NATO Secretary General at plenary session of the World Economic Forum in Davos 🇨🇭, 23 JAN 2025

Video Description

Remarks by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte during Plenary Session: “Technology in the World" at the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, 23 January 2025. From 22 to 23 January 2025, the NATO Secretary General, Mr Mark Rutte, attends the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. Mr Nicholas Thompson: First question for you. Lot of technological change. It's been interesting to watch the war in Ukraine, where, in fact, one of the most interesting technologies that has been most impactful has been drones. Tell me, as you see military change and as you see AI coming, what to you is the most important change that will affect the balance of power in the coming years. 🗣 | NATO Secretary General: Clearly, at the moment, it is the drone technology which is really changing the way we conduct these wars. You see now $400 Ukraine drones taking out multi-million dollar, in terms of cost, Russian tanks. We just launched Baltic Sentry, a mission or an activity, we should say, in the Baltic Sea, to fight off the Russians who are getting at our critical undersea infrastructure. We are using sea drone technology there, next to the more traditional technology with ships, etc, and aircraft. But also this drone technology here, and obviously, AI will also be transformative in the terms of how we fight our wars. Of course, the question I'm getting a lot is that I'm really pleading for more money to be spent on defence. And then people are worried that we will spend that in the same way as we did the last 100 years. But that is not the case. Yes, we have to spend more. We are spending now, on average here in Europe, 2%. That has to be much more. I think Donald Trump is right here that we are spending not enough. And anyway, we have to get it into a balance with what the US is spending. But particularly here, we have to look out for the industry base. So, what our defence industry is producing. And they are not producing enough. But also, in terms of innovation, we are too slow in innovating. One of the problems here is that the ‘better’ is the enemy of ‘good’. It has to be perfect, but it doesn't have to be perfect. When Ukraine is fighting this war on a one to ten scale, they can set for a six or a seven. But in NATO, we can only bring something out if it is a nine or a 10. We don't have that luxury anymore. So, speed is of the essence, not perfection, to get these new technologies in. And if we don't, then we have to spend even more. So, joint procurement, yes, we have to get the big contracts in. But also, in terms of the innovation, if do not innovate faster, at a higher speed, not achieving perfection, but getting speed and enough quality done in the right conjunction, then we have to spend even more. And it is already a big drain, of course, on society, defence spending, and we need more of that. So, in that sense, technology is a crucial factor. Is a crucial factor. Full transcript here: https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/opinions_232547.htm ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬ SUBSCRIBE to this channel https://bit.ly/NATOsubscribe SUBSCRIBE to NATO News https://bit.ly/NATONewsSubscribe SUBSCRIBE to NATO History https://bit.ly/NATOHistorySubscribe Connect with NATO online: Visit the Official NATO Homepage: https://bit.ly/NATOhomepage Receive NATO updates via email: https://bit.ly/NATOemails Find NATO on FACEBOOK: https://bit.ly/NATOfacebook Follow @NATO on X/TWITTER: https://bit.ly/NATOtwitter Follow NATO on Instagram: https://bit.ly/NATOinstagram Find NATO on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/NATOlinkedin Find NATO on Flickr: https://bit.ly/NATOflickr #NATO #OTAN #wef2025 Thumbnail photo credit: REUTERS