Insights

April 8, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. Amazon considers buying Globalstar to rival Starlink In the latest episode of Musk vs Bezos, Amazon is reportedly  in talks  to buy Globalstar, an American low orbit satellite constellation, in a continuation of its bid to compete with Starlink. It is mulling a valuation of $9B. That seems quite cheap. I wrote last week that Starlink is the jewel in the crown of SpaceX (which has recently increased its target IP

April 1, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. SpaceX ready for IPO SpaceX   is apparently set to file for an IPO  as soon as this week  to raise $75B at a $1.75T valuation. That would make it the largest IPO in history, beating that of Saudi Aramco (~$29.4B) in 2019. My prediction for 2026 was that SpaceX would become the world’s most valuable company. A market cap of $1.75T would place it ~6th. Although NVIDIA’s chips are fundamental to training and runnin

Mar 25, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. Iran attacks Diego Garcia The UK confirmed  that Iran fired two missiles at a British-American base in Diego Garcia. The missiles appeared to be two-stage intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). What is interesting is that the 4,000km range of the missiles is roughly double what most analysts thought Iran capable of. Although they failed to hit anything, the extended range now puts European capitals such as

Mar 11, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. Iran destroys $300m American radar Iran has destroyed  an American radar in Jordan used missile defence. It’s not clear whether Iran used missiles or Shahed drones, or a combination of both to achieve this. What is certain is that it cost Iran a lot less than $300m to do so. It is one of Iran’s most successful attacks to date. One of the more interesting discussions to come out of the third Gulf War has been the

11 Mar, 2026 - SheCanCode International Women's Day on 8 March is a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating women’s equality. This year’s theme is Give to Gain, encouraging a mindset of generosity and collaboration. Give To Gain emphasises the power of reciprocity and support. When people, organisations, and communities give generously, opportunities and support for women i

10 Mar, 2026 - Orqa Press Release Orqa has successfully raised  €12.7 million in Series A funding.  Led by Expeditions, the leading early-stage investor in European security, other participants in the round include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Taiwania Capital, Aymo, and Radius Capital.  The Croatian drone technology company is building on its ability to produce up to 280,000 NDAA-compliant drones annually at its Osijek headquarters by launching a Global Manufacturing Partner

Mar 10, 2026 - Forbes The German-based Jülich Supercomputing Centre announced in February 2025, that it is  permanently incorporating the U.S.-based D-Wave annealing quantum computer  after three years of successful hosting and usage. The system will be connected to JUPITER (Joint Undertaking Pioneer for Innovative and Transformative Exascale Research) supercomputer, Europe’s first and only exascale supercomputer (1018 calculations per second, 1000 times faster than previous

Mar 10, 2026 - McKinsey.com AI foundation models now routinely contain hundreds of billions of parameters, placing unprecedented demands on the chips and systems that support them. Those demands set the context for a panel discussion at CES 2026 in Las Vegas titled “All In on AI: Betting on the Power of Next-Gen Chips,” moderated by McKinsey partner Syed Alam and featuring leaders from EMD Electronics, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Synopsys. Read the full article here

Mar 8, 2026 - World Economic Forum Quantum technologies offer immense global benefits but we must proactively include women to avoid bias. Persistent gender gaps in physics and computer science translate into lower female workforce participation in quantum. A more inclusive quantum economy starts with each individual decision maker choosing to act. Breakthroughs in frontier technologies like quantum computing offer huge potential benefits across industries and societies, from

Mar 4, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. Iran is to missiles what Ukraine is to drones. Those were the words of my Lebanese friend who sent me a few WhatsApp videos over the weekend. They featured different types of Iranian missile raining down on Israel. The Islamic Republic appears to have deployed a number of novel systems over the last few days. This week’s newsletter will therefore be an Iran War special edition, covering a few of those new technolo

