Author: openjargon

• The Pentagon has a high demand signal for all types of drones and uncrewed capabilities.
• While startups are seeing success in the small drone market, the defense primes are pursuing more exquisite systems.
• Many big names like General Atomics are upgrading their older, combat-proven drones.

Silicon Valley disruptors and defense industry heavyweights are locked in a fight to shape the future of drone warfare.

The competition pits agile startups like Performance Drone Works and Anduril against the big primes — large, traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Atomics — to build new and emerging classes of weapons seen as essential for future war.

Billions of dollars are at stake in this battle.

The Pentagon is preparing to spend $9.4 billion on aerial combat drones in fiscal year 2026 as part of its larger $13.4 billion investment in autonomous systems. Furthermore, the Air Force is seeking $789.4 million for research and development of autonomous "loyal wingmen" drones that can fly and fight alongside crewed combat aircraft or carry out missions alone. The Department of Defense also aims to invest $3.1 billion in counter-drone technology.

Pentagon leaders are steering more competition toward upstart defense companies. Their argument is that big traditional contractors can't deliver new weapons fast or cheaply enough to meet today's fast-changing global threats or demands for affordable mass, such as the inexpensive drones dominating the war in Ukraine.

Startups often embrace the Silicon Valley "fail fast" approach, pushing prototypes into the hands of troops quickly and constantly iterating. Moving fast comes with risks, but moving slower does as well, specifically risking irrelevance by the time the weapon is fielded.

The big primes, however, can still leverage their scale, established integration with the US military, and decades of experience to secure both footholds and contracts in emerging technology sectors. These companies are considered the go-to builders for large, complex drones designed for high-risk missions, while startups are taking over the development of smaller, cheaper reconnaissance and attack drones, often made using commercial technology.

"The primes intrinsically understand what the gaps are that the government has because they've been working with them for years upon years," Chip Walter, a defense industry investor, said. "If they want to, they can be the quickest to have an impact on the battlefield."

Readying legacy drones for a new era of warfare

Some of America's biggest defense contractors are upgrading the drones that defined the post-9/11 era and other legacy systems.

During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the US was fixated on drones for counterterrorism operations.

"We haven't pursued their full applicability" for other combat missions and types of armed conflict, Stacie Pettyjohn, a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security, told Business Insider.

That appears to be changing.

General Atomics, a drone-making powerhouse behind the era-defining MQ-1 Predator, has been upgrading several of its top uncrewed aerial systems. These include drones like the MQ-1C Gray Eagle operated by the US Army and the MQ-9A Reaper flown by the US Air Force and some international militaries.

General Atomics is modernizing its long-endurance drones, adding an electronic warfare suite to disrupt enemy communications, radars, or sensors and pursuing easier upgrades to the Gray Eagle. Meanwhile, the Reaper is receiving artificial intelligence improvements, enhanced sensors, and strengthened cybersecurity to keep it relevant in high-end combat.

The Reaper also has a new electronic warfare pod that a top Marine general said allows it to "disappear off of enemy radar."

The Air Force previously considered retiring the $30 million Reaper, arguing that it wouldn't survive a fight against Russia or China. A Reaper is larger and slower than an F-16 fighter and is as vulnerable to ground-fired missiles as other airframes that lack stealth tech.

Pettyjohn said there's a growing recognition that survivability isn't binary, meaning it isn't a simple yes or no on whether a system can survive modern combat.

"It depends on technologies, but also different tactics, techniques, and procedures, and can be augmented or decremented depending on the capabilities that are on certain platforms," she said.

Another firm, Northrop Grumman, which built the soon-to-be-retired RQ-4 Global Hawk, is improving the effectiveness of its MQ-4C Triton, a large drone flown by the US Navy for intelligence, reconnaissance, and surveillance. And Boeing's subsidiary, Insitu, is working on updates to its MQ-27 ScanEagle drones.

More broadly, RTX, another leading defense company, is building sensors for drone fleets. The company is also advancing counter-drone measures, like the Coyote.

