Ten years ago, when Pete Newell, Steve Blank, and Joe Felter launched the Hacking for Defense (H4D) course at Stanford, “defense” was still a dirty word in Silicon Valley. Investors were reluctant to put their money into defense tech, engineers were uninterested in the military, and tech companies kept their distance from the DoD. As […]
If you read this newsletter regularly, you’ll know that Anduril has had a hell of a year. In January, the company announced that it’s building a massive, cutting-edge production facility called Arsenal-1, and has since secured major DoD contracts for everything from cUAS, to an Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS), to rocket motors. And that’s […]
Chances are, if you’re interested in innovation, you’ve heard of Steve Blank. The entrepreneur, educator, and founding member of the Gordian Knot Center at Stanford University is a legend: he has built company after successful company and helped to develop the “Lean Startup” methodology based on his decades in Silicon Valley. If you’ve ever been […]
When Raj Shah was tapped to launch the experimental Defense Innovation Unit (DIUx) in 2016, he could barely secure a budget. Raj was a former F-16 pilot and Wharton graduate. He knew that the kind of innovation that drove Silicon Valley could help close the yawning gaps he saw in US capabilities. But the rest […]
Shyam Sankar has had a busy couple of years. As the chief technology officer and executive VP of Palantir Technologies ($PLTR), he has helped drive the company’s meteoric rise to the top of the defense industry (and the stock market). Now, he’s set his sights even higher: he’s calling for a total Defense Reformation. Simple […]
