Emil Michael was exuberant.

In just six months as the Pentagon’s new technology chief, he had met with more than 100 start-ups, he told podcaster Molly O’Shea in December, scouring the tech world for companies that could build cheaper, smarter and smaller weaponry to power the future of war. “My job,” he added, is to incubate a fleet of new companies that could rival the likes of Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and other “older primes,” remaking “the whole architecture” of the military. READ MORE