Innovation Insights: A CTO's Perspective — May 2026

Gutwillig examines the global defense supercycle, a multi-year investment thesis spanning US and European public equity markets across a 7-15 year horizon. Four structural forces converge: Ukraine has exposed the gap between Western production capacity and sustained high-intensity peer warfare; NATO burden-sharing mandates have catalyzed the largest synchronized European rearmament since 1949; AI integration is reshaping intelligence, autonomous weapons, and precision munitions; and great-power competition has made defense spending politically durable across administrations. The report covers six critical investment areas -- air defense interceptor production, long-range precision strike, US supply chain reshoring, naval recapitalization, European air defense industrial creation, and autonomous systems -- with company-level analysis of US and European primes and non-traditional suppliers including Palantir and Anduril.