The Global Institute for Strategic Studies (GISS)

Europe is entering an era in which scientific research can no longer be treated primarily as an academic or innovation policy. Artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, semiconductors, biotechnology, advanced materials, space systems and defence technologies are transforming research capacity into a central component of geopolitical power. The states capable of financing research, retaining scientific talent and converting discoveries into commercially and strategically valuable technologies will increasingly determine the distribution of global economic and military power.

Europe begins this competition from a position of considerable strength. It possesses leading universities, sophisticated research institutions, highly educated workforces and major industrial capabilities. Yet the continent faces a persistent structural problem: Europe is often highly competitive in producing scientific knowledge but less successful in transforming that knowledge into globally dominant companies, technologies and industrial ecosystems.

This gap has become strategically significant as competition with the United States and China intensifies. American technology companies benefit from enormous capital markets and powerful innovation ecosystems capable of rapidly commercialising research. China has simultaneously developed an increasingly integrated model linking government investment, universities, industrial policy and strategic technology development. Europe, by contrast, continues to struggle with fragmented capital markets, uneven national research systems, regulatory complexity and difficulties scaling innovative companies across the Single Market.

The challenge is therefore no longer simply whether Europe spends enough on research. The deeper question is whether Europe can build a functioning research economy in which universities, laboratories, startups, investors, defence industries and governments operate within an integrated strategic ecosystem.

This paper argues that scientific capacity should increasingly be regarded as part of Europe’s economic security architecture. Research funding, technological sovereignty and industrial competitiveness are becoming inseparable. Unless Europe improves its ability to translate scientific excellence into economic and strategic power, it risks becoming dependent on technologies developed and commercialised elsewhere—even when some of the underlying research originated within Europe.

Introduction

For much of the post-Cold War period, European research policy was primarily associated with economic development, academic excellence and technological innovation. Governments invested in universities and research institutions because scientific discovery was considered essential to productivity, competitiveness and social progress. Security policy, meanwhile, remained largely separated from academic and technological policy.

That separation is rapidly disappearing.

The global competition surrounding artificial intelligence, advanced semiconductors, quantum computing, biotechnology, autonomous systems and space technologies has demonstrated that scientific leadership increasingly determines strategic influence. Technologies developed inside laboratories can rapidly become foundations for industrial dominance, intelligence capabilities and military power.

The semiconductor industry provides one of the clearest examples. Advanced chips underpin artificial intelligence systems, telecommunications infrastructure, modern weapons, satellites, vehicles and almost every major digital technology. As a result, semiconductor research and manufacturing have moved from commercial policy into the centre of geopolitical competition.

Artificial intelligence is producing a similar transformation. Leadership in AI depends not simply upon software development but upon an entire ecosystem involving advanced chips, computing infrastructure, electricity, data, universities, specialised researchers and enormous quantities of investment capital. The country or region controlling these interconnected capabilities gains advantages extending across both civilian and military sectors.

Europe therefore faces a strategic paradox.

The continent possesses substantial scientific capabilities but frequently struggles to capture the economic value generated by them.

European researchers contribute significantly to global scientific discovery, while European universities remain deeply integrated into international research networks. Yet innovative European companies often encounter difficulties obtaining sufficient capital to expand globally. Some relocate activities abroad, while others are acquired before developing into major European industrial champions.

The result is a structural gap between knowledge creation and value creation.

For the European Union, closing that gap may become one of the defining economic challenges of the next decade.

Research spending alone cannot guarantee technological sovereignty. Governments can invest billions in laboratories and universities, but strategic benefits remain limited if successful technologies ultimately depend on foreign manufacturing, foreign cloud infrastructure, foreign capital or companies headquartered outside Europe.

A genuine European research economy therefore requires a much broader ecosystem.

Universities must generate knowledge. Venture capital must finance experimentation. Companies must commercialise discoveries. European capital markets must provide financing for expansion. Industrial policy must support strategic manufacturing. Governments must become sophisticated customers for emerging technologies, while defence institutions can provide demand for dual-use innovation.

The connection between research and defence is particularly important. Many technologies now shaping military competition—including artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, robotics, quantum sensing, cybersecurity and advanced materials—have both civilian and military applications.

This means Europe’s defence industrial expansion cannot be separated from its scientific and technological base.

A country may increase military expenditure substantially, but if the underlying technologies, components and intellectual property remain dependent on external suppliers, higher defence budgets will not necessarily translate into strategic autonomy.

