Pentagon Acquisitions Director Ellen Lord announced the creation of the TCM program, for Trusted Capital Marketplace, a public-private partnership intended to attract national funds for investors in American technology companies, and thus avoid their takeover by foreign funds, in particular Chinese.
This strategy is not exclusive to the United States. Thus, in November 2017, the Ministry of the Armed Forces and BPI France created the DefInvest fund, intended to invest in French SMEs and Startups developing crucial technologies for Defense. Indeed, many national startups saw their technologies monopolized by foreign funds, in particular Chinese and American, posing a threat to the objectives of strategic autonomy dear to the Republic.
Thanks to a very large reserve of foreign currencies, mainly fueled by the debt of Western states, China has long appeared as an acceptable solution for investing in the Western economy, and in particular in technological SMEs. It now appears that the Chinese strategy went well beyond the capital framework, and was based on real technological capture. Thus, Chinese companies have been able, in just a few years, to acquire technological capabilities equaling, sometimes surpassing, those of Western companies. This point is particularly critical when it applies to strategic subjects, such as defense technologies, China, like the United States, having on several occasions demonstrated that they do not hesitate to very vigorously defend their commercial and strategic interests.
Beyond the operational aspect, Defense technologies often represent a technological base for the development of products and services for civil and commercial purposes. By preserving the intellectual property of this work within the national domain, the country also preserves the capacities of its future industry, and therefore employment. A point sometimes forgotten in the perception of Defense technological investment...