The CSPC Dispatch - Dec 5, 2025
In this issue, James Kitfield examines Anduril, the defense industry’s top disruptor, and explores how software-driven autonomy and “affordable mass” are reshaping modern warfare. Robert W. Gerber analyzes recent developments in U.S.-EU trade, highlighting both progress on a landmark agreement and the lingering disputes over tariffs, digital regulation, and strategic competition with China. Amarah Din investigates the ongoing debate over campus voting in North Carolina, emphasizing the stakes for young and minority voters and the broader struggle to ensure equitable access to the ballot.
Lessons from the Defense Industry’s Top Disrupter
By James Kitfield
The Anduril Ghost-X Unmanned Aircraft System in operation near Mihail Kogălniceanu Air Base, Romania, Nov. 24, 2024. The drone has a range of 12 kilometers, one hour of airtime and is primarily used for surveillance. (U.S. Army photo by Pfc. Nathan Arellano Tlaczani)
Earlier this year a unicorn emerged from the high-tech sector that has come to increasingly dominate the world of global finance. CNBC elevated the defense technology company Anduril to the top of its “Disruptor 50” list, where it displaced previous top dog OpenAI, the Artificial Intelligence juggernaut that fell to second place after two years topping the annual startup rankings. Anduril’s unprecedented ascent represented the first time in the 13-year history of the Disruptor 50 list that a defense technology company had claimed top billing.
Launched less than a decade ago as an ambitious defense tech start-up, Anduril today is a defense prime contractor with an estimated valuation of over $30 billion, and eyes on even bigger prizes in the world of defense acquisition. Anduril recently signed a $1.1 billion contract with Australia, for instance, for development and delivery of dozens of its “Ghost Shark” autonomous submarines. The company’s YFQ-44A “Fury” autonomous fighter aircraft drone – its entry in the Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) program – recently successfully concluded its maiden flight.
The company’s rapid growth speaks both to a revolution in military affairs driven by information age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and robotic weapons systems, and an increasingly threatening geopolitical landscape characterized by wars, instability and rapidly growing global defense budgets.
Joining Anduril in 2018 after a stint with data analytics company Palantir, President and Chief Business Officer Matthew Steckman has been instrumental in guiding the company through that period of rapid growth. Recently, CSPC President Glenn Nye and Senior Fellow James Kitfield sat down with Steckman to learn more about the essence of a unique defense company named after a mythical sword in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy – “Flame of the West.”
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Laws of Physics Are Transforming Warfare
Just since it began in early 2022, Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has evolved from an unsuccessful “shock and awe” campaign of ground maneuver and attempted regime change, to a static trench war of artillery duels reminiscent of World War I, and most recently to a drone war characterized by huge packs of inexpensive kamikaze drones constantly hunting virtually any target on the battlefield. Those hunter-seeker robots have expanded the so-called “kill zone” far beyond the front lines in a way that has fundamentally altered battlefield dynamics and wartime strategies on both sides. Many experts now believe those deadly packs of drones with unblinking electronic “eyes” offer a disturbing glimpse into the future of modern warfare.
To Anduril’s credit, its leaders anticipated that evolution from the company’s beginning in 2017.
“When we started Anduril we recognized that the laws of physics were literally driving warfare in a specific direction. That direction was more of everything, or greater mass,” said Steckman. The expression now most in use is `affordable mass,’ he noted, but whatever term of reference is used, the company was ahead of the curve in anticipating the escalating scale of modern warfare.
“People thought we were crazy. We said that the nature of warfare is taking us in this direction, and at the time nobody was adapting. And oh, by the way, in order to go in that direction, you need an insane amount of software knowledge. Because if you are talking about affordable mass, suddenly you have to control thousands or even tens of thousands of assets in a particular domain. A human being literally can’t do that. A commander cannot even adequately conceptualize that battlespace.”