The same principle applies to economic security.

Europe’s dependence on imported energy after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated how economic relationships can become strategic vulnerabilities. Similar dependencies are now emerging around cloud computing, advanced semiconductors, artificial intelligence infrastructure, critical minerals and biotechnology.

Scientific and technological dependence may therefore become the next major frontier of European economic security.

Europe does not need complete technological self-sufficiency. Such an objective would be economically unrealistic and potentially counterproductive. Modern research depends upon international collaboration, and technological innovation benefits enormously from open scientific networks.

The objective should instead be strategic capacity: ensuring that Europe possesses sufficient research, industrial and financial capabilities to remain competitive in technologies essential to its economic and national security.

Achieving this objective will require a shift in European thinking.

Research policy can no longer be measured primarily by academic publications, patents or research expenditure. Policymakers must increasingly ask whether research produces technologies that can be commercialised, manufactured and scaled inside Europe.

That requires connecting research policy with industrial policy, capital markets, defence procurement and economic security.

The global technology race is ultimately becoming a competition between innovation ecosystems rather than individual companies or universities. The United States possesses extraordinary combinations of research universities, venture capital, technology companies and defence investment. China has developed its own state-supported ecosystem linking industrial development with strategic technological priorities.

Europe must develop a model suited to its own political and economic structure.

Its greatest strategic resource may not be any particular technology, company or laboratory. It may instead be the ability to connect the enormous scientific capabilities already distributed across the continent into an integrated European innovation system.

If Europe succeeds, research can become one of the foundations of its future economic and geopolitical power.

If it fails, the continent risks remaining scientifically influential while becoming increasingly dependent on others to transform knowledge into technology, technology into industry, and industry into strategic power.

In the emerging international order, that distinction will matter enormously.

I. Europe’s Innovation Paradox: Scientific Excellence Without Strategic Scale

Europe’s central research challenge is not a shortage of scientific knowledge. It is the persistent difficulty of converting that knowledge into economic scale and strategic influence. Across the continent, universities, laboratories and specialised research institutes generate discoveries in fields ranging from biotechnology and advanced materials to quantum science, robotics and artificial intelligence. Yet the commercial and geopolitical value created from these discoveries does not always remain within Europe. This gap between scientific excellence and industrial scale has become one of the most consequential weaknesses in Europe’s emerging research economy.

For decades, European innovation policy was built around the assumption that strong research institutions would naturally generate technological competitiveness. Governments funded universities, supported collaborative research programmes and encouraged cooperation between academia and industry. This approach produced significant scientific achievements, but the global technology economy has demonstrated that discovery represents only the beginning of the innovation process. Transforming a laboratory breakthrough into a globally significant technology requires capital, manufacturing capacity, entrepreneurial networks, skilled workers, infrastructure and access to sufficiently large markets.

It is at these later stages that Europe frequently encounters difficulties.

A promising technology may emerge from a European university, receive early public research funding and successfully establish a startup. The company then reaches the stage at which it requires substantially larger amounts of private capital to expand manufacturing, recruit specialised employees and compete internationally. European financing conditions can become less favourable at precisely this stage, encouraging companies to seek investment elsewhere or expand operations in markets offering deeper pools of growth capital.

The strategic consequence is significant. Europe may absorb much of the financial risk associated with early-stage scientific research while other economies capture a larger share of the commercial value generated when successful technologies reach global markets. In effect, Europe risks subsidising knowledge creation without fully capturing the industrial ecosystems that knowledge eventually produces.

Artificial intelligence illustrates the problem particularly clearly. European researchers and universities have contributed substantially to the development of modern AI. Yet leadership in the commercial AI economy increasingly depends upon factors extending far beyond research talent. Companies require enormous computing resources, specialised semiconductors, data infrastructure, cloud platforms and billions in investment. The concentration of these capabilities outside Europe creates a structural disadvantage even when European researchers remain scientifically competitive.

The same pattern can be observed in biotechnology. Europe possesses major pharmaceutical companies, world-class medical research institutions and highly sophisticated life-sciences clusters. Nevertheless, emerging biotechnology firms frequently require exceptionally large and patient investments before reaching commercial viability. When domestic capital markets cannot provide sufficient financing, companies become more dependent on international investors, acquisitions or relocation. Scientific leadership alone therefore does not automatically guarantee that the resulting economic ecosystem remains European.

