Dear OODA Network Members, 

For those who made it to OODAcon, thank you! Was great catching up with so many from the network in person. For those whose travel and business could not allow your attendance, we will be capturing as many insights as we can in the coming weeks, including processing and posting video from most sessions. There were also many cross-cutting issues the day highlighted that we will capture in writing.

Prior to the main event we had a networking reception at Carahsoft, which has proven to be a great way to build relationships in the community and start working the big topics we all need to track. After the event we had another networking reception to keep discussion going on the issues. Then that led to many smaller gatherings that lasted well into the night.  The day after a smaller group of members continued strategizing and did a bit of brainstorming on how to continuously improve the event as well as discuss how to improve our research and reporting. This is a topic we always love getting input on (if you could not make it and have comments or guidance for the big topics you would like to see more on please reply to this note and let us know your thoughts).

While most of us were meeting others on the OODA team continued to track global issues. We summarize them below. 

Every day in our OODA Daily Pulse our analysts summarize stories in tech, cybersecurity and geopolitics. Scan all tech, cyber and geopolitical news at: https://oodaloop.com/briefs-archive/ Here is a review of topics we covered this week: 

Geopolitical developments
Battlefield lessons from Ukraine are reshaping force design: the Pentagon’s new overhaul will fast-track tens of thousands of cheap drones and streamline procurement as the U.S. Army targets industrialized small-UAS output and embraces 3D-printed, front-line manufacturing. In the Indo-Pacific, Taiwan rejected “one country, two systems,” pledged a “T-Dome” integrated air/anti-drone shield and higher defense spend, and reported fresh PRC pressure tactics (new “Taiwan Restoration” holiday, carrier Strait transit); Japan faced coalition turmoil and accelerated subsea-cable security, while North Korea showcased a new hypersonic system and fired additional SRBMs. Cross-border tensions persisted as Pakistan and Afghanistan cycled from deadly raids and suicide attacks to talks in Istanbul, and Nigeria saw renewed ambushes and mass-casualty incidents amid service-chief changes. Elsewhere, ceasefires in Myanmar (China-mediated) contrasted with RSF atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur; Cameroon, Tanzania, Morocco and Peru grappled with Gen-Z-led or post-election protests and internet curbs; and severe disasters struck PNG, Vietnam and the Philippines. Trade and tech geopolitics intensified: China added rare-earth/APIs leverage, tariff ripostes on U.S. shipping, PLA purges, and curbs on Western telco kit—while Washington and Beijing intermittently explored tariff truces.

Technology developments
Defense autonomy and space logistics advanced: Saronic and NVIDIA formed a strategic collaboration to accelerate Physical-AI maritime platforms; Impulse Space proposed a Helios-plus-lander stack to deliver ~3 tons per mission to the lunar surface; Kratos will use Hermeus’ Quarterhorse for MACH-TB hypersonic testbeds; and Blue Water Autonomy tapped Conrad Shipyard to mass-produce unmanned surface vessels. Humanoid and mobile manipulation momentum continued (Humanoid’s HMND 01 Alpha; low-cost Chinese “family” bots), even as industry voices cautioned against overhyping home helpers. AI infrastructure scaled at breakneck pace, Meta’s ~$30B Hyperion financing, CoreWeave’s multibillion OpenAI and Meta capacity deals, Amazon’s $11B Indiana AI campus, and xAI’s gigawatt “Colossus 2”, while chip alliances and bets proliferated (NVIDIA’s spree across Wayve/Dyna/CrowdStrike, Intel–SambaNova talks). On model and agent fronts: OpenAI launched Aardvark (GPT-5-powered autonomous security research) and richer Sora “character cameos”; Anthropic’s Claude Skills packaged task-specific abilities for the enterprise; Microsoft added Copilot Groups and “real talk”; Perplexity rolled out a patent-research agent; Adobe, Salesforce and Google pushed B2B and browser-integrated assistants. Quantum crossed from lab to line: Google’s “Willow” achieved repeatable advantage-style performance, IBM ran a key QC algorithm on AMD CPUs, Cisco announced long-haul quantum-class networking, IonQ secured $2B, and multiple deployments (OQC NYC, Advantage2 in Europe) paired QC with AI superchips, while grid-scale power constraints drove fusion (DeepMind–CFS), thermodynamic AI chips (Extropic) and nuclear builds.

