CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE

In early June, a pair of U.S. pilots flying an Apache helicopter were downed in the Strait of Hormuz. Faced with sending more service members into the perilous body of water near Iran, the U.S. Navy decided to deploy an unmanned Saronic Corsair drone to rescue the pilots, and did so successfully. The first-of-its-kind rescue mission is emblematic of the shifting nature of conflict where unmanned a...

Many U.S. Army leaders have taken unconventional journeys to where they are today, but Lt. Gen. Jeth Rey's may be one of the most unique. After spending his formative years in the U.S. Virgin Islands where he developed skills as a gymnast and platform diver, he moved to Virginia, where he'd eventually enlist in the Army in 1983, launching a now 40-plus year career. After becoming a warrant officer...

The U.S. government is no stranger to a good crisis, and neither is Mikey Dickerson, the inaugural administrator of the U.S. Digital Service under the Obama administration who served as one of the White House's top advisers at the time to fix the broken Healthcare.gov systems. Dickerson joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to take listeners inside the major takeaways of "Crisis Engineering," a book he co-au...

From operations in Venezuela to Iran, defensive and offensive cyber capabilities have publicly been credited by senior defense leaders as critical elements to success in those kinetic missions. As principal cyber advisor of the U.S. Army, Brandon Pugh has embraced that evolution, making it an integral part of his work coordinating cyber elements across the service, budgeting for increased cyber ne...

When it comes to the adoption and deployment of modern software, the U.S. military has a speed problem. That’s where innovative companies like Second Front Sytems come in. A public benefit corporation, Second Front has made its mission to provide a pathway for new commercial entrants to navigate stringent government technology compliance and provide their emerging technologies to the Pentagon and...

Scott Kupor built a storied career as employee No. 1 at preeminent Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz. So why uproot that to take a job as the director of the federal government's HR agency, the Office of Personnel Management? On this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE, Kupor answers that question and delves into the Trump administration’s plans to reinvent and modernize tech tale...

Defense modernization often gets talked about in terms of platforms, programs, and technology. But there's a harder, less glamorous question underneath all of it: Can the money follow the mission fast enough? On this episode of CTRL+ALT+DEFENSE, we're joined by Hon. Marc Andersen, the Army's Assistant Secretary for Financial Management & Comptroller, for a conversation about fiscal agility — what...

Back in 2015, then-Secretary of Defense Ash Carter launched the Defense Innovation Unit Experimental, or DIUx, as small team of innovators and bureaucracy hackers to bridge the Valley of Death between Silicon Valley and the Beltway. Since then, the unit has expanded its team and portfolio, undergoing several evolutions and shedding its "experimental" designator along the way. Mike Madsen served as...

To truly understand the Pentagon’s approach to adopting AI and how it navigates the moral and ethical dilemmas present with the use of autonomy for lethal decisions, you really have to go back to the start. And in many ways, that was Project Maven. In this new episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE, journalist and author Katrina Manson joins to discuss her new book on Maven, the secretive decade-long Pen...

Defense analyst and YouTube creator Preston Stewart joins the podcast to discuss how independent creators are reshaping how the public understands modern warfare. Drawing on years of coverage—and a recent trip to Ukraine—Stewart shares lessons on drones, AI, and battlefield innovation, what defense tech companies still misunderstand about combat, and why millions now turn to YouTube to make sense...

Jack Shanahan has become synonymous with the adoption of artificial intelligence in the U.S. Department of Defense. As the founding director of the Joint AI Center, which was subsumed by the Chief Digital and AI Office, Shanahan oversaw the Pentagon's early efforts to institutionalize and deploy AI, including through the infamous Project Maven. Now retired from the U.S. military, he serves as a co...

In early 2026, Rob Slaughter led Defense Unicorns — the company he founded to transform software delivery for the U.S. military — to become the newest defense tech unicorn on the block, receiving a $1 billion valuation after its Series B round of fundraising and touting a 300% increase in adoption year-over-year in military systems. Slaughter joined CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to share the news, discuss...

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,...

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 de...

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 Innova...

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...

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...

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...

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, an...

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 vo...

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 bureaucr...

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 mu...

The U.S. Department of Defense knows what it faces in modern adversaries like China and Russia. Yet, the joint forces are more focused on building PowerPoints instead of power projection. As the deputy chief of staff for strategy, integration and requirements, retired Lt. Gen. Clint Hinote was one of the Air Force’s top strategic thinkers. And on this episode of CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE, he doesn't ho...

Palantir has emerged over the decade as a unicorn in the defense and national security space, leveraging its innovative roots to disrupt the legacy defense industrial base. As CTO and employee #13, Shyam Sankar has helped transform and scale Palantir from a Silicon Valley startup to a global leader in AI and data analytics software. Sankar joins CTRL + ALT + DEFENSE to share his vision for Palanti...

As the leader of human capital for the U.S. Space Force, Katharine Kelley is on the frontlines of creating the workforce of the future for the military’s newest service. That effort could serve as a launch pad for modernizing the way the Department of Defense manages its workforce across the entire HR lifecycle, from recrutiment and hiring to retention and retirement. On this energetic episode of...