People surprised by this don’t know that the expertise that incubated silicon chips at Stanford and around the valley was based on electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology, among other things.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
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gmerc
Please, it’s War now, now defense.
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jMyles
Wow, I thought this was satire for a second. This is a level of shamelessness that I'm really surprised Stanford (or anyone involved) can tolerate being associated with.
> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
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kittikitti
This is incredibly cringeworthy knowing the ethical and moral issues surrounding artificial intelligence. The problem "Team SwarmShield" is obviously directly related to a problem Israeli defense forces have to deal with. It's a sad state of Stanford if they're hosting this along with allegedly leading what defined guardrails for artificial intelligence.
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AndrewKemendo
Original H4D comments from 2015 when steve blank started this:
People surprised by this don’t know that the expertise that incubated silicon chips at Stanford and around the valley was based on electrical engineering work done for world war II / cold war radar technology, among other things.
Stanford and SV have always had deep defense ties. Palmer Luckey and Palantir etc are just the latest iteration of this.
Please, it’s War now, now defense.
Wow, I thought this was satire for a second. This is a level of shamelessness that I'm really surprised Stanford (or anyone involved) can tolerate being associated with.
> Department of War Directory – This year the students had access to a Department of War Directory – essentially a phonebook of ~5,700 names of “Who buys in the Dept of War?” The directory includes a tutorial on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Acquistion Officers (PAEs) fit into that process.
Literally teaching people how to make money selling misery and violence. No mention of how the tech involved can be used to constrain states, stop wars, establish justice, identify war crimes and restore victims, nothing. I thought we were beyond this in 2026.
This is incredibly cringeworthy knowing the ethical and moral issues surrounding artificial intelligence. The problem "Team SwarmShield" is obviously directly related to a problem Israeli defense forces have to deal with. It's a sad state of Stanford if they're hosting this along with allegedly leading what defined guardrails for artificial intelligence.
Original H4D comments from 2015 when steve blank started this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9442981