Y Combinator backs its first defense startup, Ares Industries
techcrunch.com
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Not every case will fit the parent’s criteria but it’s important to understand how the US’ realpolitik has affected the world. We (the US) are not always the white knight.
Also more recently the US participated actively in the coups in Ecuador, Bolívia, Brazil, Paraguay, ...
“In 1988, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed, Public Law 100-383 – the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 – that acknowledged the injustice of "internment," apologized for it, and provided a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated.”
If you are in a dictatorship, that acknowledgement of a past wrong is absolutely impossible. That’s why democracy is so important. George Takei makes this point much more eloquently that I ever could, and it’s why he believes so strongly in democracy.
Immediately after Stalin died Khruschev went on to destalinize the country, with the USSR still being a "dictatorship" by any reasonable definition.
Yes, that was the whole point, he explicitly went around apologizing for Stalin and a lot of the stuff he did.. Rehabilitation of Volga germans, freeing political prisoners, partial? abolition of prison labor, shaming/removing Stalin's lieutenants, etc.
>There was no apology for Holodomor
There wasn't any apology for that, not that I'm aware of.
When it isn't doing that, militant criminals should be held accountable; but are they? https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/projects/drone-war/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
Not just anywhere, but specifically here in America; but you wouldn't know from all the downvotes if folks are okay with holding American war criminals to account. The propaganda of "saving democracies" is too strong.
War Atrocities in Yemen Linked to US Weapons
Columbia Law School researchers have unveiled a disturbing connection between American arms and civilian deaths.
It's also UK weapons systems being used alongside US ones, so the US isn't solely at fault here.
The insinuation here is that even the civilians are invaders? OP is talking about what's brushed aside as collateral damage, especially easily when things go south overseas.
Nowhere in that sentence did I see an insinuation that we were talking about civilians (and I was specifically talking about Russian soldiers). But when we discuss collateral damage, yes that happens sometimes and its awful. However, take how much collateral damage Ukraine causes in Russia when fighting back and how much Russia causes in terms of civilian lives, infrastructure, etc. and it feels pretty clear to me that democratic nations are probably net better at minimizing collateral damage (and generally following international norms and treaties for human rights) than authoritarian regimes.
One would think, but: https://www.justsecurity.org/89781/us-lethal-strikes-program... / https://archive.md/eZUTB
> feels pretty clear to me that democratic nations are than authoritarian regimes.
Our "feel" is, it is always the other. Never us?
Lend-Lease began in 1941 - so we were exporting war materiel and technology years before we got directly involved in WW2.
It’s better to ask for my reasoning and explain your own opposing point of view.
What does this mean? You seem to say the war on communism did nothing because we won it anyway? How can you tell?
- The defense industry is ripe for disruption, defense contractors are very top-heavy, siloed, and bureaucratic, and incredibly inefficient. However, there are structural issues to getting new companies started, and I don’t see anything in Ares that inspires confidence that they will succeed.
- Cash flow is a big problem for small government contractors. Although there are funding initiatives, such as SBIR, to encourage small entrepreneurship in government contracting, it’s generally difficult to transition out of that because the government can take an inordinate amount of time to provide the funds that they promise to a contractor. You can, of-course, get a loan from a third party to fill your funding gap, but that will eat into your profit margin. Size is a form of protection here because other contracts and programs can buffer against cash flow problems in one program.
- funding mechanisms, and laws surrounding them, the FAR in particular, incentivizes against non-traditional corporate organizing and being effective in execution. If you’ve made the transition to being a more established company, you’re getting bigger contracts, you will be following Earned Value (EV). This is required for contracts of a certain, agency defined, size. EV more-or-less requires you to follow waterfall development. It means you effectively cannot do agile development, although you can find examples of contractors using SAFe and other forms of Dark Agile, these are merely waterfall down poorly with extra steps. EV is a large bureaucratic undertaking, requiring certified earned value management systems and dedicated professionals, such as CAMs, planners, quality engineering, and contracts managers. This in service of being accountable, and making sure tax payer dollars are spent wisely, but it takes money to do this. You can’t capitalize on the benefits of being flexible and innovating with government funds because you need to report metrics as if you’ve laid out your entire plan at the start of the project.
- Defense startups effectively have one customer, the US Federal Government. Although it is true that foreign military sales (FMS) happen for a variety of defense articles, all of these sales need to be approved by the US State Department, meaning you are entirely dependent on the executive branch to give you business. How many investors would like to invest in a product that is limited by one party in determining how much you will grow?
- Partner countries like Israel (however you feel about that) will eventually use whatever we make. America will not be sole user.
- America’s police is not afraid to use technology on its own citizens. Obviously they don’t have access to missile defense, but there are plenty examples of them getting military hardware.
I am not actually 100% never-make-weapons, but I have strong doubts anyone profit-motivated is strongly thinking about the second order effects.
Regarding second-order effects, I take great comfort in that. Once upon a time people were able to discriminate between a country which uses violence to achieve goals (say kidnapping, murdering, and raping 1500 youth attending a concert) and national defense.
The US funded internet research and promoted its deregulation internally in belief that promotion of American values was something worthwhile. Post-Soviet era US tech was not conflicted in promoting a set of values in line with both its cultural and economic interests.
I see this as a small step in that direction, however tepid it may be.
Of course they're aware, they just don't care.
Military strength is a Red Queen’s race; you need to run just to stand still.
