The Death of Protectionist Partnering

​Summary: Richard Weir, former Director at Northrop Grumman, leads a closed-door session on allied defense partnering under AUKUS. It tackles the clash between protectionist production mandates and contractors guarding their IP. Focus: foreign production rules, IP-protecting MOUs, and securing delivery dates.


Western defense ministries are running out of time and industrial capacity. To offset massive supply chain bottlenecks and speed up production, governments are aggressively pushing cooperative development frameworks like AUKUS. But there is a violent collision happening at the corporate level: allied nations still cling to arbitrary protectionist mandates (like demanding 60% indigenous production), while prime contractors flat-out refuse to surrender their core IP to satisfy a political quota. The legacy model of protectionist defense partnering is effectively dead. If allied production is actually going to scale, the structural rules of commercial engagement must fundamentally change.

​In this closed-door, operational teardown, we are bringing together defense C-suites, international procurement officials, and strategic supply chain leaders. Anchored by Richard Weir—Managing Director at Blue Wave Merchant Partners and former Director of International Policy at Northrop Grumman—we are breaking down the hard mechanics of modern allied defense partnering. We will strip away the diplomatic talking points of AUKUS and focus purely on the ground truth: how contractors can navigate forced foreign production mandates, structure MOUs that bulletproof their IP, and guarantee delivery dates without getting cannibalized by protectionist policies.