NATO releases new Science & Technology Strategy
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On Thursday (5 June 2025), NATO Defence Ministers endorsed the new NATO Science and Technology (S&T) Strategy. In support of NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept, the Strategy positions S&T as a central pillar for preserving NATO’s military and technological edge.
The S&T Strategy stresses the importance of science and technology “to enable the Alliance to outperform strategic competitors and potential adversaries in inserting scientific knowledge and adopting emerging technologies across all NATO core tasks”.
It further emphasises the role that defence and security-related science and technology plays in the development of capabilities and enhancement of military interoperability, as well as in the further reinforcement of societal, political and industrial resilience.
The Strategy sets three mutually-reinforcing strategic goals for the NATO S&T Enterprise:
- To “Anticipate and Invest”: notably through enhanced foresight and increasing investment in critical S&T areas, such as AI, quantum and biotechnologies, and support for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education.
- To “Safeguard and Protect” the NATO S&T Enterprise by helping defend people and ideas, while promoting research security.
- To “Orchestrate and Energize” S&T, including by promoting “denser, deeper and more agile coordination” and exploiting S&T results across all NATO core tasks.
The new Strategy supersedes the NATO S&T Strategy released in 2018. It also takes accounts of the science & technology macro trends that the Science and Technology Organization (STO) has identified as important for the Alliance for the next 20 years, and outlined in its 2025-2045 report.