When we founded Resilience Conference last year, it was something of a knee-jerk response to what was happening around us. Friends in Ukraine were at war. Friends in the Baltics were preparing for war. In the UK, and much of Western Europe, it honestly felt like people were asleep at the wheel. Too many founders and investors were telling us ‘I don’t do defence,’ and too many government officials were busy forming working groups to explore ideas, and making do with very scant networks into the tech sector.
Over the last year, we have become immersed in the world of defence tech. This is not because we are building Resilience Media, it is why we are doing this. We wanted to help bring together the government and tech sector to work better together, and to convey to the wider tech sector both the commercial opportunity and the moral imperative of getting involved in defence, security, and resilience.
It is hard to feel positive about much right now. Last week, as we trekked across London through the Tube strike to DSEI, we were baffled by how people could be protesting outside a defence conference at precisely the same time that Russia was firing Shahed flying bombs into Poland, a NATO and EU country. When your eyes are open, the sense of urgency is palpable.
Building on last year’s conference, and our work launching the media platform this year, the content of Resilience Conference 2025 is shaping up really well. The panels are not obvious or superficial. Each panel and speaker has a reason for being there and is woven into a narrative running through the conference, which is about how the tech sector can support the military and national security community in a period of increasing geopolitical threat.
As with last year, we use sponsorships and ticket sales to pay for the conference. This allows us to remain completely independent and we are not beholden to any government or corporate line. We continue to keep commercial and editorial separate — nobody is paying to speak on our stage. All the content is carefully curated. Our aim is that people come away better informed, better networked, and better able to support the defence of our democracies.
And here’s why you need to be in the room this year.
We will hear from true leaders in the European defence tech sector. This is about much more than startups and investment. In panel discussions, the co-founder of Helsing, Torsten Reil, and one of Europe’s leading investors, Jeannette zu Fürstenburg, will discuss the urgency of European resilience and their vision for a sovereign European defence tech sector. Sten Tamkivi and Khaled Heloui, partners at Plural — and real tech veterans — will share the stage to talk about their personal mission to support European democracy and how this informs their investment thesis.
Founders, CEOs, and senior leadership from Anduril, Auterion, Frankenburg Technologies, Hadean, Hermeus, Solideon, STARK, PhysicsX, Nominal, and Tiberius will share their challenges and successes scaling companies in this complex and urgent sector.
Following on from the extraordinary fireside chat with the CTO of GCHQ in 2024, senior speakers from the National Security Community will talk about how they are engaging with the tech sector to support their mission, what technologies they are focussed on, and how startups can become part of the solution and avoid being part of the problem. All of this content will be off the record and will not be recorded, quoted, or photographed. You literally have to be in the room for this.
We will have military leaders on the stage, and more in the audience who are literally at the frontline of defence, sharing their perspectives on how technology needs to be integrated into the defence of the Nordic-Baltic region and NATO’s Eastern Flank. We will hear from the NATO Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), and the Danish Army, as well as from experts in national security from Poland and Estonia.
We will give our stage to Ukrainians, the heroes of today. We will welcome Ukrainian startups, investors, and soldiers. They will share with the conference the very latest insights into how technology is being deployed on their front line, and what the future of defence tech looks like to those actively using and building it.
And we will be breaking some big news on the stage about significant new opportunities for the Western defence tech sector — essential insights for startups and investors. What will be discussed over the two days will change how this sector looks and develops over the coming years.
To keep the content informed and in depth, panels will be moderated by top journalists from publications like Bloomberg, Financial Times, Forbes, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters and WIRED, as well as our own writers at Resilience Media. The conference is a great place to meet the journalists covering our sector, and last year this led to significant coverage for startups who attended.
We will be hosting breakout sessions with PA Consulting, BAE Systems, DarkStar, HMGCC, Holland & Knight, and Athena. These 55 minute side sessions are an opportunity to meet thought leaders, engage in a very interactive discussion, and focus in on topics including opening up our supply chain, building a defence tech ecosystem, primes investing in startups, disinformation, and more. Breakouts also offer networking on a smaller scale around a core topic or theme.
And as with last year, we have no back stage or VIP areas, everyone is in one venue and encouraged to mix. This year we’ve added a dedicated networking area with a coffee cart, sponsored by Delian, to give more space for that.
Whilst we will write about and share most of the content, we cannot stress enough that some of the most interesting and unusual content will be off the record. You need to be in the room to hear from the speakers you are least likely to hear from elsewhere. You also need to be in the room to meet this diverse and extraordinary group of people.
Leslie and I look forward to seeing you there.
TS.
