When the next war is fought with algorithms and autonomy, America’s innovators must already be enlisted.
From Tel Aviv to Palo Alto, from Kyiv to Huntsville, the boundaries between defense and innovation are dissolving — and the free world is finally acting like it.
For years, the tech world prided
Donald Trump saw it before the bureaucrats did: AI was the future, and America had to lead. So he lit the fuse—Executive Order 13859—and launched a revolution in open, pro-growth innovation. Then Biden showed up with a fire extinguisher.
In 2019, Trump signed the American AI Initiative, the first of
“$800 million just changed the way America fights—and builds.”
That’s the new reality at the Pentagon, where the Department of Defense just opened a new chapter in national power—one built not on bureaucracy, but on competition and commercial innovation.
On July 14, the DoD awarded four $200 million prototype contracts—to