To help uniformed leaders conceptualize the challenge, Anduril conducted virtual demonstrations depicting thousands of Red “enemy” and Blue “friendly” forces and platforms engaging each other across an expansive battlespace. “Visually that’s a very stark demonstration for a commander,” said Steckman. “It showed why you need a high level of software computing just to cope with that problem.”
The Future of Warfare Will Combine Both Manned and Unmanned Systems
A major challenge for Silicon Valley tech companies looking to break into the defense business, especially with proposed autonomous weapons systems, is that the Pentagon and armed services have invested so heavily for so long in manned, legacy weapons. A major element of Anduril’s success is its investment in sophisticated modeling and simulation systems able to show how different combinations of both manned and autonomous systems can dramatically increase performance on the battlefield. Before Anduril executives enter the door in terms of a Pentagon contract competition, they thus have a reputation for having studied the problem with analytical rigor.
“Going back to the start of the company, we knew we needed a deeply sophisticated understanding of military operations, so we developed enormous operations, modeling and simulation and threat analysis teams that help form our positions on what types of systems are needed, and in what combinations with current manned assets, to get the most lethal and survivable effect,” said Steckman. “When we walk into a room, I think we have become pretty well-known for having done an extreme amount of homework on our own, which allows for a very high-integrity conversation.”
In one such demonstration Anduril’s analysis indicated that the Army’s Apache helicopter gunship, teamed with autonomous drones, could become 160 times more lethal judged by strikes on prospective targets.
“When we approach a room of Army experts, we don’t say this is the answer, we say this is our analysis, and here’s our assumptions, and here’s the physics engines we used. Our answer was that if you do this in an interesting way, that Apache could be 160 times more lethal. Now please tell us what’s wrong with this concept and how can we refine it?” said Steckman, who noted that even if the analysis was wrong by half, the Apache would still prove 80 times more lethal augmented with autonomous wingmen. “Who is not going to want that capability for roughly the same amount of money?”
Forget Humans vs Artificial Intelligence: Humans Empowered by AI Always Win
Ever since IBM’s “Deep Blue” chess supercomputer defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game match way back in 1997 -- considered a major milestone in the ascendence of artificial intelligence – the argument over man vs machine, and human vs artificial intelligence, has raged. On one side is the unmatched computational power of Deep Blue and its AI antecedents, and on the other grand masters and elite warfighters possessing such intangibles as human intelligence, intuition and experience.
It turns out the “man vs. machine” argument may have been the wrong way to frame the debate. Sophisticated simulations and warfare modeling systems have been able to show in demonstrations that a human enhanced by Artificial Intelligence is unmatched.
“In the early days at Palantir the example we used would stress that Artificial Intelligence (AI) against a human is one thing, but augmented intelligence, or a human empowered by AI, always wins,” said Steckman. “So going back to the company’s founding in 2017, we basically saw that this is where warfare was developing, and as software people we knew how to create software platforms to respond to that challenge.
“That software has to have high levels of command-and-control in distributed environments, where communications and the ability to conduct updates is degraded or completely denied,” said Steckman. “Therefore those platforms or objects have to have onboard autonomy to figure out in real time, ‘What do I do if I can’t phone home?’ Driving a solution to that problem takes layer, upon layer, upon layer of different software systems.”
To Win Pentagon Contracts You Have to Build Things
For many years, Silicon Valley software companies felt at a distinct disadvantage to legacy prime contractors in terms of competing for major Pentagon programs. A major reason was the mindset baked into the acquisition corps of the armed services and Congressional appropriators, who were accustomed to thinking in terms of buying weapons systems such as fighter jets, warships, helicopters, tanks, and satellites. Software companies were often relegated to second-tier, subcontractor status.
A defining element of Anduril’s success is that the company set its sights on becoming a defense prime contractor from inception.
“One of the insights we’ve gained is that we have to take a software platform approach, but adapted to a hardware or platform perspective, because that’s how the government thinks and contracts,” said Steckman. “If your company is just on the software side, you end up being limited in the number of problems you can solve. The fact that we can bend large pieces of metal means that we can act as a prime on these large programs, even if the innovation is really happening on the software side.”
