The Download: rebuilding economic security, and solving math problems

Fiona Murray is the William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT School of Management and Vice Chair of the NATO Innovation Fund. A country's economic security--its ability to generate both national security and economic prosperity--is grounded in it having technological capabilities that outpace those of its adversaries and complement those of its allies. Though this is a principle well known throughout history, the move over the last few decades toward globalization and offshoring has made ensuring a nation state's security and economic prosperity increasingly problematic. For the US and its allies in NATO, a particular problem has emerged: a "missing middle" in technology investment. Insufficient capital is allocated toward the maturation of breakthroughs in critical technologies to ensure that they can be deployed at scale.