Can tech reshape the Pentagon?

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of America’s House of Representatives, left Taiwan on August 3rd, China launched a series of war games around the island, which it claims as its own. This was a furious response to Ms Pelosi’s intentionally provocative act. It was also a dry run for a bid to reunify Taiwan with the mainland by force, which China does not rule out. Troubling, then, for Taiwan and its Western backers, that in American simulations of the conflict the Chinese side often prevails. One congressional report in 2018 warned that America could plausibly face a “decisive military defeat” against China in a battle over Taiwan. China has since kept chipping away at American military superiority, including its technological edge. Pushing that edge is therefore a priority for the Department of Defence (o). And that would be easier if America’s world-beating software developers worked more closely with its equally formidable armsmakers, thinks Michael Brown, who heads the department’s Defence Innovation Unit. Katherine Boyle of Andreessen Horowitz, a venture-capital () firm, observes that America’s largest weapons manufacturers lack top-flight programmers. Silicon Valley has them in spades—but has also long displayed an aversion to battlefield technology.