You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name's Ryan Evans. I'm the founder of War on the Rocks. This episode, recorded at a reception hosted by our friends at Helsing,

gets it whether Europe is actually stepping up when it comes to fielding and scaling defense technology.

Well, is it?

To answer that question, I was joined by General Sir Richard Barron's,

a prominent retired British Army officer who was the commander of Joint Forces Command,

and most recently co-led Britain's

defense review. Our other guest is Peter Michael Nielsen. He's the Deputy National Armaments

Director of Denmark. Denmark occupies a particularly important role in European security this

year as it's in the middle of its EU presidency, during which it's made security, its top priority. Enjoy the

conversation. You've been a leading voice here in the UK on doing more, moving faster,

treating defense modernization and transformation as a more urgent issue than previous governments have.

When did you first realize that we were,

I guess to say, in trouble? So for me, this is a conversation of training of thought that began

in 2010, when we began to see that the relationship with Russia and Europe was changing.

And there were even then really clear signs that the US taxpayer was losing its

enthusiasm for subsidizing European security so you could see those dynamics at that time and then

the parallel thought was this early recognition then that the digital age changes how we live

work and play was really going to change how we

confront and fight each other.

And in there there was risk, which you would fail to keep up and get done over, an opportunity

that you would be able to reestablish effective deterrence because you were transforming

...