Why America’s Military Systems Still Can’t Talk to Each Other

America has built stealth bombers and missiles that hunt and take down drones.

But even after spending billions upon billions of dollars on the tech, most of these systems can’t even talk to each other on the battlefield.

I recently caught up with Picogrid founder Zane Mountcastle to find out why.

Zane started as a contractor building drones for the US Army Corps. When he couldn’t connect his drones to the military’s command-and-control systems, he built Picogrid to fix it.

And as Zane told me, solving this one problem pits him against the biggest, most entrenched companies in defense:

Click the image to watch my interview with Zane. 

In our interview you’ll hear:

• The “platform risk” every defense startup faces (5:19)

• Systems built for Afghanistan by companies that no longer exist (6:34)

• Why contractors do the bare minimum… by law (10:33)

• Who wins when the systems finally connect. (22:35)

• Why the problem with new tech isn’t the tech itself (44:17)

Please click here to watch my conversation with Zane Mountcastle now. 

A transcript of our conversation is available here.

—Stephen McBride

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Stephen McBride is a co-founder of the Rational Optimist Society.

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