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2025-2045 Insights

NATO Science and Technology Macro Trends Report 2025-2045 Insights

In this Ai Defence Journal Insights article, we read, the NATO S&T Macro Trends Report 2025-2045.
 |  Ai Defence Intelligence  |  Insights

 This report, compiled by the NATO S&T Organization (STO), analyses six socio-technical "Macro Trends" anticipated to shape the technology landscape and influence NATO's strategic environment from 2025 to 2045. These trends are: Evolving Competition Areas, Race for AI and Quantum Superiority, Biotechnology Revolution, Resource Divide, Fragmenting Public Trust, and Technology Integration & Dependencies. The report emphasizes the increasing influence of science and technology (S&T) on geopolitics and strategic decision-making, highlighting the need for NATO and its Allies to understand these complex relationships to ensure future preparedness. It also stresses that innovation, particularly in defence, is increasingly driven by the private sector, posing new challenges and dependencies.

Key Macro Trends

1. Evolving Competition Areas

Main Theme: Geopolitical competition is both a driver and a consequence of S&T development, leading to new and intensified forms of conflict, particularly in cyber and space domains.

  • Key Judgments: "Emerging technologies offer leaders a spectrum of strategic choices to be made now to ensure that the Alliance is fit for the future operating environment."
  • "Critical technology areas will shape the future of geopolitical competition and, simultaneously, geopolitical competition will fuel future S&T development."
  • "The continued hybridisation of warfare has not only made shocks from tactics such as economic coercion more likely but has also heightened the importance of the cyber and space domains in future contests and conflicts."
  • Key Ideas/Facts: Cyber and Space as Critical Domains: Below-threshold attacks in these domains are expected to increase significantly, with a growing likelihood of spurring direct kinetic conflict. Space is particularly concerning due to its increasing congestion, militarization, and reliance for critical functions like GPS and global stock markets.
  • Hybrid Warfare: Continuous technological advancements enable state and non-state actors to engage in more diverse forms of conflict, making "conflicts in non-traditional domains […] highly likely to become more commonplace in the next 20 years."
  • Private Sector Influence: Innovation, including defence innovation, is primarily driven by the private sector, allowing "super-empowered individuals to play a role in shaping the future of strategic competition." This complicates attribution and response.
  • Regionalization and Global South: Growing strategic competition may encourage further regionalization, with economic blocs like BRICS potentially challenging the influence of traditional institutions. Discontent in the "Global South," exacerbated by climate change, will intensify competition for global influence.

2. Race for AI and Quantum Superiority

Main Theme: AI and quantum technologies are uniquely disruptive and impactful across diverse sectors, and the race for dominance in these areas will accelerate between major actors.

  • Key Ideas/Facts: Transformative Impact: AI and quantum technologies will "transform a diverse range of industries in the next 20 years." They are "less predictable and more disruptive in terms of their long-term effects across various sectors, including the defence sector."
  • Strategic Competition: Leading competitors, particularly the US and China, are incentivized to maintain their technological "edge." This race is primarily "driven by the private sector."
  • Resource and Energy Needs: Advancements in AI and quantum will require significant data, energy, and scarce elements (e.g., gallium, germanium), potentially driving future R&D into bioengineered materials and green power options.
  • Dual-Use Technologies: Future cutting-edge capabilities will likely be "available for public use rather than created solely for military applications," making them accessible to powerful state actors, super-empowered individuals, and adversarial non-state actors.
  • AI Applications: In the military, AI enhances "strategic planning and tactical decision support, enhances intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, improves cyber network monitoring and defence."
  • Quantum Applications: Quantum technologies (sensing, processing, communication, navigation) are predicted to be highly disruptive. Reliable quantum computing capacity is expected by 2029, with the market potentially reaching trillions by 2035. Applications include cryptography, drug delivery, environmental monitoring, and significantly enhanced military ISR when combined with space deployment.
  • R&D Investment: The US leads in overall R&D spending, but China is rapidly catching up, having positioned itself as a leading global innovator through long-term government strategies and targeted investments.

