People surprised by this don’t know that the expertise that incubated silicon chips at Stanford and around the valley was based on electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology, among other things.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
That's about as culturally relevant to Stanford as talking of people who lived through the great depression.
The DoD doesn't get to neglect relationships with a community for decades and then talk of how much in common they have with each other. It's nonsense and transparently manipulative.
Yes, Hack for Defense is a decade old now. But the DoD famously had not done much business with area startups for many decades outside of very specific success stories like the CIA's In-Q-Tel.
Turns out that start-ups can't wait several years for a contract award. They tend to die in that time if they have no funding.
Additionally - talk of electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology has been a oft-repeated tagline by members of military leadership as well as Palantir representatives when talking amongst themselves about Silicon Valley or in their appeals to SV itself.
"We have so much in common! Here, why don't you open your history book and I'll show you!" - that's what the appeal comes off like.
I maintain that primarily relying on those examples is a poor choice in trying to establish cultural similarities.
> Turns out that start-ups can't wait several years for a contract award.
This isn’t true. They literally do this all the time. They just need funding. This is also true for biotech.
> They tend to die in that time if they have no funding.
Right. So they raise funding.
Your argument boils down to “the DoD won’t work with startups that don’t have funding,” which is both true and, frankly, as it should be, in my opinion.
> This isn’t true. They literally do this all the time. They just need funding. This is also true for biotech.
Thus the sentence I immediately followed the one this was made in response to where I said "They tend to die in that time if they have no funding."
> Right. So they raise funding.
In many, many cases when it comes to the DoD, their wants aren't seen as dual-purpose and start-ups struggle to find funding that isn't from some DoD-aligned and defense-focused investment firm - which haven't historically invested in large numbers of startups. At least not when I last checked several years ago.
And just to get ahead of this - a DoD want not being seen as dual purpose and the tech later being used for a dual purpose are two very different things.
> Your argument boils down to “the DoD won’t work with startups that don’t have funding,” which is both true and, frankly, as it should be, in my opinion.
My argument is that DoD contract law is poorly suited for funding meaningful sums of money to start-ups that do not have significant non-DoD sources of funding. I'm to understand relatively small sums of money can be awarded on a short time scale, but those sums of money are tiny compared to what's needed to execute on most contracts.
I would agree that it used to be more of a challenge than it is today. For what it’s worth, I worked at a defense contractor and have advised / invested in defense startups.
The government is much more open to it today than ever before. Is it still hard? Yes. Does it require funding? Yes.
I'm aware of a relative lessening of cultural aversion in the bay area of having anything to do with the DoD, but what of substance has changed on the gov side, really?
I'm aware of DIU and of greater outreach efforts to the bay area. I'm aware of a greater rhetorical focus within DoD leadership on taking advantage of Silicon Valley's tech expertise.
But I'm not aware of any substantive change to DoD acquisition law to address the fundamental incompatibility in funding models between DoD's traditional contractor base and bay area startups. The significant lag time to award contracts. The risk-aversion for the DoD where civil servants face political and, in some cases, legal liability for granting funding for projects that don't pan out.
Has the DoD's risk tolerance for investments changed recently? As in - accepting the possibility that some investments may not pan out if it means there's a good chance that other investments bear fruit.
Last I checked a few years ago, outreach to the bay area startups has been primarily using the DoD's equivalent of change found in the couch. A rounding error of DoD's overall available funding.
It is absolutely true that there are people out in the world who would love it if we had no defense. You can argue (validly) that we have made a lot of poor choices, but it’s definitely defense.
Wow, I thought this was satire for a second. This is a level of shamelessness that I'm really surprised Stanford (or anyone involved) can tolerate being associated with.
> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
I believe the quip associated with this is "don't hate the player, hate the game."
War is where the money is. The government of this country has decided that you make money by going to war and you don't make money by not going to war. It's also decided that having money is mandatory. So if you want to succeed you'll go to war.
I don't need a 13 page pamphlet to convince me that people are motivated by making money. But that's orthogonal to wanting a powerful military under whose umbrella you are pontificating.
Have you been asleep for the last 4–8 years? We aren't even 'beyond this' compared to where we were 15 years ago. In case you haven't noticed, the US has been going backward for years: Americans fundamentally don't give a shit about anything except maximizing GDP, regardless of cost - and in fact, some sectors thrive on that externalized 'cost.' I've noticed your sentiment a few times on HN lately and I'm befuddled every time, like what in your life makes you think we are beyond this kind of thing?
