In recent years, autonomy how completely transformed how future wars will be fought and won. And with that, a new crop of defense startups have emerged with a focus on bringing autonomy and artificial intelligence to the battlefield at scale. On this episode of CTRL + ALT +DEFENSE, Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of Shield AI, shares how autonomy has moved the needle in foreign conflicts, how upstart tech companies are injecting innovation into the Department of Defense, and what's ahead.

If you’ve paid attention to the defense acquisition space long enough, you’ve surely heard of the “Last Supper” — the secret 1993 dinner meeting in which Secretary of Defense Les Aspin invited the CEOs of America's largest defense contractors to share the news that the Pentagon was going to scale back spending leading to a consolidation of the defense industrial base. While that meeting and the decisions tied to it came to define the past three decades of defense contracting, it has also been riddles with myths, according to Margaret Mullins, Director of Public Options and Governance at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator. Mullins joins this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to share the reality of defense acquisition consolidation and how that history can best inform how the Pentagon should approach the current pivotal moment of transformation it’s encountering where it must scale industrial innovation to compete with adversaries like China and Russia.

While Steve Blank might be best known for his ultra-popular Lean Startup methodology that has inspired a generation of American entrepreneurs, he's spent much of the past decade working to infuse that thought leadership in the defense innovation ecosystem, largely at the academic level. Through his work as a founding faculty of Stanford University's Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation and the school's Hacking for Defense program, Blank is helping shape a new class of startups dedicated to defense-aligned missions. And most recently, he launched a PEO Directory that he refers to as "a phonebook for the Pentagon" that's meant to make it easier for those founders to do business with the Department of Defense. The legendary Blank joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE for a wide-ranging discussion about the state of defense innovation, why budding entrepreneurs are turning to defense problem sets at greater rates, and how startups can navigate the bureaucracy of the Pentagon amid a variety of Trump administration reforms.

Venture capital has become an integral part of of the defense innovation ecosystem. And there’s perhaps no Silicon Valley VC firm leaning in to support national security- and defense-focused startup more than Andreessen Horowitz through its American Dynamism initiative. Matt Cronin, senior national security advisor at Andreessen Horowitz, joins this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to explore that evolving intersection of venture-funded innovation and defense, and how the nation can make more room for early-stage startups to bolster national security.

The Department of Defense is quickly running out of time to modernize and build capacity in anticipation of a potential conflict with China. In this episode, we sit down with Chris Brose, Chief Strategy Officer at Anduril Industries and author of The Kill Chain, to discuss how emerging technologies — and the industrial partners building them at scale — could reshape national defense. Brose shares insights on the future of U.S. military innovation, the role of software and autonomy in modern warfare, and how the defense industry must evolve to stay ahead of global competitors.

When Katie Arrington was named to her role performing the duties of the CIO for the Department of Defense, which the Trump administration is now calling the Department of War, she took that charge seriously. As such, she’s not just keeping a seat warm until the Senate approves a new CIO. Instead, Arrington, who knows what it takes to get things dones in the Pentagon, has been helllbent to drive IT reform to deliver better software and digital services that warfighters depend on. In an energetic new episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE, Arrington shares why she returned to the Pentagon during the second Trump administration, what’s in store for the department’s IT and much more.

Despite dramatic advance in AI and compute power, the Pentagon still largely operates as an organization driven by spreadsheets and PowerPoint. To become a truly data-centric force, the U.S. military services must move beyond this to adopt advanced data analytics and AI tools for making critical decisions with speed and accuracy. Govini is one of the top commercial entities leading that charge, and its CEO, Tara Murphy Dougherty, joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE this week to discuss why the U.S. must move decisively and without hesitation into this new era, or risk putting itself in a losing position against its top adversaries.

The debate rages on — and it's coming to a head. Does the U.S. military need an independent cyber force? Or should the services retain their own cyber organizations with specialization in the domains in which they operate? Josh Stiefel, vice president of government relations for Second Front Systems and a former professional staffer for the House Armed Services Committe, is one of the prominent voices advocating for studying the prospect of an independent cyber force, recently helping launch the Commission on U.S. Cyber Force Generation at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Stiefel joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to dig into the debate and share what's ahead.

Can venture capital unlock the Pentagon’s innovation problem? Alex Harstrick of J2 Ventures, an Army reservist and former leader of the Defense Innovation Unit's National Security Innovation Capital team, joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to explore how startup speed and private-sector risk-taking could reshape defense. We dig into where VC is making a real impact, where it struggles against DOD bureaucracy, and what it will take for government and investors to actually work together to deliver the next wave of national security technology.

After a more than three year stint in various roles across the Pentagon, Radha Plumb was appointed as Chief Digital and AI Officer in April 2024, a position she served in until the end of the Biden administration. Now on the other side of that service, she joined CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to reflect on her tenure, the direction of the CDAO, the adoption of AI in the context of the U.S. military, and much more.