This article previously appeared in Cipher Brief. The DoW urgently needs to organize its scattered subterranean warfare assets into a single unified organization. Ideally, a Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager (DRPM) for Subterranean Warfare, reporting to the Deputy Secretary of War. (The Department already uses this model for unmanned systems, critical weapons and Golden Dome.) This […]

This post previously appeared in Poets and Quants. 15 years ago, my Lean LaunchPad class changed how entrepreneurship is taught. The class is now taught in hundreds of universities worldwide and helped launch thousands of startups. But this past summer, I got thinking about whether AI killed our Lean LaunchPad class, and with it the […]

We just wrapped up our Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. This was the 11th year we’ve taught Hacking for Defense, and the impact of asymmetric warfare, (drones, off-the-shelf technologies, etc.,) disruptive technologies (AI, commercial access to space) and a startup friendly DoW acquisition system – make it feel like a much different class than […]

Drones in Ukraine and in the War with Iran have made the surface of the earth a contested space. The U.S. has discovered that 1) air superiority and missile defense systems (THAAD, Patriot batteries) designed to counter tens or hundreds of aircraft and missiles is insufficient against asymmetric attacks of thousands of drones. And that […]

Your Startup Is Probably Dead On Arrival If you started a company more than two years ago, it’s likely that many of your assumptions are no longer true. You need to stop coding, building, recruiting, fund raising, etc., and take stock of what changed around you. Or your company will die. I just had coffee […]