Brandon Tseng, co-founder and president of Shield AI, sat down with Glenn Beck to spell out what the next war will look like now that artificial intelligence is being married to real combat aircraft. The conversation is not theory — it’s a warning and a wake-up call that the battlefield is changing faster than the bureaucrats in Washington can even write memos.
Shield AI has quietly moved from prototype to platform with ambitious projects that will make traditional airpower doctrine look outdated in short order. The company’s recent public push around an autonomous fighter-class design shows private American industry is willing to shoulder the risk the Pentagon too often shirks, and that’s the kind of grit our nation needs right now.
The technical pitch is simple and terrifying to our adversaries: an AI-piloted, vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft that can operate in GPS- and communications-denied environments, team with manned planes, and project power from ships or austere strips hundreds or thousands of miles away. That combination — Hivemind autonomy, VTOL flexibility, and long range — is not sci‑fi; it’s a practical multiplier that restores deterrence and gives American pilots the edge without risking lives for every mission.
Shield’s work isn’t limited to headline-grabbing concepts; their V‑BAT family has already been upgraded with hardened autonomy, SATCOM, and heavy-fuel compatibility, and it has proven itself in operational experiments with U.S. forces. Those tests show these systems aren’t toys — they’re force multipliers that perform under electronic attack and tough conditions, the exact places where our outdated, flashy platforms struggle.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin’s grand announcements about exotic doomsday toys — like the nuclear-powered cruise missile Putin bragged about — have deservedly been met with skepticism by real engineers and operators who know how fragile that technology is. Russia has a long history of bluffing technological miracles, and independent analysis has repeatedly shown such projects to be unreliable, risky, and strategically dubious rather than game-changing.
Here’s the plain truth Americans need to hear: American innovation, not appeasement or talk, keeps our children safe. If Congress and the White House won’t fund pragmatic, battlefield-ready autonomy and give our commanders the tools to deter aggression, then those politicians have chosen weakness over defense and spectacle over substance. We should back companies and people who build capability, not bureaucrats who build talking points.
This is a matter of survival and American leadership. Shield AI and veterans-turned-entrepreneurs like Tseng are doing the hard work; patriotic citizens and elected officials must stop dithering, cut through the woke ideological games, and fund the technologies that will keep our soil and sailors safe. If we want peace through strength, we better act like it — not with press releases, but with planes that fly, drones that endure, and a will that never wavers.
