Silicon Valley America has a huge superhero complex. The whole array of Marvel and DC series stands as proof of that. No matter which part of the world is trudging in war, America will be there, with its advanced set of weapons. Even though the Vietnam War and the whole Arab Spring era led to a strong protest from high profiles to stop wars, it does not seem to actually change anything as we see Russia fighting with Ukraine’s now, almost starting a World War 3. This shows that even a worldwide pandemic could not stop these men from spewing war.

In this context, Silicon Valley’s original culture of pioneering defense tech has now returned to protect the American homeland and its allies from adversaries. Indeed, more and more people want to work exclusively with the Pentagon and other allies on defense tech, particularly as confronting the rise of China has become one of the few truly bipartisan positions in a polarized Washington.

For engineers diving into defense tech, the challenges and opportunities in every domain are extensive. In the air, China is believed to have successfully tested a hypersonic missile — a technology that the United States is considered years away from obtaining based on intelligence estimates. Given the speed of its travel and the inability of sensors to detect it, a hypersonic missile would render much of America’s current air defense systems ineffective. Swarms of cheap and violent drones can be deployed rapidly with nary a human operator insight. U.S. general Frank McKenzie recently dubbed these “Costco drones” after the warehouse retailer, and we’re likely to see countries with tiny defense budgets capable of overwhelming the U.S. forces.

Similarly at sea, we’re seeing a shift from large and expensive aircraft carriers manned by thousands of sailors to small, cheap, and autonomous vessels. Governments (or non-state actors) can now disrupt critical sea trade lanes in ways that are very difficult to defend against. Meanwhile, beneath the waters, there is a growing capability for adversaries to tap into and disrupt undersea internet cables that carry a growing bulk of the global economy. In space, Russia just a few weeks ago tested a direct-ascent, anti-satellite weapon that destroys individual satellites. Such an attack could annihilate GPS and global communications (and the commerce, transportation, and logistics that depend on them), as well as potentially render much of near-earth space unusable for satellites due to the resulting debris. These weapons are hard to detect and even harder to stop with existing defense technologies.

Finally, in the cyber domain, despite tens of billions of dollars flooding into the cybersecurity sector over the past decade, companies and governments remain extraordinarily vulnerable to ransom and espionage with large-scale denial of service and information exfiltration initiatives. A year after the gargantuan SolarWinds hack, it's time for Silicon Valley to work more to fight against state-directed cyber warfare.