May 19, 2026

What Breaks When You Build AI Under Sovereignty Constraints - Bilge Yücel, deepset GmbH

Bilge Yücel explains that true AI sovereignty is a technical challenge, not just a policy issue, built on four pillars: data, model, infrastructure, and operations. This talk explores the common pitfalls of retrofitting sovereignty—from performance regressions after swapping models to discovering deep vendor lock-in when moving on-prem—and presents a checklist for building genuinely sovereign systems.

Mar 13, 2026

Under Secretary of War on Iran, Anthropic and the AI Battle Inside the Pentagon | The a16z Show

Emil Michael, a key figure in the Department of Defense, outlines his strategy for modernizing the department by prioritizing Applied AI. He details the risks discovered in existing commercial AI contracts, which led to a vendor-lock crisis, and explains how the DoD is reforming its procurement processes to better engage with innovative startups and ensure technology serves national security interests without restrictive terms.