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.
