I’ve been working in the Dutch tech sector for decades. My general opinion about the culture of Dutch governmental institutions, including Defense, is one of neoliberalism and technological opportunism. Public officials are completely ignorant about technology, yet misuse technology to advance their careers by by starting megalomanic IT-projects that never realized.

All of this has caused governments to become highly digitized, with large pools of IT-‘professionals’, yet barely able to maintain and develop the digital infrastructure they built up since the 2000’s, because of a catastrophic shortage of tech-savy leaders and professionals.

The reason I mention this, is because Dutch public officials are generally both highly techno-optimistic as well as highly techno-ignorant.

Tuinman likely shared this comment in an attempt to comfort the public, but it betrays his fundamental lack of understanding about the digital infrastructure that makes up the F35. And if Tuinman is being fed this sort of information by his subordinates, then I’m worried that the experts at Defense might not actually understand the infrastructure either.

The risk in all of this, is that Defense and the political establishment might be lulling themselves into a false sense of security, by underestimating the risks.

the risks involved.