Feel free to peruse my profile and websites to get a sense of my contributions and career trajectory over the past few decades, in software and in bluegrass music, if you for whatever reason seriously think that's germane to the discussion.
Of course, and it's been discussed on HN several times, but I can't recall seeing that students were being taught "how to sell to the [DoD/DoW]"; I'm pretty sure that's new (whether it was part of the course I have no idea, but I don't recall it being part of any materials or discussions).
From this article, it does sound like it’s a newer development:
> Goals for Hacking for Defense
> A decade ago, our goal for the class was to teach students Lean Innovation methods while they engaged in national public service. We wanted to familiarize students with the military as a profession and help them better understand its expertise, and its role in society. We also hoped the class would show our sponsors a methodology that builds problem understanding before writing requirements.
> The class still does all this, but now that the DoW is buying from startups and defense venture capital is abundant, the class has turned into a national security incubator. Most of our teams form defense companies.
That’s literally the whole point of the course if you read the original intent of the course it was to change the acquisitions approach of Silicon Valley to match or influence the way the Department of defense does acquisitions and they’ve been extremely successful in capturing the Department of defense as you can see
Lesson learned: California, and all the universities within, are liberal on the surface, but deeply right-wing in the halls of power. Once you understand this, the whole state and its lack of progress on progressive issues makes sense.
This is incredibly cringeworthy knowing the ethical and moral issues surrounding artificial intelligence. The problem "Team SwarmShield" is obviously directly related to a problem Israeli defense forces have to deal with. It's a sad state of Stanford if they're hosting this along with allegedly leading what defined guardrails for artificial intelligence.
Also problems Ukrainian defense needs to solve, and that the Canadian military is trying to solve. This is everyone's problem. It's also biased towards defense use.
But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.
This page literally presents war as if it's a profit vector rather than a societal ill - something that antiwar activists have been claiming is the actual impetus for most conflicts in the world, only to be called conspiracy theorists in response.
It's just totally nauseating.
So while, in the abstract, preventing people from being killed by drone swarms is a great idea, it's tainted from the get-go if the solution is just to make more money by having bigger killing machines, rather than preventing people from wanting/needing to drone swarm other people from the outset.
Someone is going to try and kill you with a drone swarm, so no matter how detestable you find it, I think it’s good that there’s people that are thinking of ways to stop that.
> But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.
War has existed for all of human history.
Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?
> Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?
Isn't this _the entire point_ of the internet? To evolve beyond states and boundaries and warfare as a way of making decisions about resource allocation?
It strikes me as very short-sighted to decline to act as a generation on this matter. Humans today (or lets say, in these next few centuries) _are_ special; we have arrived at an evolutionary milestone with the birth of a new organism that does seem capable of lasting peace.
No... that sounds an awful lot like revisionist history trying to force a utopian ideal where none exists. If anything, the advent of the Internet and social media in particular has made us more tribal, not less.
The majority of the Internet is geared towards feeding the hedonistic treadmill of porn, cat pictures, selling things, influencer chasing, faking happiness on Instagram and trolling political sides on X or Blue sky.
I don't see how we could remove states and boundaries and warfare. Boundaries aren't bad things, they're a natural consequence of living in a natural world
People surprised by this don’t know that the expertise that incubated silicon chips at Stanford and around the valley was based on electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology, among other things.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
That's about as culturally relevant to Stanford as talking of people who lived through the great depression.
The DoD doesn't get to neglect relationships with a community for decades and then talk of how much in common they have with each other. It's nonsense and transparently manipulative.
Huh? The DoD has maintained relationships with many area startups and tech companies for decades. Have you not been paying attention?
I question what specifically you're referring to.
Yes, Hack for Defense is a decade old now. But the DoD famously had not done much business with area startups for many decades outside of very specific success stories like the CIA's In-Q-Tel.
Turns out that start-ups can't wait several years for a contract award. They tend to die in that time if they have no funding.
Additionally - talk of electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology has been a oft-repeated tagline by members of military leadership as well as Palantir representatives when talking amongst themselves about Silicon Valley or in their appeals to SV itself.
"We have so much in common! Here, why don't you open your history book and I'll show you!" - that's what the appeal comes off like.
I maintain that primarily relying on those examples is a poor choice in trying to establish cultural similarities.
