Sep 5Grey-zonesThere is no such thing as war or peace — both coexist, always. — Sean McFate, The New Rules of War If the United States is black and China is white, Europe is a grey-zone. What is the grey-zone? The grey-zone is where adversaries deal, trade, negotiate, steal, spy, apply…3 min read3 min read
Jul 31VignettesSketching a future of intelligence and defense breakthroughs. HAPPYMAX: bring-your-own-device defense force. A fully software driven defense force would look odd, a Ready Player One meets Amazon Basics mashup, simultaneously mass customizable and mass produced. With HAPPYMAX, I imagine vehicles of all different types, acquired from all over, in various…3 min read3 min read
Jul 3ComputingOutlining a computing model for defense tech. Intelligence and defense technology in the next 15 years will adopt a computing architecture, ushering in an era of interoperability, abstraction, and networking. This is the premise of Software-Defined Warfare, a September 2022 report by Nand Mulchandani (CTO @ CIA). Porter Smith and…2 min read2 min read
Apr 23milOS10 rules for milOS, the operating system for conflicts of the future. Hardware agnostic. No more old laptops, scotch-taped USB drives, or Pelican cases to wheel around. milOS works on the world’s best supercomputer and on a jailbroken iPhone. Cloud based. Yes, classified information lives in the cloud in milOS. …2 min read2 min read
Mar 7MannersEuropean venture capitalists are not a shy bunch and loud overconfidence is the norm. But where are all the VCs when it comes to defense? Why is nobody in Europe shouting about national sovereignty, defending democracy, and patriotic capitalism? European venture capitalists are absolutely terrified of talking about defense. The…3 min read3 min read
Dec 30, 2022BureaucracyThe press has reported lately on US export controls and sanctions on Chinese semiconductor companies, suppliers, and intermediaries. Left out of the article was — what I presume to be — the small team inside the US government that’s driving this effort. I don’t have inside knowledge on who…2 min read2 min read
Dec 29, 2022SecretsIf you have me, you want to share me. If you share me, you haven’t got me. Secrets are a valuable currency of power. You can use them to assert, shift, usurp, or keep it. There’s something intoxicating about learning secrets, and even more so about holding them. When I…2 min read2 min read
Aug 19, 2022Self-sufficiencySelf-sufficiency is on the rise. The preceding decades of globalization made self-sufficiency a bad word, saved for things like North Korean political philosophy (juche) or Iran’s weapons development (Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization). However, self-sufficiency is surging in the democratic world. In the last two years alone, there’s been self-sufficiency…2 min read2 min read
Feb 14, 2022ServiceIf you’re watching news of the possible impending Russian invasion of Ukraine, and wondering “what can I do,” listen carefully to that thought. Don’t push it away. Pull on that string. We live in, historically speaking, peaceful times. We haven’t had an all-out war in a while. 9/11, Afghanistan, and…2 min read2 min read
Dec 3, 2020RISC-VThe most fundamental ingredient of a computer chip is getting some competition. Meet RISC-V, the “new” kid on the block. Instruction set architectures How a chip is made Chip lock-in ISA wars The Berkeley project Intel and Arm: nervous neighbors RISC-V doesn’t make money…technically China Next few years are crucial …6 min read6 min read