A prime example of Anduril’s software ethos married to a major hardware program is the company’s contract with Australia to build dozens of its “Ghost Shark” autonomous submarines. Ghost Sharks must be able to operate autonomously, submerged and over great distances, without human input for long stretches of time.
“That represents a software problem that is very, very hard to solve,” said Steckman. “Can we have platforms operating essentially alone and unafraid, literally underwater with no communications link, except every once in a while they can pop up to the surface and get an update of the commander’s intent? To me the software that allows you to do that represents the real innovation. That capability doesn’t exist right now, and it has never existed before. The technology behind the hardware did exist. We didn’t invent a new class of hardware, we just built a relatively efficient submarine.”
Anduril’s Beating Heart Remains Software Development
A Silicon Valley ethos has allowed Anduril to build on its foundational software platform, applying it to ever more ambitious and complex defense programs in a process of continuous development .
“People often don’t believe me when I tell them that the security towers we initially built on military bases and installations on the southern border actually share a lot in common with the Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) we’re building for the Air Force,” said Steckman. “For example, we have probably integrated hundreds of different types of radars. With a traditional defense company, you are under contract to produce a specific program, and then you produce it and it works, and everyone celebrates. For Anduril, when we integrate a radar, we’re already thinking about the next time we might see a similar radar, and whether that means we can integrate it essentially for free. In that case, instead of taking 10 people a month to accomplish the next job, it might take one person a week. That is ultimately the human capital of our company that is baked into our software code and platform, which we have branded “Lattice.” Lattice combines about 90 different software systems at this point. It really represents all of the lessons we’ve learned over the last 8 years, baked into our software code.”
Timing Is Everything, and This Is the Defense Industry’s Time
The roughly three-decades of the post-Cold War era were a notoriously difficult time for U.S. defense prime contractors to make long-range plans. With the American public clamoring for a “peace dividend,” Pentagon leaders declared a “procurement holiday” in the 1990s, and defense spending on procurement and research and development plummeted by 44 percent (1985 to 1998). Many of America’s storied defense companies were thus forced to either merge or go out of business altogether.
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and commensurate sky-high operations and personnel costs consumed inordinate portions of the defense budget, and the Tea Party wave of budget hawks in 2010 led to the Budget Control Act of 2011, resulting in sequestration and automatic spending cuts that sliced tens of billions of additional dollars from the defense budget.
Today the post-Cold War era is receding into history’s rearview mirror. Russia continues to prosecute the largest land war in Europe since World War II, the Middle East is in flames as Israel confronts Iran and its proxies, and a hegemonic China is leading an “axis of resistance” (along with Russia, North Korea and Iran) that is directly challenging the U.S.-led rules-based international order.
All of which has made strategic planning by defense companies vastly more predictable.
“In 2017, people had to bet on our team and theory, because there was no war in Europe, China was still our friend, and it was an entirely different world,” said Steckman, noting that such times make it nearly impossible to know where to make prudent investments in defense. “So I tend to think people over-analyze this business…the competition phase we’re in right now makes the defense procurement business more ‘forecastable.’ Any new defense company faces strong headwinds, and anytime one of those headwinds disappears it’s a good thing. Right now geopolitics certainly favor urgency in defense, which ultimately favors new entrants who for structural reasons can move faster.”
New Defense Primes Must Master the Venture Capital Game
From the company’s inception, Anduril’s leadership team envisioned not only competing for large defense programs, but also “shooting for the moon” in terms of proposed solutions. That required raising vast amounts of capital, which is where the company’s roots in the Silicon Valley venture capital game proved critical. Company leaders were typically on their second or third company, giving the executive team a deep level of expertise and experience. In those early days, the company was thus able to raise seed money to go after specific programs based largely on their reputation and credibility in the market.
