Reasoning agents have quietly crossed a threshold. In just the past few months, models gained the ability to choose and chain tools, turning them from text summarizers into systems that can actually reason, act, and adapt. For defense missions, that shift is enormous.

Vannevar CEO Brett Granberg explains why the o1 –> o3 leap changed everything, how a task that once required 40 analysts a month now runs in 20 minutes, and why agents are more than “chatbots with tools.”

We cover:

• Why tool use is the real step-change
• Concrete defense use cases
• The playbook for building with agents: model-agnostic, tool-first, and mission-driven
• How tech-enabled services could upend billions in prime contracts
• The unsolved problems: model evaluation, UX, and hallucinations
• What an “agent-native” team looks like, and how to build one

Outline

• 00:00 The inflection point
• 00:36 What are reasoning agents?
• 03:38 Why now?
• 04:46 New missions unlocked
• 05:45 Vannevar case study
• 09:17 The last 20% problem
• 12:18 Ship fast, don’t break infra
• 16:18 The agent product playbook
• 20:13 Agents x sensing grid
• 23:23 Be model-agnostic or lose
• 26:19 3x Better, not 10% better
• 28:24 Impact on tech-enabled services
• 32:18 Paths forward for startups
• 34:05 What’s real today
• 36:10 Picking models that win
• 38:22 Unsolved challenges
• 39:15 Hiring an agent-native team