(bright upbeat music)
-: Hello. I'm Matt Schlueter,
Managing Director and partner at BCG,
and also BCG's global leader
for our Defense and Security Sector practice.
Today, we have the privilege to speak with Benedict Franke,
CEO of the Munich Security Conference.
The Munich Security Conference, or MSC,
is the preeminent global forum
to discuss defense and security.
And just recently,
BCG had the privilege
to announce a formal partnership with MSC
to support MSC style leadership,
and also to help MSC convene the leading defense leaders
from around the world
to discuss today's most difficult security challenges.
We are thrilled
to be partnering with such a fantastic organization,
and are excited to learn more from Benedict directly
about the defense and security trends
that MSC is facing today.
Benedict, it's great to see you again.
Welcome, and we look forward to speaking.
-: Thank you so much Matt for having me this morning,
for your warm welcome,
and for your very kind words
about the Munich Security Conference.
And we are absolutely thrilled
to be partnering with BCG-
because it's industry partnerships like this one
that keep us relevant,
that keep us ahead of the curve in defense thinking.
I can't wait for our discussion this morning,
and what we can achieve together in the years to come.
-: Thanks Benedict.
You know, one area I think we've always appreciated
is that MSC has been at the forefront
of evolving defense trends,
really for several decades now.
So perhaps to start our discussion,
you could spend a few minutes elaborating
on how the conversations have evolved within MSC-
from your founding in 1963,
all the way to the challenges of today.
-: You've already mentioned
we started in the early 1960s as a small meeting
across the Atlantic between German
and American thought leaders, senators, representatives.
We have now evolved into
what we believe is a pretty global setup
with dozens and dozens of meetings
around the world every year,
and about 500 leading participants
at our main conference in Munich, every February.
The topics that we are really discussing now
aren't all that different from the topics
that we've been discussing for the last 60-odd years.
However, we really have become more global.
Now we have participants
from places like Brazil, India,
the United Arab Emirates sitting side-by-side
with heads of state and military leaders,
with CEOs, academics, environmentalists,
and the most influential thought leaders around the world
to discuss the pressing issues of the day
and to advance dialogue wherever we can.
The ambition has stayed the same over the last 60 years.
We want to be the world's best,
most relevant, and most constructive platform
on the debate of foreign and security policy.
The challenges that we're looking at today
really boil down to sort of three silos:
There are the issues of global order.
There are issues of defense and security.
There are issues of human security,
resilience, sustainability.
-: You know, Benedict the one word
that maybe really resonates with me
from that MSC ambition that you just laid out
is the word relevant.
I would offer if there's one thing we've learned,
and we've gotten to know MSC over the past few months,
but there's one thing we've learned,
it's clear that MSC has not shied away
from taking on many of the big topics
that defense ministries are facing today.
These include AI, space, climate, cybersecurity,
all of which you were extremely relevant on.
In fact, as I understand,
MSC has even set up separate working groups
to address each one.
So I think it would be helpful
maybe for us to dive into those specifically
to understand if you have further thoughts
on each of these areas.
-: Lots of thoughts and probably more than I can squeeze
into this little conversation today,
but I guess we've got many years
to develop this conversation.
For us,
technology has taken up
such an important part of our work
of the last couple of years.
We've gone from talking about cybersecurity
as a new arena of a confrontation competitionm
to really looking at technology
as a driver of conflict,
as a new pedal space,
but also as a new way to look at possible solutions
to huge challenges.
When we look at what really drives change
in the defense sector,
it is technology.
And we are absolutely focused currently on
the capacity of the public sector,
of defense ministries, of the military to innovate
and to align this innovation
across our various alliances.
And I think those are two issues
that we have to get much better at in the west,
and that we have to get much better at globally.
We are not as good in innovating as we believe we are,
and we are certainly not as good as we think we are
on coordinating these innovations across the alliances.
And so those are two sort of,
geopolitical angles to industry issues
that we're looking at right now.
-: Benedict, I'm glad you brought up innovation
because I think it's one area that clearly
industry has a role where we can help support.
And you also mentioned in your comments
the role that MSC is playing to help
different alliances coordinating innovation.
