Moving Fast and Breaking Things: The increasing role of start-ups in the European defense domain
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2025-06-13
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en
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The EU has recently increased its focus on stimulating the role of innovative tech start-ups in the European defence domain. The goal of this assistance is to greatly enhance their security and military capabilities before the year 2030. Despite arguing that these start-ups are important to enhance its security, the EU is stimulating their role in defence only in a limited amount. Through a combination of a theory-driven and grounded theory approach, this thesis uses a qualitative content analysis of recent EU-defence policy documents to examine if this restrained stimulation is due to the absence of militarized neoliberalism or other constraining factors. Militarized neoliberalist theory argues that neoliberal governments are using economic statecraft to enhance their military and defence capabilities to contain China. The results of this analysis suggest that the increased role of start-ups in the European defence domain is a result of the presence of militarized neoliberalism in the EU. However, this only leads to a limited amount of stimulation due to two constraining factors that are intrinsic to the EU defence domain: normative constrains and the fragmented nature of member states. Because of the negative effect that a large role of start-ups in the defence domain could have on (inter)national security, this thesis hopes to contribute to a debate on the desirability of these developments.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen