Most of those take a lot more time and money than YC usually offers.
There are some opportunities in "New Defense Technology". Something like a low-cost replacement for the Javelin anti-tank missile based on off the shelf phone camera parts ought to be possible. Of course, once that's out there, every insurgent group will have some.
"Explainable AI" is really important.
"Stablecoin finance" is mostly how to make sure the issuers don't steal the collateral.
Maybe the people behind the stablecoin have an explosive collar welded around their neck. If the price drops, it detonates. That might work.
"Applying machine learning to robotics" has potential. Get bin-picking nailed and get acquired by Amazon. Many people have failed at this, but it might be possible now.
"Bring manufacturing back to America". Is it possible to build a cell phone in the US?
"Climate tech" - think automating HVAC and insulation selection, installation, and analysis.
Installers suck at this. See previous HVAC article on HN.
A phone app where you walk around and through the building with an IR camera is one place to start.
Map the duct system. Take manometer readings. Crunch. That's do-able on YC-sized money.
Fun fact about the Javelin bit. I know it was just a throwaway example but something to tickle your brain about it:
Phone camera parts would be overkill. The Javelin sensor isn't nearly that high-resolution, we're talking low triple digits in "pixels". It does however refresh its readings very fast, a necessity given its speed. The old Javelin used active cryo and a filtered IR imager, the new one is passive like the IR camera in some phone attachments. It is stupidly simple in operation: CLU provides the target "signature" and the imager seeks it. After the initial ascent in top-down mode, a stronger signal on one edge of the sensor pushes the control surfaces in the opposite direction until it strikes its target. I'd give the Wikipedia page a read. It contains a surprising amount of information that informs the design and thought behind the missile. Military systems are cool for how robust yet simple they are.
I used to work on the Javelin guidance system "seeker head". It's wild seeing him tear it apart. Questions like "what is this for" make me laugh. It's all seen as dead simple, but a lot of engineering went into manufacturing them even as recently as a few years ago. Funny he thinks the sampler chip was expensive, he should look up the cost of the optics!
One thing I’ve been thinking about re: Javelin (and MANPADS)—would it be better to be able to fire them remotely? ie let soldiers put a set of launch tubes in a bush or behind a rock, then use the targeting system from a separate location. That way, the solders’ location isn’t revealed by firing the missile. Better yet if you can strap the tubes to a robot dog.
Another idea: drone AWACS. I mean, a drone with radar to detect other drones (and other aircraft).
Doing anything remotely means using radio signals to control the thing, and that becomes the main weakness: radio signals can be jammed. You could try other means of communication, like lasers, though, but those too have their own weaknesses.
"Bring manufacturing back to America". Is it possible to build a cell phone in the US?
I think we should start more basic and work our way up. For example, there isn't a real reason we can't produce all of our domestic iron and steel needs in the USA, but we end up importing a lot right now. Same with aluminum, etc. But this isn't something YC is really going to help with unless they are funding manufacturing and industrial tech that makes it easier/cheaper to set-up and run these types of facilities.
The US currently imports only 17% of its steel, mostly from Canada and Mexico. The US also exports steel, but imports are about 4x exports. So the US steel industry is doing OK.
60% of US steel consumption is now from recycled steel. Nucor became the largest US steel manufacturer by making that work.
Is the percentage of steel imports relevant, when most of the metal consumer products are coming from abroad?
Simple stuff like pots and pans, cutlery, potato mashers. Then industrial parts. Farm equipment. Eventually, cell phone frames and more sophisticated stuff. I think this is what the parent comment is alluding to.
Depending on the specific concern, I assume what mostly matters is where the facilities are, not who owns the company. (At least so long as it's an ally.)
it should be irrelevant who owns it. regulations ought to be robust enough anyway. technology export controls, worker protections (OSHA, business continuity, financial integrity, audits), market protection (no abuse of market power, ie. no dumping no Apple/platform/gatekeeper shenanigans, etc.)
You can do advanced electronics manufacturing in North America, it just has tradeoffs - primarily cost and process availability. I work for a company that builds high-end electronics over in Canada; Opinions are my own.
Advanced electronics manufacturing never left the US. The problem is that all the consumer-grade stuff left, and what's left is all really high-end military stuff, and is stupidly expensive. It's great if you're a defense contractor building some state-of-the-art weapons system that really needs the performance offered by those process technologies, but if you want to build a simple prototype for your small business, or you want to build some not-so-cutting-edge electronics in high volume for consumers, it just isn't feasible.
We’re not military, but I hear what you’re saying. Generally when I look at the costs of doing stuff onshore vs offshore it’s typically ~2x more expensive to do it here. That blows out any ambitions of competing purely on price pretty quickly for most types of product.
We import a lot but we make a lot. I made a living supervising the manufacturing of the rolls used to roll steel in mill. We weren't exporting even the majority of the product.
Cost. I don't think America should focus on mining raw materials that can be sent elsewhere so cellphones can be made which America will import back at high costs.
It's a good sign that Purism can do this at all, even though it's a boutique/fringe product right now.
Note that it's $1,999+ for mostly made/assembled in USA version, vs. $999 for Purism's made in China version.
And China is more capable at scaling, if the product were ever competing on price rather than principle. So still a ways to go to be competitive at manufacturing.
It's definitely more expensive to produce in the US, but I think it's priced at $2000 because this is literally the only option for people who want/need a US-made phone. I don't think it actually costs them double to produce.
The is no practical reason why javelin costs the $$$ it costs post r&d which was completed in the early 1990s. The matrix and most other electronics in it are extremely basic and could be obtained off the shelve already like 20 years ago. The concept is already outdated anyway - just use a cheap drone
More or less all of these yes. I always found it ironic how the new Javelin is believed to be cheaper because the components are less mechanical and easier to source. The continued support especially. Military systems can be designed (and warrantied) to last decades if maintained properly - and that costs the big bucks.
During wartime, it may be better to design for a short lifespan. Build the seeker with ordinary AA batteries welded in instead of thermal batteries with a standby life of decades. If it's intended for Ukraine or Taiwan, skip the part temperature range that would allow the thing to sit in the sun for a year in Iraq.
Seal up the unit and stencil it "NO USER SERVICEABLE PARTS INSIDE" and "USE BEFORE 2026-12-31". It will have been fired at the enemy long before then.
It isn't as simple as "make a new design with a shorter lifespan" either. These systems are intended to work the first time every time, and every change introduces numerous second-order consequences. You swapped the batteries? Great the balance of the missile now changed and we have to re-calculate the flight dynamics. Remove some shielding and conformal coating? Now the thermal properties have changed on the control boards and the welds are cracking due to different heat propagation. We certainly could make them cheap and dirty, but their reliability and consistency would suffer. The last thing you want is to shoot a missile and piss off the guy on the receiving end, who isn't dead but is now very motivated to get revenge.
Ukraine is out of ammunition NOW. If the war suddenly ends and they have to dispose of warheads that will expire soon, that is a cost that can be paid. But more importantly for them is ammunition now, if that can be achieved by making the build process simple, it should probably be done.
You can't immediately scale up manufacturing. People have to be trained, parts have to be procured, and facilities made available to build the things. Ramp-up takes months, and if you're lucky the product is well established already so you aren't stepping on landmines as you scale. I helped to restart a mothballed process for a military product once and I have stories that you wouldn't believe.
You’re advocating general motors approach over tesla/spacex approach. Tesla is selling millions of evs every year now an gm, boeing and friends are with you making excuses about training people and their process
I'm not advocating any approach. I'm telling you, as someone who has years of experience in the field of defense manufacturing, that one cannot force manufacturing processes into existence through sheer will. My posts on the topic are for the edification of whoever reads them, convincing anyone isn't my concern as ultimately it isn't HN comments that are going to change the situation. Maybe SpaceX should start making Javelins by the millions (:
For context btw: I oversaw the production of hundreds (if not into the thousands) of the Javelins we sent to Ukraine. Two of my coworkers were Ukrainian too. Do not mistake my brutal realism for a lack of caring about the situation.
> that one cannot force manufacturing processes into existence through sheer will
That worked for russia but somehow doesn't work in the west?
I mostly lack experience in defense tech beyond being a user but ime it often doesn't work as well as the certificate (which probably cost a lot of effort to obtain) states it does. I'm of the opinion that we need to radically rethink our approach here if we hope to deter or withstand potential conflict with china in the next 10 years.
The Russians certainly did scale up as you say, but there are underlying issues that have remained with them. Captured equipment has shown issues, some of which are potentially fatal to the user. The quality of work is poor and leads to a high failure rate. They do, however, make plenty of them - which has an advantage. Go to the war museum and look at any soviet tank built between 1940 and 1945, the welds look terrible and some are even missing the full complement of armor plating. They made thousands of them though.
The Western powers are not treating the situation as if they themselves were at war, hence no drastic changes in economic output to favor war machines. We have increased production though. Can't say how much, but it would raise eyebrows. I feel we should have been far more generous with the munitions, especially the older aircraft (think F-16, F-18) early on.
The certificates are basically just a paper trail. The aluminium is aircraft grade, the optics in spec, EMI shielding is sufficient, etc. We do extensive testing, but things slip through. Some issues are storage-related, and others are issues that don't show up til years later - such as microscopic ESD damage. Much of what we've been giving Ukraine was in storage for a while.
Out of interest, since you seem really knowledgeable: is there any reason no one ever mentions shipping VT fuzes to Ukraine? They seemed to work really nicely in the Battle of the Bulge, and the US is likely to have a vast stockpile of Cold War era fuzes. If they make the sparse shells even marginally more effective, it'd probably be worth it, yet there is not a whisper of their existence.
And now imagine how that stuff would work if certification requirements were lower.
Regarding China, I thought the same thing. Until Ukraine. Because as it turned out, that being at constant, if low intensity, war for basically all the time since Vietnam and Korea (at least since Gulf War 2 over Kuweit), really has benefits for the warfighting capability of countries. NATO, and especially the US, have that. Russia and China don't. And it shows, Russia didn't walz over Ukraine the way the West did over Iraq. And China has to deal with an amphibious invasion against a country that had decades to prepare for just that. Which leaves the question of supply lines across the pacific for a prolonged conflict. And there my money really is on western navies.
Just as a reminder, Russia is at a war economy by now, and still has to source from North Korea. All the while, NATO countries are just emptying stockpiles and slowly, maybe too slow, replenishing them. And despite that, all Russia got is a stalemate.
"Russia didn't walz over Ukraine the way the West did over Iraq"
Not really the same thing. Iraq was very low on quality military supplies with years of sanctions before that.
And Russia did walz over Georgia in 2008 and Russia would have walzed over Ukraine in 2014 (some russian military was enough to capture lots of ground back then). But much happened between 2014 and 2022.
Yes, you should tell theilitary industrial complex to produce arms and ammunitions during times of peak demand. You know, they might not have gotten the memo that they should get production volumes up.
They're certainly facing a serious situation. But by all accounts they still have some runway. And if you'll check your current news feeds very carefully: no, the front hasn't collapsed, and no, the Russians aren't on the verge of overrunning Kharkiv and Odesa.
They have so little ammunition, that they have to think 2 or 3 times about every artillery and even more so every anti air shot they have to take. With resserves are shrinking and less and less on the way. It is hard, waging war this way. Russia on the other hand is now in war economy mode. They produce ammunition and tanks way, way faster, than the west.
So if there would be a startup saying, we can build a automated factory, spitting out cheap javelin alike warheads using off the shelf components, would surely get money, if they have some expertise.
I was in trench few km from Avdiїvka for 2 weeks few days ago, and I can confirm that our artillery is out of ammunition. The silence of our artillery was horrible to listen. When we cannot use our drones because of fog, heavy snow, or strong wind, Russians are advancing because we have no shells enough to fire at them.
I might have done a bit of hyperbole to get the point across, true. But by my understanding, when you are in a war and see the enemy, but cannot shoot at them, then you are effectivly out of ammunition by my definition. Even though sure, more precise would have been, very low on ammo.
I think this is why we're seeing that the type of founders YC usually funds in these industries aren't going through YC and choosing alternative methods of getting started.
Is this a serious suggestion, or a warning for why there's no place for move-fast-and-kill-things startups in the defense space? No one should be working on this, especially not involving AI in any way.
In Ukraine, hundreds of small teams are working on new drones or other military tech, like radars, camouflage, shelters, demining, etc., but they are low on money.
I personally have some ideas based on my own experience in war, but I cannot make them while in a trench.
Well, given the fact that people are working on it, and many of them probably don't like you so much, it's a good idea for "the people you call friendly" to work on it.
"Our doomsday scheme cost us just a small fraction of what we'd been spending on defense in a single year. But the deciding factor was when we learned that your country was working along similar lines, and we were afraid of a doomsday gap."
> I think they are looking for a "decentralized" solution where the collateral is held by a smart contract.
Problem is that unless the asset is virtual, it's going to actually be held by a legal person in the real world, not the smart contract, and it's not ideal to have a stable coin collateralised only by another virtual asset (although makerdao seems to make it work so far).
I think the main innovations here wouldn't be technical but legal, since good solutions to this problem involve the interface between the real world and the blockchain. I remember reading about a legal structure where real assets were held by a trust for the benefit of the owner of an NFT or something, but I'm sure there are other things you could do with the right legal structure, or possibly a central bank or a jurisdiction like Estonia could come up with something that would engender a lot of confidence.
This is a Chesterton's fence situation - we already know the problems of HEAVY, punitive liability and accountability for everything.
But I do think we're leaning way too far towards the no-accountability side currently, and need to shift a bit further the other way.
(But I don't expect THAT to come out of a VC industry where so many prominent people and parters have track records that generally include a lot of "founded unprofitable company but kept it alive long enough to have a good exit" stories... This world lives on the perception of success, not on long-term responsibility.)
China sometimes does that. Zheng_Xiaoyu, the head of China's equivalent of the Food and Drug Administration, was caught taking bribes to allow tainted drugs to be sold. He was executed in 2007. [1]
Say what you want about the death penalty, but it is hard to feel sympathy for a person who, by approving dangerous pharmaceuticals after accepting bribes,
> caused the deaths of over 800 people in Panama from cough syrup that contained diethylene glycol in place of glycerin.
Strongly deregulate nuclear power - on condition that CEO of company operating, designer, manufacturer CEO live with families within 15km of power plant.
(unlikely to work for several reasons, may be stupid idea but looks like something that could work in not-so-different world)
Do we have the aluminum milling capacity at scale?
Can we manufacture touch screens at scale?
Can we manufacture Li-ion batteries at scale? (Tesla and Panasonic might be able to, with large new investments, but I don't think there's anybody ready to go)
Do we have 3nm fab capacity? (TSMC is planning to build one, but AFAIK not yet)
Do we have the ability to manufacture various sensors at scale? (Some likely yes - ambient light, inertial - some no)
What about image sensors? (Maybe, Omnivision is probably the best candidate, but I don't think they can currently do 48MP. ON Semiconductor is also a good chunk away from that, AFAIK)
I think that's a sufficient number of parts to claim we currently can't make cell phones, as long as you define cell phone as "current gen cell phone". We could probably retool relatively quickly back to at least cell phones, but even that is AFAIK not a current capacity.
Can we _theoretically_ do all that? Sure. But we can't right now, or within short time frames, and we can't without significant investment.
That aluminum milling scaling problem itself is like, an entire category of hard.
CNC machines are hard to scale anything more than linearly. We need to train up hundreds of thousands to become CNC machinists. An entire support industry for machine maintenance, tooling manufacturing (an even harder problem), consumable commodities needs to be similarly scaled in parallel.
> We need to train up hundreds of thousands to become CNC machinists
What? Are you suggesting that aluminium phone cases nowadays are created by an army of trained CNC machinists? And not programmed once by a (few) dozen engineers per model of the handful of existing phone models and then executed by highly automated factories and an army of "low-skilled" workers.
That army of “low-skilled” workers are highly skilled machine operators.
CNC programming isn’t generally performed by engineers—it is currently mostly performed by veteran machine operators.
To get enough veteran machine operators who have the skill and talent to program at the level necessary for high-precision consumer goods, you need quite the workforce pool.
And then add in all the other CNC machinists and manufacturing engineers you need for the auxiliary industries (tooling, molding, the machines themselves) and it starts to add up.
Don’t forget every other industry that is competing for this labor pool.
There are some opportunities in "New Defense Technology". Something like a low-cost replacement for the Javelin anti-tank missile based on off the shelf phone camera parts ought to be possible. Of course, once that's out there, every insurgent group will have some.
"Explainable AI" is really important.
"Stablecoin finance" is mostly how to make sure the issuers don't steal the collateral. Maybe the people behind the stablecoin have an explosive collar welded around their neck. If the price drops, it detonates. That might work.
"Applying machine learning to robotics" has potential. Get bin-picking nailed and get acquired by Amazon. Many people have failed at this, but it might be possible now.
"Bring manufacturing back to America". Is it possible to build a cell phone in the US?
"Climate tech" - think automating HVAC and insulation selection, installation, and analysis. Installers suck at this. See previous HVAC article on HN. A phone app where you walk around and through the building with an IR camera is one place to start. Map the duct system. Take manometer readings. Crunch. That's do-able on YC-sized money.