YC is definitely pivoting into Defense. Besides 9mothers, there’s a list of 22 defense startups accepted into YC just this year so far:
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/industry/defense
And beyond this there are a number of defense-dependent companies like ProvenMetal (whose value proposition largely depends on a customer’s deep need to do onshore manufacturing)
It makes sense. From 2000-2015 it was pretty difficult for anyone to break into defense and really own a brand. Breakout companies like EOTech were really rare. Generally founders would be at the mercy/grace of the major defense incumbents ('primes'), getting scraps from their tables.
That’s changed lately. For a wide variety of reasons (political, technical, and on active battlefields) there’s a lot more room for startups to really own their own slice of the industry and build some moats of their own.