Weekly News Update: Sep 13, 2024

7 - 13 Sep 2024

Good morning,

It’s been a busy week. Jared Isaacman completed the first-ever commercial spacewalk for the SpaceX Polaris Dawn mission, even as Elon Musk announces that the next launch of Starship is ready, pending regulatory approval, and that he intends to launch to Mars in the next two years. Congress won’t pass a defense budget this month, and political gamesmanship risks approval of stopgap measures too.

Russia has begun a counterattack to Ukraine’s counterattack into the Kursk region of Russia. Russia is also stating that Western missiles being fired into Russia constitutes a ‘red line’, which is most likely just regular Russian saber rattling.

China and the US are reestablishing high-level military communications, even as Congress seeks to curb Chinese influence, hitting at technologies.

And there’s lots of defense-tech related finance news: two new funds, lots of fundraisers, and Palantir heading to the S&P500!

In other news, expect some big changes to Building our Defense…