We are excited to announce Blue, your Copilot for Military Operations. Commanders who decide faster, win faster. Blue automates labor-intensive, “science of war” decision making inputs, like terrain analysis, mission analysis, decision support templates, so commanders and staff have more time for the art of war and making better informed decisions. War has become increasingly digital, decentralized, and fast – leading to compressed decision cycles. The future of military operations will demand innovative approaches to planning, rehearsal, and execution to outpace adversaries and seize the initiative.

I made the mistake of giving my dog some wagyu steak and he's been following me around for an hour non stop pawing me for more (I already gave him half an entire steak) 😭 – at Beaux Arts Village, WA

RIP Tesla shorts 🤣 – at Beaux Arts Village, WA

Every defense tech firm has been offered money from Chinese or Russian affiliated sources, including us. It would be nice to use that money to accelerate our efforts, but it defeats the purpose of America rearming and reindustrializing. My issue isn't with what one founder did, but the culture that enabled him to take any money when convenient. btw, we would never have heard about this if there wasn't a dispute. Now it's "Russian/Epstein" money (his investor's words, not the founder).

The Portuguese are so good at mushroom rice – at Oporto, Portugal

"Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life" - Oscar Wilde

I turned 18 only two days before 9/11. Every year, I learn more about the tragic and brave stories of the victims and first responders. Last night, I was digging around my emails and hard drives to see if I could find anything new and I found an email I sent to another freshman in college about joining the Army. He just finished his active duty service and was now in the New York National Guard, here was his response: "Army life, especially the Infantry, is a lot of hard work. As an officer expect long hours and little sleep. Aside from your decent pay don't expect much else. Physically you have to be able to do everything your men can do and then some. For them to trust you and follow your orders while under fire you must get dirty with them. The best leaders I've encountered always seemed to be men that cared more for their men then themselves." It's surreal to dive into some of the thoughts of 18 and 20 year olds back then. Despite all the tragedy and sadness, our collective response to 9/11 makes me very proud to be an American.

Seattle has S tier summers – at Clyde Hill, WA

Casual Blue Angels flyover while I'm walking my dogs – at Bellevue, WA

Exia Labs has joined partners like Microsoft and Google in signing the "Open Weights and American AI Leadership" letter. Efficiency is everything for military and intelligence workflows, especially at the edge. Not every prompt requires the firepower of Mythos or GPT-5.5. While mission-critical targeting workflows might need the reasoning capabilities of a frontier model, simpler workflows like generating a route or querying a logistics report can easily be handled by open-weights models like Inkling or Kimi. microsoft.com/en-us/corporat…

Every time I go to the park and I see hundreds of people looking at their phones (or the telltale double phone), it's always because they are playing Pokemon Go. Crazy how people are still loving ther game 10 years after launch – at Clyde Hill, WA

The ultimate disrespect in the workplace today? Outsourcing your thinking to AI and forcing your co-workers to review your slop. If you don't start with a coherent thought, no frontier model can cover that up for you. Who else hates this?!?!

