We just wrapped up our Hacking for Defense class at Stanford.

This was the 11th year we’ve taught Hacking for Defense, and the impact of asymmetric warfare, (drones, off-the-shelf technologies, etc.,) disruptive technologies (AI, commercial access to space) and a startup friendly DoW acquisition system – make it feel like a much different class than the previous classes.

(I’ll summarize some of the learnings about the use of AI at the end of this post.)

Hacking for Defense is now in 70 universities, including 20+ in the UK – and this year in Poland and Germany – with teams of students working to understand and help solve national security problems.

This year’s problems came from the Navy, Air Force, Army Research Lab, Defense Innovation Unit, IQT, and NASA.

This quarter 9 teams of 42 students at Stanford collectively interviewed 1132 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners, etc. – while simultaneously building a series of AI-driven minimal viable products and developing a path to deployment.

We opened this year’s final presentations session with a great talk about AI and defense – past, present and future – from (Ret) LTG Jack Shanahan. Jack was the Director of the DoD Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). Watching his talk is a worthwhile use of your time.

If you can’t see Jack Shanahan’s video click here

During the quarter guest speakers in the class included Owen West – director of the Defense Innovation Unit, Mike Brown – partner at Shield Capital, (Ret) LTG Joseph McGee recent head of the Joint Staff J5 (strategy, plans, and policy,) and Hon Marise Payne Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs.

**“Lessons Learned” Presentations
**Each of the eight teams gave a final “Lessons Learned” presentation along with a 2-minute video to provide context about their problem. Unlike traditional demo days where teams show off, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” the Lessons Learned presentations tell the story of each team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery. It’s a roller coaster narrative describing what happens when they discover that everything they thought they knew on day one was wrong and how they eventually got it right.

While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas, Customer Development and AI tools to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique.

This year we had the teams add two new slides at the end of their presentation: 1) tell us which AI tools they used, and 2) their estimate of progress on the Technology Readiness Level and Investment Readiness Level.

Here’s how they did it and what they delivered.

Team Noctua – Started with a problem that said, “Special operators can’t detect drones passively, without exposing their position.” They ended up understanding that a larger problem was, “Dismounted troops and base defenders lack a passive means to provide early warning detection of all types of drones, including those that are RF silent.

If you can’t see the Noctura video click here

If you can’t see the Noctura presentation click here

**These are “Wicked” Problems
**Wicked problems refer to really complex problems, ones with multiple moving parts, where the solution isn’t obvious and lacks a definitive formula. Most problems our Hacking For Defense students work on fall into this category. They are often ambiguous. They start with a problem from a sponsor, and not only is the solution unclear but figuring out how to acquire and deploy it is also complex. Most often students find that in hindsight the problem was a symptom of a more interesting and complex problem – and that Acquisition in the Dept of War is unlike anything in the commercial world.

Instead of admiring problems from inside a classroom our students get of the building and learn, discovery and iterate.

The figure shows the types of problems Hacking for Defense students encounter, with the most common ones shaded.

Team SwarmShield – The initial problem was framed as, the cost of using expensive interceptors to shoot down cheap drones. By the end of the class the Team realized the problem was building terminal guidance that lets a cheap, throwaway drone find and hit an attacker at night.

If you can’t see the SwarmShield summary video click here.

If you can’t see the SwarmShield presentation click here

Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of  ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.

Team Weapons Without Wait – The initial problem for this team was “Retool and scale defense manufacturing capacity to replenish critical munitions at the pace required by sustained, high-intensity conflicts.”  This is what I call a “boil the ocean” problem” – big and vast – and vague. By class end the team realized what was rapidly achievable (and needed) was affordable, certified munitions for small drones produced at the point-of-need.

If you can’t see the Weapons Without Wait video click here

If you can’t see the Weapons Without Wait presentation click here

**It Started With An Idea
**Hacking for Defense is built on the same methodology as Lean LaunchPad class I created at Stanford in 2011. It was adopted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as the NSF I-Corps (Innovation Corps) to train Principal Investigators who wanted an SBIR grant. Now in its second decade and in 100+ universities, I-Corps has become a standard for science commercialization at the NSF, National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy –  training 3,251 teams and launching 1,400+ startups to date.

Team IonX – IonX also started with a “boil the ocean” problem – The US needs a secure rare earth supply chain. They ended up with a problem more tangible and deliverable – Mineral processors across markets can’t identify and test better chemical reagent schemes.

If you can’t see the IonX video click here

If you can’t see the IonX presentation click here

**Origins Of Hacking For Defense
**In 2016, brainstorming with Pete Newell of BMNT and Joe Felter at Stanford, we observed that students in our research universities had little connection to the problems their government was trying to solve. We realized the same Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps class would provide a framework to do so. That year we launched both Hacking for Defense and Hacking for Diplomacy (with Professor Jeremy Weinstein and the State Department) at Stanford.

Team Cheese on the Moon – Started with a mandate to search for mineral deposits on the moon. By class end they realized that to do that lunar missions need to know what’s on and under the moon not only to mine, but to land.

If you can’t see the Cheese on the Moon video click here

If you can’t see the Cheese on the Moon presentation click here

**Goals for Hacking for Defense
**A decade ago, our goal for the class was to teach students Lean Innovation methods while they engaged in national public service. We wanted to familiarize students with the military as a profession and help them better understand its expertise, and its role in society. We also hoped the class would show our sponsors a methodology that builds problem understanding before writing requirements.

The class still does all this, but now that the DoW is buying from startups and defense venture capital is abundant, the class has turned into a national security incubator. Most of our teams form defense companies.

