A central question for defence planners is now whether their governments sit atop, or can reliably access, civilian electric-manufacturing ecosystems that can be redirected quickly in a crisis. Private companies with fast design cycles and tight hardware–software feedback loops have become essential to sustaining high-tempo military operations, not because the technology is cutting edge, but because production cadence and iteration speed are more significant factors.

Countries that cultivate durable civilian strength in the electric tech stack will find that when under threat, much of the defence-industrial base required for attritional, distributed warfare already exists in civilian form. Those that rely on distant suppliers may learn that emergency spending cannot quickly conjure engineering expertise, reliable component lines or innovation loops that were not developed prior to a crisis or war.

Years of forward-leaning climate policies have forced utilities and manufacturers to build relevant capabilities and solve problems that others are only now confronting. The United States, for instance, has in 2025 doubled down on fossil fuels and coal while downgrading or eliminating industrial policies aimed at electrification. This has opened space for Europe to emerge as a key supplier to the US and other markets (including its own) if it treats electrification as a strategic, dual-use industrial activity rather than something done primarily in service of decarbonisation goals.

Europe’s high industrial-electricity costs and slow project delivery remain constraints. And while European firms have excelled at producing high-end electrical equipment, states have not built the types of dense, flexible supplier ecosystems seen in China. Yet some of these gaps are tractable: a straightforward menu of policies could incentivise greater manufacturing co-location and offer targeted support to mid-tier producers in the electric tech stack – particularly in a world of higher tariffs and emerging processes for advanced and robotic manufacturing. The need to build supply lines less reliant on China, particularly for refined minerals and neodymium magnets, is already front of mind in Brussels.

If Europe were to close some of these gaps, it would convert its early electrification moves into real defence capability in a future crisis. With battlefield activity increasingly mediated by batteries, motors and chips, the ability to source, build and iterate these technologies at scale is no longer peripheral to future defence planning but a central element of national power.