An exciting personal/professional announcement: I am taking over as Managing Director of the Army Venture Capital Corporation (AVCC). AVCC is the one and only Congressionally created venture capital organization whose mission is to serve the defense needs of the United States of America.
What is AVCC?
AVCC is a venture capital fund whose mandate is to generate financial return by investing in the most compelling defense technology companies. Naturally this means investing in tech sectors like energy, hypersonics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, synthetic biology, climate tech, advanced manufacturing and everything you might think of when you think of defense technology.
It also means investing in the boring stuff like productivity software, smart thermostats, logistics tech, etc. Few people consider that the Department of Defense is one of the largest global:
Property managers
Residential movers
Food service providers
Apparel buyers
Day care providers
Employers, etc
Technology can move the needle in each of these domains saving the American tax payer tens of billions of dollars and making our country safer.
We are a hybrid for profit / non-profit structure and will be investing both public and private dollars in our nation’s future.
Why AVCC is Important
Several years ago I made a commitment that I would only invest in businesses building the future in which I wanted to live and that I wanted to leave behind for my daughter. Practically speaking this meant shifting my focus from interesting frivolities to the people and companies working on cutting edge technologies that have the potential to materially move the needle on human prosperity.
As it happens, these deep tech companies are the same companies building what the Department of Defense desperately needs for its modernization efforts. As such I’ve been working with defense communities the last few years. What I’ve learned over that time has convinced me that if I ever want to see my vision of the future become a reality, we need to take decisive action now when it comes to bolstering the national security of the United States of America.
The US is no longer the sole global super power. China has risen and is in many ways stronger and more threatening than the Soviet Union ever was. Worse yet the emerging revisionist powers have a dramatically different vision for the global order. Xi Jinping makes the explicit argument that techno-authoritarianism is the superior form of governance and wants to see its influence spread. Xi is accomplishing this spread in 1001 ways, some quite brazen and aggressive while others are more subtle. While I’ll go into more detail on our current danger in future missives, here is a small sample:
Use of violence and threats of violence to usurp the independence of Hong Kong.
Preparations for an invasion of Taiwan (where 70% of some of our most critical semiconductors are manufactured).
Effective annexation of critical African infrastructure through the Belt and Road Initiative.
American actors like John Cena forced to kowtow to Xi Jinping for simply calling Taiwan a country.
China dramatically expanding its nuclear missile arsenal while others continue to try to reduce global nuclear forces.
The Chinese Communist Party actively attacking free speech on American university campuses.
China forcing American companies to apologize for obeying American laws re: the ongoing genocide/forced labor in Xinjiang.
While these threats may seem far off or it may seem that the US maintains near invulnerability in a strategic sense, that simply is not the case. As Christian Brose explains in his book The Kill Chain:
“Over the past decade, in U.S. war games against China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost every single time.”
Neither is it the case that there are hundreds of billions of dollars or millions of American service members working on these issues. Our armed forces are impressive but they were largely built to fight a war that will never come to pass. The number of people working on defense modernization might be numbered in the thousands but I fear it’s closer to the hundreds.
Our freedoms are at risk at home and abroad in a way we haven’t experienced since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Today the world is approaching a crossroads. Down one is a globe made safe for freedom and commerce and down the other is a techno-authoritarian future, the type imagined by Orwell in his book 1984 but only recently become feasible in practice. This is why I have chosen to revitalize AVCC and build a venture firm with an explicit public mission. We have time to act.. but not much.
Help
I need your help. This organization has been dormant for 10 years and we need to get the word out that we’re back and under new management. Please retweet/comment on this twitter thread if you have time:
and follow/share our page on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/armyvc/
Labyrinth Newsletter
Going forward this newsletter will become the official publication of the Army Venture Capital Corporation. We will publish 1-2 times a month and will share updates in defense innovation, national security and venture capital with you.
This newsletter will also keep you updated on the companies/technologies we are seeing and the opportunities we have to for you to get involved. Please share this newsletter with anyone you think will appreciate it.
Fascinating individual, with a fascinating role. The intersection of defense and VC!