Team Fuel Forge started with the problem that combat units need to generate power and fuel locally. They ended with a more interesting observation that they could build networked, on-site hydrogen nodes to fuel drones in forward, contested environments where resupply is at risk,

If you can’t see the Fuel Forge video click here

If you can’t see the Fuel Forge presentation click here

**Go-to-Market/Deployment Strategies
**The initial goal of the teams is to ensure they understand the problem. The next step is to see if they can find mission/solution fit (the DoW equivalent of commercial product/market fit.) But most importantly, the class teaches the teams about the difficult and complex path of getting a solution in the hands of a warfighter/beneficiary. While the DoW has made tremendous strides in reforming how and who they buy from, students still need to know: Who writes the requirement? What’s an OTA? What’s color of money? What’s a Program Manager? Who owns the current contract?

Team Luminarch – Started with Tactical units lack the capability to visualize, manage, and adapt to the electromagnetic spectrum in real time. They ended with Tactical units lack low-cost, attritable RF sensors that can be deployed at scale, limiting their ability to detect threats, manage signatures, and communicate.

If you can’t see the Luminarch video click here

If you can’t see the Luminarch presentation click here

Team Tessellate– Started with the observation that drone missions don’t scale. And ended by realizing what’s missing is US multi-drone doctrine doesn’t exist and current drone warfare changes are happening faster than the software lifecycle.

If you can’t see the Tessellate video click here

If you can’t see the Tessellate presentation click here

**AI In the Class Room
**AI has had some obvious and not so obvious impacts on our class.
First, here’s a summary of how our students used AI in both classes I taught this quarter.

If you can’t see the AI Use In Class slide click here

If you can’t see the AI Rap Video click here

AI Tools Used
Claude + Granola – were the AI tools used by everyone.
Large Language Models Used
– Claude, Claude Code, Claude Chrome extension, Claude Cowork, Claude Design
– ChatGPT
– Gemini
Note taking
– Granola
– Twinmind
_Presentations
_– Perplexity
Building prototypes
– Replit
– Lovable
Creating Synthetic Users
– Listen Labs
– Viewpoints AI
Summarizing Research
– Google NotebookLM
– Notion + G Suite (not strictly AI, but used as part of AI workflows)
Other– Ultralytics YOLOv8 (used by the SwarmShield H4D team for drone detection/tracking MVP)

The obvious and positive changes of AI were that teams were able to do customer discovery more efficiently. The not so obvious change was that creating products rapidly allowed teams to make bad ideas go faster.

In the past, MVPs were a sign of a teams technical competence, but now spinning up something in hours that previously took weeks, means that an MVP is no longer evidence of critical thinking and hypothesis testing.

This meant student learning was unbalanced. A finished-looking product felt like success. Students confused a polished deliverable with the need to deeply understand the needs of all the stakeholders, as well as the need for Customer Validation. For defense startups that means understanding a path to a CRADA, or to a research or production OTA. We needed to slow the teams down. Going forward we’ll have students come into class with a prototype but next time accompanied by the explicit hypotheses and experiments they’ll use to validate whether the prototype solved an actual problem.

More about this in a separate blog post.

**It Takes A Village
**While I authored this blog post, this class is a team project. The secret sauce of the success of Hacking for Defense at Stanford is the extraordinary group of dedicated volunteers supporting our students in so many critical ways.

The teaching team consisted of myself and:

• Pete Newell, retired Army Colonel and ex Director of the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, now CEO of BMNT.
• Joe Felter, retired Army Special Forces Colonel; and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania; currently Director of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford which we co-founded in 2021.
• Steve Weinstein, partner at America’s Frontier Fund, 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley technology companies and Hollywood media companies. Steve was CEO of MovieLabs, the joint R&D lab of all the major motion picture studios.
• Chris Moran, Executive Director and General Manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures; the venture capital investment arm of Lockheed Martin.
• Jeff Decker, a Stanford researcher focusing on dual-use research. Jeff served in the U.S. Army as a special operations light infantry squad leader in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Jillian Manus, a venture partner at Shield Capital and Senior U.S Venture Advisor for the European Innovation Council

Our teaching assistants this year were: Evan John Twarog, Varsha Saravanan, Breno Casciello, and Luke Andrews.

**34 Sponsors, Business and National Security Mentors
**The teams were assisted by sponsors and mentors.

Sponsors were originators of the team problems. They gave us their toughest national security problems_:_ Owen West, Will Ryan, Phillip “Donna” Smith, Joel Uzarski, Alexandra Bissey, Mark Breier, Jonathan Stock, Trent Emeneker,  Matthew Anderson, Ana Alvarez, Jonathan Boltersdorf.

National Security Mentors helped students who came into the class with no knowledge of the Department of War, understand the complexity, intricacies and nuances of those organizations: Katie Tobin, Kelly McGannon, Rachel Costello, Henning Heine, Josh Edwards, Marco Romani, Tom Schmitz, David Vernal, Rich Lawson, Dan Ruttenber, Ashley Perry, Sophia Vahanvaty, Rick Lu, Chris O’Connor

Business Mentors helped the teams understand if their solutions could be a commercially successful business: Doug Seiche, Jeremy Schoos, Adam Waters,, Matt Croce, Isobel Porteous, Eric Byler, Diane Schrader, Donnie Hasseltine, Mark McVay.

Sponsoring Organizations: Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, Common Mission Project, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BMNT, Defense Innovation Unit.

Thanks to all!

Filed under: Hacking For Defense, Teaching |