Hacking for Defense Stanford 2026 – Lessons Learned Presentations

Posted by sblank 1 day ago

Comments

Comment by awongh 1 hour ago

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.

Comment by gmerc 4 hours ago

Please, it’s War now, now defense.

Comment by Aeolun 3 hours ago

Most of the problems seem defense oriented

Comment by inigyou 2 hours ago

That's how they try to frame them to make you feel less ethically dissonant.

Comment by jMyles 4 hours ago

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.

Comment by chadgpt3 3 hours ago

I believe the quip associated with this is "don't hate the player, hate the game."

War is where the money is. The government of this country has decided that you make money by going to war and you don't make money by not going to war. It's also decided that having money is mandatory. So if you want to succeed you'll go to war.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 1 hour ago

This is extremely well put and precisely accurate

you may not even appreciate how accurate this is because it seems so simple but it’s exactly true

The moment you say “I’m not going to spend my time doing war” (in my case anymore) you are persona non grata to capitalism

Comment by mhb 15 minutes ago

> “I’m not going to spend my time doing war” (in my case anymore)

It's less convenient to indulge that opinion without the protection of the most powerful military in the world.

Comment by jenniferhooley 2 hours ago

"I thought we were beyond this by 2026."

Have you been asleep for the last 4–8 years? We aren't even 'beyond this' compared to where we were 15 years ago. In case you haven't noticed, the US has been going backward for years: Americans fundamentally don't give a shit about anything except maximizing GDP, regardless of cost - and in fact, some sectors thrive on that externalized 'cost.' I've noticed your sentiment a few times on HN lately and I'm befuddled every time, like what in your life makes you think we are beyond this kind of thing?

Comment by talon8635 2 hours ago

HN continues to slouch towards emotional outrage, even at the expense of the point.

Comment by graphime 4 hours ago

> I thought we were beyond this in 2026.

You must be new to tech.

Comment by jMyles 4 hours ago

> You must be new to tech.

Feel free to peruse my profile and websites to get a sense of my contributions and career trajectory over the past few decades, in software and in bluegrass music, if you for whatever reason seriously think that's germane to the discussion.

Comment by leoqa 20 minutes ago

He’s calling you naive, not asking for your resume.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 4 hours ago

Steve Blank has been doing H4D for a decade now

Comment by jMyles 4 hours ago

Of course, and it's been discussed on HN several times, but I can't recall seeing that students were being taught "how to sell to the [DoD/DoW]"; I'm pretty sure that's new (whether it was part of the course I have no idea, but I don't recall it being part of any materials or discussions).

Comment by chadgpt3 3 hours ago

Every tech company that can is selling war machines to the DoW because that's where most of the country's money is - that and stock markets.

Comment by AndrewKemendo 3 hours ago

That’s literally the whole point of the course if you read the original intent of the course it was to change the acquisitions approach of Silicon Valley to match or influence the way the Department of defense does acquisitions and they’ve been extremely successful in capturing the Department of defense as you can see

Comment by mhb 3 hours ago

You don't think the US military should have the best technology?

Comment by phendrenad2 1 hour ago

Lesson learned: California, and all the universities within, are liberal on the surface, but deeply right-wing in the halls of power. Once you understand this, the whole state and its lack of progress on progressive issues makes sense.

Comment by kittikitti 4 hours ago

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.

Comment by traverseda 4 hours ago

Also problems Ukrainian defense needs to solve, and that the Canadian military is trying to solve. This is everyone's problem. It's also biased towards defense use.

Comment by jMyles 4 hours ago

Sure, I think anyone can appreciate that.

But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.

This page literally presents war as if it's a profit vector rather than a societal ill - something that antiwar activists have been claiming is the actual impetus for most conflicts in the world, only to be called conspiracy theorists in response.

It's just totally nauseating.

So while, in the abstract, preventing people from being killed by drone swarms is a great idea, it's tainted from the get-go if the solution is just to make more money by having bigger killing machines, rather than preventing people from wanting/needing to drone swarm other people from the outset.

Comment by jnwatson 3 hours ago

It is far ethically superior for Stanford grads to stick to their wheelhouse: optimizing engagement so that their users doomscroll longer.

Comment by Aeolun 3 hours ago

Someone is going to try and kill you with a drone swarm, so no matter how detestable you find it, I think it’s good that there’s people that are thinking of ways to stop that.

Comment by graphime 3 hours ago

> But this program appears to just treat war like it's some perfectly normal thing, rather than the most undesirable aspect of humanity which we're hoping to finally bring to an end so can we enjoy an age of peace amidst the internet.

War has existed for all of human history.

Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?

The only acceptable answer is: you want hope.

Comment by jMyles 3 hours ago

> Why do you think humans today are special and will eliminate war?

Isn't this _the entire point_ of the internet? To evolve beyond states and boundaries and warfare as a way of making decisions about resource allocation?

It strikes me as very short-sighted to decline to act as a generation on this matter. Humans today (or lets say, in these next few centuries) _are_ special; we have arrived at an evolutionary milestone with the birth of a new organism that does seem capable of lasting peace.

Comment by mhb 4 minutes ago

If you think suicidal fanatics or megalomaniacal dictators are motivated by sub-optimal resource allocation, you haven't been paying attention.

Comment by pasc1878 2 hours ago

What a thing invented (or at least large parts) by DARPA. An agency of the United States Department of Defense.

You expect that the whole point of something there not to boost the US military?

Comment by zdragnar 2 hours ago

No... that sounds an awful lot like revisionist history trying to force a utopian ideal where none exists. If anything, the advent of the Internet and social media in particular has made us more tribal, not less.

The majority of the Internet is geared towards feeding the hedonistic treadmill of porn, cat pictures, selling things, influencer chasing, faking happiness on Instagram and trolling political sides on X or Blue sky.

We aren't better people as a result.

Comment by eigencoder 1 hour ago

I don't see how we could remove states and boundaries and warfare. Boundaries aren't bad things, they're a natural consequence of living in a natural world

Comment by mhb 3 hours ago

Couldn't resist dragging Israel in, right?

Comment by inigyou 2 hours ago

Israel is America's biggest ally and an active war zone. Of course it's relevant to most war things that are going on right now.