At Andreessen Horowitz’s latest American Dynamism summit, Hadrian founder and CEO Chris Energy painted an image of the nation in peril. “I’m right here to speak to you about an existential danger to the way forward for the Republic and the way Hadrian is making an attempt to resolve it,” he started.

His phrases – a mixture of rationalism and Marcus Aurelius – weren’t misplaced on the occasion, which introduced collectively a mix of traders, founders, policymakers and different Washington officers to debate points dealing with the nation. A notable variety of talks had been associated to protection and nationwide safety, according to the American Dynamism crew’s funding portfolio, which incorporates bets on protection tech startups like Hadrian, Anduril and Protect AI.

Only a few years in the past, many traders thought that reducing a verify for a defense-first startup was a proposition that merely didn’t make sense. The tides have clearly shifted: a16z is one in all many corporations that’s taken a stronger curiosity in protection and nationwide safety. PitchBook knowledge helps this warming to protection tech. From January to October final yr, VC-backed corporations injected $7 billion into aerospace and protection firms, an enormous development that stands in sharp distinction to the relative sluggishness in different sectors. Some offers in latest months embody Anduril’s $1.4 billion Sequence E; Protect AI’s $225 million Sequence E; and Vannevar Labs’ $75 million Sequence B.

There are lots of causes for this uptick in curiosity in protection tech, however driving all of them is a brand new, realist imaginative and prescient that’s unfold amongst some technologists and enterprise capitalists. It sees international antagonisms threatening the steadiness of Pax Americana; it sees america rotting from the within out attributable to bloat and lethargy. In consequence, the Silicon Valley mentality has returned to its protection roots, embracing the function that venture-funded startups can play in sustaining America’s army dominance and technological supremacy around the globe.

“For those who imagine in democracy, democracy calls for a sword,” a16z basic companion David Ulevitch stated in a latest interview with TechCrunch. And Silicon Valley can be the place it’s solid.