Navigating Uncertainty with Agility and Innovation
At the Singapore Defence Technology Summit 2025, one message stood out clearly: agility and innovation are key to ensuring national security. Around the world, defence agencies face the difficult, yet urgent challenge to maintain a delicate balance of speed and caution amid the deluge of emerging technologies they must evaluate and integrate as they anticipate new adversarial threats.
This year’s Summit was particularly significant as it coincided with DSTA’s 25th anniversary. As the digital frontier increasingly becomes the first line of defence, DSTA’s leadership in shaping Singapore’s defence innovation ecosystem remains critical in keeping our nation safe.
As highlighted in DPM Heng Swee Keat’s opening keynote, Singapore’s approach to “Progress, Protect, Partner” in defence technology underscores the need to adapt quickly, seize opportunities for innovation, and deepen partnerships across industries and borders.
At Temus, we see strong parallels between the challenges in national defence and the broader public sector—both demand a mindset shift, rapid experimentation, and responsible adoption of emerging technologies.
Progress: Investing in Talent, AI, and Agility
The Summit spotlighted initiatives such as National AI 2.0, AI Singapore’s collaboration with MINDEF, and the $120M AI for Science fund—each helping to lay the groundwork for next-generation capabilities in autonomous systems, cyber defence, and applied AI.
Beyond software, hardware, and the phygital convergence, what truly enables innovation in the face of evolving threats is organisational agility. To stay ahead, defence agencies and public institutions alike must invest not only in technology—but in the processes, capabilities, and structures that support rapid adaptation.
From our perspective, this is about building the right talent, culture, and frameworks to support their adoption. At Temus, we believe:
1. Investing in technology starts with investing in people—both within our own organization and in Singapore’s broader innovation ecosystem.
2. Helping the Singapore government build its own capabilities—not just implementing technology, but enabling agencies to develop, deploy, and govern AI-powered systems confidently.
3. Empowering our people and clients with access and autonomy to enhance their work.
Protect: Balancing Speed and Scale with Oversight
As the phygital world rapidly evolves—where physical and digital systems increasingly converge—defence agencies must balance the need for speed and scale with the imperative for strong governance and oversight. This tension between agility and accountability was a central theme at the Summit.
We believe that transformation can be both bold and responsible. Whether it’s disrupting traditional workflows or bringing value-added ways of working into corporate functions, the objective remains the same: build systems that are fast, flexible, and governed by design.
Singapore’s commitment to initiatives such as AI Verify and the development of verification and validation frameworks with universities reflects this dual commitment—to advance cutting-edge technologies while safeguarding trust, ethics, and accountability.
Partner: From Customers to Co-Creators—Redefining Public-Private Collaboration
One of the strongest themes emerging from the Summit was the power of partnerships—between governments and industry, defence and emerging tech, global allies and local ecosystems. As highlighted throughout the panels, defence innovation cannot thrive in silos—it requires co-creation, shared risk, and cross-sector learning.
We’re proud to partner with technology leaders like Cohere and Oracle, both of whom were represented at the event. We also work closely across the defence ecosystem, including with DSTA, DIS, and other key stakeholders, to support the delivery and scaling of next-generation capabilities.
Our intent is not just to build point solutions, but to scale what works, applying what we learn across use cases with public sector relevance, and bringing the best of private-sector innovation and operating models into defence and national transformation efforts. The cross-pollination of ideas and technologies will enable the ecosystem to adopt and adapt innovation more confidently.
Looking Ahead: Building with Purpose, Partnering with Confidence
To wrap up, this edition of the biennial Singapore Defence Technology Summit felt especially poignant and timely—not just because of the backdrop of global political shifts and accelerating technological change, but also on a more personal note for Temus, as we prepare to mark our 4th anniversary.
When we started Temus, the path to success was far from obvious. We were—and still are—a startup, and some might say an upstart, with bold, hairy, audacious goals. In a world dominated by consultancies with 500,000 employees and tech giants valued in the billions, the question was: how could a young company create a credible alternative? How would we bridge the gap between vision and value, and address the digital capability gap across Singapore’s public and defence sectors?
This Summit offered more than just validation—it offered encouragement. The startups and scale-ups that are now signing landmark agreements with Singapore Defence are evidence that the ecosystem is shifting. Innovation is no longer the domain of just the incumbents. The fact that Temus is already partnering with Singapore Defence on work that aligns so closely—perhaps even presciently—with the Summit’s core themes of agility, governance, and collaboration, is both affirming and energising.
We are incredibly privileged to be on this journey with our public sector partners. And we’re even more excited about what’s next. By the time the next edition of this Summit comes around, we hope to be back—not just as attendees, but as contributors—showcasing how vision has translated into real, measurable impact for Singapore Defence and beyond.
Because if there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that relevance in the digital age isn’t earned by size—it’s earned by impact, speed, and the courage to build differently.