“We started Anduril saying we are going to become a large, institutional defense prime, and that meant a specific set of attributes, starting with going after large programs. And the amount of capital needed to acquire the necessary infrastructure to go after larger defense programs requires a ton of capital,” said Steckman. “Who’s going to trust you as steward of all that capital? That’s where you get into the Silicon Valley, venture capital game, where its easier to raise capital if you’ve already had successful companies. For our executive team, this wasn’t our first rodeo. We already had successful companies under our belt and deep domain expertise. So we were in a privileged position to be able to go big from the very beginning.”
Acquisition Reforms Are Making Pentagon Contractors Less Adversarial
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth proclaimed “a war of bureaucratic attrition” in a recent speech that took direct aim at a Pentagon acquisition system infamous for bureaucratic red tape and regulation. Hegseth’s response is a sweeping set of reforms designed to further streamline that process, outlined in a memo titled “Transforming the Warfighting Acquisition System to Accelerate Fielding of Capabilities.” It follows a series of reforms in recent years designed to emphasize speed over process and infuse defense acquisition with a renewed sense of urgency.
“I would say most of the [Pentagon acquisition] reforms have been successful at reducing friction in the system,” said Steckman, noting that Pentagon program managers have new authorities and acquisition paths to choose from, along with different risk profiles. “In total we’re finding that the reforms are making every new conversation with DoD contracting officers easier. They are more willing to hear us out in pitching our ideas, and that’s good. At least they are now letting us make our best case. And to their credit, the [armed] services and service secretaries do have a real sense of urgency now. You can feel it.”
The Future of U.S. Defense Acquisition Is Multinational Partnerships
Powerful forces are pushing U.S. and allied defense companies to coordinate more closely. They include Beijing increasingly flexing its defense manufacturing might and bullying neighbors; allied difficulties in keeping Ukraine resupplied in its war against a revanchist Russia; and the NATO alliance formerly adopting this year a goal of spending five percent of each members’ GDP on defense and security-related capabilities.
Like many of its defense industry cohorts, Anduril has embraced the resulting opportunities, including signing defense development and production contracts with German, Swedish and Australian entities.
“Based on the threat NATO is operating against and the timeline Europe has in terms of needing gear, they literally can’t reach those goals in Europe alone. Even if they had infinite money, they just can’t build that fast, because there are limitations on how fast you can design, test, build and scale weapons production,” said Steckman. “So we’re going to have to create partnerships. And Anduril has found pretty creative executives within European prime contractors to work with, including signing contracts with (Germany’s) Rheinmetall and (Swedish aerospace and defense company) Saab. I think there will be a lot more to come in terms of those kinds of relationships.”
James Kitfield is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency & Congress.
Forward Movement on U.S.-EU Trade – But Will Both Sides Seize the Opportunity?
By Robert W. Gerber
UNC Professor Klaus Larres and EU Ambassador to the United States Jovita Neliupšienė.
The European Council (ministers representing member states) approved on November 28 the terms of the U.S.-EU “Framework Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair and Balanced Trade,” a landmark agreement that the Trump Administration and the European Commission jointly announced in August. This decision paves the way for the European Union to eliminate tariffs on most imported American industrial goods, some agricultural products, and live and frozen lobsters in line with the agreement. The Council’s move has alleviated some of the growing frustration in Washington over the slow pace of the EU’s implementation of the agreement, which the White House originally described as a “historic” and “colossal” deal achieved through President Trump’s “decisive leadership” and “unwavering resolve.” BMW’s CEO also urged EU leaders not to delay in approving the trade package, which still needs approval by the European Parliament.
This was a hard decision for the Council, because it watched the Commission negotiate the terms of the agreement under the threat of President Trump’s unilateral 35% tariffs on most EU exports (now 15%). Europeans bristle at coercive diplomacy. From their perspective, the EU trading bloc deserves to be treated as an equal partner in negotiations that concern the world’s largest bilateral trading and investment relationship. Furthermore, the EU has not seen relief from the 50% “Section 232” tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products. The EU argues that its relatively small steel and aluminum exports to the United States do not constitute a national security threat, which is the legal justification for 232 tariffs. EU leaders would rather that the United States and the EU jointly confront global industrial overcapacity emanating from China.