Quantum technology may present an even more important test. Europe maintains substantial expertise in quantum physics and related scientific fields. However, the strategic competition surrounding quantum computing, sensing and communications will ultimately depend upon whether scientific discoveries can be converted into commercially viable technologies and industrial capabilities. Losing the commercialisation race after contributing significantly to the underlying science would reproduce the same structural problem Europe has experienced in other technology sectors.

Fragmentation within the European economy compounds these difficulties. The European Union possesses a vast Single Market, yet startups and technology companies still encounter differences in regulation, taxation, financing conditions and administrative procedures across member states. A company attempting to expand from one European country into several others can face greater complexity than a comparable company scaling across the United States. For technology businesses operating in markets where speed is strategically important, these barriers can influence where companies choose to expand.

Capital-market fragmentation is particularly significant. Europe possesses enormous private savings, institutional investors and financial resources, but comparatively less capital flows into high-risk technological expansion than the continent’s overall wealth might suggest. The problem is therefore not simply a lack of money. It concerns how European capital is mobilised and where investors are willing or able to deploy it.

This distinction has major strategic implications. If European savings finance established assets while innovative companies depend heavily upon external capital for expansion, Europe risks separating its financial strength from its technological ambitions. Building a genuine research economy therefore requires mechanisms capable of directing greater quantities of long-term private investment toward innovative European companies.

Public procurement represents another underused strategic instrument. Governments are among the largest purchasers of technology in Europe, particularly in defence, healthcare, transportation, energy and digital infrastructure. Procurement can provide emerging companies with reliable customers during the difficult transition between research and commercial scale. The United States has historically demonstrated how government demand, particularly defence-related procurement, can help create markets for technologies that later develop major civilian applications.

Europe could make greater use of similar mechanisms while developing its own institutional model. Defence ministries could support dual-use technologies. Healthcare systems could accelerate adoption of European biotechnology and medical innovation. Energy authorities could provide early markets for advanced storage, grid and clean-energy technologies. Governments would therefore act not simply as research funders but as strategic customers capable of accelerating commercialisation.

Universities themselves may also need to evolve. Academic excellence should remain fundamental, but stronger mechanisms for technology transfer, entrepreneurship and cooperation with industry could increase the economic impact of publicly funded research. Researchers should not be forced to become entrepreneurs, yet those seeking to commercialise discoveries should encounter fewer institutional barriers and greater access to specialised financing and business expertise.

Talent represents another critical dimension. Europe’s research institutions attract scientists from around the world, but international competition for highly skilled researchers has intensified dramatically. Artificial intelligence specialists, semiconductor engineers, quantum physicists and biotechnology researchers can choose among opportunities in multiple global technology centres. Compensation, research infrastructure, access to capital and the ability to transform discoveries into real-world applications increasingly influence where they choose to work.

Europe therefore faces not only a competition for technology but also a competition for people.

Retaining European researchers while attracting international talent will require an ecosystem in which ambitious scientists and entrepreneurs believe they can build globally significant projects without leaving the continent. Immigration policy for highly skilled researchers, research funding, housing, taxation and entrepreneurial conditions consequently become elements of technological strategy.

The geopolitical implications are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Technologies developed today may define economic and military capabilities decades from now. Artificial intelligence can influence intelligence analysis and autonomous military systems. Quantum technologies could transform sensing and secure communications. Biotechnology may affect healthcare, agriculture and national resilience. Advanced materials will shape aerospace, energy and defence manufacturing.

Countries capable of controlling these technologies will possess forms of power that cannot easily be measured through conventional economic indicators.

Europe’s innovation paradox therefore represents more than a competitiveness problem. It is becoming a strategic-security problem.

Scientific excellence gives Europe an extraordinarily valuable foundation. But scientific publications alone cannot provide technological sovereignty, and patents alone cannot create industrial power. The decisive challenge lies in constructing the institutions, capital markets and industrial ecosystems capable of carrying innovation from the laboratory through commercialisation and ultimately into large-scale production.

The future of Europe’s research economy will therefore depend less on whether the continent can continue producing excellent science—it almost certainly can—and more on whether Europe can retain the economic and strategic value generated by that science.

Closing that gap may become one of the defining tests of European power in the coming decade.

