NATO EDGE 26: The intelligence priorities shaping NATO’s data-centric future
As NATO advances its digital transformation, the challenge is no longer simply sharing more data. It is ensuring that information can be trusted, understood consistently, and used across nations, systems, and operational environments to support faster, more confident decisions.
Ahead of NATO EDGE 26, we spoke with Jerome Kühnert, Director, Business Development, NATO and EU Institutions at Janes, about the intelligence priorities shaping NATO’s data-centric future. From interoperability and credible AI to enterprise data access and decision advantage, he explores what NATO needs to turn shared information into shared understanding.
NATO EDGE 26 is centred on the theme ‘Built for Readiness. Driven by Delivery.’ What are the biggest intelligence and information challenges NATO must address to strengthen readiness?
Jerome Kühnert: NATO operates across a complex information environment. Data is fragmented across organisations and systems, standards can be inconsistent, and system siloes can prevent information from becoming operationally useful.
Strengthening ‘fight tonight, fight tomorrow’ readiness therefore requires more than access to data. NATO needs a trusted, validated, and shared intelligence baseline that supports consistent understanding across the Alliance.
That foundation is critical to decision advantage. When people and systems can work from validated, interconnected intelligence, they are better positioned to build a common understanding of the operating environment and make faster, more defensible decisions.
NATO organisations have access to more data than ever before. Why is shared understanding becoming as important as information sharing?
Jerome Kühnert: Sharing information does not guarantee that nations, systems, or analysts interpret it consistently. Shared understanding requires validated entities, relationships, and common semantics across classified and unclassified environments.
This is where Janes provides a critical foundation. Our intelligence connects and contextualises information to support NATO’s move beyond basic data exchange towards semantic interoperability and common operational understanding.
Ultimately, this is about making intelligence decision-grade: trustworthy, understandable, shareable, and usable by people, systems, and AI.
How important is a technology-agnostic approach to supporting NATO missions?
Jerome Kühnert: It is essential. NATO operates across nations, classifications, platforms, and legacy environments. Intelligence needs to reach users through the systems and workflows they already rely on, rather than creating another standalone environment.
Janes provides modular, API-delivered intelligence designed to integrate into existing environments. This approach supports federated architectures, data sovereignty, reusable services, and NATO’s need for greater interoperability.
Most importantly, it helps put validated intelligence where it matters: into the workflows that support operational and strategic decision-making.
What role will AI play in NATO’s ability to make faster, more informed decisions?
Jerome Kühnert: AI-enabled exploitation has significant potential to help NATO process information and support decision-making at speed. But AI is only as effective as the intelligence foundation beneath it.
Trusted AI depends on validated intelligence, common standards, and clearly understood relationships. These foundations help make outputs more interpretable and defensible.
Semantic interoperability, federated data meshes, and API-delivered data products will all have an important role. Combined with NATO’s data architecture, governance, and digital transformation initiatives, they can strengthen cross-domain decision support.
For Janes, technology complements rather than replaces human expertise. AI expands the ability to collect, process, scale, and enrich information, while human expertise, Janes ontology, and established tradecraft remain central to validation and contextualisation.
NATO EDGE brings together operational users, technology providers, and decision-makers. Why is that important?
Jerome Kühnert: NATO EDGE creates an important connection between operational demand, policy, technology, and acquisition. Bringing those communities together helps validate requirements earlier, demonstrate existing interoperable solutions, and reduce the gap between experimentation and delivery.
I have attended the event since 2009, when it was known as the NATO Information Assurance Symposium and held in an events tent at SHAPE in Mons. Its evolution since then reflects the growing importance of bringing stakeholders together to address NATO’s changing technology and information requirements.
That collaboration matters. Digital transformation requires common standards, trusted intelligence, interoperable services, and a clear understanding of the operational outcomes NATO needs to achieve.
What should attendees take away from Janes at NATO EDGE 26?
Jerome Kühnert: Janes has worked with NATO for more than 40 years, providing foundational military intelligence and developing a deep understanding of the complexities of its information environment.
Our message at NATO EDGE 26 is simple: shared data doesn’t deliver decisions. Shared understanding does.
Janes provides validated, interconnected, and interoperable intelligence that helps create a common intelligence baseline. By bringing that intelligence into the platforms and workflows NATO already uses, Janes can support enterprise data access, semantic interoperability, trusted AI, and decision advantage across the Alliance
Whether the priority is operational intelligence, AI readiness, geospatial analysis, network exploration, C2 planning, or partner integration, the goal is the same: giving people and systems the trusted context they need to move from information to decision.
