Eric Lofgren

@hesspresso_ @JohnDDulin

More and more VCs began investing in defense. Bessemer Venture Partners released their Defense Tech Roadmap. Andreessen Horowitz raised $600 million for their American Dynamism fund. Approximately $3 billion flowed into defense tech startups in 2024. 📈

2024 was a big year for defense tech! 🚀💥 Here are some of the big events that defined the year and will shape what happens in 2025:

@jordanschneider @KHawickhorst @ejames_c @marquezxavier @Evolving_Moloch @eric_is_weird Haha, well Sen Wicker has released something like Goldwater 2.0 just a couple weeks ago! Trying to break the merry go round of acquisition reform. wicker.senate.gov/services/files…

@KHawickhorst @ejames_c @marquezxavier @Evolving_Moloch @eric_is_weird @AcqTalk once eric manifests it into Goldwater–Nichols 2.0 it will all be worth it

@dkrajendra Interested to learn more and connect you with DoD energetics community.

I'm proud to say to our industry partners, warfighters, and adversaries that America will never run out of ammunition. Announcing today that Deterrence has raised $10M to automate the production of energetics:

@JoshuaSteinman @__searchlight_ @DOGE Cost benefit analyses are always doomed to fail due to incommensurables and overlapping probability distributions. The methodology Pierre Sprey and others used to get to A10 was sound, generally theorized in Boyd's destruction and creation.

@__searchlight_ @DOGE Isn’t that what CAPE was supposed to do?

Hear me out: What if the Warthog is the most — THE MOST — effective use of taxpayer dollars in the history of the Department of Defense? @DOGE — could we get some folks to take a look at this?

@MergeNewsletter 😭

Part of defense reform should be firing the people who make these official posts. If the F-35 program office doesn't know it's not an F-35 they are promoting...

@jordanschneider @alexandr_wang Looking forward to listening

What sort of bias has Scale AI CEO @alexandr_wang had to overcome while engaging with the US national security community? And how can the US benefit from high-skill immigration while mitigating the risk of industrial espionage? From our interview dropping tomorrow on ChinaTalk: "I have lots of meetings with folks in the government, lots of meetings with the DOD, lots of meetings with, national security folks. Looking the way I do, you have to preface and you have to overcome these implicit biases that people have. My parents immigrated from China to the US, they hate the CCP, and they worked on national security problems in the United States. I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, very passionate about national security, and passionate about defending America, yet, it is like this tax in every interaction that I have to sort of preface. I want to make sure that the United States will win in AI because I think in some ways, it's the only issue that really matters. And I've been lucky that actually there have been a number of champions of mine who, get that and have, put me in positions and put Scale in positions to have real impact. If you zoom out at the net level, by and large, it is a one-way road. Talent leaves China, comes to America, they don't go back to China. Most people leaving China dislike the CCP and really don't have an intent to move back. You know, it used to be that they would encourage folks to come to the US for grad school. I think they've noticed that not enough people come back, so now they encourage them to go to, Russia or Europe or, other places for grad school. If we can have confidence in the security of our AI efforts, and I'm not going to stop harping on this because we are not in a good situation. As it currently stands with the current structure of these private AI labs with minimal security, there's no way that the United States will win. If we solve that problem, if we're in a world where we can have confidence in the security of our AI efforts, then I think we should be trying to take in as much high-end talent from China as possible. China is churning out more high-end STEM talent than anywhere else in the world. And if the brain drain can come to the United States, that's a huge win."

@SubBrief The amount under construction is so high because the backlog is so great. This isnt a measure of thruput, as it was conveyed to me, but the tonnage on order being worked on. While VCS buildspans were supposed to get down to 60 months, they are actually around 96.

The USN provided this 'submarine tonnage under construction' graph to the CBO. It shows a doubling of submarine production within the next 5 years from 100K tons to 200K. This is a lie. This is bullshit. Subpoena the authors. It's time to stop this shit.

@PeteModi It'd be funny if it weren't so sad!

