The global race is on to secure and dominate critical technologies and the workforce talent and capital markets that support their development. Whichever country or group of nations succeeds will have the military and strategic edge. The quiet launch on 1 July of the Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator within the Defence Department seeks to position Australia in this race.

Laura Dobberstein reports that insufficient attention has been paid to the national security implications of private enterprise taking over from government as the main source of innovation for defence and intelligence applications, according to a panel at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI)'s Sydney Dialogue on 04 April 2023.

UK launches 2023 Integrated Review Refresh to respond to growing global volatility.

Any Yakulis explores how the Department of Defense has an innovation problem, threatening our competitive advantage with our adversaries. Risk aversion, bureaucracy, red tape, heavy regulation, and a culture that values the status quo over change are stalling the pace of innovation. The simple reality is that innovative thinking gets squashed by the "this is the way we've always done things" mentality. DoD must prioritize this self-inflicted innovation crisis to streamline advanced technology to the warfighter when needed most; an institutional culture shift must occur. DoD must focus on new collaborations with startups, venture capital (VC) and overall, start taking measured acquisition risk in the same way our operational force takes calculated but necessary risk.

John Kunkel and Hayley Chenner suggest we urgently need to develop new public-private partnerships that leverage private sector nous and capital for national security purposes.

Repeat billion-dollar start-up founder Palmer Luckey, who sold his pioneering virtual reality company Oculus to Facebook in 2014, has castigated socially-minded investment funds for failing to include the defence and nuclear energy industries in their portfolios.

Over the years, steps were taken to better equip the U.S. military toward modernizing defense IT infrastructure in the face of cyber threats along with increased budget free from sequestration. Recently, a group of defense investors has been closely observing dual-use technologies that may be useful for the army.