Why Canada’s defence spending should follow this Cold War blueprint

Liam Gill is a former startup founder, investor, and lawyer who leads the Capital Program at MaRS Discovery District, where he supports Canadian startups in raising the capital they need to grow and scale.

Last week, the federal government unveiled a $6.6-billion Defence Industrial Strategy that will play a key part in its push to rebuild the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the country’s sovereign defence capabilities.

As Canada ramps up defence spending, the country must look to American spending during the Cold War as its blueprint.

The goal should not just be to fund technologies that improve the military’s operational readiness, but to fund foundational technologies, such as AI and clean energy systems, that will underpin the next generation of the consumer economy.

The power of countries like China and the US comes not just from their militaries or economies, but from the world’s reliance on their tech stacks.

Liam Gill, MaRS Discovery District This approach shifts the definition of national security.

Today, owning foundational technology is a defence strategy.

We have long recognized a secure oil supply as necessary for national security; the United States recently initiated another global conflict to secure its oil pipeline.

Sovereign foundational technology is as important as oil.

The power of countries like China and the US comes not just from their militaries or economies, but from the world’s reliance on their tech stacks.

Spending billions on traditional defence without prioritizing investments in domestic AI and clean energy capacity is a strategic failure.

History proves that defence spending is the most potent industrial policy a nation can deploy.

In 1961, the majority of computer semiconductor chips produced in America were purchased by the US government to support the Apollo program .

Over the next few years, the government remained the top buyer, providing the critical capital needed for companies like Fairchild Semiconductor to survive and innovate.

The US government purchased frequency synthesizers for deep-space exploration from Hewlett-Packard (HP) and funded high-risk research, such as the Gravity Probe B at Stanford University.

These investments did more than put a man on the moon and help to win the Cold War, they laid the foundation for America’s technological dominance.

A group of executives left Fairchild to form Intel, which, along with HP and Stanford, formed the bedrock of Silicon Valley.

To this day, roughly 78 percent of all laptops use Intel processors, direct successors to the chips created for the Apollo mission.