During a November 24 visit to Brussels by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, EU officials called for deeper U.S.-EU cooperation against Chinese overproduction, monopolistic practices, and export controls which undermine U.S. and EU industrial competitiveness. Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who chairs the European Council, said the EU’s trade relationship with China was “unbalanced” and that the EU needed to purchase and stockpile strategic materials. He added, “If (the United States and the EU) combine our forces we can set standards for the entire world.” Rasmussen said discussions with the American delegation had been “constructive and frank.” Lutnick was magnanimous in his public comments, stating that the U.S.-EU relationship was “our most important relationship in the world.” But he also unveiled a plot twist: Lutnick told reporters that the United States would be willing to address EU concerns on steel and aluminum tariffs if the EU backed off on its digital economy regulations. At a joint press conference with Greer, Rasmussen, and EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, Secretary Lutnick explained that the U.S.-EU deal was a “living, breathing agreement” and a “foundation” for future progress.
Bartering steel/aluminum tariffs for digital regulations would be a non-starter for Europe. Its leaders cherish their sovereign right to protect EU citizens and small business from global “digital giants.” EU antitrust commissioner Teresa Ribera reacted to Lutnick’s statement by accusing Washington of blackmailing Europe into abandoning its digital media regulations. Recently, the European Commission launched an investigation into whether Microsoft and Amazon’s cloud services fall under the rules of the EU’s Digital Markets Act. Meta faces a European antitrust investigation into its ban on third party AI apps on the WhatsApp platform. Tech company CEOs, who had a front row seat at President Trump’s second inauguration, want to make sure that favorable AI regulations are front and center in U.S.-EU trade negotiations.
Meanwhile, EU frustration over Washington-Moscow negotiations and their potential to undermine Ukraine’s long-term security interests could seriously impact positive momentum on the trade policy front. That would be bad for both the U.S. and EU economies and for prospects for deeper cooperation on the shared China challenge.
On the home front, the U.S. Supreme court will decide this month whether the President’s use of emergency tariffs under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are legal or not. There are also deadlines approaching for the Trump Administration’s decisions on Section 232 tariffs on semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, and critical minerals -- major categories of imports that currently enter the United States largely duty-free. If Section 232 tariffs on European steel and aluminum can be washed away by changes to EU digital rules, as Lutnick suggested, this undermines the Administration's legal rationale that those tariffs are necessary for national security reasons, which could impact future use of Section 232.
EU Ambassador to the United States Jovita Neliupšienė addressed some of the complex U.S.-EU trade dynamics during a recent fireside chat at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her opening remarks she said it was important to nurture the U.S.-EU relationship especially challenging times and when opinions are diverging. She pushed back when asked if Europe had been slow to implement the bilateral trade agreement, noting that unilateral U.S. tariffs had put increased pressure on European markets, and declaring “we are on the right track.” Neliupšienė also cautioned that a continued threat of Section 232 tariffs would stall implementation. She commented that the $600 billion in future EU investments in the United States – as referenced in the joint statement - depended on a predictable and clear trade relationship.
On China strategic competition, Ambassador Neliupšienė said “you will see more of our strategic use of export screening and export controls in the coming months,” and added that the United States and EU (and Australia) should not deal separately with China on critical minerals. “We are always stronger together,” she concluded.
Robert W. Gerber is a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
Voting on Campus: a Privilege or Right?
By Amarah Din
As the country prepares for midterm elections to take place next year, residents of Greensboro, North Carolina have already found themselves at a disadvantage. In a 3-2 vote along party lines, the Republican-led Guilford County Board of Elections recently voted to approve an early voting map that would remove voting sites from two major college campuses: North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University (NC A&T) and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC-G).
