"I’ve heard various estimates from the Ukrainians themselves that any given drone typically has a life span of about four weeks."
Maybe if referring to the Mavic scouts or bombers... Because the FPVs and Cessna-based drones have a lifetime based on mission duration. They have an outsized impact, however. I also must say that expensive gear from Anduuril is a drop in the bucket compared to homegrown sea and air drone assets. It has become a diy drone war through and through. Nothing like 2022.
This guy is great. Companies like Anduril are what we need to protect America in the next war. Defense procurement has eaten us alive and made a relatively ineffective fighting force. We need to be capable of creating liberty ships again. And the UAV and USV tech that Anduril pioneers will hopefully lead to a bunch of copycat companies that push low cost weaponry.
High production wins wars. We did it last time. We just have to get it back into action again.
The Thiel collective has reached VP and Pres candidates. If they make it to the White House, this particular pathway is going to open. American hegemony can be preserved and the World can be at peace.
>"And the companies that did have expertise, like Google, like Facebook, like Apple, were refusing to work with the U.S. national security community."
Idk if this is true. I suspect they--at a minimum--cooperate with the "soft" side of the defense industry (e.g. NSA). However, if they don't, I think there will come a time when we will have to bring them to heel. The world won't have the luxury of supporting fat corps who aren't aligned with respective hegemons (e.g. US, China, Russia). They will find themselves supporting the effort or cut off from resources and unable to continue operating.
Who is “we” in “we will have to”? As a citizen, I would strongly reject any increased national security involvement in tech; and as an employee, this may be the thing that pushes me to unionize.
We = The people with guns who control the nation and access to the inputs and trade networks (e.g. ports, sea-lanes, highways), and informations systems (e.g. fiber) that these companies rely on.
I also have no doubt that you personally might refuse to participate, but enough of your peers will re-orient to enable the corporation to keep moving.
There was a period of time where employees of companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google were protesting in order to prevent their companies from taking military contracts.
That seems to have mostly died down and all of those companies have contracts with the DoD.
Ultimately, I agree with your sentiment. Alibaba can't tell China no. And while US corporations have that freedom. It isn't one they should exercise because the US military's ability to remain competitive is in the vital interest of all that live in the US. Even if you don't always agree with the government's use of the military.
Contrary to that viewpoint I think there is much to be said for separating peaceful non military companies from military ones. Some reasons:
Google FB etc are inherently global. Military is inherently regional.
Mixing military and civilian tends to cause messes. See Boeing doing military stuff and now their planes and ISS shuttles don't work. Also so Cheney transferring the military biodefense budget to Fauci and the NIH and now we have lab leaks and covid.
> Google FB etc are inherently global. Military is inherently regional
Military is often global, too. We have the term "world wars" for a reason. Boeing has been doing military work long before it's contemporary issue. Most aerospace companies do. In fact a lot of tankers and airborne radars are built on top of civilian aircraft frames.
Google had an employee revolt over project Maven. However, there were suggestions that this was overblown and mostly driven by foreign national employees. Which, to be clear, does not make their opinions invalid but it does mean it's not necessarily representative of the whole if for example lots of mainland Chinese employees aren't enthusiastic about working for American military capabilities.
A company like Google (or Apple for that matter), with their own freewheeling project systems, would rather jump into an olympic pool filled with razor blades and used condoms before taking any amount of money from the hellish morass that is the defense procurement system. The instant you enter the MIC, kiss goodbye to any of your internal business systems - you will be re-writing the way you work every second of every day. And not for the better, I might add. I think Google looked at the costs of that, looked at the contract, and said, nah, thanks, I'm good. Then went back to feeding NSA/NRO for black money delivered by men in coats.
Of course, now, post-ZIRP, things are a wee bit different.
Agreed on defense procurement revenue vs their current revenue streams. But they are given national-level amounts of resources (eg gigawatts for their data centers). In a wartime footing that would go away unless they re-oriented to serve common effort.
I’ve still not seen any actual proper evidence of Andruils tech being fielded in Ukraine, and I’m in touch with a rather large number of people on drone and EW teams over there.
