Steve Blank
Nowhere is Safe
Drone-saturated battlefields make every surface asset a target. Blank calls for a middle layer between 'put up nets' and 'build a Cold War concrete bunker' — and for a unified U.S. survivability strategy.
Steve Blank — Stanford lecturer, originator of the Lean Startup methodology, and a defining voice in U.S. national security innovation — argues that drone-saturated battlefields make every surface asset a target, and that the U.S. is spending tens of billions on counter-UAS systems while spending nothing comparable on putting its high-value, hard-to-replace assets out of harm's way.
He calls for a middle layer between 'put up nets' and 'build a Cold War concrete bunker': rapidly-bored shallow tunnels providing genuine overhead cover for movement corridors, equipment, command posts, and personnel. He also calls out the absence of any unified U.S. protection and survivability strategy.
“Drones in Ukraine and in the War with Iran have made the surface of the earth a contested space.”
“The logical response is to go underground (or out to space) but the technology to do it quickly, cheaply, and at scale is genuinely new.”
“Gaza proved that even with total air superiority and ground control, Israel has destroyed only about 40 percent of Gaza's tunnels after two and a half years of war. That's an asymmetric defender's advantage the U.S. military should be thinking about for its own use, not just as a threat to overcome.”
