The people redesigning European defence aren't coming from the military. They're coming from the gaming world — and they're building it over weekends.
Georgina Godwin speaks with Benjamin Wolba, co-founder of the European Defense Tech Hub, about how the age of the drone has fundamentally rewritten the rules of who gets to participate in defence. A cheap quadcopter can now neutralise a million-dollar tank. A weekend hackathon can produce a working interceptor prototype. And the skills that once seemed frivolous — flying drones for sport, writing game code, optimising flight algorithms — are suddenly among the most strategically valuable on the continent.
Benjamin charts the journey from Ukraine's improvised drone kitchens to the defence hackathons now running across Europe, from London to Lviv, pulling hundreds of young engineers, physicists and coders into a field they once considered off-limits.
So where's Europe's real defence gap? Not hardware, Benjamin says, but mindset. In the future, the most innovative thinking will be the key to keeping us all safe.
Visionary is brought to you by Here East, London's home of innovation and creativity.
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