Introducing FYSA

The defense technology ecosystem in America and abroad, from EUCOM to INDOPACOM to SOUTHCOM, is rife with hyperbole and surface-level discussions.

My co-founder (JJ Wilson, who you’ll hear from frequently in this newsletter) and I get it — punchy, tweet-length statements about building or rearming and lethality are easy to write. It’s easy to say we need to have more drones and deploy AI. Few on the side of Western democracies are anti-building or against enhancing the lethality of America’s forces and those of her allies.

It’s much harder to do these things (if they were easy to do, they would be done!) because, in part, meaningful interrogation of the underlying challenges that exist between saying a thing and getting it done remain largely missing from the defense tech discourse.

How should we expand the definition of modern warfare, and how does that impact how the Pentagon operations and technologies it procures? Why does the underlying technological architecture behind the enterprise systems behind the warfighter fail, and how do we fix it? How can the Department of War and Ministries of Defence improve the balance between innovation and hierarchy when these two vital concepts are so often at odds with one another? What are programmatic steps Militaries can take today to improve how it buys and deploys software? How do shifting geopolitical priorities impact defense from Europe to Taiwan, and everywhere in between?

Unpacking these issues can’t be done in a Tweet, and empty platitudes help no one.

We’re giving warfighters, civilians at the Pentagon, fellow defense tech builders, and industry observers the unfiltered truth about the most complicated issues confronting the most complex institution on Earth: The Department of War. Because the Pentagon is a global institution, expect global commentary — we’ll dive deep into the state of play for defense technology companies across Europe, explore burgeoning issues in INDOPACOM, and abstract requirements for global security to first principles.

For those serious about supporting the warfighter — for those who do this not because of VC funding or because it’s “cool” or because you can go viral — for those who do this because it is right, join us.