ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to present a historically informed account of how the European security and defence industry has emerged in recent decades, and how the EU, through its technocratic politics of (in)security in combination with the strategic moves of its private industry, has transformed into an active subsidiser of security technologies, armaments, and weapon systems. It discusses the decline of European arms industries after the Cold War and the increased attention to internal security practices in the EU. The chapter maps the emergence and establishment of the European Security Research Programme (ESRP) in relation to this general shift in practice. It shows how the ESRP has come to serve as somewhat of a prefigure and model for the military research and development (R&D) instruments and defence cooperation policies currently being developed. R&D consortiums came to involve applied research institutes and private security firms focusing on, for example, multi-sensors, ICT technology, and cybersecurity.
