Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy(warontherocks.com) |
Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy(warontherocks.com) |
> How did it come to this? Starting in the 1960s and building steadily in the decades that followed, our defense industry and government leaders became more interested in process than progress.
I also understand that "starting in the 1960s" a lot of scientists moved to totally disassociate themselves from the military and military applications for ideological reasons. I recall reading some article saying something along the lines of "engineers have tried heroically to fill the gap, but there's only so much they can do." I recall another where some scientist was seriously conflicted about doing radar work on a space probe, because his work could be repurposed for military applications.
I think there's only so much that calls to action like this one can accomplish, so long as that cultural trend continues.
Also, I understand that cultural trend is mainly an American/European thing, and not present in other countries (e.g. China).
Tactics win wars, technology can help, but the best it can be is a force multiplier. If you have no force, or foundation for that force, then we all know what multiplication by zero equals.
> Today, there is more AI in a Tesla than in any U.S. military vehicle and better computer vision in your Snapchat app than in any system the Department of Defense owns.
This is just patently untrue. My MRAP had an insane camera in it where we could pop a pole up and see for miles around us. This same camera was used on a blimp that would fly around OPs, LPs, and PBs that would do all kinds of image and metadata analysis. I remember seeing a post on this forum discussing that very blimp.
I keep hoping that the Arsenal of Democracy involves better ways of rooting out corruption across the world. I keep hoping it involves better & lower cost wireless systems, better ways to deploy internet service or power. I hope the Arsenal of Democracy rebuilds & fortifies us when the peace-loving civilized world is attacked not by bombs or tanks but also by natural disasters and calamity.
Anyhow, I'll step through the article a bit. Which starts out far more prosaic but does come around to having some interesting challenges to make. It starts:
> Only superior military technology can credibly deter war — but our defense companies are losing the ability to build it.
The B21 raider is seemingly going ok, but is by design is seemingly rather a re-hash. The Next Gen Fighter program & other aerospace folks are showing fairly rapid iteration in some segments. Our hypersonics seem ok, but only looking year by year by year. I think we still make all the rifles we can muster. But perhaps- especially after watching the recent Russian situation- a deeper understanding of our supply lines- not for the front but for our industrial base- is merited & worth considering. I wonder what data we'd look at to make or reject this core premise.
The article starts getting much closer to relevant for me after the initial opening:
> The result is a defense industry that spends a measly 1 to 4 percent of revenue on internal research and development, compared to 10 to 20 percent at major tech companies and 40 percent or higher at technology startups.
Heck yeah, now we're talking about. The idea of searching for good things to work on resonates. Our defense rests not just on brawn, but on understanding & intellect & adaptability. On radical vigilance. The Secret History of Silicon Valley is a great retelling of much of our semi-recent (WWII) epic[1], & so much of it is about the intellectual struggle, finding people & putting them in front of problems.
DARPA continues to be home to interesting challenges[2]- multi-fuel quiet hybrid personal transit, cancer detection, new X-planes, integrates sensors & mems programs, and plenty of other militarily focused efforts. The idea of funding interesting work, heavily, seeing what shakes out, is constant allure to me.
The article points out what seems like much the trend of the world: the very big doing more work, less competition, less diversity in thinking & ways:
> The 10 largest defense companies account for upwards of 80 percent of the industry’s revenue. Nearly two-thirds of major weapons-systems contracts in the United States have just one bidder.
Frustrating. This definitely feels weak. Being willing & able to iterate more rapidly, to experiment, to make programs which run shorter with more risk of failure & higher rewards of success; that's key. The article talks about software first- it feels like that's increasingly going to be a crunch point: something the very big entities have internal systems they can deploy, & others needing Commercial Off-the-Shelf have less well structured software environments, less ability to integrate & get making hardware.
The authors background (at the end of the article) is in-line with who we'd expect to be pushing for more diversity & competition,
> Trae Stephens is co-founder and executive chairman of Anduril Industries, a cutting-edge defense technology company, and a partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, where he invests across sectors with a particular interest in startups operating in the government space. / Previously, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he led teams focused on growth in the intelligence/defense space as well as international expansion. Prior to Palantir, Trae served as a computational linguist within the United States intelligence community.