The usefulness of these upgraded systems will depend on what the next war demands and where it's fought.

"We are seeing innovation happen in the Ukrainian battlefield on a daily basis," Walter told Business Insider. "The battle that we're going to see in the South China Sea, in my opinion, is going to look very different," he added, which will likely shift which types of drones and capabilities will be most useful.

The battle for the future of drone warfare is on

The big, established defense companies generally are not producing expendable quadcopter-style drones. Instead, they're pitching ideas for a different kind of war. With the US seeking a wide range of drone capabilities, these firms are betting on new uncrewed combat platforms that can fight alongside high-end aircraft or go on missions too risky for piloted jets.

General Atomics is working on one of the Air Force's new Collaborative Combat Aircraft, commonly called "loyal wingman" drones. The jet-powered aircraft are built to fly with front-line fighters and boost firepower, situational awareness, and communications.

Another airframe selected in the first round is one developed by Anduril, a rapidly growing defense startup with 6,000 employees that has signaled its willingness and ability to compete against some slower-moving primes.

Other defense power players are still a big part of the conversation, though.

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works, long recognized for its decades of expertise as a developer of advanced stealth aircraft, recently entered the fray with Vectis, advertising its design as a stealthy, low-cost solution.

And beyond the company's wingman pitch, its subsidiary Sikorsky recently unveiled a new uncrewed Black Hawk helicopter — the autonomous U-Hawk. This comes as the US Army is looking to dramatically overhaul its helicopter force to a structure that is only around 10% crewed and 90% drone.

Boeing, Northrop Grumman, General Atomics, and Anduril have all been tapped by the Navy to develop conceptual carrier-based wingman drone designs. Lockheed has a "common control" contract in this space for the development of a shared software interface to control different drones from a single system.

RTX isn't building airframes, but it's still key to the drone revolution. The Air Force, for instance, has tapped RTX and Shield AI, a startup, to provide the AI brain for the coming "loyal wingmen" that may be flying and fighting alongside crewed aircraft in the future.

The companies highlighted in this story did not respond to requests for comment.

The Pentagon is heavily prioritizing speed and mass

America's biggest defense contractors have the money, talent, and connections needed to make big moves on drones, but they aren't the only game in town. The current administration is signaling greater support for companies that can move faster and cheaper than the big defense giants.

In July, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth sent a memo to senior Pentagon leadership, combatant commanders, and the directors of defense agencies about "unleashing US military drone dominance."

He touted the opportunities in building lower-cost drones rather than larger, more complex designs to match US foes in volume. That's a mission that the top defense contractors aren't necessarily chasing right now.

Service secretaries have taken public digs at the primes, with Army Secretary Dan Driscoll being among the most direct.

"We are going to completely disrupt the system that held the Army back for decades and lined the primes' pockets for so long," Driscoll said in October.

He said a Silicon Valley approach combining "venture capital money and mentorship with startup culture" would be "absolutely ideal for the Army." He previously said it'd be a win if one of the primes went out of business.

Some of the big primes have said that there's space for more competition and collaboration across the defense industry. Earlier this year, Jim Taiclet, CEO of Lockheed Martin, said during an earnings call that he sees "us all working together."

"I think that it's industry's role to help marshal the talent and expertise in our country to provide the best possible deterrent capabilities" for the US, Taiclet said.

Startups have been seizing on this moment by selling commercially developed drones directly to the military, in some cases bypassing the traditional contracting cycles that center on waiting for the military to set its requirements. There's a high-risk, high-reward aspect to this approach.

Putting capital into developing systems before the actual competition process is risky, Anduril President and Chief Business Officer Matthew Steckman told Business Insider earlier this year, but it also has its rewards.

The "risk is obvious," he said, explaining that if "we make the wrong decisions, we lose a whole lot of capital. But if we bet right, then we're ahead. We have sort of a head start."

Walter, the defense industry investor, said the big primes could do the same thing.

"They just have to get out of their own way," he said.