But maybe you could spend a few minutes
talking about the relationship and coordination
between industry and the public sector,
specifically
how do you see industry's role to support
innovation in the public sector we are at large?
-: What the public sector needs
is the private sector capacity to innovate,
we've seen that all over the place.
We've seen that most recently
in the development of vaccines.
But behind the scenes,
we've also seen it in the areas of cybersecurity.
Espionage- you've just recently heard about the Pegasus
issue where an Israeli company has provided espionage
software to selected governments around the world.
The private sector has become a crucial aspect
of military strategy, military outreach,
and defense doctrine across the world
and particularly in the west.
And what we are really excited about is the question
how do you get the public sector and the private sector
to operate more efficiently?
How can the private sector draw attention
to problems down the line earlier and louder?
Let me just raise the 5G example
as an issue where industry was aware of
the inherent problems in setting this new standup.
But the public sector-
especially the high political level-
just ignored the problem until it was too late.
So we at the Munich Security Conference
are working very hard with our industry partners
to raise questions like which standards to go for early
and continuously to ensure that the debate doesn't derail
when it's far too late or in fact it doesn't derail at all.
And we're also excited to see
what the public sector can learn from private sector
innovation, processes, capacities,
and how we can synchronize
and create synergies between private sectors
and public sectors across the west and globally.
-: Thanks Benedict.
As I reflect over the challenges
of the past year,
I have to commend the MSC with what you've done
to still bring defense leaders together virtually
through your Road to Munich campaign
and all the various virtual events that you've supported.
So as the world looks to open up,
can you talk a little bit about
what the next few months look like for MSC,
and what big events you have planned?
Yeah, it was a really difficult year for us-
really difficult year and a half-
and we're an organization
that thrives on physical meetings,
on intimate atmospheres,
on conversation among the most powerful people,
and that was very difficult to arrange
over the last year and a half.
However, we have started what we called
the Road to Munich campaign
that is supposed to lead up
to the Munich Security Conference 2022
in February of next year,
and we have selected the transatlantic relationship
as the core issue in this Road to Munich campaign.
What we're really, really interested in
is to map out the building sites and the relationship.
And there are many.
There are those that believe
that with the Biden administration having come to power,
all the billing sites have suddenly disappeared
and it's almost a paradise once again.
And yes, the tone has improved,
but the building sites are still there.
And with the Road to Munich,
we have already looked at many important buildings sites,
like Nord Stream 2,
like the joint technology agenda,
like digital trust,
like issues like military sovereignty,
military autonomy in Europe,
the relationship between the NATO pillar
in European defense
and the European pillar in European defense.
And we will continue to look at these building sites
and map them out
in order to present a list of action items
at the next Munich Security Conference.
What we really want to do is to showcase
the low-hanging fruits out there,
and to draw attention
to the really, really difficult challenges
and see whether we can't make
some progress now that we have important elections
in Europe coming up.
The German elections in September of this year
may provide yet another window of opportunity
to tackle some of these challenges early on.
And so you will see us going to Seattle and to Washington,
you will see us looking at east west relationships again,
you will see us looking at vaccine distribution,
but also at some regional challenges
like Yemen, Western Sahara,
European periphery, Belarus, and Ukraine.
All of these are very important building sites
in our relationship with the United States,
and many of those we believe can be solved
if we slim down the issue
and make it even clearer what the right policy
responses to these challenges are
and draw attention to the need
for European and American agendas to be aligned,
synchronized, and driven ahead simultaneously.
-: Thanks Benedict.
I know we only had a few minutes to speak,
but let me just close by saying it's a very inspiring agenda
and we're really excited to be a part of it,
to be supportive of MSC,
and we're very excited
about the MSC and BCG partnership going forward.
We look forward to hopefully seeing you very soon in person
at the next event,
and we really appreciate that you spent some time
to join us today and share your MSCs agenda
and the exciting things that MSC is doing.
As always, thanks Benedict,
really appreciate your time.
-: Thank you so much for having me,
I can't wait to get started with our knowledge partnership
and look at some of the important issues
on our agenda together.
Many thanks for having me Matt.
-: Thank you Benedict, take care.
(bright upbeat music)