Making NATO More Agile and Lethal: A Digital Insurgency is Underway

"Nothing After Two O'clock" or "No Action, Talk Only" are well-worn jabs at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) that once resonated with a certain truth. They conjured images of bureaucratic inertia and a disconnect between lofty pronouncements and concrete action. This has changed. NATO's Allied Command Operations is shifting its culture to rapidly adopt new technologies and capabilities at record breaking speed.
A prime example is the recent acquisition of Palantir's Maven Smart System in under six months - a process that previously took up to two decades. A surging movement of digital insurgents within NATO is redefining what is achievable. The time for talk has ended; it is now an era of relentless execution and swift delivery of crucial capabilities to the warfighter.
A landscape rewritten
While the Alliance's core mission of collective defence enshrined in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty remains sacrosanct, the strategic environment has undergone a seismic shift, demanding a fundamental reassessment of NATO's capabilities and operational posture. This is not your father's NATO.
The comfortable certainties of the Cold War era, with its clearly defined adversary and predictable battlefields, have given way to a complex and fluid landscape characterised by resurgent great power competition, the weaponisation of information, the blurring lines between peace and war, and the rapid advance of technology transforming how wars are fought and won.
As underscored by the 2022 Strategic Concept and the Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area strategy, NATO faces a multitude of evolving threats, from state-sponsored aggression and terrorism to cyberattacks, hybrid warfare, and the disruptive potential of emerging technologies. These all converge to challenge the international rules-based order that underpins the security of NATO's nearly one billion citizens.
This necessitates a renewed focus on deterrence and defence across all domains, including the increasingly critical digital sphere.
The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and other advanced technologies is not merely a technological evolution; it represents a revolution in military affairs, fundamentally altering the character of contemporary warfare. The analytic horsepower backing these technologies creates an unmatched acceleration within a decision cycle. This reality has spurred a top-down and bottom-up movement for change within Allied Command Operations, the Alliance's military instrument of power.
Led by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Allied Command Operations is driving a transformation aligned with NATO's evolving strategy and plans, ushering in a renaissance in Allied operations.
From within the ranks
At the forefront of this effort is a nascent but increasingly influential bottom-up group of "digital insurgents," a cross-generational, multinational cohort of tech-savvy individuals. These insurgents are working to drive NATO's transition towards rapid and effective technology adoption, focused on warfighting and warfighters.
This is not a nostalgic yearning for a romanticized past or empty slogans; it's about recognising the imperative for NATO to be more agile and lethal, leveraging the most powerful technologies available to maintain its strategic edge. The world's most powerful Alliance in history needs the most powerful tools to plan, operate, and fight.
We, the authors, are active participants in this digital insurgency - we are Task Force Maven. On March 25, 2025, the NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCIA) and Palantir Technologies Inc. (Palantir) finalised the acquisition of the Maven Smart System for employment within the Alliance. Our task now is implementation and fostering an environment of speed, agility, and adaptability.
Yet, this is not a story about a specific technology but one about NATO's people, culture, and the fight to keep pace with an accelerating future.
Task Force Maven was for...