• An analysis of large US metros showed two Florida locations had the fastest growth in independent workers.
• Other data showed Florida has been a popular destination to move to.
• Americans could be attracted to freelance or independent work in the stagnant labor market.

Florida has long been a hub for those settling into retirement, and it's also becoming a destination for freelancers and other independent workers.

A recent report from freelance platform Fiverr and market research firm Illuminas showed which big US cities have seen the biggest estimated changes in independent professionals from 2019 to 2024 using government data. The report said since the most recent available data was for 2023, Illuminas estimated the 2024 figures "based on more recent macroeconomic data."

Michelle Baltrusitis, head of community at Fiverr, said there's been a "freelancing boom" in major Sun Belt cities. Orlando and Miami had the highest growth in independent professionals among 30 large US metro areas, at 32% each. Nashville followed, with a growth of 24%. The rest of the top-ten cities were all in the South or Southwest:

"The Sun Belt really represents the sweet spot between lifestyle and opportunity," Baltrusitis, head of community at Fiverr, told Business Insider, adding it tends to offer a lower cost of living, nice weather, and booming economies.

Census Bureau data showed more people have moved into than out of Florida over the past few years, as has the South as a whole.

In the stagnant job market, where hiring opportunities are often harder to come by, building a business, freelancing, or independent contract work could be an attractive option.

Baltrusitis thinks the rise of independent professionals will continue in the Sun Belt and nationwide because people want more work flexibility, multiple income streams, and control over their careers.

Other data suggested a rise in working for yourself. ADP Research found the number of independent contractors rose by 50% between 2019 and 2024, adding growth has been steady since 2021, when the labor force was recovering from pandemic-induced job losses. Ege Aksu, an economist at Revelio Labs, found that the share of job switchers transitioning into entrepreneurship has surged over the past few years while hiring has slowed.

"It's maybe speaking to work culture and autonomy, flexibility that are more talked about in today's job market," Aksu said, who also thinks it could be due to necessity due to the fewer job prospects.

Baltrusitis said people looking to freelance should consider what skills they could monetize and be willing to go through trials and errors. She also suggested that people research how others advertise their skills on freelance platforms.

• Geoffrey Hinton said he was surprised it took Google this long to catch up in the AI race.
• Google received significant praise for its release of Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro models.
• Hinton, an AI pioneer who previously worked at Google Brain, said the tech giant is now likely to surpass OpenAI.

The "Godfather of AI" thinks it's about time that Google caught up in the AI race.

"I think it's actually more surprising than it's taken this long for Google to overtake OpenAI," Geoffrey Hinton, a professor emeritus at the University of Toronto who previously worked at Google Brain, told Business Insider in a Tuesday interview.

Google is coming off the heels of its widely praised launch of Gemini 3, an update that some in tech said elevated the giant beyond OpenAI's GPT-5. Google's Nano Banana Pro AI image model has also proven to be a hit.

Three years after Google reportedly declared a "code red" after the release of ChatGPT, recent reports indicate it's now OpenAI that is sounding the alarm.

"I think that right now they're beginning to overtake it," Hinton said of Google's position relative to OpenAI.

On top of the successful launch of its latest AI model, shares of Google rose on reports that it might broker a billion-dollar deal to supply Meta with its own AI chips.

Making its own chips is a "big advantage" to Google, Hinton said.

"Google has a lot of very good researchers and obviously a lot of data and a lot of data centers," he said. "My guess is Google will win."

Hinton, who helped pioneer AI research during his time at Google Brain, said that the search giant was once at the forefront of AI but held back.

"Google was in the lead for a long time, right?" he said. "Google invented transformers. Google had big chatbots before other people."

Google was cautious, Hinton said, in the wake of Microsoft's disastrous 2016 launch of its short-lived "Tay" AI chatbot, which it took offline after it posted incredibly racist tweets.

"Google, obviously, had a very good reputation and was worried about damaging it like that," he said.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has previously said that the company held back on releasing its chatbot.