3. Biotechnology Revolution

Main Theme: Synthetic biology and related biotechnologies will have a revolutionary impact in both civilian and military realms within 20 years, necessitating careful consideration of security, defence, and ethical implications.

  • Key Judgments: "Synthetic biology and related technologies will have a disruptive, revolutionary impact within the next 20 years, in both the civilian and military realms."
  • "While the potential benefits from increased biotechnology use are substantial, especially for healthcare, the risks of harmful uses are also enormous. This necessitates careful consideration of security and defence implications, including the protection and sharing of research."
  • "Research safeguards need to align with our shared values and norms."
  • Key Ideas/Facts: Dual-Use Potential: Biotechnology is "widely considered to be crucial for future economic security," offering benefits like healthcare advancements (e.g., biosensors for combat casualty care, CBRN defence, genetically engineered food) but also enormous risks of harmful uses.
  • Synthetic Bioweapons: The combination of synthetic biology with other EDTs "is also likely to create opportunities to use synthetic bioweapons for targeting specific individuals or groups." The convergence of AI, advanced manufacturing, big data, and CRISPR technologies could contribute to bioweapon proliferation.
  • Ethical and Regulatory Challenges: Biotechnologies, particularly implantable technologies like neural implants, raise "complex" moral, ethical, and legal implications, including long-term health effects and impacts on military unit cohesion. Protecting "personal (biological) information will become increasingly challenging."
  • Bioeconomy Growth: The global bioeconomy could "reach or even exceed $20 trillion by 2030."
  • Climate Change Link: Climate change will "further compound the already substantial threat of increased biological weapons usage" by enabling access to dangerous biological agents from thawing permafrost and increasing contact between humans and wildlife, raising the risk of zoonotic diseases.
  • Global Leadership: The US is considered the global leader in biotechnology, supported by R&D investment and a robust intellectual property framework. The UK, Germany, and Switzerland are also significant players. China and India are expected to increase their biotechnology capacity, potentially rivalling or surpassing traditional leaders.

4. Resource Divide

Main Theme: Modern technological development exacerbates existing resource divides and scarcities, while also offering potential solutions, particularly in the context of climate change and growing geopolitical tensions.

  • Key Judgments: "Climate change will impact the Alliance’s shared access to critical resources for S&T innovation."
  • "Upcoming shocks, especially but not exclusively stemming from climate change, will exacerbate existing tensions between nations that can more easily recover from such shocks and those that cannot."
  • "Future technology advancement and adoption will act as both a solution to these growing tensions as well as an accelerator of them."
  • Key Ideas/Facts: Exacerbating Divides: Technology fuels demand for critical materials and widens gaps between prosperous and less prosperous nations.
  • Depleting Resources: By 2050, overconsumption could require "three times the Earth’s resources." Factors like climate change, conflicts, population growth, and urbanization contribute to scarcity of basic needs (food, water, energy), especially in the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia.
  • Scarce Materials: Demand for rare materials (e.g., lithium) is accelerating due to economic growth and the need for technological advantage. Control of these resources is concentrated in a few nations, potentially leading to the emergence of "resource cartels."
  • Technology as Solution: Technology diplomacy, international collaboration on technology development (e.g., for supply chain resilience, recyclability, novel materials), and strengthening energy security (e.g., through the NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence) can help bridge resource divides.
  • Impact on Less Powerful Economies: "It will be crucial to monitor how technology adoption affects less powerful economies."

5. Fragmenting Public Trust

Main Theme: Declining trust in science, institutions, and governments is accelerated by S&T development, particularly through the rapid spread of misinformation and disinformation, impacting geopolitical polarization and potentially leading to internet fragmentation.

