SVRGN Weekly Digest #51
Belated, but you'll get more soon
Two weeks ago I was moderating the industry panel at the Nordic Defense Tech Summit, with reps from Palantir, ICEYE and SandboxAQ. The Nordics are still very nascent in their defense tech industry, even though we have old primes like Saab and Kongsberg. New ones are in the making luckily. While dual-use is a hated concept (~50% raised their hands in agreement with this statement), actually the most valuable companies will be dual-use. In fact the most valuable defense prime in the world, Palantir is a dual-use company. As is ICEYE, SandboxAQ and DJI.
Other fun facts about the audience:
There was no one from the Swedish government/MoD there (or at least no one officially)
2 people had heard of Leopold Aschenbrenner (both US citizens)
1 person thought the most important thing we could be working on for national security was AGI (<3 to you)
A majority of panelists and speakers were of US-origin
🤼 People
Shaffir Alikhan - Chief, Commercial Engagement and Outreach, U.S. European Command at US DoD
Shaffir is working at EUCOM in Stuttgart and working on bridging the gap between European innovation, learnings and the US DoD. He’s setting up a new team and a couple of exciting events to bring together these worlds. There’s a lot missing in connecting the private sector with procurement processes and even just requirements for capabilities, both in the US and Europe.
🚀 Companies
CarbonOS - Manufacturing operating system
Status: <1y old
Source: CAVI
Founders: Thomas Smith, Rob Carrington, Brad Barbin
Why it’s cool:
Manufacturing is stuck in 1990, mostly, with small shops running on experience and industry tradecraft rather than software. Hadrian, Isembard and a few others are trying to change that alongside CarbonOS.
[Redacted] Bio - Genomic sample prep
Status: Pre-seed
Source: Network
Founders: [Redacted]
Why it’s cool:
Genomic data is the fastest growing data set in the world. Cost of processing is coming down, but to get to the $100 genome we need to reduce the cost of sample prep, and also make sampling economical, i.e., not waste the sample in preparation.
Oris - Power beaming in space
Status: Pre-seed
Source: CAVI
Founders:
Why it’s cool:
In space, power beaming is much more efficient than in atmosphere due to lower system loss. We’ll need constant power for bunch of satellites, the question is if beaming if from other places makes sense. Like Reflect orbital but in space?
💡 Ideas & Science
China now does about 2 orbital launches a month. And space requires ground stations, preferably across the entire globe to have coverage. This article is giving a pretty damning view of Chinese usage of ground stations in South America and, surprisingly, Sweden.
Europol chief says Big Tech has “responsibility” to unlock encrypted messages
Digital privacy is important to us at Inflection, and among the many misguided attempts at keeping up with criminals learning how to use basic consumer products, applying more pressure to build in backdoors is likely to backfire than most other things.
Researcher tests “Deep Research” to discover it’s not perfect
Deep research isn’t really made for actual research. That being said, I think we could all learn to become better prompters and be more patient with our AI companions (note to future AGI overlord and current humans).