Newsletter 34

Happy Wednesday, ya'll. It's your Editor, Ryan. Although a lot has been moving in the Renaissance (great news!), what I want to call out today is that it won't happen overnight.

While doors are opening and we’re creating the conditions to succeed, we’ll need capital, time, capacity, and communities voting yes to actually build.

Below, you’ll see what I mean with two examples: drones and datacenters.

👇 Let's dig in.

IN THIS WEEK’S EDITION:
🚁 Drone decoupling: who fills the DJI gap?
🏛️ Datacenters, détente, & democracy
🤝 Friends in high, hard places

Forwarded this email? Subscribe to Per Aspera here.

It was truly a December surprise. On Dec. 22, the FCC blacklisted all new foreign-made drones and critical components over concerns that such gear poses “an unacceptable risk” to U.S. national security.

Then came a partial walkback, when last week the FCC carved out exemptions for drones on the Pentagon’s Blue UAS Cleared List and those meeting a 65% domestic parts threshold — a reprieve for allied manufacturers through the end of 2026. The Commerce Department also quietly withdrew its own proposed restrictions, which would have been more draconian, potentially grounding existing fleets rather than just blocking new imports.

DJI got no such relief. The world’s dominant drone manufacturer (with ~80% share in the U.S.) is now functionally iced out of the American market. Its existing models can still be sold and flown, but the pipeline for new DJI products has closed.

The security concerns are legitimate and longstanding, having been articulated for the better part of a decade. For instance, DJI hardware can transmit telemetry to servers accessible by Beijing, and >80% of America’s public safety programs flew DJI drones as recently as 2021. Reducing that exposure makes sense.

American drone companies are thriving in delivery and defense. Zipline is closing in on 2M autonomous deliveries with zero safety incidents, is growing insanely quick in the U.S. (+15% week over week), and recently secured $150M to triple its Africa network. Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery unit, and Walmart aim to scale to 270 locations by next year, which would allow them to serve 10% of the U.S. population by 2027. The Pentagon's Drone Dominance Program is procuring 340,000 tactical drones over the next two years, with a range of startups, neo-primes, and existing manufacturers competing for contracts.

The consumer and commercial market is a different story. Real estate photographers, prosumers, farmers, surveyors, and filmmakers — the operators who made DJI’s Mavic ubiquitous — face a market with no American substitute at a comparable price. A Pilot Institute survey found that 43% of drone operators expect the ban to have “extremely negative or potentially business-ending impact.”

The U.S. and its Allies invented nearly every component in a modern drone: lithium polymer batteries, brushless DC motors, flight controllers, GPS modules, IMU sensors, sintered neodymium magnets, etc. Today, though, and you already know what’s coming next, we manufacture almost none at scale.

When Beijing sanctioned Skydio last October, the company couldn’t source batteries for months and was forced to ration customers to one per drone. CEO Adam Bry called it “a clarifying moment.”

The U.S. has had plenty of clarifying moments like this up and down the supply chain in recent years. We are investing heavily in reindustrialization and onshoring supply chains for systems like drones. It’s not an overnight process; and blind spots or near-total dependencies for certain components remain.

…one that hasn’t existed since 2016. That year, DJI’s dominance became clear as it crushed the American competition. The company’s combination of genuinely innovative design, rapid iteration, low prices, state support, and Shenzhen’s unparalleled supply chain efficiency has made head-to-head hardware competition nearly impossible. Those remaining from the consumer and commercial drone wars of the 2010s largely survived by pivoting to software or protected markets.

A decade later, the door is wide open again. Supportive industrial policy has changed the calculus for building stateside, with demand signals across government, enterprise, and consumer segments. Domestic magnet production is scaling and new battery plants are coming online. A company that cracks a key component, or the full system at consumer/commercial price points, with a domestic or allied supply chain, now has a real shot at a multi-$B market.

The component problem is solvable, but demands capital, time, and manufacturing capacity that will not materialize overnight. And while ripping off the bandaid hurts, depending on a single foreign supplier was never a stable equilibrium.

