DOGE targets Lockheed, photons mapped, and Congress wants an AI Manhattan Project

Advanced Computing, AI/ML, Chips, and Extended Reality

Good morning,

It’s Monday and that means we get to peel back the headlines to see what happened over the weekend. Fortunately, it wasn’t too much. Elon Musk, in his ‘role’ as the co-head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE; not really a ‘department’ per se) has fired a shot across the bow of the large Defense Primes. He particularly seems to have Lockheed and their abysmal record with delivering the F-35 on-time and on-budget in his crosshairs.

We think that it’s probably a good time for us to once more highlight that it’s not a question of ‘this or that’ but rather it’s a question of striking the right, optimized balance of this AND that. Yes we will need 5th and 6th Generation aircraft, but we will also need smaller, cheaper, autonomous systems supporting. What’s the right number? We don’t know. Maybe it’s 10:1, maybe it’s 100:1 autonomous systems to manned systems. Regardless, it’s refreshing to know that there will be challenges to the ‘business-as-usual’ mode…