"The Cherry on Top of Industrial Development": Expert Explains How Ukraine Can Build an Effective Defense Industry

Economist Alexey Kusch explained that it's not possible to develop Ukraine's defense industry in a targeted and efficient manner at this time. To do so, a whole range of issues must be addressed, industrial production must be revived, and a system must be created, reports Politeka.

He discussed this on the channel "7 Krokiv."

"We often hear about targeted development of the defense industry. And, by the way, this shows a complete lack of understanding among officials of how industrial development processes work. It's impossible to build a defense industry in an industrial desert because the defense industry is the cherry on top of industrial development. Israel, for example, first started developing its own industry, building and producing its own industrial goods, and only after that did a high-tech defense industry emerge," explains Alexey Kusch.

According to him, the defense industry is connected to a huge number of industrial contractors, who may not be part of the defense sector itself but still produce various components, wires, parts, and so on. Moreover, the country must have a well-developed engineering culture and technological environment; only within such an ecosystem can an effective defense industry develop. However, as Kusch notes, for years the government believed that Ukraine did not need industry and that everything could be bought.

But the paradox, the expert points out, is that the same people remain in power, and they’ve just decided to make an exception for the development of the defense industry. Yet, in a time of war, this is unrealistic. In an industrial desert, he emphasizes, the defense industry will never develop because there won’t be enough technical specialists, cross-industry diffusion, scientific ideas, skills, competencies, the flow of innovations, or an ecosystem of industrial contractors.

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