The WONDER BOY paperback is here! We're excited to share the story of Zappos leader Tony Hsieh, whose rise and fall told the quintessential Silicon Valley tragedy. "Mandatory reading for anyone who is interested in big tech" - New Yorker On sale here: https://t.co/CzVJr7q6Yv

Anduril conducts the first flight of its jet-powered unmanned drone, flying it "semi-autonomously", as the US Air Force plans swarms of unmanned jet drones (@davidjeans2 / Reuters) https://t.co/vtDsUibYmH https://t.co/lKkKHFdsaD 📫 Subscribe:

NEW- DOGE is leading a new effort at the Pentagon to acquire tens of thousands of cheap military drones within the coming months. https://t.co/8BCrrpebmY

A look at Allen Control Systems, maker of AI-powered gun turrets designed to shoot down drones, co-founded by Steven Simoni, who sold Bbot to DoorDash for $125M (@davidjeans2 / Reuters) https://t.co/9rChjQybQE https://t.co/i6HiGtmGCf 📫 Subscribe:

🔊 How a Silicon Valley 'warlord' got the Pentagon's attention. Listen to @DavidJeans2 on the Reuters World News podcast for the story https://t.co/dQgfFZ4VbX

“I’m a warlord now, bitch!” Steve Simoni was a Silicon Valley success story who sold a company to DoorDash. Now he sells an AI-powered machine gun to shoot drones out of the sky. Cracking story from @DavidJeans2

🔊 ' Silicon Valley believes that it has the answer to help it modernize.' @DavidJeans2 talks about how tech is being welcomed at the Pentagon. Listen on the Reuters World News podcast https://t.co/I8gD35NEkq

New: Steve Simoni sold a company to DoorDash for $125M in 2022. Now he's building Allen Control Systems, which makes an AI-powered autonomous machine gun turret called the "Bullfrog" to shoot drones out of the sky. "The future is Skynet, basically." https://t.co/9Ljge8dyOq

New: Doug Beck, the director of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit, resigned today, according to a memo he sent to staffers. It comes a week after SecDef Hegseth ousted three other military leaders, including the head of Defense Intelligence Agency. https://t.co/Y7r1Syiekx

Exclusive: Military leaders have said they need autonomous swarms of maritime drones to take on China. But the Navy's effort to achieve this is under scrutiny following test failures, the firing of a top admiral and a pause on a contract with L3Harris. https://t.co/BBO8qRucsz

I'm incredibly grateful for the 5+ years I spent at Forbes, a phenomenal newsroom where I first started covering Silicon Valley's shift toward the military. Am going to miss my talented colleagues there, not least my fearless editors @JohnPaczkowski and @SchwabKatharine

Update: Excited to share that I've joined Reuters as a space and defense correspondent. I'll be reporting on weapons, national security and Silicon Valley, focusing on major arms, space companies, and venture-backed startups. Send tips / say hi: david.jeans@thomsonreuters.com

New- Will Somerindyke supplied munitions to warzones for years. Now with investor BVVC, he's joined the defense tech boom, and is in talks to raise "hundreds of millions" for Union, a startup making artillery shells. https://t.co/4CN4zjf78U

SCOOP: ex-OpenAI staffers have raised $20M for a pre-launch startup, Applied Compute. Led by Benchmark, the round values the reinforcement learning startup at $100M. Its 3 founders, all recent Stanford students, have since fielded an offer 5x higher 👀 https://t.co/vkgPLLKqUO

New- Last night Meta announced its mega $14B investment in Scale AI. But there's more to the deal: Meta could spend the majority of its annual AI budget on Scale over the next five years — a provision worth hundreds of millions in revenue for Scale. https://t.co/Jkrri4FkEV

New: Last week, Anduril's mega $30B funding round underscored how hungry investors are for military startups. It also minted a new defense tech billionaire: Trae Stephens. https://t.co/gvnStSSASy

The Midas List returns for a 24th year. With only a handful of IPOs, and acquisitions, the big driver of changes to our ranking of the world's best VCs have been mega raises from startups like OpenAI & SpaceX Check out the full @forbes list for 2025 https://t.co/skF5KJJf8D

Shield AI executives overlooked its V-BAT drone’s safety hazards, Forbes found. Now with sales falling short and the CEO stepping down, the company is trying to win back military customers. https://t.co/G0fGfH52V7

Shield AI executives overlooked its V-BAT drone’s safety hazards, Forbes found. Now with sales falling short and the CEO stepping down, the company is trying to win back military customers. https://t.co/yjHRJQiiIg

Shield AI's outgoing CEO Ryan Tseng told me the company has turned a new page and that safety hazards have been addressed. Under new CEO Gary Steele, of Proofpoint and Splunk, the company is hoping to scale its autonomous pilot software, Hivemind. https://t.co/sITC8vIHEO

The injury, caused by one of Shield AI's V-BAT drones, came after executives didn't address a known safety hazard and other engineering issues, Forbes found. Military contract opportunities were lost. Sales are falling short. And CEO Ryan Tseng is stepping down.