> Turns out that start-ups can't wait several years for a contract award.
This isn’t true. They literally do this all the time. They just need funding. This is also true for biotech.
> They tend to die in that time if they have no funding.
Right. So they raise funding.
Your argument boils down to “the DoD won’t work with startups that don’t have funding,” which is both true and, frankly, as it should be, in my opinion.
> This isn’t true. They literally do this all the time. They just need funding. This is also true for biotech.
Thus the sentence I immediately followed the one this was made in response to where I said "They tend to die in that time if they have no funding."
> Right. So they raise funding.
In many, many cases when it comes to the DoD, their wants aren't seen as dual-purpose and start-ups struggle to find funding that isn't from some DoD-aligned and defense-focused investment firm - which haven't historically invested in large numbers of startups. At least not when I last checked several years ago.
And just to get ahead of this - a DoD want not being seen as dual purpose and the tech later being used for a dual purpose are two very different things.
> Your argument boils down to “the DoD won’t work with startups that don’t have funding,” which is both true and, frankly, as it should be, in my opinion.
My argument is that DoD contract law is poorly suited for funding meaningful sums of money to start-ups that do not have significant non-DoD sources of funding. I'm to understand relatively small sums of money can be awarded on a short time scale, but those sums of money are tiny compared to what's needed to execute on most contracts.
I would agree that it used to be more of a challenge than it is today. For what it’s worth, I worked at a defense contractor and have advised / invested in defense startups.
The government is much more open to it today than ever before. Is it still hard? Yes. Does it require funding? Yes.
But unlike before, it’s much easier today.
I'm aware of a relative lessening of cultural aversion in the bay area of having anything to do with the DoD, but what of substance has changed on the gov side, really?
I'm aware of DIU and of greater outreach efforts to the bay area. I'm aware of a greater rhetorical focus within DoD leadership on taking advantage of Silicon Valley's tech expertise.
But I'm not aware of any substantive change to DoD acquisition law to address the fundamental incompatibility in funding models between DoD's traditional contractor base and bay area startups. The significant lag time to award contracts. The risk-aversion for the DoD where civil servants face political and, in some cases, legal liability for granting funding for projects that don't pan out.
Has the DoD's risk tolerance for investments changed recently? As in - accepting the possibility that some investments may not pan out if it means there's a good chance that other investments bear fruit.
Last I checked a few years ago, outreach to the bay area startups has been primarily using the DoD's equivalent of change found in the couch. A rounding error of DoD's overall available funding.
Please, it’s War now, now defense.
Most of the problems seem defense oriented
That's how they try to frame them to make you feel less ethically dissonant.
It is absolutely true that there are people out in the world who would love it if we had no defense. You can argue (validly) that we have made a lot of poor choices, but it’s definitely defense.
It's both.
Completely agreed.
Sure, and I’ll totally switch to calling it “X” instead of Twitter and the Gulf of America instead of Mexico.
Nope, hard pass. I’ll use the real names and people can understand me just fine.
If they insist, I have little desire to continue the conversation.
Wow, I thought this was satire for a second. This is a level of shamelessness that I'm really surprised Stanford (or anyone involved) can tolerate being associated with.
> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
I believe the quip associated with this is "don't hate the player, hate the game."
War is where the money is. The government of this country has decided that you make money by going to war and you don't make money by not going to war. It's also decided that having money is mandatory. So if you want to succeed you'll go to war.
This is extremely well put and precisely accurate
you may not even appreciate how accurate this is because it seems so simple but it’s exactly true
The moment you say “I’m not going to spend my time doing war” (in my case anymore) you are persona non grata to capitalism
> “I’m not going to spend my time doing war” (in my case anymore)
It's less convenient to indulge that opinion without the protection of the most powerful military in the world.
Ah yes this old chestnut
Come back to me after you serve in combat. The dod doesn’t protect anything but investors’ returns.
I’ll have two time Medal of Honor winner explain it to you:
https://archive.org/details/WarIsARacket
I don't need a 13 page pamphlet to convince me that people are motivated by making money. But that's orthogonal to wanting a powerful military under whose umbrella you are pontificating.
"I thought we were beyond this by 2026."
Have you been asleep for the last 4–8 years? We aren't even 'beyond this' compared to where we were 15 years ago. In case you haven't noticed, the US has been going backward for years: Americans fundamentally don't give a shit about anything except maximizing GDP, regardless of cost - and in fact, some sectors thrive on that externalized 'cost.' I've noticed your sentiment a few times on HN lately and I'm befuddled every time, like what in your life makes you think we are beyond this kind of thing?
