Software & Steel: The Return of Defense as Destiny
A new generation of founders is rebuilding the arsenal of democracy
The world is breaking apart. You can feel it everywhere. In the rise of revanchist powers. In the crumbling trust between allies. In the shifting alliances, supply chains, and spheres of influence. The myth of a flat world, one that is interconnected, liberal, and predictable is fading fast. We are no longer living in the long peace. Instead, we are entering the long fracture.
The post-Cold War dream of permanent globalization is being replaced by something messier, more unstable, more dangerous. Call it great power competition. Call it the new Cold War. But whatever we call it, the implications are clear: defense is back. Geopolitics is back. Survival is back.
And yet, the companies meant to protect liberal democracies feel stuck in a past era. The military-industrial complex still moves like it’s the 20th century. Boeing. Lockheed. Raytheon. Titans, yes, but too slow, too sclerotic, too removed from the exponential curve of modern technology. They work on multi-year procurement cycles. They fear software. They fear iteration. But the battlefield no longer moves in years. It moves in milliseconds. Cyberattacks. Drones. Deepfakes. Hypersonics. AI agents coordinating swarms in real time. This is warfare as a software problem. And that means it’s also a startup problem.
But there’s a new class of defense-native companies. A software-and-steel generation of companies. Builders who aren’t afraid to touch hardware, who can write code and weld metal, who move fast and ship real things. They aren’t playing defense; they’re reinventing it. Anduril is the early signal. Founded by Palmer Luckey, backed by Founders Fund, it builds autonomous systems from the ground up: drones, towers, battlefield networks. Its Lattice OS is a software brain for real-time defense. But more importantly, Anduril isn’t bashful about its mission. It believes in defending the West. Full stop. That clarity, and that speed, has earned it contracts, believers, and imitators.
Around it, a constellation of others is rising. Shield AI with its autonomous aerial systems. Hadrian, reinventing defense manufacturing with vertically integrated, AI-powered factories. Palantir, still leading in battlefield data fusion. Varda, manufacturing off-world. Epirus, building directed energy weapons to counter drone swarms. These are all arsenals built by founders who know that in a world of fragmentation, deterrence is innovation.
The blueprints are forming. Some companies go full-stack, like Anduril. Others build dual-use software that can swing between military and civilian needs, like Palantir or Helsing. Some focus on infrastructure: chips, manufacturing, orbital logistics. Others specialize in new forms of non-kinetic conflict like AI-driven command systems, electromagnetic pulse tech, cognitive security.
Together, they form a new industrial movement that revives resilience.
But they cannot do it alone. Not in a world where procurement cycles stretch years, where trusted capital is scarce, where regulations are built for a previous century. We need policy to evolve. Fast-track pathways for non-traditional startups to work with government. Export frameworks that enable alliance-based industrial bases. Public-private mechanisms for early design partnerships. We need a new kind of industrial policy that empowers insurgents.
And above all, we need a moral reframing. For too long, “defense tech” has carried a stigma, as if building for war is inherently suspect. But we are not building to wage war. We are building to prevent it. The new generation of existential defense companies is driven by clarity. By the understanding that open societies do not defend themselves. They must be defended.
Defense is about meaning, not just about missiles and machines. It’s about whether free people can retain the power to defend themselves in an age of AI, drones, and digital instability. About whether the best minds of our time will continue to optimize ad clicks, or step into something bigger.
So if you're a founder asking what matters, what’s worth building - look at the arsenal of democracy. Look at the tools that could help keep civilization standing. Then pick up the torch.
With belief,
Yon
👋 Hello! My mission with Beyond with Yon is to ignite awareness, inspire dialogue, and drive innovation to tackle humanity's greatest existential challenges. Join me on the journey to unf**ck the future and transform our world.