It’s become kind of a joke of sorts - we see slick promo stuff for Luckeys shit in the press, but we never see the goods.
This guys PR team has been obviously working overtime in the last few months to make him the new musk. I’m taking note of all the organizations being paid to exhaustingly fawn over the cool new kid of death technology
(American here) I don't know anything about Palmer Luckey or Anduril, but I do believe in a strong national defense.
As an individual, I can do approximately zero to stop weapons from being used for offense, rather than defense. That is wildly unfortunate and tragic, but (false dichotomy incoming) I would choose that path for my country 100% of the time over being under-armed.
"The strong do what they will while the weak suffer what they must." I can't recommend being weak so instead I will vote for being strong.
All that to say: I am supportive and thankful that someone out there is actually innovating/delivering in this space and not just an MIC-parasite.
I am a pacifist at heart, and I truly wish it wasn’t so, but it is impossible for any nation that believes in its continued existence [0] not to arm itself and maintain alliances with other like minded nations (including, regrettably, nuclear arms).
I agree with the sentiment around demilitarisation, too. If everyone started getting rid of weapons there would, in many ways and for much of the time be less war and suffering. It feels right, compassionate, and empathetic. It’s what I would want. But it’s wrong.
It only takes one national collapse, one coup, one crackpot dictator, one rogue leader to upend that and walk all over everyone. And we have far more than one, both nascent and incipient, at this point.
This used to be somewhat untested in modern times, making it easier for loud anti-defence voices to be heard and acted on. But Ukraine is living that reality every day and Russia is far from the only would be aggressor.
So yes, we need to build capable militaries and strong alliances, and we need work to promote a more stable world outside those alliances.
At the same time we need to try, as hard as possible, to use our democratic power to prevent our nations and their allies overreaching with their military power, given that they must not surrender it.
But the idea that any subset of nations can choose peace by not having weapons in anything like the world we inhabit is, unfortunately, dangerous wishful thinking.
[0] Every nation believes this, regardless of its truth. We can (and should) evaluate the legitimacy and stability of a nation, alongside its governance when forming alliance, but all will rationalise their own existence (however poorly) and therefore their defence.
Seeing what is happening in the world, I agree with you.
While America does not have a perfect history and is not a perfect system, there is no other country in the world right now that i would rather have overwhelming military advantage over others.
If it was really all about non-lethal defense, weapons would look a lot different, and many current weapons would simply be banned, with anyone owning or employing such weapons getting forced -- by non-lethal force -- to give them up.
Warfare is an inherently competitive endeavor. Which is going to win: an army armed with stun batons and pepper spray pitted against an army with machine guns, tanks, and artillery?
Non-lethal defence does not seem possible at our current technology level.
Keeping it about defence only rather than offense is a political problem, with the decision about what sort of weapons you acquire being influenced by the politics, not driving it.
There's a grim irony to naming military technology companies (Anduril, Palantir) after objects from a story written by a survivor of the meat grinder that was World War I.
Neither of these names are ironic. The name Palantir was chosen to remind the company of surveillance's potential for abuse. Anduril was meant to reference th idea of shaking up American defense, disrupting an industry that's become dominated by a few big players on cost-plus contracts that routinely overrun. Because Anduril is the new sword reforged from Narsil.
That Tolkien was a world war veteran doesn't make it any more ironic. The way you o avoid wars is to deter them: countries aren't selfless magnanimous institutions, they need to know that they'll lose in war in order to keep them from trying to wage it.
"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."
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Maybe if referring to the Mavic scouts or bombers... Because the FPVs and Cessna-based drones have a lifetime based on mission duration. They have an outsized impact, however. I also must say that expensive gear from Anduuril is a drop in the bucket compared to homegrown sea and air drone assets. It has become a diy drone war through and through. Nothing like 2022.
High production wins wars. We did it last time. We just have to get it back into action again.
The Thiel collective has reached VP and Pres candidates. If they make it to the White House, this particular pathway is going to open. American hegemony can be preserved and the World can be at peace.
Dead Comment
>"And the companies that did have expertise, like Google, like Facebook, like Apple, were refusing to work with the U.S. national security community."