At a County Commissioners meeting, where students and community members alike gathered to oppose the new map, a member of the Guilford County Republican Party defended the decision, citing the generally lower turnout for primary elections and the parking spots on campus that students occupy when they could be used by non-student voters. At a separate meeting, the chair of the elections board, Eugene Lester, further defended the new map and deemed voting a privilege, not a right.
Students, on the other hand, view the move as a disenfranchisement and suppression of voting for the youth and minority groups, as students may not have reliable access to transportation for off-campus travelling. It may also be more difficult for students to carve out time in their busy school schedules to go off campus to vote. Some even pledged to staff the campus polling sites themselves if having adequate staffing was a concern.
Since the vote was not unanimous, the proposal moved to the North Carolina State Board of Elections for final voting.
Furthermore, it is important to acknowledge that NC A&T is a historically Black college, and UNC-G is a minority-serving institution. With each school’s respective populations serving diverse student communities, their experiences with voting have been impacted by historic infringements on civil rights and the effects of gerrymandering.
You may have heard of the Greensboro Four: four young Black men who conducted a sit-in at a local whites-only lunch counter. These young men, who sparked civil rights action and inform today’s discussions surrounding peaceful resistance to oppression, were students at NC A&T—the very university that just lost its voting site. It is an ironic development for an institution located in a city and state so integral to civil rights history to still be confronting obstacles to voting access.
The fight for protecting voting sites on college campuses is not a new one. Back in 2014, the Watauga County Board of Elections voted to remove Appalachian State University’s early voting site at the Plemmons Student Union. The proposal went up to the North Carolina State Board of Elections, and the measure was approved, meaning the site that served thousands of students, faculty, and staff was cut. A spokesman for the State Board of Elections stated that the on-campus site is more difficult for rural members of the county to reach, giving them reason to choose a replacement location about half a mile down the street. Later that same year, Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens overturned the Board’s decision and reinstated the campus’s voting site, stating “the court does feel strongly that government should make every effort to encourage that group of voters and every groups of voters to vote... [it] is the responsibility of government to minimize inconvenience in voting, not maximize it.”
That same year, the State Board of Elections also eliminated the early voting site at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which forced students to travel over a mile across a highway in order to cast their ballot. North Carolina State University, located in Raleigh, also lost their voting site for the 2014 midterm election. Although the school’s voting site has been reinstated since 2017, it remains subject to annual approval by the county elections board, underscoring just how fragile campus voting access can be.
Protecting voting sites on college campuses ensures that young Americans, who typically lack access to reliable transportation and flexible schedules, are able to equitably participate in democratic processes. By removing such voting sites, the youth's vote and voice is advertently suppressed, and this doesn’t help when youth voter turnout is already low during midterm elections. According to the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University, national youth turnout reached 23% for the 2022 election, down from 28% in 2018 but higher than 13% in 2014. With youth turnout rates seemingly unpredictable, states can not risk leaving behind an integral base of American voters who already struggle to get to the polls. Decisions, like ones made in North Carolina, convey that student voices are secondary in the political process.
Policies that increase voter access, such as enshrining college campus voting sites, same-day registration, statewide election holidays, and permitting student IDs in states that require photo IDs to vote, are vital to empowering young people to take action in the politics of today and tomorrow. We can not expect young people to be enthusiastic and active participants in our democracy if we continue to make political engagement more difficult for them.
If we truly want a democratic republic where every citizen feels supported in exercising their political voice, then one thing is for certain: removing campus voting sites is not the answer. Young people will not feel encouraged to participate if the very systems they are asked to trust and engage with are simultaneously placing roadblocks. Protecting these sites honors the legacy set by generations of Americans before us and serves as a reminder of how democracy and voting ought to be seen not just as a privilege, but as a right.
Amarah Din is an intern at CSPC and recent Political Science graduate from Appalachian State University.
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