Editor’s Brief¹

Last week we released our article on Chariot Defense, recently out of stealth.

This week, I am trying something different. A defense op-ed—or maybe a Signals-Editorial.

There’s a growing chorus on LinkedIn that loves to take shots in the comments section:

Posting a spicy teardown about how a product isn’t being used in Ukraine or how a company’s supply chain is flawed might earn you 10,000 impressions.

But it doesn’t build anything.

If you truly believe defense tech is broken, fix it.
Join a company. 
Start a new one.
Roll up your sleeves and solve the problem.

And if you disagree, @ me in the LinkedIn comments with your spiciest take. I’ll read it.

Signal Brief: Holding Out for Something Better Won’t Save Us

Ukraine has done an incredible job fielding fast, adaptable tech under extreme conditions. According to Ukrainian defense officials, drones accounted for 69% of strikes on Russian personnel and 75% on vehicles and equipment in 2024. There is new Tac D&E happening every day and we should extract every ounce of battlefield knowledge.

But we also need to be honest about where that capability came from.

Until 2023, up to 80% of Ukraine’s drone parts came from China, particularly DJI systems. Even as Ukraine ramps up domestic production, critical chips and rare minerals still flow from China—legally or otherwise. Many of the systems we now praise for their agility were jailbroken DJI quadcopters duct-taped to a hand grenade.

So here’s the question: if a war with China breaks out, do you think Beijing will keep exporting critical parts to U.S. allies?

The War Has Already Started

In 2024, China sanctioned Skydio and cut off their access to key battery components. Skydio had to limit deliveries as a result. I think the war is already underway, being fought through supply chains, restrictions, and leverage. We just haven’t acknowledged it yet.

We can debate all day about how expensive U.S. drones are compared to DJI, post countless takes about how bad the Blue UAS list is/was, or complain about how hard it is to scale CMMC-compliance

But if you’re only focused on performance specs and not asking how we’re actually going to field the actual tech, you’ve already missed the point.

When the global market fractures into “us” and “them,” we don’t get to shop the open internet for drones or anything else. And we sure as hell don’t get to borrow from the enemy.

Entire categories of electronics, pharmaceuticals, and rare earth materials would vanish overnight.

Yes, we have critical stockpiles for some items.
But when China does things like produce 98% of the world’s low-purity gallium, we’d better hope that stockpile is bottomless.

Tear Down Culture Undermines Deterrence

I will fully agree that not every defense startup deserves applause. Some are all demo, no delivery. Valuation ≠ Value to the warfighter. And rebuilding domestic manufacturing is going to take years, not a year.

At the same time, we need to seriously temper our expectations that any single company is going to be the silver bullet. I can tell you from experience. It never is.

But unlike typical Venture backed companies, the end user of a defense tech product isn’t someone ordering a burrito at midnight.

It’s your daughter, serving onboard an aircraft carrier for 10 months after three extensions.
It’s your son, posted to a FOB with a six-month-old baby at home and he missed the birth.

So yes, criticism is absolutely necessary. We should call out grift, vaporware, and sloppy execution because people’s lives are at stake.
But the growing wave of teardown posts dunking on defense startups because it’s not perfect?

That’s not analysis.
It’s noise.
And that noise has consequences.

If You Want to Help, Start Here

Stop commenting. Start contributing.
If you’ve got strong opinions, back them with action. Reach out for a real conversation. Join the company you’re dunking on. Or better yet, start one to solve the problem yourself.

Build with the warfighter in mind.
If you're not designing for the E-3 carrying your gear, the O-3 flying with your AI wingman, or the E-5 using your software in a SCIF, you’re not building for reality.
The generals approve the budget. But it’s the junior troops who live with the consequences. Long after the ribbon-cutting ends and the O-6 who approved your SBIR has rotated out.

Accept that readiness isn’t cheap.
Will it cost more to build here? Absolutely. Will it take longer? Almost certainly. But what’s the real cost of not having a domestic defense industrial base when deterrence fails?

Champion the imperfect.
Every defense startup has flaws. So do the primes. But this is the group we’ve got. Help them get better. Make the right introductions. Bring in operators. Offer real, constructive feedback.

Understand what’s at stake.
You might know the names— Chariot Defense, Castelion, Anduril. But most people wearing a uniform don’t.
If we don’t close the gap between builders and warfighters and keep these companies alive long enough to matter, we’ll be in a hurt locker long before the VC dollars vanish.

Bottom Line:

You can call out grift.
You can criticize programs.
You can post your hottest take on LinkedIn.

That’s one of the great things about this country. You're free to speak your mind.

But that freedom didn’t just appear. It was earned through sacrifice. And it still depends on people, systems, and technology that work when everything else breaks.

Support the imperfect companies building imperfect products.
Push them to get better.
Not every new startup is going to fix the system. But don’t burn them down just to farm “💯!!!!”s in the comments section.

Because if deterrence fails and we’ve mocked our way into paralysis, we won’t just be out of options.

We’ll be out of time.
And no one else is going to build this for us.

1  The views expressed in this newsletter are my own and do not represent the views of the U.S. Navy, Department of Defense, or any government agency. Mention of companies, technologies, or products is not an endorsement or recommendation. The content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice.