Toespraak minister Brekelmans bij opening academisch jaar 2025-2026 TU Eindhoven
Minister van Defensie Ruben Brekelmans opende op 1 september 2025 het academisch jaar 2025-2026 van de TU Eindhoven. In zijn toespraak ging hij in op de samenwerking tussen wetenschap, bedrijven en defensie. Die is volgens hem hard nodig om Nederland veilig en sterk te houden. De toespraak is alleen beschikbaar in het Engels.
Gesproken woord geldt.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,
It’s good to be here in Eindhoven, perhaps the most international city of the Netherlands: home to international students, scientists, entrepreneurs and businesses such as ASML, VDL, Philips and NXP.
This is a city with innovative ideas that have global impact.
Around 20 years ago, I was a student myself.
I studied economics and business economics at Tilburg University.
The reason for choosing those studies was personal.
When I was still in high school, my father started a company.
He was head of the video department of Arcadis, the large engineering company.
With the rise of the internet in the late 1990s, his idea was to bring video to the internet.
It was 5 years before YouTube was founded.
His company started off well, but that changed around the year 2000.
The internet bubble burst. This led to a financial and economic crisis in the United States, which spilled over to the Netherlands.
My father’s business got into heavy waters.
I asked myself: how could an economic crisis that had started a continent away have such a big impact on a small business in Brabant?
This question guided me in my studies.
I learned how major global events, geopolitical shifts, and changing tides affect all of us.
I also learned how economics can provide insights into certain dynamics but certainly cannot explain everything.
That’s why I decided to do a master’s degree in global politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
The key course was called ‘From empire to globalization’.
It demonstrates the paradigm of that time: history was marked by imperialism, the rise and fall of empires, but we had now entered a new era.
The era of globalization, in which the world was becoming more connected, values and cultures would converge, and shared interests would make us cooperate even more closely.
Look where we are now, less than 20 years later.
The world is not characterized by closer cooperation, but by strategic rivalry.
Imperialism is back almost everywhere, including in Europe.
Russia has been fighting a large-scale war of aggression in Ukraine for more than 3 years.
We see daily air attacks, with hundreds of drones and missiles, their purpose being to terrorize and break the will of the Ukrainian people.
And Putin is not alone.
Russia has shifted to a full-fledged war economy with direct support from North Korea, drones from Iran, and dual-use goods and economic cover from China.
Russia’s military threat goes far beyond Ukraine.
The Russian regime has often expressed the ambition to restore the former Soviet Union’s spheres of influence.
We see Russia is investing in the necessary military capabilities: recruiting more soldiers, replenishing its strategic reserves, further scaling up its military industry.
By 2030, Putin wants to be ready for a large-scale confrontation with NATO.
In the meantime, it is able to shift around hundreds of thousands of troops to threaten NATO and to be ready for a regional conflict.
Keeping the war machine running is in Putin’s interest: the economy would otherwise collapse and thousands of traumatized soldiers would return to society.
So, Putin has the intention, capabilities and incentive to continue his imperialist agenda.
That’s what we as the Netherlands, together with our NATO allies, need to defend ourselves against.
That’s why it is so important to deter Russia from acting on its intentions, as it has in Ukraine.
In short, the Netherlands is not at war today.
But we’re not living fully in peace, either.
We’re living in the grey zone between war and peace.
Russia is testing our readiness and studying our preparedness.
It is not only using hard military power to do so. As we all know, it is already conducting hybrid attacks in Europe, such as cyber-attacks and sabotage operations.
In this grey zone, we need to protect ourselves against hybrid attacks and be ready if Russia opts for a black-and-white escalation on NATO territory.
When dealing with an aggressor such as Russia, there are two things we need to do to preserve our security, freedom and way of life.
First, we must make sure that we are able to defend ourselves.
Second, to deter aggression, we must make sure that Russia understands that it would lose any confrontation.
As the old saying goes: if you want peace, prepare for war.
The main purpose of the Ministry of Defence is not to fight wars. Its main purpose is to prevent wars from happening.
Many of our men and women in uniform have been in war situations: nobody knows better the horrors of war and the importance of preventing them if at all possible.
In order to do that while the Russian military threat is growing, we need societal resilience and military preparedness.
These are the building blocks for the security of the Netherlands, of Europe and of our trans-Atlantic Alliance.
Our collective defence does not rest only on shoulders in uniform.
It also depends on private companies, knowledge institutions and universities, civilian actors, and local infrastructure.
Societal resilience means our society as a whole is able to deal with a crisis: companies, hospitals, banks, the energy sector, telecom, food and drinking water suppliers, critical infrastructure and logistics.
Everyone should have a plan B, a backup or an emergency procedure.
Because every service or structure that we rely on for our security and well-being is a high-value target to our enemies.
Today, over 90% of military transport in a crisis depends on civilian logistics.
Over 70% of satellite communications used by Defence are delivered by commercial providers.