HN continues to slouch towards emotional outrage, even at the expense of the point.
You don't think the US military should have the best technology?
> I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
You must be new to tech.
> You must be new to tech.
Feel free to peruse my profile and websites to get a sense of my contributions and career trajectory over the past few decades, in software and in bluegrass music, if you for whatever reason seriously think that's germane to the discussion.
He’s calling you naive, not asking for your resume.
Steve Blank has been doing H4D for a decade now
Of course, and it's been discussed on HN several times, but I can't recall seeing that students were being taught "how to sell to the [DoD/DoW]"; I'm pretty sure that's new (whether it was part of the course I have no idea, but I don't recall it being part of any materials or discussions).
From this article, it does sound like it’s a newer development:
> Goals for Hacking for Defense
> A decade ago, our goal for the class was to teach students Lean Innovation methods while they engaged in national public service. We wanted to familiarize students with the military as a profession and help them better understand its expertise, and its role in society. We also hoped the class would show our sponsors a methodology that builds problem understanding before writing requirements.
> The class still does all this, but now that the DoW is buying from startups and defense venture capital is abundant, the class has turned into a national security incubator. Most of our teams form defense companies.
Every tech company that can is selling war machines to the DoW because that's where most of the country's money is - that and stock markets.
That’s literally the whole point of the course if you read the original intent of the course it was to change the acquisitions approach of Silicon Valley to match or influence the way the Department of defense does acquisitions and they’ve been extremely successful in capturing the Department of defense as you can see
Lesson learned: California, and all the universities within, are liberal on the surface, but deeply right-wing in the halls of power. Once you understand this, the whole state and its lack of progress on progressive issues makes sense.
This is incredibly cringeworthy knowing the ethical and moral issues surrounding artificial intelligence. The problem "Team SwarmShield" is obviously directly related to a problem Israeli defense forces have to deal with. It's a sad state of Stanford if they're hosting this along with allegedly leading what defined guardrails for artificial intelligence.
Also problems Ukrainian defense needs to solve, and that the Canadian military is trying to solve. This is everyone's problem. It's also biased towards defense use.
Sure, I think anyone can appreciate that.
But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.
This page literally presents war as if it's a profit vector rather than a societal ill - something that antiwar activists have been claiming is the actual impetus for most conflicts in the world, only to be called conspiracy theorists in response.
It's just totally nauseating.
So while, in the abstract, preventing people from being killed by drone swarms is a great idea, it's tainted from the get-go if the solution is just to make more money by having bigger killing machines, rather than preventing people from wanting/needing to drone swarm other people from the outset.
It is far ethically superior for Stanford grads to stick to their wheelhouse: optimizing engagement so that their users doomscroll longer.
Someone is going to try and kill you with a drone swarm, so no matter how detestable you find it, I think it’s good that there’s people that are thinking of ways to stop that.
> But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.
War has existed for all of human history.
Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?
The only acceptable answer is: you want hope.
> Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?
Isn't this _the entire point_ of the internet? To evolve beyond states and boundaries and warfare as a way of making decisions about resource allocation?
It strikes me as very short-sighted to decline to act as a generation on this matter. Humans today (or lets say, in these next few centuries) _are_ special; we have arrived at an evolutionary milestone with the birth of a new organism that does seem capable of lasting peace.
What a thing invented (or at least large parts) by DARPA. An agency of the United States Department of Defense.
You expect that the whole point of something there not to boost the US military?
No... that sounds an awful lot like revisionist history trying to force a utopian ideal where none exists. If anything, the advent of the Internet and social media in particular has made us more tribal, not less.
The majority of the Internet is geared towards feeding the hedonistic treadmill of porn, cat pictures, selling things, influencer chasing, faking happiness on Instagram and trolling political sides on X or Blue sky.
We aren't better people as a result.
If you think suicidal fanatics or megalomaniacal dictators are motivated by sub-optimal resource allocation, you haven't been paying attention.
I don't see how we could remove states and boundaries and warfare. Boundaries aren't bad things, they're a natural consequence of living in a natural world
Couldn't resist dragging Israel in, right?
Israel is America's biggest ally and an active war zone. Of course it's relevant to most war things that are going on right now.
Original H4D comments from 2015 when steve blank started this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9442981