Idk if this is true. I suspect they--at a minimum--cooperate with the "soft" side of the defense industry (e.g. NSA). However, if they don't, I think there will come a time when we will have to bring them to heel. The world won't have the luxury of supporting fat corps who aren't aligned with respective hegemons (e.g. US, China, Russia). They will find themselves supporting the effort or cut off from resources and unable to continue operating.
I also have no doubt that you personally might refuse to participate, but enough of your peers will re-orient to enable the corporation to keep moving.
That seems to have mostly died down and all of those companies have contracts with the DoD.
Ultimately, I agree with your sentiment. Alibaba can't tell China no. And while US corporations have that freedom. It isn't one they should exercise because the US military's ability to remain competitive is in the vital interest of all that live in the US. Even if you don't always agree with the government's use of the military.
Google FB etc are inherently global. Military is inherently regional.
Mixing military and civilian tends to cause messes. See Boeing doing military stuff and now their planes and ISS shuttles don't work. Also so Cheney transferring the military biodefense budget to Fauci and the NIH and now we have lab leaks and covid.
Military is often global, too. We have the term "world wars" for a reason. Boeing has been doing military work long before it's contemporary issue. Most aerospace companies do. In fact a lot of tankers and airborne radars are built on top of civilian aircraft frames.
Explain please. How does one lead to the other?
> Also so Cheney transferring the military biodefense budget to Fauci and the NIH and now we have lab leaks and covid
That’s a bold claim.
So what you're saying is that we need to restrain their freedom so we can protect their freedom?
Of course, now, post-ZIRP, things are a wee bit different.
Here is one source of many that came up from a quick Google search: https://techinquiry.org/?article=google-aerial
It’s become kind of a joke of sorts - we see slick promo stuff for Luckeys shit in the press, but we never see the goods.
As an individual, I can do approximately zero to stop weapons from being used for offense, rather than defense. That is wildly unfortunate and tragic, but (false dichotomy incoming) I would choose that path for my country 100% of the time over being under-armed.
"The strong do what they will while the weak suffer what they must." I can't recommend being weak so instead I will vote for being strong.
All that to say: I am supportive and thankful that someone out there is actually innovating/delivering in this space and not just an MIC-parasite.
I am a pacifist at heart, and I truly wish it wasn’t so, but it is impossible for any nation that believes in its continued existence [0] not to arm itself and maintain alliances with other like minded nations (including, regrettably, nuclear arms).
I agree with the sentiment around demilitarisation, too. If everyone started getting rid of weapons there would, in many ways and for much of the time be less war and suffering. It feels right, compassionate, and empathetic. It’s what I would want. But it’s wrong.
It only takes one national collapse, one coup, one crackpot dictator, one rogue leader to upend that and walk all over everyone. And we have far more than one, both nascent and incipient, at this point.
This used to be somewhat untested in modern times, making it easier for loud anti-defence voices to be heard and acted on. But Ukraine is living that reality every day and Russia is far from the only would be aggressor.
So yes, we need to build capable militaries and strong alliances, and we need work to promote a more stable world outside those alliances.
At the same time we need to try, as hard as possible, to use our democratic power to prevent our nations and their allies overreaching with their military power, given that they must not surrender it.
But the idea that any subset of nations can choose peace by not having weapons in anything like the world we inhabit is, unfortunately, dangerous wishful thinking.
[0] Every nation believes this, regardless of its truth. We can (and should) evaluate the legitimacy and stability of a nation, alongside its governance when forming alliance, but all will rationalise their own existence (however poorly) and therefore their defence.
While America does not have a perfect history and is not a perfect system, there is no other country in the world right now that i would rather have overwhelming military advantage over others.
Not China, not Russia, Not any other country.
Keeping it about defence only rather than offense is a political problem, with the decision about what sort of weapons you acquire being influenced by the politics, not driving it.
Deleted Comment
That Tolkien was a world war veteran doesn't make it any more ironic. The way you o avoid wars is to deter them: countries aren't selfless magnanimous institutions, they need to know that they'll lose in war in order to keep them from trying to wage it.
You just said it.
War Is Peace. Freedom Is Slavery. Ignorance Is Strength.
War is peace.
Dead Comment