Cybersecurity developments
AI browsers and agentic workflows emerged as a prime risk: researchers showed that a few hundred poisoned artifacts can implant LLM backdoors; prompt-injection in Atlas/Edge-Copilot-style features and indirect attacks via screenshots or logs make “AI time bombs” a realistic threat. Threat tempo stayed high across critical infrastructure, Russian-linked activity against Texas cooperatives; Canada warning of ICS tampering at water/energy sites; Denmark/Germany/French bases disrupted by drones; and Ribbon Communications (backbone telecom) compromise, while data exposure mounted (Conduent, WestJet, Harrods/Merkle, Discord, DraftKings). Software-supply-chain risk persisted with the “Shai-Hulud” NPM worm (180+ packages) and new infostealer campaigns (100k downloads), alongside actively exploited flaws in Adobe Commerce, Rust TAR parsing, Microsoft SMB client, Apple/Kentico and VMware/Aria/NSX/vCenter. On defense-side innovation, OpenAI’s Aardvark and BreachRx Mobile Command point to AI-augmented blue-team operations, but nation-state pressure and compliance sensitivities rose, China’s customs crackdowns on NVIDIA chips and demand for U.S. chipmaker data, plus FCC actions to bar high-risk telcos. Bottom line: lock down agent integrations, enforce content provenance and model guardrails, accelerate PQC pilots, and exercise cyber-physical incident playbooks that assume blended drone, cloud, and ICS attack paths.

For a directory of all OODA analysis see: https://oodaloop.com/analysis/

OODA Loop’s latest analysis was mostly centered on topics adjacent to OODAcon, including research on key elements of forces behind technological acceleration, strategic competition, and emerging architectures of power. This year’s OODAcon theme, Accelerating Disruptive Technologies, calls for new frameworks to manage innovation moving at double-exponential speed, from AI to de-dollarization. Modern defense investment now treats acquisition speed as a strategic weapon, compressing the cycle from prototype to deployment to stay ahead of adversaries. Panels like Architecting for Emergence will explore how enterprises can govern and secure operations increasingly run by autonomous AI agents. Bill Hagestad’s RedDragon1949 highlights how China’s military is racing ahead in intelligentized and cognitive warfare, fusing AI with information dominance. Meanwhile, zero-trust hardware practices centered on Hardware Bills of Materials (HBOMs) are emerging as the foundation of secure global supply chains. Across subsea and orbital frontiers, data centers are becoming instruments of AI sovereignty and geopolitical influence. OODAcon’s quantum sessions will separate genuine breakthroughs from hype, while DARPA’s AI Cyber Challenge proved that generative and agentic AI can autonomously defend complex systems. Collectively, these developments reveal a world where acceleration itself has become the strategic domain, demanding foresight, speed, and imagination to compete.

This week’s research and analysis includes:  

• The Architecture of Acceleration: From Double Exponential AI to De-dollarization
  This year’s OODAcon theme is Accelerating Disruptive Technologies, recognizing that the pace of technological advancement demands new frameworks for assessing, adopting and scaling innovation.
• Exponential Innovation and National Security Investment: Updating the Defense Industrial Base Acceleration Playbook
  Outpacing fast-moving adversaries requires procurement built for speed. Across the U.S. national‑security enterprise, acquisition has been reframed as a strategic capability—compressing timelines from prototype to fielded capability.
• Architecting for Emergence: AI Agents and Enterprise Design
  The OODAcon 2025 panel “From Automation to Autonomy: Navigating the Next Wave of AI Agents,” led by experts Josh Devon, Thomas Quinn, David Ginn, Josh Ray, and Andy Black, will confront a defining question for enterprise leaders: how to operate (and secure) organizations run by autonomous AI agents.
• Bill Hagestad’s RedDragon1949: “China’s Networked and Intelligent Warfare Strategy Is Accelerating”
  According to Bill Hagestad at RedDragon1949, China is rapidly transitioning from legacy informationized warfare to intelligentized, AI-driven, cognitive warfare — reshaping the future of strategic competition.
• What Do You Know About HBOM? Zero-Trust Hardware Starts With Provenance
  The hardware supply chain is a clear front in the global competition to control (or at least heavily influence) the global IT supply chain — and Hardware Bills of Materials (HBOMs) are emerging as the critical tool for transparency and risk reduction.
• Subsea, Space, and AI Sovereign Power: A Future That Does Not Suffer from a Failure of Imagination
  The global race to expand AI compute is pushing data centers underwater, into orbit, and adjacent to new energy sources — reshaping critical infrastructure and geopolitical risk.
• The Reality of Quantum Innovation: Examine what is real and what is hype at OODAcon
  This post is a reference designed to help you make the most of discussions on quantum, both at OODAcon and beyond
• Lessons Learned about Offensive AI: The DARPA AI Cyber Challenge (AIxCC) and Team Atlanta’s Victory
  This summer at DEFCON 33, DARPA’s 2025 AI Cyber Challenge showcased how generative and agentic AI can autonomously find and fix vulnerabilities in complex software systems.

We maintain an online calendar of events for your reference at: https://oodaloop.com/events/ 

Coming events include: 

• 21 Nov OODA Network Meeting
• 19 Dec OODA Network Meeting

Thanks for your support!

Matt Devost, Bob Gourley, and the OODA Loop team