Resilience and Defense – The Role of Tech
Risto Siilasmaa explores how technological sovereignty, trusted governance, and Nordic cooperation can strengthen resilience and defense in an era of fused economic, security, and digital dependencies.
Technology has become the dominant engine of global value creation, on track to reach up to 300 trillion USD within the next decade. It is already reshaping power structures, political decision-making and the regulatory landscape. For Europe, our economic security, defense capability and societal stability will increasingly hinge on our ability to achieve sovereignty in AI, cloud, cybersecurity and data infrastructure.
The core question is how the New Nordics can strengthen resilience at a moment when economic, defense and technological dependencies are fusing—and how we turn the hard lessons from Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine into a strategy for long-term strength. The Nordic region is exceptionally well positioned to lead. As NATO and EU partners move toward investing closer to 5% of GDP into resilience and future security, the Nordics can set the benchmark. We have trusted governance, world-class research, and a long tradition of public–private cooperation.
This allows us to evolve the Host Nation Concept beyond military interoperability into technological hosting—secure environments for allied AI, cloud and defence systems under shared governance, shared standards and shared accountability. Through this Nordic companies will gain in competitiveness as reliable and trusted providers of critical infrastructure related products and services globally.
The task ahead is to define how secure Nordic investment frameworks can guarantee access to strategic technologies, reduce structural dependencies, and build a model for integrated technological and defence cooperation. Done right, the New Nordics can become trusted hubs for allied digital and strategic assets—a foundation for both regional resilience and Europe’s future competitiveness.
About Risto Siilasmaa
Risto Siilasmaa is a Finnish entrepreneur who founded F-Secure in 1988 and was CEO for 18 years. After a company split, he now serves as Chairman of WithSecure, the B2B cybersecurity company. Chairman of Nokia from 2012 to 2020 and Interim CEO in 2013. Today, his work focuses on entrepreneurship, venture investing, and strategic foresight through his family office, First Fellow, which invests primarily at the pre-seed stage and has backed more than 50 companies, including seven unicorns. He is also active in education and science, working with Aalto University and serving on the IESE Business School Advisory Board.
Risto Siilasmaa is Origination’s Knowledge Partner and Chair of the Origination’s Resilience and Defense sector.