Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media

Thanks for all the feedback after last week’s news about our funding and editorial expansion, and welcome to many new subscribers. As I said last week, we couldn’t do this without you. Over the coming months, we’ll be digging into what you want to read so we can continue to provide the deepest coverage possible of the ecosystem. Feedback on this welcomed anytime.

Late last week we brought you the news that BAE Systems had made an undisclosed strategic investment into Oxford Dynamics, a startup founded in 2020. Oxford Dynamics has chosen to bootstrap since it was founded, which, in founder Shefali Sharma’s words, allowed them to understand the market more organically. This is a relatively unusual way for a prime to engage with a startup. Rather than hiring, contracting, or acquiring the company, an investment sees BAE supporting them on a longer journey, and in a more conventional tech sector way. Oxford Dynamics will not be limited in its relationships with other primes, which in turn allow BAE Systems both to expand its own relationships in the industry and to capitalise on Oxford Dymanics’ success with those organisations. New ways of primes and startups working together are emerging, such as Rheinmetall’s partnership with Auterion, but no direct investments like this have crossed our path. Know of any others? Send us a message. More below in our Startup Watch section.

In other news, China has accused the US of exploiting a Microsoft zero-day to attack its defence sector. This alleged role-reversal saw US intelligence active in an un-named major Chinese military-related enterprise from July 2022-23. Read more in our Cybersecurity News section below.

Elsewhere on Resilience Media:

• Germany Floats a New €100B Resilience Fund
• Inside the Darkstar Bootcamp in Kyiv: Unorthodox Comms, Underwater Operations, and Building a Community
• Milrem and Frontline partner to power up Milrem’s THeMIS vehicles with BURIA grenade systems
• Point72 Launches $400M ‘Deterrence Fund’ to Back Early-Stage Defence Tech
• SEB Expands Defence-Sector Investment Access, Launches Thematic Fund for Europe’s Strategic Resilience
• Skyrora secures UK rocket launch licence, marking a first for British spaceflight
• Transatlantic Financial Heavyweights To Fund New European Defence Bank

See you next week (and send us your news!).

-Leslie, co-founder, Resilience Media

BAE Systems has made a strategic investment in Oxford Dynamics, a UK startup building agentic AI and embedded systems for the space, security and defence sectors.

The British aerospace giant becomes the first external investor in Oxford Dynamics, with initial plans to embed the startup’s AI smarts into Prophesea – a platform that pulls together data from different systems to monitor assets like warships and armoured vehicles, and keep them ready for action.

Co-founder and director Shefali Sharma said that while the funding supports integration with BAE’s own systems, it also strengthens Oxford Dynamics’ ability across broader defence and national security applications.

“It’s fuel for sovereign innovation, wherever the mission leads,” Sharma told Resilience Media. Read more here.

China has formally accused US intelligence agencies of exploiting a previously unknown Microsoft Exchange zero‑day vulnerability to orchestrate a prolonged cyberattack against its defence sector.

China’s National Internet Emergency Response Center (CNCERT), which describes itself as a non-governmental cybersecurity technical center, alleges that US intelligence hackers leveraged the flaw in Microsoft’s Exchange software to breach and maintain control of the email server of a major Chinese military-related enterprise (which it did not name) between July 2022 and July 2023.

During this alleged cyber‑espionage campaign, CNCERT claims the perpetrators stole sensitive defence data and maintained persistent access throughout that period.

“The attacker … launched more than 40 network attacks, stealing the emails of 11 people, including the senior management of the enterprise, involving the relevant design schemes, system core parameters and other contents of our military industry products,” reads a version of CNCERT’s statement translated by Resilience Media. Read the full piece here.

Drones

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Taiwan Drafts New Special Defense Budget Amid Drone, Missile Push

Europe

Denmark to complete $3.4 billion of air defense purchases by year-end

Startups

Anduril Expands to Taiwan

INDOPACOM’s ‘expeditionary foundry’ is another step toward the 3D-printed future