Trae Stephens’ origin story begins like the first volume of a spy thriller series. Galvanized by 9/11, he vowed as a high schooler to find a career that would let him defend his country. He applied to colleges with programs that could prep him for that heroic role. None were …
Read More »Your Phone Won’t Be the Next Exploding Pager
For two days this week, Hezbollah has been rocked by a series of small explosions across Lebanon, injuring thousands and killing at least 25. But these attacks haven’t come from rockets or drones. Instead, they’ve resulted from boobytrapped electronics—including pagers, walkie-talkies, and even, reportedly, solar equipment—detonating in coordinated waves. As …
Read More »Palmer Luckey Is Bringing Anduril Smarts to Microsoft’s Military Headset
When Palmer Luckey was hacking together virtual reality headsets at his startup Oculus VR in the mid-2010s, he would sometimes imagine a future in which US soldiers used the technology to sharpen their battlefield senses. That vision is now virtually a reality after a deal that will bring software from …
Read More »First Israel’s Exploding Pagers Maimed and Killed. Now Comes the Paranoia
When Nadim Kobeissi was a child growing up in Beirut in the early 2000s, sonic booms created by the Israel Defense Forces' planes in the skies above Lebanon would occasionally rattle his home, generating enough noise and concussive force that he and his family would sometimes sleep in the hallways …
Read More »The Japanese Robot Controversy Lurking in Israel’s Military Supply Chain
Activists in Japan earlier this year accused one of the country’s largest robotics manufacturers of profiting off the war in Gaza, accusing it of violating its own company policies in aiding the Israeli defense industry. At a protest outside the headquarters of FANUC Corporation earlier this summer, the Boycott, Divestment, …
Read More »The US Navy Is Going All In on Starlink
Life aboard a US Navy warship at sea can be stressful, boring, and lonely, with separation from friends and family and long stretches between port calls both isolating and monotonous. Now, Elon Musk is here to take the edge off. In a now deleted press release from the Naval Information …
Read More »The Pentagon Is Planning a Drone ‘Hellscape’ to Defend Taiwan
It has become conventional wisdom among the halls of the United States government that China will launch a full-scale invasion of Taiwan within the next few years. And when that happens, the US military has a relatively straightforward response in mind: Unleash hell. Speaking to The Washington Post on the …
Read More »Palmer Luckey’s Defense Startup, Anduril, Raises $1.5 Billion to Produce AI-Powered Weapons
Palmer Luckey has come a long way from hacking together virtual reality headsets in a garage. Today, the Oculus VR founder’s defense tech startup, Anduril, announced that it has raised $1.5 billion in addition to developing a new manufacturing platform to produce “tens of thousands of autonomous weapons” a year. …
Read More »AI-Powered Super Soldiers Are More Than Just a Pipe Dream
The day is slowly turning into night, and the American special operators are growing concerned. They are deployed to a densely populated urban center in a politically volatile region, and local activity has grown increasingly frenetic in recent days, the roads and markets overflowing with more than the normal bustle …
Read More »The Lords of Silicon Valley Are Thrilled to Present a ‘Handheld Iron Dome’
Drones have changed war. Small, cheap, and deadly robots buzz in the skies high above the world’s battlefields, taking pictures and dropping explosives. They’re hard to counter. ZeroMark, a defense startup based in the United States, thinks it has a solution. It wants to turn the rifles of frontline soldiers …
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