Good afternoon from the team at Resilience Media. This is Issue 54 of our weekly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
It is perhaps unsurprising that the distance between defence and the commercial sector is growing increasingly small. Nothing made this more clear than the Consumer Electronics Show floor (CES), a gigantic event held every year at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Resilience Media Editor at Large, John Biggs was on site and wrote about its transformation from a strictly consumer event into a defence and dual-use show. We’ve excerpted John’s piece below in our Dispatches From Las Vegas section.
When John was working on the story, I mused that perhaps CES was becoming a national security risk as most of the technologies presented at the trade show originated in China. John makes the point in his piece that CES as a convening body has never been more political than trying to help their member organisations sell more product, but given security concerns with technology coming from China and inhabiting every aspect of consumer technology, this consideration should be part of societal resilience.
Another aspect of societal resilience we are watching is the protection of our elections. With interference incoming from both Russia and the US, digital literacy and relationships with startup technologies are going to be required by our political leaders. That’s why it was really exciting to see tech champion Mykhailo Fedorov named new defence minister of Ukraine on Wednesday, reported for Resilience Media by Ingrid Lunden and Thomas Macaulay. As for the rest of our predictions, we’ve excerpted the piece below, in case you missed it last week.
Elsewhere on Resilience Media:
Defense Unicorns lives up to its name: $136M round lifts valuation past $1B
Hydrosat raises $60M for its thermal satellite imaging tech
The startup hoping to sell anti-radiation drug to Ukrainian Armed Forces
MoD weighs £20M laser investment for UK air defences
Berlin power grid attack underscores fragility of Europe’s critical networks
We’re running our first jobs board today which you can find at the bottom of this post. I encourage you to check out the opportunities at Farsight Vision. And lastly, got a tip, funding announcement, or news? Send it our way. I’ll be back in your inboxes next week.
-Leslie Hitchcock, co-founder and Publisher, Resilience Media
CES isn’t just consumer tech anymore
John Biggs, Editor at Large
For decades, the Consumer Electronics Show has emphasised (as you might guess by the name) the consumer side of things. CES is where they launched the VCR, the first Atari arcade game, and the first CD player. Las Vegas — convention centre extraordinaire, and the home of CES — where the future came to rest after winging its way across the Pacific from Japan and China and over the desert from the tech hubs of San Francisco and Palo Alto. You could walk miles of convention halls secure in the knowledge that nothing at the show could hurt you.
This year, the show was different. During the three days I spent roaming the massive halls, I didn’t see Bluetooth speakers or TV sets. Instead, I saw humanoid robots, autonomous drone platforms, and systems that could sort objects, play tic-tac-toe, and identify a target in the wild.
On the surface, many of the products still looked like consumer ideas. But what was unique were a series of pavilions dedicated to academic research and startups. These companies weren’t trying to make a cooler keyboard or add LEDs to a mouse. Instead, as in the case of one Chinese company called Neuromeka, they were building robots that could replace Amazon warehouse workers by packing and sorting boxes at comically slow speeds.
The undercurrent here was one of potential dual use, if not malice. These robots and drones, all of them designed to look like friendly game players and sports stars — one company featured a pair of little humanoids that boxed each other with realistic punches and kicks — had an ulterior motive, one firmly rooted in the future of warfare.
Keep reading here.
ICYMI: 6 predictions for defence in 2026
Leslie Hitchcock and Tobias Stone, Co-Founders
As we enter 2026, these are the key topics the Resilience Media editorial team will explore in our writing and at our events (though we also expect the unexpected).
We will be shining a light on the people and technology addressing these problems, raising the profile of the newcomers stepping up to protect our democracies and talking to established leaders. We will focus on the intersection of innovation, technology, investment, policy, and strategy; whilst this is mainly about defence and security, we will broaden out into resilience because warfare is no longer restricted to the battlefield.
We believe there is a risk that NATO is preparing for a war that is unlikely to happen whilst not recognising the war that is already underway. Whether the threat is Russia or another adversary, technology has opened a new front in how countries fight.
Along with interviews and profiles, news and comment, Resilience Media will build resilience through the networks we create between the military and national security community and the tech sectors across Europe and Ukraine. We will announce our program of events across Europe in the coming weeks.
Reflecting geopolitical realities, we are focussed on defending our elections, our information space, and our infrastructure as well as the role of deterrent in preventing conflict. If conflict comes, European NATO and its partners need to be able to win decisively and quickly. We need rapid innovation in defence, national security, and resilience to do that.
Read our list of 6 defence predictions here.
Follow Resilience Media on LinkedIn to catch our latest news coverage in your feed. And don’t be shy, bring your voice to the discussion.
Jobs Board
Our friends at Farsight Vision are hiring for a lot of roles, including Account Manager, Sales Manager, Robotics Software Engineer, Senior Python Software Engineer, Customer Support Manager, Computer Vision Engineer, Compliance Officer (Cybersecurity), Technical Recruiter, and more. To apply for any of these positions, please reach out to the team or apply online.
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