"We hadn't quite gotten it to a level where you could put it out and people would've been okay with Google putting out that product," Pichai said earlier this year. "It still had a lot of issues at that time."

In the past, the company has had some shaky rollouts. Just last year, Google had to pause its AI image generator after some users complained that results showing historically inaccurate images of people of color were too "woke." Its initial AI search overviews generated nonsensical advice, such as putting glue on pizza to prevent cheese from falling off.

Google just made a big university donation in Hinton's honor

Hinton spoke to Business Insider ahead of the announcement that Google was donating $10 million CAD to help establish the Hinton Chair in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Toronto. The university, where Hinton split his time while at Google, said it would match Google's gift.

Hinton left Google in 2023, citing concerns about AI's development. Since then, he has repeatedly spoken out about the risks that AI poses to society, ranging from the potential to outsmart humans to displacing jobs. In 2024, Hinton was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.

"Geoff's work on neural networks — spanning his time in academia and his decade here at Google — laid the foundation for modern AI," Google said in a statement. "This chair honors his legacy and will help the university recruit visionary scholars dedicated to the same kind of curiosity-driven, fundamental research that Geoff championed."

• Social Security benefits will increase by about $60 in 2026 due to a 2.8% cost-of-living adjustment.
• Eligibility rules and benefit amounts depend on Americans' age, income, and work history.
• Seniors can expect more tax relief and higher Medicare premiums in 2026.

For millions of older Americans, Social Security is a financial lifeline.

The program is the country's largest social safety net program, providing monthly payments to nearly 74 million people. Business Insider has heard from hundreds of seniors living check to check without retirement savings and 80-somethings working to supplement their Social Security income.

Here's what you need to know about benefits heading into the new year.

Who will qualify for Social Security in 2026

Americans pay into Social Security throughout their careers. The program is largely funded by payroll taxes, and each individual's monthly checks are based on the income they made during their working years. Qualification rules will remain unchanged in January.

Older adults must be at least 62 years old to enroll in the program — but those who enroll before full retirement age typically receive smaller checks and may experience benefit deductions if they're still employed.

The national retirement age is 66 or 67 for most baby boomers, which is the age that beneficiaries can collect their full Social Security amount. And those who delay filing for benefits until age 70 will receive the highest monthly allotment.

Depending on income and filing age, Social Security beneficiaries typically take home between $800 and $3,000 a month. Widows and widowers can claim benefits based on their spouses' income.

The Social Security Administration also offers benefits for low-income Americans and those with disabilities at any age. Supplemental Social Security is generally available for individuals earning less than $2,000 a month, roughly 130% of the federal poverty line. Social Security Disability provides monthly payments to people experiencing at least one year of disability that affects their ability to work.

Beneficiaries will see higher checks to keep up with inflation

Social Security beneficiaries will receive about $60 more monthly in 2026, thanks to the program's annual cost-of-living adjustment. That 2.8% increase is based on third-quarter inflation data.

The latest COLA announcement, tied to year-over-year increases in the consumer price index, mirrors the past several years. Raise percentages skyrocketed during high pandemic-era inflation, but have hovered around 2% and 3% since 2023.

Older Americans have told Business Insider that, while this COLA raise helps cover the rising cost of groceries, rent, and healthcare, it can present another problem. Low-income retirees often rely on other aid programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and Medicaid. This slight cost-of-living raise can push some older adults over the qualifying threshold for those other aid programs, so lower-income retirees should carefully check those criteria.

Social Security income will still be taxed

Social Security income is typically taxed. Depending on household income, Americans may pay taxes on up to 85% of their Social Security payments.

Those who take home less than $25,000 as an individual and $32,000 as a couple, however, will not have their benefits taxed. Need-based Supplemental Social Security also isn't subject to tax.

Under President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act — signed in July — taxpayers 65 and older can claim up to $6,000 in addition to their normal standard deduction. This new rule is set to last through 2028 and builds off of an existing tax exemption for seniors.