  • Key Ideas/Facts: AI and Information Threats: S&T primarily acts as an "accelerator" of declining public trust by "generating and spreading misinformation (false information) and disinformation (deliberately false or misleading information) more rapidly with AI." This makes it "difficult to determine what is real and what is fake."
  • Impact on NATO: Undermining public trust indirectly affects how individuals view NATO, potentially making it "more challenging" to build partnerships and impacting military recruitment targets.
  • Political Polarization: This trend is mutually reinforcing with global geopolitical and domestic political polarization and the rise of authoritarian governments.
  • Internet Fragmentation ("Splinternet"): Experts predict increased fragmentation of the internet based on regional divides, driven by differences in technology adoption, industry consolidation, or authoritarian control. This could "enhance global geopolitical tensions and make it easier for false information to be disseminated and believed."
  • Weaponization of Technology: The "weaponisation of certain technologies to create misunderstandings and mistruths can be achieved very easily and cheaply." AI chat functions have the potential to "persuade human behaviour and decision-making."

6. Technology Integration & Dependencies

Main Theme: The increasing integration of S&T into civilian and military domains brings both solutions and challenges, including unequal access, interoperability issues among Allies, growing dependence on the private sector, and unforeseen long-term societal effects.

  • Key Judgments: "Future S&T capabilities need to be interoperable by design."
  • "Interoperability will become more critical than ever for Allies in the next 20 years, yet new challenges to achieving it will also arise as disparities in technology access, usage, and regulations become more pronounced."
  • "Economic cooperation is needed with like-minded nations and private sector partners."
  • "Increasing dependencies on private actors for critical defence needs will become a greater challenge as S&T becomes increasingly essential for a wider range of military operations."
  • Key Ideas/Facts: Unequal Access and Interoperability: Access to cutting-edge technologies will not be equal, even among Allies, leading to challenges in interoperability and aligning ethical/regulatory standards. Technical disparity could "severely challenge" Alliance interoperability.
  • Private Sector Dominance: "As innovation is increasingly driven by the private sector, new challenges for civilian-military integration are likely to emerge." The private sector holds a "more dominant position in the global economic and geopolitical landscape." Over-reliance on commercial entities for critical defence capabilities could create vulnerabilities and "reframe the way military leaders and political decision-makers have traditionally approached deterrence."
  • Long-term Effects: Careful consideration of the "potential long-term repercussions" of technology integration is needed, especially regarding automation's impact on employment and market concentration.
  • AI Vulnerabilities: While AI offers "critical real-time decision support for military leaders," the technology "remains imperfect (for example, due to algorithm biases)." Over-reliance on AI could have "major unintended implications for battlefield escalation."
  • Social Impact: Monitoring how humans are impacted by future technology use is vital, including potential negative psychological and emotional effects of digital technologies.
  • Information Superiority: "Accelerating investment in technology coupled with a rise in the use of electronic warfare has made information superiority even more important." Militaries will become more dependent on advanced sensor technologies for real-time data, but a "hyper-digitalised and connected battlespace also brings vulnerabilities and risks," particularly regarding reliance on space assets.

Cross-Cutting Issues

Several issues are highly relevant across multiple Macro Trends:

  • Challenged Rules-based International Order (RBIO): Global strategic competition is fuelling efforts to challenge the existing international order.
  • Climate Change: A significant enabler and accelerator of several trends, particularly resource divides and biological threats.
  • Global Partnerships: The importance of deepening existing ties and building new alliances, potentially driven by ideological values or short-term economic/technology needs.
  • Increased Role of the Private Sector: A central theme, as the private sector increasingly drives innovation and provides critical solutions, creating new dependencies for governments and militaries.
  • Research Security: The promotion of scientific collaboration while safeguarding sensitive research with defence and security applications from foreign state or non-state access, influence, or espionage. This was not identified as a primary cross-cutting theme for all six trends but is highly relevant for several.

Conclusion

The report underscores that the socio-technical trends from 2025-2045 will profoundly impact NATO's political decision space, defence capabilities, military operations, and enterprise functions. Decisions made by senior leaders today are critical to ensure NATO's preparedness and ability to "outperform the competitors of today and tomorrow and ensure that we remain robust, resilient, and ready to respond to any threat." Volume II of this report provides classified recommendations to equip the Alliance with necessary S&T solutions for future warfighting.