A frontier that never truly existed
As introduced in our article about dual technologies, from digital cameras to superglue, and from night vision to blood transfusions, numerous technologies were developed for the military before being used in the civil domain. However, the links between civil and military technologies are currently both accelerating and transforming.
When you use your GPS to navigate, your smartphone to communicate, or satellite imagery to analyze the climate, you are handling technologies designed as much for the military as for the civil sector. This reality, often ignored by the general public, is nonetheless the bedrock of our modern world—and the invisible engine behind billions of dollars in R&D investment.
Civil/military duality is neither a recent phenomenon nor a historical anomaly. It is a constant of technological evolution, a permanent feedback loop that is accelerating today at an unprecedented speed. In the B2B/B2G high-tech sector, this duality has become the structural norm: it guides product roadmaps, determines strategic partnerships, and conditions access to the most strategic markets on the planet.
Pour les décideurs, les responsables produit et les business developers qui opèrent dans ces environnements complexes, penser « dual-use » n’est plus une option – c’est une compétence de survie stratégique.
A deep heritage: from war technologies to civil uses, and back
Military inventions that have transformed civil society
The history of the 20th century is marked by technological leaps funded by the war effort. Radar, developed under military pressure as early as the 1930s, became the guarantor of global civil aviation safety and the foundation of modern meteorology. Cryptography, once reserved for the coded messages of general staffs, now protects every bank transaction and every message on our smartphones. ARPANET, the ancestor of the Internet, was funded by the American DARPA with an explicit military purpose.
The most emblematic example remains GPS. Designed to guide ballistic missiles, coordinate nuclear submarines, and pilot precision airstrikes, it is now an invisible global infrastructure upon which the entire mobile digital economy, global logistics, and precision agriculture depend. According to an RTI International study commissioned by NIST, the cumulative economic value of GPS for the U.S. private sector alone since 1983 exceeds $1.4 trillion—for a system initially intended for war.
The reverse movement: civil “ascending” toward the military
Since the 2000s, the movement has radically reversed. Consumer electronics, micro-computing, and then smartphones reached such performance levels that the military sector began to draw inspiration from them—no longer reluctantly, but out of strategic necessity.
Today, commercial artificial intelligence (born in the labs of Google, OpenAI, or Mistral), hyperscale cloud platforms, low-cost sensors, and IP communication protocols have become essential building blocks for the armed forces. Duality is no longer a one-way flow: it is a permanent back-and-forth whose pace is accelerating, driven by civil innovation cycles that now surpass traditional military cycles in both speed and volume.
Duality at the heart of B2B/B2G high-tech: same blocks, multiple markets
In B2B/B2G high-tech, what changes between civil and military use is often not the fundamental nature of the technology—it is its application context, its level of hardening, and its contractual model. A single FPGA component simultaneously equips an Airbus’s avionics and the signal processing system of a defense radar.
Aerospace & Earth Observation
Observation satellites are the perfect embodiment of duality. On the civil side, they serve precision agriculture, climate change monitoring, and urban planning. On the defense side, the same sensors provide intelligence, border surveillance, and tracking of enemy fleet movements. Companies like Planet Labs or Airbus Defence & Space sell the same “imagery + analytics block” to environmental ministries and intelligence agencies.
Drones & Aerial Mobility
Drones, which were originally purely military, exploded into civil use (critical infrastructure inspection, last-mile logistics at Amazon or La Poste, cinema, agriculture) and leisure, before armed light civil drones became formidable tools on the modern battlefield. The functions of autonomous navigation, autopilot, and “sense & avoid” rely on the same algorithmic blocks—simply configured differently depending on whether they operate in a conflict zone or in an airspace regulated by EASA. Ukraine has tragically demonstrated that commercial FPV (First Person View) drones from the consumer market could influence the outcome of conventional battles.
Communications, Cybersecurity & Electronics
Routers, SATCOM links, and encryption tools serve civil telecom operators and tactical military networks alike. In cybersecurity, SOC/EDR products and Zero Trust architectures protect banks against organized crime just as they defend general staffs against sophisticated state attacks. Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, or Thales often sell the same solutions to hospitals and Ministries of Defense.
Sensors, Embedded AI & Advanced Electronics
Radars, lidars, and infrared sensors equip autonomous cars and industrial control systems, but also military threat detection systems. The embedded AI that allows an autonomous vehicle to distinguish a pedestrian from a road sign is the same that allows a defense system to qualify a target. What differentiates these products is the level of hardening, certification chains, and export constraints.
The “civil-first” era: when civil innovation dictates the pace to defense
It is time to permanently break the cliché that “the military invents and the civil sector adapts.” We have entered the era of civil-first—and this shift changes everything for industry players.
A shifted center of gravity
The fastest innovation cycles and the most massive investments are now found in the civil sector. Edge computing, generative AI, and low-cost sensors are driven by mass markets that amortize costs over volumes the military could never achieve alone. By comparison, global military spending reached $2.7 trillion in 2024 according to SIPRI—but the share devoted to disruptive technological R&D remains a minority compared to civil sector investment masses.
Faced with this, armed forces have made a pragmatic choice: rely on these civil foundations for their own needs, even if it means hardening, certifying, and adapting them to the operational context.
