> 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.
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.
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
It's less convenient to indulge that opinion without the protection of the most powerful military in the world.
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:
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
You expect that the whole point of something there not to boost the US military?
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.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
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.
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.
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.
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.