00:00For decades, America's military weapons came from the same few companies.
00:04Now, it's startup founders who are taking the reins.
00:12In the spring of 2025, tech founders, politicians, and venture capitalists gathered in Washington,
00:17D.C. for the Hill and Valley Forum. Welcome to the fourth annual Hill and Valley Forum.
00:22A high-level summit aimed at bringing together the tech industry with national policy makers.
00:26This is now one of the best places for tech founders to connect with America's national defense industry.
00:31The theme of tomorrow's event is re-industrialization, but in many ways it could also be renaissance.
00:38Unlike traditional defense or political conferences, the usual business giants weren't the selling point.
00:44Instead, the biggest draw of the event was Alex Karp, CEO of the defense tech giant Palantir.
00:49Last year, Time Magazine listed Karp as one of the world's 100 most influential people,
00:53calling him the embodiment of a new kind of Silicon Valley billionaire.
00:57Silicon Valley is poised to play a bigger role in the defense industry in the coming years.
01:01For decades, the U.S. defense industry was dominated by aerospace giants.
01:05And it largely still is.
01:07But a new generation of founders, many in their 20s,
01:10are ditching traditional tech careers and building companies focused on modern warfare.
01:15Take, for example, Ethan Thornton, who dropped out of MIT to found Mach Industries,
01:19which built autonomous drones and rockets that he hopes will define future battlefields.
01:23He told me, if America doesn't prepare for the worst case scenario,
01:27we will quickly lose military relevance.
01:29Mach isn't alone.
01:30A wave of startups is joining the defense marketplace,
01:33believing the U.S. military's technology stack, in many areas, is stuck in the past.
01:38What's driving this shift?
01:39First, a sense of urgency and patriotism.
01:42Young founders see a looming rivalry with China for AI and military supremacy,
01:46and they believe America's technological edge can't slip.
01:50There's also founders who are super nationalistic and have no qualms about building weapons.
01:55Take Palmer Luckey, the founder of Anduril, who once said in a 2024 discussion on stage at
02:01Pepperdine University,
02:02You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of
02:07violence in order to preserve freedom.
02:09The second factor driving startups to the defense world are programs like Hacking for Defense,
02:13a popular educational and industry pipeline that is now taught at over 70 universities.
02:18This program, and others like it, teaches students how to work with the Defense Department.
02:23Plus, the tech industry has had an ideological vibe shift in recent years.
02:27Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have cozied up to the Trump administration's America First agenda.
02:32Critically, venture capital has also changed its tune.
02:35In 2023, Andreessen Horowitz, one of Silicon Valley's most influential firms,
02:39created a dedicated fund called American Dynamism, its goal being to invest in defense, aerospace,
02:45and companies building infrastructure and logistics tools.
02:49Some of these startups are building autonomous weapons, drones, and AI systems for military intelligence.
02:54Some are already winning real military contracts, like Mach Industries,
02:58which won a contract with the US Army to build cruise missiles last year.
03:02And of course, the money is colossal.
03:04The Defense Appropriations Act of 2026 allocates $839 billion towards military spending,
03:12part of which startups are eager to earn through contracts.
03:14So, over the last few years, defense has become less dominated by decades-old giants
03:19and a growing area for a new generation of patriotic founders.
03:23What this means is that in the near term, there is likely to be a lot more competition among tech
03:28startups for lucrative military contracts and perhaps a flood of new companies competing for the money.
03:33One thing is undeniable, America's defense future is now inseparable from the tech industry.
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