95% of military data flows through privately owned undersea cables.
In the grey zone between war and peace, the question is not what the military can do for society, but what society can do for the military.
In this case, it starts with being resilient.
Because anything that can disrupt our daily lives and cause mayhem – a long power outage, a large-scale cyber-attack – is a tool in the hand of our adversary.
The strategy of our adversaries is ‘the weaponisation of everything’.
There is only one answer to that: ‘the readiness of everyone’.
A strong defence can win a battle; a strong society can win a war.
So societal resilience is the first building block of our security.
The second building block is military preparedness.
Our armed forces need to be prepared to fight in any conflict and need to be able to sustain the fight and win.
This preparedness also serves as a deterrent to anyone who’s contemplating a move on NATO territory.
To be prepared, we need:
- more military personnel;
- more equipment and technology;
- more space to train, educate and conduct exercises; such as the international exercise Falcon Leap, which is hosted by Eindhoven Airport and starts in a few days.
Given the speed with which Russia is ramping up its military capabilities, we need to act fast.
We need to produce and innovate more.
The war in Ukraine is not only a war of attrition; it is also a war of innovation.
High-tech innovations are the biggest game changers.
Innovation cycles are short, with, for example, new updates in drone technology and operations every three weeks, as I have seen with my own eyes in Kharkiv and Dnipro, just a few dozen kilometres from the front line.
The Ukrainians are outnumbered by Russia in terms of troops and quantities of ammunition.
But Ukraine is still standing strong, because it is embracing innovation and developing new technologies fast.
Innovation and technology are literally saving hundreds of thousands of lives in Ukraine.
Since we are facing the same Russian threats, innovation and new technologies will make the difference for our own security as well.
That’s why the region of Eindhoven is crucial to our security.
Let me give a few examples.
- The Dutch ecosystem for unmanned systems is a frontrunner in Europe, enabling us to donate a large number of drones to Ukraine and keep up with high-tech advances ourselves.
- We owe this in large part to the deep tech knowledge of robotics, which is developed at this university, Delft and Twente, and is used by companies such as Avular and Tective.
- Tulip Tech has developed an innovative battery that extends the flight time of unmanned systems such as drones by 50%.
- With the family business VDL, we are scaling up our national defence industry by setting up 120,000 square metres of production lines in Born.
- In 2019, one of your graduate students developed a smart lens to detect roadside bombs; it is now used by Defence and is being further developed by ViNotion, with the lens systems made by Nedinsco. Both companies are based in this region and produce dual-use technology.
- And of course there is our MINDBase initiative at the High Tech Campus. MINDBase was launched to identify new technologies and innovations and attract the know-how of students, start-ups and companies.
I’m impressed by its Master Kick-Off Challenge for your master’s degree students, which previously challenged them to wirelessly charge drones.
I look forward to seeing the results from this year’s challenge.
These are just a few examples of how Defence works with the ecosystem here in Eindhoven to develop the most cutting-edge technology.
And of course, there is research that may not seem at first glance to be connected to Defence but is certainly of relevance to us.
Research in the fields of energy, semiconductors, medical technologies, sensors and materials, to name just a few.
Nowadays, we often talk about Defence expenditures, but it would be better to talk about Defence investments.
Our Defence budgets should not only be an investment in our security, but also in our economy, innovation, technology and our scientific qualities.
We need to create more reciprocal opportunities – we must stimulate science and the economy, foster innovation, employment and entrepreneurship in this region, and incorporate insights and innovation into all areas of Defence operations.
But we can only get these efforts off the ground if we open up to each other.
Get to know each other, work together, do joint projects.
I have seen a great willingness among many scientists and academics to do this, also among people who were sceptical at first.
Your university is an example of this willingness, and I would like to thank you for that.
Today, we are starting a new academic year. A year with new ideas, new opportunities, new breakthroughs.
I am standing here in front of you as the Minister of Defence.
My message is very simple and clear:
Without you – without our technical universities – we cannot keep our country secure.
Without you, we cannot protect the values, the freedoms and the way of life that we hold so dear.
We are facing imperialism – aggressors and dictators who put their money where their mouth is.
We are in a battle of innovation, and we cannot afford to lose it.
While this may all sound a bit concerning, there are many reasons to be optimistic.
We have everything we need to win this race.
We have a much stronger economy, the best entrepreneurs, the brightest scientists, and academic freedom that encourages creativity and innovation.
And the most shining example of this is here, right here in Eindhoven, here in the Brainport region.
As your motto states, ‘Mens Agitat Molem’, or ‘mind moves matter’: what you imagine, research, study and produce here can contribute to societal resilience and military preparedness; it can save many lives and contribute greatly to the security of the Netherlands, Europe and NATO.
You can help us protect the freedoms that are so dear to us.
And hopefully, one day, our children or grandchildren can dream again of a world where the era of imperialism is over.
I know we can count on you.
Thank you.