The challenge for civil-first companies is no longer whether they can address defense markets—but deciding if they want to, and how they organize for it.
The “militarization” of the civil sector: concrete examples
This movement takes various forms. DJI drones (Da Jiang Innovation, founded in 2006 in Shanghai), adapted with encryption and infrared sensors, have been used in reconnaissance operations. SaaS platforms born in Silicon Valley—like Palantir or Anduril, which define themselves as tech companies before being defense contractors—”harden” their solutions and deploy them on sovereign servers for general staffs. Even smartphones and IP protocols are repackaged in rugged shells to integrate C2 (Command & Control) systems.
In France, companies like Preligens (AI for intelligence satellite imagery), Contentsquare, or INRIA spin-offs illustrate this trajectory of civil innovation moving toward sovereign applications.
Duality as a corporate strategy: business model and trade-offs
What is a dual company?
A dual company simultaneously addresses civil and defense markets with the same technological building blocks, but with differentiated products and business models. The advantages are structural: amortization of R&D over larger volumes, smoothing of budgetary cycles (defense budgets being counter-cyclical to civil markets), and exploitation of a common industrial base and skill set.
Thales, Leonardo, Safran, or MBDA are historical examples in Europe. But the new wave—Palantir, Shield AI, Helsing, Exail—is reinventing this model by starting from software and AI rather than hardware.
The real dilemmas of dual strategy
Duality is not a smooth ride. It requires managing often-contradictory logics:
- How far should blocks be standardized without compromising civil competitiveness or sovereignty requirements?
- When is it necessary to physically separate production lines for security and ITAR/EAR compliance?
- How to manage product roadmaps when civil client schedules (time-to-market in months) diverge radically from state program cycles (multi-year)?
- How to preserve employer attractiveness with engineers who may refuse to work on military applications?
Structuring a dual portfolio
A mature dual portfolio is generally structured into three levels:
- Common Building Blocks: Hardware, base software, algorithms—developed once, amortized across both markets.
- Product Variants: A civil version focused on ergonomics, cost, and sectoral regulatory compliance; a defense version focused on hardening, cybersecurity, and NATO/DO-178 certifications.
- Specific Services: Maintenance in operational condition (MCO), training, export compliance management. This is often where margins are highest.
What duality truly complicates
Regulation and Sovereignty
Dual technologies are subject to export control regimes of formidable complexity. American ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulations) and European (dual-use regulations) or national (LGT in France) export control regulations create legal constraints that can block commercial partnerships, limit international recruitment, and expose companies to massive sanctions. Any company seriously dualizing its products must invest in a dedicated compliance function—it is not an option.
Divergent Product CBycles
Civil certification cycles (aviation DO-178C, medical IEC 62304, rail EN 50128) and military cycles (MIL-STD, NATO STANAG) are often incompatible in their methodologies and timelines. Managing a common product base while satisfying radically different safety requirements is a major systems engineering challenge requiring modular architecture thought out from the design stage.
Image, Ethics, and Social Acceptability
This is undoubtedly the newest and most underestimated area of tension. Tech companies are increasingly challenged on their defense-related activities—whether by their employees (the Project Maven movement at Google in 2018 being the founding example), ESG investors, or public opinion. It has become essential to have a clear and transparent narrative on what the company agrees to do, its ethical red lines, and how it frames the use of its technologies.
What this implies concretely for high-tech players
Thinking “dual-use” from the design stage
Product architecture must be modular from day one. Designing a common technological core onto which specific layers (civil / defense / B2G) are attached is not just a good engineering practice—it is a strategic imperative. The certification strategy must be anticipated upstream to avoid costly architectural redesigns at the end of the cycle.
Structuring the organization accordingly
The organization must reflect this duality without suffering from it. This means dedicated market teams (with appropriate clearances and professional cultures) but shared technological platforms. Governance must include a risk committee mixing engineering, product management, legal, export compliance, and CSR—with a real mandate, not a symbolic one.
Cultivating the right partnerships
Collaboration between civil-first players and established defense industrials is the cornerstone of the contemporary dual ecosystem. It is essential to know how to properly “militarize” civil innovations through co-development programs, joint ventures, or dual-use startup accelerators—as the Directorate General of Armaments (DGA) does in France with its ASTRID program, or as American military Innovation Units (DIU, AFWERX) do.
Building a narrative of transparency
Finally, duality must be explained, not hidden. Companies that perform over the long term in this space are those that publicly own their choices, explain their ethical framework, and show how their technologies serve collective security, climate transition, mobility, and health alike. This is the only way to build a strong brand, attract talent, and preserve social acceptability in a world where opinions are increasingly informed—and increasingly demanding.
Conclusion: From Implementer to Architect of the Dual World
Technological duality is not a cyclical trend—it is the deep structure of innovation in the 21st century. It is more than just a commercial opportunity, though it is a considerable one. It reflects a world where the boundaries between national security, economic resilience, digital sovereignty, and civil progress irreversibly overlap.
For decision-makers and engineers operating in this space, mastering these codes—architectural, regulatory, ethical, and commercial—is no longer a niche specialization. It is a fundamental skill for anyone aspiring to build technologies that matter.
The companies that win tomorrow’s markets will not be those that chose between civil and military—they will be those that knew how to navigate intelligently between the two, without ever losing the thread of their values or their purpose.