Entirely by accident - the US wasn't fighting fascists for some ideals of democracy and freedom, or to liberate conquered peoples, or to save Jews being slaughtered; but because the fascists were invading and declaring war left and right, including against the US. Without Japan attacking, and Germany joining, the US would have probably sat the war out (of course still contributing a lot of armaments and loans to the UK, but that was probably as far as the public and Congress would have allowed things to go).
> the world’s most diverse nation
The US doesn't even make the top 50 other than in religion, which doesn't count IMO (because US subreligious groups are incredibly close to one another):
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-dive...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ethnic_an...
That's not true - a quick search reveals a bunch of direct defense companies, like Apollo Shield, and a ton of companies building in the defense space:
https://usefind.ai/searches/defense-startups-funded-by-yc
Do they mean to say "weapons company"?
The US is procuring a couple hundred cruise missiles per year right now, and unit cost isn't the reason they aren't buying more. If 100% of volume went to Ares (it won't) at 1/10th the cost, would that even be a sustainable business model? US manufacturing with US based input suppliers isn't cheap and neither are security cleared workforces.
They might be betting on a change in doctrine emphasizing this sort of platform, and/or the ability to sell directly to Ukraine (and to countries in similar conflicts going forwards), rather than looking at existing cruise missile contracts and trying to compete with those. Drones are one of the items I frequently see in the news as "Ukraine is purchasing these" instead of "these have been donated to Ukraine".
(This is pure speculation, everything I know about this company is from the article being discussed)
If there is anything unique about the military in the US, it's that the budget is extremely sticky and it only goes up. Its basically as "recession-proof" as it gets. Why wouldn't you fund a startup that targets:
1) A niche with a well defined TAM and stable growth prospects
2) No real recession prospects
3) Entrenched players that by all accounts are inefficient
4) An industry where its hard to imagine FTC really flexing its muscles to prevent anti-competitive mergers, in an era where FTC is trying to shut off the acquisition exit for startups.
It's also a part of a much bigger trend, Gov spending as a % of GDP is trending only one way over the last 70 years in the West(up) and so at a certain point why not explicitly start targeting the government as your end user?
Si vis pacem, para bellum.
If you want peace you must prepare for war.
Si vis pacem, par bellum does not really apply to the United States. The US is bellum paratum enough for war to be it's own election, and it has elected for war enough to know that making more weapons for the US won't being any peace.
There's a neighborhood in my city where this family has taken on the role of community police. Strangely enough, most people outside that family believe they have taken on the role of the dominant criminal gang; I wonder why that is. When accused of violence, they mention the belligerence of some of their (real and imaginary) rivals.
First of all, the vast majority of conflicts the US was involved in would not have been fought by regional powers, or not with that intensity, see Libya, various conflicts in South America, etc...
Second, when the US was in China's position, it did everything China does right now, with even more violence. The US annexed, failed to annex or dominate every one of it's neighbors until it relented. There has been no fundamental change in policy since then.
However, if we are going to take an ethical perspective, it seems like a particularly inopportune time to be joining the industry given that the intended customer (the US government) has refused to abide by its own laws with regard to selling weapons to regimes that fail to meet the necessary standards.
Women and children in Yeman would be an example of misuse of US weapons.
*War Atrocities in Yemen Linked to US Weapons
Columbia Law School researchers have unveiled a disturbing connection between American arms and civilian deaths.
a joint investigation by the Security Force Monitor [..] recently concluded that a “substantial portion” of airstrikes that have killed civilians in Yemen have been carried out by jets developed, sold, and maintained by US companies and flown by US-trained pilots.
THe UK is also at fault here, it's not just the US that supply advanced weapon systems with casual disregard for end use.
America should stop them.
We used to have a major, major war every generation.
Improved weaponry (and nukes) have been a huge force for peace since 1945. There have been only proxy wars since then and battle deaths per 100k people dropped off a cliff.
If they kept their nukes, there’d be no invasion.
I’m not an American and live in a country where gun ownership is highly regulated.
For example, you can express all the democracy you want in the US but you have F35s, aircraft carriers, etc that supports the system. Like it or not.
Look up the early history of Google and Facebook, you'll find tons of links to three letter agencies. Every FAANG (or whatever the acronym du jour is now) or equivalent startup is run by spooks and sociopaths with blood on their hands. That's just how America works.
Even in certain unnamed European countries, they proliferate more freely than you'd think, staying unnoticed as long as they’re deniably placating their wrongdoings within the civilian sector. Certain ones are known to become increasingly bold as they encroach on organized crime and PMC breeding grounds, both in close proximity, as of recently. It happens in seemingly ordinary situations, and you'd be surprised at how insidious certain individuals can become.
But if cruise missiles (or drones, or anything else that put explosives on a target) become cheap enough to basically allow you to loiter thousands of weapons over any conflict area, overwhelm any defense, and annihilate all the enemy's material it becomes a similar game of mutual destruction.
If they break their promise not to use nukes first, that’s on them.
> Silicon Valley is telling the average American ‘I will not support your defense needs’ while selling products that are adversarial to America. That is a loser position.
I think that’s fair. And selling to the very deep-pocketed defense sector is obviously a winner position.
https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Ares_Macrotechnology
I'll just leave this here.
If art continues to be predictive of future development, I'm putting money on 4 generations or so to either total dystopia or societal collapse.