II. The Battle for Research Investment: Can Europe Finance Its Technological Future?

If scientific knowledge represents the foundation of Europe’s research economy, capital determines whether that knowledge can become strategic power. The challenge facing Europe is therefore increasingly financial as much as scientific. Developing artificial intelligence systems, semiconductor manufacturing, quantum technologies, biotechnology, advanced materials and space capabilities requires levels of investment that extend far beyond traditional university research budgets. The emerging technology competition is becoming extraordinarily capital-intensive, and the ability to finance innovation from laboratory research through industrial-scale deployment will increasingly determine which regions dominate the technologies of the coming decades.

Europe possesses substantial financial resources, yet it continues to face difficulty converting those resources into large-scale investment in high-risk technological innovation. European households, pension funds, insurance companies and institutional investors collectively hold enormous pools of capital. However, much of this wealth remains concentrated in relatively conservative assets rather than being channelled toward emerging technology companies. This creates an unusual situation in which Europe possesses both scientific expertise and financial wealth but often struggles to connect the two effectively.

The funding gap becomes particularly visible as companies move beyond the startup phase. Early-stage research can receive support through universities, national programmes and European funding instruments. Young companies may also obtain venture financing during their initial development. The greater difficulty often emerges when successful firms require hundreds of millions—or eventually billions—of euros to build factories, computing infrastructure, research facilities or international operations. At this stage, access to large and patient pools of capital becomes decisive.

The United States possesses a significant advantage because its financial ecosystem can provide enormous amounts of private investment to technology companies pursuing rapid expansion. Deep capital markets, venture funds, institutional investors and major technology corporations create an environment in which successful companies can obtain increasingly large rounds of financing as they grow. This allows firms to scale rapidly before competitors can capture emerging markets.

Europe’s comparatively fragmented financial structure can make this transition more difficult. Although substantial capital exists across the continent, investment markets remain divided along national and regulatory lines. Differences in taxation, insolvency regimes, investment regulations and financial structures can complicate cross-border financing. The result is that Europe has not yet fully transformed the enormous economic scale of the Single Market into an equally integrated market for financing innovation.

This matters because technological competition increasingly rewards scale and speed.

Artificial intelligence demonstrates the magnitude of the challenge. Building frontier AI systems requires far more than talented researchers. Companies need large data centres, enormous computing capacity, advanced chips, electricity infrastructure and access to specialised engineering talent. The financial requirements can therefore reach levels that only governments, major corporations and exceptionally large private investors can support.

Semiconductors are even more capital-intensive. Advanced fabrication plants require enormous upfront investment, highly specialised equipment and sophisticated global supply chains. Governments around the world increasingly provide incentives to attract semiconductor manufacturing because they recognise that market forces alone may not produce sufficient strategic capacity. Research policy therefore becomes inseparable from industrial and fiscal policy.

Quantum computing presents a different version of the same problem. Commercial returns may remain uncertain for years while companies continue investing heavily in experimental hardware, specialised laboratories and scientific talent. Investors seeking rapid profitability may hesitate to finance such technologies over extended periods. Yet abandoning investment until commercial certainty emerges risks allowing competitors to establish technological leadership first.

This creates what might be described as the strategic patience problem.

Many technologies essential to long-term national power require years—or decades—of investment before their economic potential becomes clear. Private markets are essential to innovation, but governments may need to absorb part of the early risk when the strategic importance of a technology exceeds its immediate commercial profitability.

European policy must therefore find a balance between state intervention and private-sector dynamism.

Attempting to select technological winners entirely through government planning risks inefficient investment and political distortion. Yet relying exclusively on private markets may lead to chronic underinvestment in strategically important technologies whose commercial returns remain distant or uncertain.

The strongest model is likely to involve the public sector reducing risk while private investors determine which companies and technologies can scale successfully.

Public research funding can support basic science. Government-backed investment vehicles can provide long-term capital. Public procurement can create early demand. Loan guarantees can reduce financing risks associated with major industrial projects. Private investors can then provide additional capital once technologies demonstrate commercial potential.

Europe’s research programmes already provide an important foundation for this approach. However, the next stage requires stronger connections between European research funding and the industrial ecosystems capable of commercialising the resulting technologies.

A research project should not be considered strategically successful simply because it produces a scientific breakthrough. Policymakers should also examine whether Europe possesses the manufacturing capacity, intellectual property environment, financing and supply chains required to convert that breakthrough into economic value.

This is particularly important for dual-use technologies.

Many innovations originally developed for civilian purposes now possess significant defence applications. Artificial intelligence can support autonomous systems and intelligence analysis. Quantum sensing may improve navigation and detection capabilities. Robotics can transform military logistics. Advanced batteries influence both civilian transportation and battlefield mobility. Space technologies support communications, surveillance and navigation.