“My team loves spreadsheets. They like fax machines. Believe it or not, we have a dial-up modem and floppy disk for part of our operations. One of my counterparts in the intel community actually still uses microfiche. We’re using 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s, ‘90s, technology in 2024. So, simple things like asking a data query might take my team hours and hours and hours to comb through spreadsheets, collate data, look through products and then present static PowerPoints to me.” - DIA CFO Steven Rush Article highlighting Rush's story of @DefenseIntel losing $200M annually due to expiring funds. defensescoop.com/2024/04/17/dia…

@ppbereform Important, thanks for your work!

We are pleased to release our Final Report, which makes 28 recommendations critical to establishing a new Defense Resourcing System and advancing reforms to the current PPBE process. You can access our Final Report here: ppbereform.senate.gov/finalreport.

@Andercot Is DoD paying attention for potential transition?

The winners of the hackathon delivered a functional prototype with thoughtful consideration of real world requirements, to use drones as relays for free space laser comms. For many teams ML and AI were used but not as the main show - just part of the stack

A Weekend at the El Segundo Defense Tech Hackathon - The UNIX Timestamp of the Deep Tech Renaissance This weekend smashed all of my expectations. Here's my honest impressions and takeaways, and where this fits in to the evolving startup scene. The Gundo Thread: 🧵

@goatmaster89 @cdrsalamander @JerryHendrixII @ConsWahoo 🧐

Hey @cdrsalamander and @JerryHendrixII and @ConsWahoo - would these be useful in logistical support of a Taiwan invasion?

@DrChrisCombs @AJ_Piplica ??

So, if I understand correctly, it sounds like GE has successfully tested a turbine-based combined-cycle engine that incorporates: 1) gas turbine; 2) rotating detonation engine; 3) ramjet; 4) scramjet 🤯 Could in theory go from 0 to Mach 10+ Demo at full scale planned for 2024

@jordanschneider This is a match made in heaven

Honored and excited for this series!

@maeday22 Good set of reporting thanks

... and then the day that forward-looking piece runs, there's news on that very topic! I think this is certainly going to be one to follow in 2024. defensenews.com/naval/2023/12/…

When you're asked to write a forward-looking piece for the @defense_news Outlook project, so you tackle @SECNAV 's maritime statecraft initiative that considers military and commercial shipping industries together ... defensenews.com/outlook/2023/1…

@Aaron_MatthewIL @GravitysRa1nbow @StrategicTrends Looks like courthouse kabob to me

Getting Afghan food and then drinks at a Taco Bell Cantina with @GravitysRa1nbow and @StrategicTrends was very Jamescore. Would do again.

@vc @ADoricko Rain song led zep, obv

What is the greatest song about rain of all time? cc: @ADoricko There is only one right answer.

This, from the Walter Isaacson biography, is both an underrated aspect of SpaceX’s success, and the perfect example of why “cost plus” manufacturing (used by many aspects of US Government) is a terrible idea

@MergeNewsletter Dishing out hot takes, good to see you up there now need to find the recording.

Rare day job post: really enjoyed being on the CCA speaking panel at #asc23 to speak about autonomy, drones, and making it real.

@JohnDDulin @ashleevance Updated version here, thanks for sharing! acquisitiontalk.com/wp-content/upl…

@ashleevance If you really want to understand the thought & challenges of the customer - and how we got to the situation we are in today - technomics.net/sites/default/…

What are the best books on the defense industry written in the last 30 years?

@MergeNewsletter The 700B IC estimate is likely purchasing power adjusted. Chinas 2022 budget was like $230B, IISS estimates $319B, and if you adjust that MER for PPP instead (1.7x) you get like $550B. But in some things 4-5x might be more appropriate, maybe over $1T on the higher end.

Great scene setter here with a dollars-to-dollars chart. But... it's even worse because the buying power isn't even close to the same. China probably has 4-5X the buying power (aka, their $700B budget is akin to the Pentagon having a $3T budget).