Across European Union policy circles, a decisive shift is underway. The language of globalization — efficiency, interconnected supply chains, frictionless markets — has given way to a new vocabulary: resilience, sovereignty, strategic autonomy.
Budgets are being redirected, industrial strategies rewritten, and political consensus is emerging around the need for Europe not just to compete, but to withstand disruption and operate independently in times of crisis. This is not about reversing globalization or retreating from international cooperation; Europe’s strength lies in open markets and global partnerships. But resilience requires ensuring that critical capabilities can be sustained when those systems come under strain.
Technological sovereignty is not an abstract goal — it is a force multiplier for European defense. Resilient supply chains reduce dependencies, independent space and communications infrastructure ensures operational continuity, and strong industrial ecosystems enable faster deployment and sustainment of critical capabilities.
Yet policymakers continue to debate why sovereignty matters and how much to invest, with much less attention paid to what capabilities Europe must actually build. As the focus moves toward resilience, Europe must look beyond strategy and funding and commit to building the physical infrastructure required to sustain technological and defense capabilities at scale.
The rise of low-code and no-code tools, and the practice of “vibecoding,” have made it possible to prototype and scale ideas at unprecedented speed. This is a remarkable step toward democratizing who gets to build and experiment with technology. But resilience, particularly in defense and mission-critical systems, depends on capabilities that go far beyond this.
Europe cannot vibecode semiconductor fabrication plants, sovereign satellite constellations, or autonomous defense systems. These require secure testing environments, capital-intensive infrastructure, and trusted supply chains. In these domains, software is only the surface layer. The ability to operate in contested environments depends on physical systems and industrial capacity that can withstand pressure.
The Missing Aspect: Critical Physical Infrastructure
If Europe is serious about sovereignty, it must confront a structural reality: resilience is built of concrete, steel, and silicon.
Secure cleanrooms, advanced laboratories, testbeds, cyber validation environments, redundant manufacturing capacity, and communications infrastructure are essential to innovation; they are the backbone of defense readiness and civil preparedness. Without them, Europe risks designing systems it cannot sustain when it matters most.
The challenge now is directing coordinated investment into building and scaling them across Europe through shared facilities, cross-border programs, and long-term funding models rather than duplicating infrastructure through fragmented national efforts.
The EU already supports this through programs such as the European Innovation Council and the EU Defence Innovation Scheme. However, fragmented funding and overlapping remits create administrative bottlenecks, funding delays, and confusion for the innovators they are designed to support. The priority for those programs is not new instruments, but scaling and integrating existing ones to ensure shared infrastructure is accessible.
Differences in national priorities and coordination levels have historically led to siloed, short-term responses, rather than the systemic, long-term investment that sovereign infrastructure requires. The risk is not simply inefficiency; it is that Europe invests significantly while still falling short of the integrated capacity needed to operate independently at scale.
Closing this gap requires full-spectrum capability — from design and simulation to testing, production, deployment, and maintenance — with systems able to continue operating under stress or disruption.
The Strategic Role of Defense-Aligned Innovation Clusters
This is where regional innovation ecosystems become strategically critical. Clusters such as Kista, Stuttgart, and Toulouse illustrate what defense-oriented ecosystems look like in practice.
Kista, long established as one of Europe’s leading telecoms and ICT hubs, is evolving into a dual-use innovation ecosystem, where capabilities developed for commercial applications such as sensors, data infrastructure, and mobile communications are increasingly being applied to defense contexts. These technologies now underpin modern defense operations, enabling real-time intelligence, surveillance and rapid decision-making.
This ability to pivot toward defense applications makes clusters like Kista strategically valuable, enabling Europe to build on existing industrial foundations, scale innovation, and respond more effectively to emerging threats.
There are other such clusters already in existence. In Germany, Stuttgart demonstrates the strength of tightly integrated industrial capabilities, enabling precision manufacturing at scale, a critical asset for sustaining defense supply chains. In France, Toulouse, one of Europe’s most mature aerospace and defense clusters, anchors capabilities across satellite systems, avionics, and mission-critical infrastructure.
Scaling these ecosystems through Triple Helix collaboration (academia, industry, government) should become an anchor of EU industrial strategy, ensuring access to shared high-grade infrastructure and the testing, validation, and specialized equipment needed to build trusted, resilient, and deployable systems.
EU and NATO member states must take a more active role in enabling and scaling such hubs. This means committing to long-term co-investment in shared R&D infrastructure, while aligning defense and industrial funding to support dual-use innovation.
Programs such as the European Defence Fund and ESA-led collaborations have demonstrated how pooled funding supports shared capabilities by incentivizing cross-border coordination and reducing fragmented defense spending across Europe. Building on this, governments can expand co-investment models to ensure infrastructure is accessible across ecosystems, rather than confined to national initiatives.
Rather than developing isolated national hubs, Europe should focus on connecting existing clusters into a networked ecosystem that supports knowledge sharing, supply chain integration, and faster deployment.
To accelerate defense innovation, Europe must connect and scale these ecosystems into a coherent, pan-European resilience architecture. Achieving this will depend on coordinated policy frameworks, joint funding, and closer alignment between EU and NATO priorities. Without it, Europe risks fragmentation; with it, these clusters can function as distributed, resilient systems underpinning Europe’s technological sovereignty.
Strategic Clarity Is Needed, In Addition to Solid Budgets
Europe does not lack ambition, nor funding. But too often, discussions around sovereignty are framed in terms of budgets and policy frameworks, rather than operational capability.
Flagship initiatives such as the European Chips Act and IRIS² ultimately hinge on Europe’s ability to build end-to-end industrial capacity, not just fund it. This means ensuring systems can be designed, tested, manufactured, deployed, and maintained within Europe, rather than relying on fragmented supply chains or external dependencies.
The need for trained personnel is another key component to building European defense sovereignty. Europe’s semiconductor talent gap is set to significantly widen over the next five years. It’s crucial that academia and industry jointly develop new talent pipelines, while prioritizing workforce reskilling and upskilling, to ensure labor resilience in such critical industries.
Funding must be channelled through coordinated European programs that prioritize shared infrastructure over isolated national projects. Without this shift, Europe risks duplicating efforts while still failing to build the integrated capacity required at scale.
The real question is not just how much Europe spends, but what it can sustain, protect, and mobilize in crises. Otherwise, sovereignty remains aspirational, not operational.
Sovereignty is not achieved through declarations. It is built deliberately with long-term commitment.
It requires sustained investment in infrastructure, supply chains, maintenance capacity, and skilled personnel. It demands coordination across civil and defense domains. And it requires political willingness to prioritize resilience over short-term efficiency.
Above all, it requires clarity about what independence entails in practice. Because in the end, resilience in Europe’s defense, space, and critical technology systems cannot be vibecoded.
It must be built.
Elin Hammarberg is Manager at Kista Limitless, a development company that works closely with local stakeholders and the City of Stockholm to strengthen Kista’s position as a leading tech hub.
Carina Zaring is the Director of Electrum Laboratory, where she works to strengthen collaboration between academia and industry, bridging advanced semiconductor research with industrial applications. The Electrum Laboratory, a KTH Royal Institute of Technology research infrastructure, provides a fully equipped CMOS and III-V semiconductor laboratory to researchers and companies. The laboratory is a part of the Chips JU funded WBG Pilot line.
