Heiko Borchert

Dr. Heiko Borchert is Co-Director of the Defense AI Observatory at the Helmut Schmidt University, Hamburg, and industry partner of GhostPlay@SEA, a capability and technology development project of the German Bundeswehr’s Center for Digitalization and Technology Research bunded by the European Union – Next Generation EU. He also owns and manages Borchert Consulting & Research AG, a strategic affairs consulting group. With more than 28 years of experience, Dr. Borchert has been actively involved in defense capability development by setting-up a six-nation project that has been successfully adopted in the context of the EU’s Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and organizing four six-nation defense research consortia for the 2019 Preparatory Action on Defense Research (PADR). In addition, he has supported five defense export campaigns of major European defense companies in his role as a political advisor and concept developer. His most recent publications include The Very Long Game: 25 Case Studies on the Global State of Defense AI (Cham: Springer Nature, 2024, with Torben Schütz and Joseph Verbovszky as co-editors) and “Athena’s Shield Is Brittle: Why and How NATO Needs to Get Serious About Economic Warfare” in Greg Kennedy (ed.), Economic Warfare in the 21st Century (Cham: Springer Nature, 2025).