I really want Switzerland to win – at Clyde Hill, WA

Defense Founder Note 4 of 20: The Defense Acquisition Timeline Right now, there is a mad scramble within the government to spend end-of-year (EOY) money, and a significant portion of those funds is flowing through defense consortia. Let’s zoom out for a second. Despite the endless podcasts, memos, and webinars proclaiming that defense acquisition is speeding up, it remains notoriously slow—especially for early-stage startups. Achieving product-market fit in defense requires three things: alignment with the end-user, alignment with the buyer, and alignment with timing. Timing is usually the trickiest variable. As a startup, you spend most of your time in a direct feedback loop with the end-user to drive product development. If you’re wise, you also keep the buyer informed and aligned. But just like in commercial enterprises, military personnel and teams change frequently. For example, my team was once down-selected for a contract, only to be met with months of silence. We eventually found out through the press that the specific acquisition office had been reorganized, leaving us in limbo. Returning to the current calendar: July is generally the final month to capture EOY funds, submit proposals, and shape opportunities. By August, defense acquisition quiets down significantly as Congress goes on recess. And since government shutdowns have become a standard political tactic, September always carries the looming threat of a government standstill. This compressed timeline is exactly why many defense organizations are currently funneling money through consortia (Topic 5 of 20). Defense consortia are organized around specific technological domains, such as ground autonomy or modeling and simulation. The government issues a requirement to the consortium, members submit proposals, and the selected companies are awarded contracts via Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs). While consortia and OTAs were designed for speed, they largely operate in the dark. This lack of transparency has become so pronounced that the U.S. Senate recently passed the Stop Secret Spending Act, which would require agencies to disclose OTAs just like standard federal grants. For early-stage startups without a platoon of capture managers, this opacity is a major hurdle. It is incredibly difficult to gauge whether a consortium solicitation is a genuine open competition or just a contracting vehicle for a pre-chosen candidate. You can spend dozens of hours on a proposal, only to be completely ghosted; consortia aren't even required to notify you if your bid wasn't selected. It gets even crazier. One consortium we worked with had a dashboard showing proposal statuses. When we asked for an update on a February submission, their response was: “We’re removing the feature that shows you the status.”

Happy 250th Birthday, America 🇺🇸 – at Clyde Hill, WA

Paraguay is such a dirty team it's crazy – at Seattle, WA

Anduril was awarded a $363 million contract two weeks ago. Did you know that it was awarded under a Department of Homeland Security SBIR Phase III IDIQ contract that they first won back in 2020? A SBIR Phase III IDIQ allows the government to award massive contracts on a sole-source (no-bid) basis. From that single contract vehicle alone, they’ve now been awarded $862.1 million. New defense tech founder topic #2/20, let’s talk about SBIRs. Hopefully, now you understand the true scale of the impact of SBIRs going dark from October last year to April, specifically to VC-backed startups relying on those vehicles to scale. So how do you win a SBIR? For me – whether it’s working with BD capture companies, external proposal writers, or just writing them myself, I’ve learned that it’s truly a numbers game. Trae Stephens recently made headlines saying that defense tech valuations are “completely disconnected from reality.” The other side of that coin is the sheer volume of new defense tech startups flooding the zone. Here’s an example of the volume. Last year, there was a Phase II SBIR that received 200+ submissions. Historically, SBIR topic owners had to market to receive 10 solid submissions. Even if you have the perfect product and there’s only one or two awards available, how do you make sure you get it? Is it actually based on merit? Sorry to say, but now let’s get into topic #3/20: Kingmaking. A former In-Q-Tel President told me that merit is largely a mirage. I saw this firsthand when the two winners of that 200+ submission SBIR were the two best-funded startups in that vertical—backed by VCs who are big financial backers of this administration. The point here isn’t to hate the player; the point is to reveal the game that’s actually going on. No, it isn’t every SBIR, but this game exists, and if you don’t know what game you’re even playing, save your time. One of the winners of that SBIR just received a $100M SBIR IDIQ. Your best strategy as a new company is to bid for as many proposals right now before another potential government shutdown, and to lock in a win by bidding $1 (seriously). Because the initial Phase 1 check doesn’t matter at all compared to the massive sole-source potential it unlocks down the road. Now let’s jump back to Anduril and SBIRs. Their first 5 DoW SBIRs were all Air Force Open Topics. The best front door for the Army and the Navy is the Air Force; their open topic is truly the “front door” for small businesses and startups. That leaves founders in a bind, because your product may specifically be for another branch, but given the power of Air Force Open Topics, it’s worth making it relevant for the Air Force just to get your foot in the door. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an announcement on whether or not there will be more Open Topics. The Air Force seems to be deliberately dodging that question in every Q&A I’ve attended. That’s enough spice for today! Follow me for more bangers.