Silicon Valley insiders warn U.S. defense supply chain is unprepared for modern warfare
To compete with China, the U.S. defense industry must leverage private venture capital and dual-use technologies to overhaul the defense playbook in the age of AI. That is a point that leading technology executives and venture capitalists drove home in a wide-ranging discussion at this year’s Fortune Brainstorm Tech summit in Aspen, Colorado. The U.S. is reliant on vulnerable supply chains for critical minerals and high-tech components. Maintaining a competitive edge will require deeper public-private partnerships and modernization of how the government acquires and scales innovation, according to a group of frontline investors and executives. The group included Teresa Carlson, chief executive of the General Catalyst Institute, Jon Garrity, chief executive of MIT-born defense tech startup Tagup, Aidan Madigan-Curtis, a partner at venture firm Eclipse, and Peter Wilczynski, chief product officer at spatial intelligence firm Vantor. Specifically, the group warned, China’s chokehold on rare earth elements and critical minerals, which the country has shown it is willing to use as a political tool, poses a major threat to U.S. national security. In addition, the majority of parts for critical war-fighting assets such as large ships rely on a single vendor, the panelists cautioned. U.S. ammunition infrastructure has stagnated since World War II, and the country is far behind in drone manufacturing. “They’ve got [tactical] drone capability thousands of times [greater than what] we do,” Aiden Madigan-Curtis said of China. “They’re the only ones with a true robust robotics ecosystem. We really don’t have the capacity here.” The group discussion mirrored some points said earlier at Brainstorm Tech by Brian Schimpf, chief executive of defense tech company Anduril, who warned that the U.S. military’s supply chain is dangerously unprepared for modern warfare. One example is the U.S.’s quick depletion of its arsenal in the conflict with Iran. T