European defence spending could therefore become an important engine for technological innovation.

Rather than viewing defence procurement exclusively as the purchase of existing military equipment, governments can use procurement budgets to create demand for emerging European technologies. Long-term contracts can provide companies with predictable revenue, allowing them to invest in research and production capacity that would otherwise be difficult to finance.

The relationship between defence and innovation does not require militarising Europe’s research system. Fundamental science should retain academic independence, and civilian research should remain central to Europe’s technological development. The strategic objective is instead to recognise that many technologies now cross traditional boundaries between civilian and military applications.

The same applies to Europe’s green transition.

Massive investment in electricity grids, batteries, hydrogen, renewable energy, advanced nuclear technologies and industrial decarbonisation can generate technological ecosystems with global commercial potential. Climate policy can therefore function simultaneously as research policy, industrial policy and economic-security policy if investment is structured to encourage European innovation and manufacturing.

Europe’s challenge is consequently not a lack of strategic sectors requiring investment. It is coordinating investment across them.

Fragmented national programmes can produce duplication, competing standards and projects too small to compete internationally. Greater coordination at the European level could create sufficient scale for investments that individual member states may struggle to finance independently.

This does not require centralising all research policy in Brussels. Different European regions possess different technological strengths, and competition among national research ecosystems can encourage innovation. The objective should instead be to create sufficient interoperability between national systems so that successful companies can access capital, talent and markets across the entire continent.

Ultimately, financing research is no longer simply about determining the size of university budgets.

It is about financing the entire journey from scientific discovery to strategic capability.

Europe possesses laboratories capable of generating breakthrough technologies. It possesses companies capable of commercialising them. It possesses sophisticated industrial sectors capable of manufacturing advanced products. And it possesses enormous pools of private capital.

The strategic challenge is connecting these elements before European discoveries become industrial ecosystems somewhere else.

In the global technology competition, the decisive advantage may ultimately belong not to the country that produces the first breakthrough but to the economy capable of financing that breakthrough until it reaches global scale.

For Europe, solving that financing challenge will be essential if scientific excellence is to become lasting economic and geopolitical power.

III. The Global Competition for Scientific Talent: Europe’s Human Capital Challenge

Capital and infrastructure are essential to technological leadership, but neither can generate innovation without scientific talent. As competition in artificial intelligence, quantum technology, biotechnology, semiconductors, robotics and advanced engineering intensifies, researchers themselves have become strategic assets. Europe is therefore entering a global competition not only for technologies and investment but for the scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs capable of creating them.

This competition is changing the economics of research. Highly specialised researchers increasingly operate within a global labour market in which universities, technology companies, startups and governments compete for a relatively limited pool of expertise. An artificial intelligence researcher trained in Europe may receive opportunities from companies in the United States, research laboratories in Asia or technology startups offering substantially greater financial resources. Semiconductor engineers, quantum physicists and biotechnology specialists face similar choices.

Europe consequently confronts a challenge that cannot be solved simply by increasing university funding.

The continent must create an environment in which researchers can build ambitious careers, establish companies, obtain financing and gain access to world-class infrastructure without needing to relocate elsewhere.

Historically, Europe has possessed significant advantages in attracting scientific talent. Its universities enjoy strong international reputations, public research institutions provide substantial intellectual freedom, and many European cities offer attractive living environments. Programmes supporting cross-border academic mobility have also helped create one of the world’s most internationally connected research communities.

Yet the global competition for elite scientific talent has become considerably more aggressive.

Large technology companies can offer compensation packages that universities struggle to match. Well-funded startups can provide researchers with access to enormous computing resources and the possibility of substantial financial rewards. Governments increasingly use immigration policy, tax incentives and research grants to attract scientists working in strategically important sectors.

The result is that scientific migration is becoming an element of geopolitical competition.

For Europe, the danger is not simply the traditional concept of “brain drain.” The more significant risk is losing entire innovation networks. When a leading researcher relocates, the movement can eventually involve graduate students, collaborators, startup founders and investment capital. Scientific talent tends to cluster around institutions capable of providing exceptional infrastructure and opportunities. Once powerful clusters develop, they can become self-reinforcing.

This dynamic is particularly visible in artificial intelligence.

Frontier AI research increasingly requires access to extremely expensive computing infrastructure. Researchers may therefore choose their location not only according to academic reputation but according to where they can obtain sufficient computational resources to conduct ambitious experiments. Access to computing power has effectively become part of the global market for scientific talent.

