The private sector just handed the Pentagon a wake-up call, and patriots should be grateful. Shield AI — a scrappy, American defense company built by former servicemen — is quietly building the autonomous aircraft and software that will decide future battlefields, not some paper-pushing Beltway committee. The fact that a company founded to protect service members is leading this charge shows what freedom and free markets can do when the swamp is pushed aside.
Brandon Tseng, a former Navy SEAL who helped found Shield AI, is not a lobbyist or a career bureaucrat; he’s a warfighter-turned-engineer who knows what soldiers need to survive. He now runs growth, strategy, and government relations at Shield AI, and he speaks plainly about the need to field intelligent systems that keep Americans alive. That blend of battlefield experience and technological ambition is the kind of leadership our military has desperately needed.
We’re not talking toys. Shield AI’s work on vertical takeoff drones like the V-BAT and the company’s newer X-BAT concepts point toward a future where affordable, autonomous aircraft do the dangerous work men and women used to have to do. Investors have taken notice — the company raised a massive round recently and is valued in the multi-billion dollar range, because private capital sees the same future smart patriots do: cheap, effective autonomy wins fights and saves lives.
And this isn’t theoretical. Shield AI’s systems proved resistant to the intensive electronic warfare environment in Ukraine, winning real contracts and praise for doing what big, expensive platforms sometimes cannot: operate when the enemy is trying to blind you. That kind of resilience is not just impressive — it’s a national security imperative as rivals try every trick to jam, spoof, and disrupt our forces. We should celebrate American ingenuity doing what bureaucrats have too often promised and failed to deliver.
So here’s the bottom line: Washington needs to stop dithering and let American industry mass-produce the tools our troops actually need. Too often procurement is run like a government grant program rather than a race to field the best kit to the battlefield. Conservatives should demand speed, scale, and accountability — fund the factories, cut the red tape, and let our allies and soldiers benefit from American know-how.
Meanwhile, let the dictators grandstand. Vladimir Putin’s vaunted “nuclear-powered” cruise missile has always smelled more like propaganda than capability, and experts have repeatedly pointed out the practical and safety problems with the idea. The Kremlin’s past testing mishaps and the obvious radiological dangers of a flying reactor have convinced many analysts that this is a dangerous, showy project, not a genuine leap in military technology.
If we’re serious about deterrence, Congress and the administration must back companies like Shield AI with procurement schedules, production contracts, and clear rules that keep human judgment in the loop for lethal decisions. Brandon Tseng and others who’ve testified to lawmakers make the common-sense case: autonomy should augment American courage, not replace it, and the private sector can deliver faster than bloated acquisition offices. Now is the time for conservatives to push for real investment in American defense innovation so our sons and daughters have every advantage over tyrants abroad.
