Source: Semafor
by Ben Smith
“The only bipartisan consensus left in Washington is that America needs to reform how it buys weapons. Out with the clunky old 20th-century contractors making fighter jets, say Democrats and Republicans alike — and in with the venture-backed, slickly marketed, innovative new companies selling the silent drones, surveillance software, and cheap missiles of 21st-century combat. But this consensus has unexpectedly run into the teeth of the only conflict in America as deep as the divide between Republicans and Democrats. I am referring, of course, to the decades-old feud between Venture Capital dreamers and their elder cousins, by-the-numbers Private Equity tycoons, the rivalrous twin engines of the red-hot private capital markets.” (11/03/25)