In practice, this means that older Americans filing their 2025 tax returns can write off as much as $23,750. Joint filers over 65 will be able to claim as much as $46,700.

Out-of-pocket Medicare costs will rise

Most Social Security beneficiaries are also enrolled in Medicare, a federal health insurance program available to Americans over 62 and some people with disabilities. Open enrollment began in November and ends December 7.

The program's structure will not change in the new year, but beneficiaries can expect higher out-of-pocket costs because the price of US healthcare is climbing and more baby boomers are needing care as they age. Premiums for Medicare Part B plans will jump by about 10%.

Medicare has four main plan types. Parts A and Part B are standalone insurance plans that cover inpatient and outpatient care; Medicare Advantage allows older Americans to join private plans governed by Medicare rules and out-of-pocket caps; and Part D is typically supplemental insurance that covers prescription drugs and basic provider visits.

Medicare is based on age and Medicaid is based on income, so some Americans qualify for both insurance programs.

The Social Security fund is in jeopardy

America's Social Security fund is expected to become insolvent in the mid-2030s. This doesn't mean checks will stop entirely, but retirees could see smaller benefit amounts unless Congress secures more money. Social Security is supplemented by the federal government, even though individuals pay into the program throughout their careers.

Programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP that some older Americans rely on are funded separately from Social Security and will not be impacted.

• Reddit is retiring r/popular as its default feed.
• CEO Steve Huffman said the feed "gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture."
• He said removing the feature would promote a more personalized and relevant user experience.

Reddit is getting rid of one of its oldest fixtures.

The platform's CEO, Steve Huffman, said in a post that Reddit would be removing its r/popular feed from the homepage for new users to promote a more personalized and relevant user experience.

The popular feed, located on the left sidebar of the website, displays the most liked recent posts across the platform.

"In theory, it's what's most popular on Reddit, but it's actually what is liked by the most active users on Reddit—which is not the same thing," he said. "Having it as a default feed gives the false impression of a singular Reddit culture, one that is neither representative of Reddit nor appealing to new users (or anyone at all, IMO)."

He summed up his disdain for the feature by saying, "r/popular sucks, and we're moving away from it, and towards better, more relevant and personalized feeds."

Huffman, who has been the platform's CEO since 2015, said Reddit would stop showing the popular feed in the sidebar unless users read it regularly.

He said his favorite part of Reddit was that every community on the platform had its own unique culture, rules, and sense of humor.

"And if your perspective isn't represented, you can create the community you want to see," he said. "The freedom to build your own corner of the internet is what makes Reddit, Reddit."

The platform gets 116 million visitors daily, he said. Reddit's stock price has risen about 44% in the past year.

In the post, he announced a few other changes, like limiting the number of high-traffic communities a single person can moderate, and changing the way it shows community sizes.

"These changes are all part of the same goal: making Reddit more conducive to how people actually use it today," he said.

This is not Reddit's first effort to nudge its users into smaller community groups, as it recalibrates its platform alongside competitors like Quora, and beyond that, the likes of Meta.

In October, Reddit removed its public chat feature and urged users to chat on private group chats as a way to "connect with communities in smaller, focused spaces."

• LinkedIn is dismantling its associate product manager program.
• It's replacing it with an associate builder track that trains hires to code, design, and product manage.
• LinkedIn's chief product officer said the company has adopted small "pods" of full-stack builders.

LinkedIn is dismantling one of Silicon Valley's most familiar early-career tracks: the associate product manager program.

It will be replaced with a new program that trains people to code, design, and build products end-to-end.

LinkedIn's chief product officer, Tomer Cohen, said on an episode of "Lenny's Podcast" published Thursday that the company's long-running associate product manager program will end this year.

Starting in January, new hires will enter the associate product builder program, he said.

"We're going to teach them how to code, design, and PM at LinkedIn," he added, referring to product management.

The shift is part of a broader internal transformation built around what LinkedIn calls the full-stack builder model. Instead of splitting responsibilities among product managers, designers, and engineers, the company wants employees who can bring a product from idea to launch themselves, "regardless of their role in the stack," Cohen said. These builders can combine skills that were once separated across different job functions.

