Chairman @ Autonomy Institute | Industry 4.0 Fellow: Building Intelligent Infrastructure Economic Zones ARPA-I
Mark Bigham, fantastic insight and critical for our national productivity and sovereignty. We launched the CONTINUUM of Innovation Capital to help address this massive gap. National sovereignty and global productivity will go to the nation that deploys the INTELLIGENT INFRASTRUCTURE enabling Industry 4.0. This requires aligning Innovation funds with Infrastructure funds, CONTINUUM of Innovation Capital. In 1960, investors did not know what Venture Capital was; today, few know about the Continuum of Capital. This is critical to compete with China's Military-Civil-Fusion and Belt and Road Initiative. https://lnkd.in/geVHueFz Infrastructure investors and the Federal Infrastructure Bank are mobilizing $billions in private capital to underwrite Intelligent Infrastructure Economic Zones. https://lnkd.in/gWnJD877 The CONTINUUM of Innovation Capital will allow Americans ownership in the renewal of U. S. infrastructure and the economy and strengthening our National Security. Autonomy Institute WHAT IS AUTONOMY PRIME: https://lnkd.in/gkAtJemv
The DoD & Defense Industrial Base may not be learning the primary lessons from Ukraine's use of Drones? What are the two biggest lessons Lesson #1 - Ukraine has clearly demonstrated the power of small low cost networked systems over big expensive platforms. These small low cost systems are not very sophisticated being basically First Person View Remotely Piloted Aircraft/Platforms RPA/Ps. Some of the larger Cessna sized platforms offer a bit more autonomous navigation but still pretty basic. Now imagine those same small simple platforms with AI enabled autonomy onboard. There is another exponential increase in capability less than a year away. China very likely already has it because of their current industrial base (e.g., DJI). Lesson #2 - "The big don't eat the small, the fast eat the slow." I love this quote and it is a very relevant lesson we must learn here. Look at how rapidly the Ukrainians evolved and developed new capabilities. They did not do this with big well established defense companies and a 5 year plan. They actually did the opposite. Their innovation was inspired by a life or death struggle which engaged their brightest minds to rapidly, innovate, create and build. This life or death inspiration for innovation happens in every great conflict. Much of the innovation in the US over the last few decades was a direct result of WWII (nuclear power and space race). So how should we apply these lessons? Action #1 - Embrace smaller, lower cost, networked, collaborative AI enabled Autonomous Platforms from lots of suppliers. We need to allocate about 50% of our budget on these types of platforms/systems. Action #2 - Accelerate and expand the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) - The current DOD and mirror DIB structure is focused on the big shiny (aka, expensive) platforms with big Program of Record (POR) budget line items. This fundamental structure has been built around the big platform business model which stifles competition and innovation. This has resulted in exquisite platforms that are very expensive and not well positioned for what comes next. Our Defense structure needs to fundamentally shift to a continuous innovation business model that rewards many smaller, faster, continuously evolving programs running in parallel. Additionally, we need to make sure that the budget is significant and sustained to dramatically expand the industrial base with hundreds of new small-medium domestic suppliers. Furthermore, just as we did in WWII, we need to engage academics (Manhattan Project) to help push the boundaries of this new emerging AI and Autonomy technology for the benefit of our defense. Just one humble opinion. https://lnkd.in/g9gryfmE
