Published: 2025-07-04T06:43:23.686Z
Updated: 2025-07-14T03:02:27.198Z
Nihilism and complacency are the biggest threat to the world. Everything good comes downstream of growth. Embracing new tech helps bring prosperity to everyone and leads to a safer, more secure world. Degrowth isn't the answer, the answer is to build. When someone says the grid can't handle EVs, I respond by telling them we need to build a better grid and that EVs are a drop in the bucket compared to AI. There needs to be incentives to build, and that increased demand can start the chain of events to get us there. Have you tried flying anywhere recently? Good luck.
In an era when cynicism has become fashionable and decline narratives saturate the media, American Dynamism stands out as a declaration that the United States is still the world’s most fertile ground for big, consequential innovation. At its core, American Dynamism is about building things that matter—from defense technology and advanced manufacturing to civic infrastructure and bold industrial projects. It is an unapologetic embrace of ambition, a cultural and economic movement driven by founders, investors, and operators who believe America’s future is shaped by the companies we create today. Do software tools matter? Absolutely. This is about including hardware, not excluding software, especially in controversial industries such as defense.
The term “American Dynamism” was popularized by the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to describe startups working in areas long considered too slow, too regulated, or too capital-intensive to attract Silicon Valley energy. These are companies building in defense, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, energy systems, and critical infrastructure—domains where innovation has often lagged behind consumer tech.
Unlike the “move fast and break things” ethos of the social media era, American Dynamism has a different posture: move deliberately and build things that endure.
Several forces have converged to make this moment ripe for a return to big, ambitious projects:
Geopolitical Competition: The rise of China and renewed great-power rivalry have made American policymakers and entrepreneurs aware that technological leadership is not inevitable.
Supply Chain Vulnerabilities: The COVID-19 pandemic revealed how fragile global logistics can be and why domestic capacity matters.
Cultural Fatigue: After decades of optimizing online advertising and engagement, there is an appetite for work that feels tangible and nationally significant.
Policy Tailwinds: Governments are increasingly willing to fund and contract with agile private companies to modernize infrastructure and defense.
These trends have created a fertile environment for founders who want to build beyond apps and marketplaces.
American Dynamism companies tend to share a few defining traits:
Mission-Driven Purpose: They explicitly connect their work to national security, industrial capacity, or public benefit.
Frontier Technologies: They integrate hardware and software in domains like autonomy, space, and manufacturing.
Regulatory Complexity: Unlike pure software startups, they operate in heavily regulated sectors.
Long Time Horizons: They often require more capital and patience to reach scale.
A few companies illustrate the breadth and ambition of this movement:
Anduril Industries builds autonomous defense systems, from drone sentries to sensor towers, designed to modernize military capabilities.
Varda Space Industries is working to manufacture materials in orbit, where microgravity enables processes impossible on Earth.
Hadrian is creating advanced factories that produce precision parts for aerospace and defense, with the goal of revitalizing American industrial capacity.
Palantir has become a critical software provider for intelligence and defense agencies, demonstrating how data infrastructure can be as strategic as hardware.
Zipline operates autonomous delivery drones that began in humanitarian supply chains and are now expanding to commercial logistics.
These examples share a common theme: making the previously impossible or impractical both feasible and scalable.
Despite the debates, American Dynamism has struck a nerve for good reasons. It restores a sense of purpose to the technology sector and makes room for founders who want to solve problems that feel substantial. It aligns entrepreneurial ambition with national priorities, creating a narrative that building can be both profitable and patriotic. And it shows a pathway for talent to work on projects that blend frontier technology with public impact.
In a time when many have lost faith in institutions, these companies are a reminder that we can still design, manufacture, and deploy world-changing systems here in America.
To fulfill its potential, American Dynamism will need more than just venture capital. It will require:
Modernized policies that enable fast-moving companies to compete in regulated markets
New funding models that combine public and private investment
A cultural reorientation that makes building things—rather than merely critiquing them—heroic again
The above has been written with the help of ChatGPT. It's 2:20am, there's no way I was going to write this at this hour.
If you look at our target applications (delivery of goods + power as well as defense) it becomes clear that this has the potential to benefit the national interest and fit well into American Dynamism portfolios. Disaster recovery, delivery infrastructure, creating opportunities thanks to AI that weren't feasible before are all core to American Dynamism.
Here are some great American Dynamism resources