🔗 Responding to Bill Bennet’s article.

The dependencies are clear - but if the EU, with 450 million people and deep talent pools, is only now waking up to the fact they can’t compete head-on in AI and cloud infrastructure, then NZ’s current posture makes even less sense.

The EU’s defaulted to regulation because that’s what they can actually do. But even that gets framed as geopolitical interference by Washington. They’re playing defence from a position of relative strength.

NZ pursuing direct competition in AI, quantum or advanced chip manufacturing isn’t realistic. More importantly, it’s the wrong game entirely. Our constraints should force us to be smarter, not just smaller versions of what’s happening in ‘The Valley’.

We have genuine strengths if we care to look around … Agriculture. Biotech. Climate tech. These are domains where our size becomes an advantage because we can move faster and stay coherent. They’re built on foundations this country has already established.

From where I’m sitting, I see less of that and more of organisations either chasing every race simultaneously or reinventing the wheel in isolation. It goes all the way to government. Nobody asks the straightforward question: where can we actually win? We’re all chasing whatever we’re afraid of missing. The EU might sustain that scatter. New Zealand has no chance.

We need to stop managing dependencies and choose the fights we can win. Then do them exceptionally well. That’s the part we struggle with, even with our number-eight-wire mentality.

Then again - here’s a win - fiscally a BIG win

Chris Keall reported last week …

Rocket Lab will deliver satellites equipped with advanced missile warning, tracking, and defense sensors to provide global, persistent detection and tracking of emerging missile threats, including hypersonic systems.

Luxon has historically been a big drum basher for RocketLabs - but on this one - so far - silence as far as I can see - including nothing from www.beehive.govt.nz - as surprise given how often they are helf up as ‘a great Kiwi Company’ ..

Maybe it’s how these are going to be used for (apparently) the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture

So I guess we need to first define winning?