Feb. 25, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. DoW vs Anthropic Pete Hegseth has  threatened  to list Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’, meaning no defence contractor could use it. This comes after Anthropic tried to set conditions for what its AI could be used for. The red line for Anthropic seems to be around the use of AI for final targeting decisions without human intervention. This reminds me of the debate around submarines in the early 1900s. As the t

Feb. 19, 2026 - Quantum Insider Firgun Ventures, a new, London-based, $250 million Quantum fund, announces its first investment, backing Photonic Inc., a Canadian-based leader in distributed quantum computing and communications. Photonic is one of the quantum computing companies globally selected for Stage B of the DARPA Quantum Benchmarking Initiative, which seeks to validate approaches to utility-scale quantum computing. The company was co-founded by Dr Stephanie Simmons, w

Feb. 18, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. I was at the Munich Security Conference last week. There was a palpable difference in tone compared to the year before. Despite the relatively conciliatory speech by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Europe is now firmly in a ‘post-Greenland’ mentality. Admittedly we are not yet ‘post-Greenland’ as the issue may rear its head again at any moment. But that is kind of the point. Unsure if they can trust the curre

Feb. 16, 2026 - MIT Sloan Management Review Is fear in times of high uncertainty holding your organization back from revenue growth? New research busts three widespread myths about risk-taking and shows how to profit. Many leaders say it’s wise to hold back from making new investments or acquisitions during tumultuous times. They posit that significant risk-taking works only if you go into an uncertain period with momentum or with a healthy fallback cushion. A new analysis of

Feb. 4, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. SpaceX acquires xAI SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI at a $1.25tn valuation ties its capital-disciplined launch and satellite business to the cash-hungry race for frontier AI. While framed as a space-based data-centre collaboration, the deal effectively channels SpaceX revenues to fund xAI’s competition with OpenAI and others, diluting SpaceX’s focus and undermining the case for it becoming the world’s most valuable c

Jan. 28, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. Blue Origin will launch TeraWave Blue Origin’s TeraWave satellite internet launch signals Bezos’s challenge to SpaceX and highlights how critical space-based infrastructure has become. With Starlink’s growing dominance raising geopolitical and resilience concerns—especially in Europe—governments are increasingly motivated to support alternative, sovereign satellite systems. Russian technology shuts down Starlink

Mar 25, 2026 - MIT Sloan Management Review AI Hype vs. Reality: 2026 — 13-minute video Beyond the headlines about generative AI, what do leaders really need to know? In this insightful video , AI experts Thomas H. Davenport and Randy Bean explain why most AI investments aren’t paying off yet — and what leading companies are doing differently. AI investment continues to fuel the U.S. economy, but many expect it to slow down dramatically in 2026. Agentic AI was the hot topic of

Jan. 21, 2026 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. Germany buys American UAVs Germany has  ordered  eight MQ-9B SeaGuardian drones from General Atomics, an American defence prime, at a cost of €1.52bn. This initially feels off-brand for Germany, which has been a staunch champion of sovereign European capability since Munich Security Conference one year ago. But there are many (largely strategic) capabilities which are still provided to Europe by the US. At least

Jan. 15, 2026 - MIT Sloan Management Review If you’re lucky, your team has talent. What they may lack is the freedom to use it fully. Distributed leadership can unlock employee potential that has been stifled by a traditional workplace hierarchy, by giving teams the autonomy to react quickly and innovate rapidly. In a short video, MIT professor Kate Isaacs and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Michele Zanini revisit seven of their favorite clips from interviews they’ve c

Jan. 14 , 2025 - Major developments in dual-use and defence tech. US used kamikaze drones in Venezuela Footage from Venezuela shows Shahed-style kamikaze drones used in an operation against Maduro, likely American LUCAS drones, though the Pentagon hasn’t confirmed this. LUCAS is a low-cost U.S. drone reverse-engineered from Iran’s Shahed-136, marking its first use in a complex combined-arms operation and reflecting tactics seen in Ukraine. At roughly $35k per unit, it highlig