Ukraine Launches Brave1 State-Backed Defense and Surveillance Technology Platform

On April 26, 2023, the Ukrainian government launched Brave1, a state-backed coordination platform designed to accelerate development of dual-use military and surveillance technologies. Founded by a coalition including the Ministry of Digital Transformation, Ministry of Defence, General Staff of the Armed Forces, National Security and Defense Council, Ministry of Strategic Industries, and Ministry of Economy, Brave1 received initial funding of 100 million hryvnias (approximately $2.7 million). The platform explicitly prioritized “scalable, interoperable tools, including AI-driven surveillance systems, cyber defense technologies, and semi-autonomous drones designed for contested environments.”

Rapid Expansion of Military AI Surveillance Ecosystem

By October 2023, just six months after launch, Brave1 had evaluated over 500 proposals and approved funding for more than 70 projects covering unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs), uncrewed surface vessels (USVs), situational awareness centers, artificial intelligence systems, cybersecurity tools, communication systems, and satellite data infrastructure. The funded projects received $1 million in total support. By early 2025, Brave1 encompassed approximately 1,500 defense tech startups—more than double the number from earlier in 2024—making Ukraine one of the world’s densest concentrations of military AI and surveillance technology companies.

Dual-Use Technology and Surveillance Normalization

Brave1’s explicit focus on “dual-use” technologies—systems designed for both military and civilian applications—created a pathway for battlefield surveillance tools to transition seamlessly into domestic contexts. The platform’s prioritization of AI-driven surveillance systems, situational awareness centers, and autonomous systems established technical infrastructure that could be redirected toward civilian population monitoring once the immediate military threat subsided. This dual-use framework allowed Ukraine to rapidly develop surveillance capabilities that would face significant legal and ethical scrutiny if proposed directly for domestic use, using the war emergency to bypass normal democratic oversight of surveillance technology deployment.

Creating “Battle-Tested” Surveillance Technology Market

Brave1 explicitly marketed its startup ecosystem as a testing ground for surveillance and military AI technologies, with products gaining credibility through combat validation. The platform attracted international interest from defense contractors and technology companies seeking to market their systems as “battle-tested in Ukraine.” This created perverse incentives where prolonged conflict served commercial interests, as companies could use Ukraine as a real-world laboratory for technologies that would later be sold to Western militaries and law enforcement agencies. Ukrainian defense tech companies produced 1.5 million first-person-view drones in 2024 alone, developing innovations including “unjammable” drones controlled through fiber optic cables, remotely-controlled machine gun turrets, and anti-drone drones.

Significance

The Brave1 platform represented a systematic effort to institutionalize Ukraine as a surveillance technology testing ground, creating state-backed infrastructure to accelerate the development and validation of systems that would face restrictions in democratic peacetime contexts. By framing surveillance tools as essential defense technologies during an emergency, Ukraine created regulatory bypass mechanisms that normalized invasive monitoring systems before democratic oversight could be applied. The platform’s rapid expansion to 1,500 startups in just two years demonstrated how conflict zones could serve as innovation accelerators for authoritarian surveillance infrastructure, with the “battle-tested” label providing marketing credibility that would facilitate global deployment. Most critically, Brave1’s dual-use framework established a direct pipeline from battlefield surveillance systems to domestic population monitoring, using military necessity to justify the development of technologies that would persist long after the conflict that created them.