If you’re working on something in this space, get in touch! We’d love to hear more.

Microsoft has published the closest thing that hyperscalers have to a détente strategy. Yesterday, Microsoft’s Brad Smith announced the company’s "Community-First AI Infrastructure Initiative,” a five-point framework pledging to:

The breakneck buildout of datacenters, and the metastasizing opposition to such projects, were both defining stories of 2025.

The democratic legitimacy issue with AI infrastructure often stems from communities feeling ambushed rather than consulted. Developers arrive via shell corporations, secure approvals under NDAs, extract massive tax abatements, and saddle regions with grid upgrades and residential power rate hikes. Or, at least, that’s the perception shaping local politics.

Here is the paradox: datacenter development & energy infrastructure can create genuine economic value. But if the gains accrue invisibly to distant shareholders while costs land locally — or, if this is perceived to be the case — communities will increasingly question and/or reject the project.

Ultimately, we see this as savvy politicking from Microsoft: not only in its attempt to deliver more widespread, good-faith gains, but also by making them legible to local communities. The messenger matters, too, as it’s coming from the top: Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, has spent the better part of two decades working to transform the firm from antitrust pariah into the rare Big Tech company that politicians, regulators, and power brokers in DC (and Brussels) will play ball with.

The White House signaled its support for Microsoft’s initiative, a marker of how national this issue has become. Already, both Silicon Valley and Washington are bracing for datacenter/AI politics as a 2028 election cycle issue. If Microsoft walks the walk, and this becomes the industry floor rather than a PR ceiling, it may help hyperscalers achieve the social license they so desperately need.

Or, maybe datacenters will just migrate to space…

On Wednesday, Micron will officially break ground on its New York semiconductor megafab, a project expected to reach roughly $100B in total investment over time. The project marks the largest private investment in New York state history…not a bad start for megaprojects in 2026!

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth kicked off a multi-state “Arsenal of Freedom” tour aimed at putting America’s industrial backbone front and center. Traveling from shipyards in Newport News to Starbase and many other factories around the country, Hegseth is making the case that national security starts long before the battlefield. It begins with the workers, welders, machinists, and engineers building the systems the military relies on.

Lilac Solutions and Traxys North America have signed a binding 10-year offtake agreement for lithium produced from the Great Salt Lake, giving both companies a clear path toward long-term commercial production. The deal helps move the project beyond pilots and feasibility work and into a contracted supply relationship, which is still rare for domestic lithium.

Aviation Week Opens Space Tech Challenge. Aviation Week, alongside Space Tech Expo USA, has opened nominations for its new Space Tech Challenge Awards, a program meant to surface technologies that are already working and ready for real use. The goal is to honor systems that have been built, tested, and can be put in front of customers today. The challenge targets gaps across lunar operations, space infrastructure, and on-orbit protection, and gives selected teams a direct line to government agencies, prime contractors, and commercial operators actively looking for solutions. Finalists will be announced next spring and showcased at Space Tech Expo, with broader visibility through Aviation Week. Apply here — thanks to our friend Joe Anselmo of Aviation Week for putting this on our radar!

Think Orbital Raises Seed. Space infrastructure startup ThinkOrbital has closed their Seed Round, led by TFX Capital. The funding will accelerate development of the company’s Space‑to‑Space X‑ray imaging system — designed to inspect spacecraft in orbit and determine adversary capabilities, intent, and damage — along with in‑space construction capabilities for orbital infrastructure at a scale that simply cannot be deployed from the ground. ThinkOrbital’s Space‑to‑Space X‑ray system is scheduled to fly on demonstration missions in March and October 2026.

SSTA Conference Focuses on the Work That Makes Space Operable. The SSTA Conference brings together engineers, researchers, and operators who are focused on the practical work of making space systems function. The emphasis is on hardware, integration, and real-world constraints — rather than theory — with a focus on what survives launch, operates reliably in orbit, and can be sustained over time. By putting scientists and engineers in the same room, the confab helps move ideas from the concept stage into production. H/T to reader Zachary Marano (SSTA, University of Tennessee Knoxville) for flagging this.