Cohen said he wants these builders to develop vision, empathy, communication, creativity, and judgment — especially the ability to make "high-quality decisions in what is complex, ambiguous situations."

"Everything else, I'm working really hard to automate," he added.

The model is also reshaping how teams are structured. Instead of large groups split by function, LinkedIn has adopted small "pods" of cross-trained builders, allowing it to be more nimble, adaptive, and resilient.

"They can actually match the pace of change to the pace of response," Cohen said.

It's "less about an engineer, designer, PM working together" and more about people "who can flex across," he added.

Cohen, who has worked at LinkedIn for nearly 14 years, said in a post on the platform last month that he is leaving the company in January.

The end of product managers?

Business Insider's Amanda Hoover reported last year that product managers are increasingly seen as critical in the tech world, but some remain skeptical about the role's value.

Some companies have reevaluated their need for product managers. Business Insider's Ashley Stewart reported in March that Microsoft wants to shift its workforce composition by increasing the number of engineers relative to product or program managers to run leaner. Other companies, like Airbnb and Snap, have been rethinking the need for product managers.

Surge AI CEO Edwin Chen said on an episode of the "No Priors" podcast published in July that early-stage teams don't need product managers at all.

Engineering leaders should drive product direction until they no longer have the bandwidth. "Your engineer should be hands-on. They should be having great ideas as well," he said.

Others take the opposite view. Google Brain founder Andrew Ng said in an episode of the "No Priors" podcast published in August that product management, not engineering speed, has become the bottleneck in AI startups.

In the past, building a prototype might have taken three weeks, so waiting another week for user feedback was acceptable. But when AI tools let teams build a prototype in a day, having to "wait a week for user feedback" is "really painful," Ng said.

That pressure forces startups to make faster product decisions, the kind of calls product managers are trained to make, he added.

• Fei-Fei Li criticized extreme AI rhetoric as misleading and unhelpful for public discourse.
• She urged balanced, factual communication about artificial intelligence and its impact.
• Other AI leaders, including Andrew Ng and Yann LeCun, have also called for balanced AI messaging.

The current rhetoric around AI is far too dramatic, says the Godmother of AI.

"I like to say I'm the most boring speaker in AI these days because precisely my disappointment is the hyperbole on both sides," Fei-Fei Li said in a talk at Stanford University published on Thursday.

"We've got the total extinction, doomsday, and all that talk about AI will ruin humanity, machine overlord," she said. On the other hand, she said, there is the "total utopian" scenario where people use words like "post-scarcity" and "infinite productivity."

Li is a longtime Stanford computer science professor famous for inventing ImageNet. Last year, she cofounded World Labs, a company building AI models to perceive, generate, and interact with 3D environments.

At the Stanford talk, she added that this "extreme rhetoric" is filling tech discourse and misinforming vulnerable people.

"The world's population, especially those who are not in Silicon Valley, need to hear the facts, need to hear what this truly is," she said. "Yet that kind of discourse, that kind of communication, that kind of public education is not as good as I hope it is."

Li is among the top computer scientists who are advocating for more balanced messaging around AI and its impact on society.

In July, Google Brain founder Andrew Ng said that he thinks artificial general intelligence is overrated.

AGI refers to a stage when AI systems possess human-level cognitive abilities and can learn and apply knowledge just like people. The execs of leading AI labs are often asked when they think AGI is coming and what it will mean for human workers.

"AGI has been overhyped," Ng said in a talk at Y Combinator. "For a long time, there'll be a lot of things that humans can do that AI cannot."

Meta's former chief AI scientist, Yann LeCun, has said that large language models are "astonishing" but limited.

"They're not a road towards what people call AGI," he said in an interview last year. "I hate the term. They're useful, there's no question. But they are not a path towards human-level intelligence."

Last Month, LeCun announced on LinkedIn that he was leaving Meta after 12 years to launch an AI startup.