The same principle applies to other strategic technologies.

Semiconductor researchers require sophisticated fabrication and testing facilities. Biotechnology scientists depend upon advanced laboratories and clinical research networks. Quantum researchers need specialised experimental infrastructure. Space technology companies require testing facilities, launch opportunities and access to complex industrial supply chains.

Research infrastructure has therefore become a talent policy.

If Europe wants to retain world-class scientists, it must ensure that they have access to the equipment and institutional environments necessary to compete internationally.

Immigration policy represents another critical component. Europe will not be able to meet all of its future scientific needs through domestic education alone. Demographic pressures and rapidly expanding demand for specialised skills mean that attracting international researchers will remain essential.

Countries capable of providing straightforward immigration procedures for scientists, engineers and technology entrepreneurs will possess an increasingly important competitive advantage.

However, attracting talent is only half of the challenge.

Retention matters just as much.

A researcher may initially move to Europe for university training but leave after graduation because better commercial opportunities exist elsewhere. This creates a situation in which European institutions bear much of the cost of education while competing economies capture the subsequent economic value.

Closing this gap requires stronger connections between universities and industry.

Doctoral researchers and postdoctoral scientists should have clearer pathways into European technology companies and startups. Universities can strengthen entrepreneurship programmes, simplify technology transfer and create environments where researchers can move between academic and commercial careers without permanently abandoning either.

This relationship becomes particularly important in deep technology.

Unlike conventional software startups, deep-tech companies often emerge directly from scientific research and require years of development before reaching commercial markets. Founders may be physicists, engineers, chemists or biologists with limited business experience. Creating specialised networks that connect these researchers with investors, experienced executives and industrial partners can significantly improve the probability that European discoveries become successful European companies.

Geography also matters.

Innovation does not distribute itself evenly across economies. It tends to concentrate in clusters where universities, investors, companies and skilled workers interact continuously. Europe’s research landscape therefore benefits from strengthening specialised technology hubs while ensuring that those hubs remain connected across national borders.

A semiconductor cluster in one European country should be capable of working efficiently with artificial intelligence companies in another, quantum researchers elsewhere and manufacturing partners across the Single Market.

The strategic objective should not be for every European country to reproduce every technology ecosystem.

Such duplication would waste resources and reduce scale.

Instead, Europe could increasingly develop a network of interconnected centres of excellence, each possessing specialised capabilities while benefiting from access to a continental market for capital, research and talent.

The competition for talent also raises an important question about research security.

Open scientific collaboration has historically been one of Europe’s greatest strengths. International researchers contribute enormously to European science, and collaboration across borders accelerates discovery. However, governments are increasingly concerned about intellectual property theft, unwanted technology transfer and the movement of sensitive dual-use knowledge.

Europe therefore faces a delicate balance.

Excessive restrictions on international research collaboration could undermine the openness that makes European science competitive. Insufficient safeguards could expose strategically important technologies to exploitation.

Research security will consequently need to become more sophisticated rather than simply more restrictive.

Universities and governments must develop mechanisms capable of identifying genuinely sensitive technologies while preserving international cooperation in fields where openness remains beneficial. The objective should be protecting strategic capabilities without transforming scientific institutions into closed national-security environments.

Ultimately, the competition for researchers demonstrates how profoundly the concept of economic security is changing.

A country’s strategic assets are no longer limited to factories, natural resources or financial reserves. They increasingly include people with specialised knowledge that may take decades to develop.

A single research team can generate technologies capable of creating entirely new industries.

A successful startup can become the foundation of a strategic industrial ecosystem.

A university laboratory can produce discoveries that eventually reshape military or economic power.

Europe therefore needs to treat human capital as a central component of its strategic infrastructure.

The continent already possesses many of the institutions required to compete successfully: outstanding universities, sophisticated industries, strong public research organisations and an attractive social environment.

The challenge is ensuring that talented researchers see Europe not merely as an excellent place to study or conduct early-stage research, but as the place where they can build the world’s most ambitious scientific and technological projects.

If Europe succeeds in combining talent, capital and industrial scale, its research economy could become one of its most important sources of geopolitical strength.

If it fails, the continent risks continuing to educate and train some of the world’s best scientists while watching the industries built around their ideas emerge elsewhere.

In the global research economy, retaining knowledge may prove just as strategically important as creating it.