Brave1 is a shining example of questioning every doctrinal and policy assumption – and doing so constructively. As many of my peers have said, Ukraine has the "luxury" (in quotes) of urgency. But I disagree with even that framing. Because if urgency isn’t felt right now by heads of state in Europe – despite attacks on pipelines, undersea cables, satellites, GPS disruptions, and massive cyberattacks – then what will create that sense of urgency?
I’m a big fan of shamelessly learning from others — from their mistakes and successes. I’ve learned a lot from government entities around the world, including a bit from the DIU itself. If we build transparent, open processes here in Europe, we too can have the success the U.S. is already showing.
Just yesterday, the U.S. fielded and procured a huge range of unmanned systems. The shift is already happening – outside of the EU. Inside, the momentum is growing. We’re seeing great progress in the UK, Ukraine of course, the CEE region, and even some moves in Sweden and Finland.
This is not the time to be pessimistic. This is the biggest economic opportunity we’ve seen in decades: the chance to reindustrialize, stop the brain drain, and retain talent that has traditionally fled to the U.S.
Europe doesn’t have to remain the world’s free R&D lab. We can become an industrial superpower again – and defend our borders, our values, and our democracy at the same time.
Also, don’t forget the legacy of the old-school post-Soviet engineering education in Ukraine. Many of our innovations in defense, our solutions, and our sheer resilience are built on that foundation.
Ukraine is not just fighting for itself; it’s fighting for all of us. The moment Ukraine stops fighting, this war spreads to all our eastern borders. That’s a fact.
And beyond that, Ukraine is outsmarting its adversary – and arguably outsmarting Europe too. If we fail to learn from Ukraine – to exchange ideas on security, infrastructure, procurement, and digital transformation – we’re missing an enormous opportunity.
Ukraine has performed literal marvels in all of these sectors, reducing procurement cycles from decades to a single year. They’ve launched a military marketplace, like Amazon for warfighters, where soldiers can order innovative gear directly.
Ukraine is now the ultimate testing ground for defense tech. Testing your tech in Spain or France doesn’t carry the same weight. Ukraine is where real battlefield testing happens.
Moreover, Ukraine has a significant purchasing power advantage. Production is not only already scaled and efficient – it’s cheaper than in most of Europe. Ukraine is a vital source for innovation, talent, manufacturing, testing, and policy reform. We should be learning and collaborating as much as possible.
When I talk to policy leaders, procurement officers, and big OEMs, they all talk about “innovation.” “We need AI.” “We need drones.” But that’s not enough.
Ukraine has adapted to defense, counter-defense, economic constraints, workforce shortages, and shifting battle conditions faster than any other nation. That’s what our leaders should focus on: adaptation, not just innovation. Because by the time your cybersecurity requirements are written, your tech might already be outdated.
We can’t deter adversaries with outdated tech. So, the question becomes: how do we build systems that allow us to adapt in weeks or months, not years? It’s possible. Ukraine has shown us how.
That’s what I hope leaders will take away: think in processes, not just products.
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