Venture capitalist Finn Murphy believes world leaders could soon resort to deflecting sunlight into space if the Earth gets unbearably hot. That’s why he’s invested more than $1 million in Stardust Solutions, a leading solar geoengineering firm that’s developing a system to reduce warming by enveloping the globe in reflective particles. Murphy isn’t rooting for climate catastrophe. But with global temperatures soaring and the political will to limit climate change waning, Stardust “can be worth tens of billions of dollars,” he said. “It would be definitely better if we lost all our money and this wasn’t necessary,” said Murphy, the 33-year-old founder of Nebular, a New York investment fund named for a vast cloud of space dust and gas. Murphy is among a new wave of investors who are putting millions of dollars into emerging companies that aim to limit the amount of sunlight reaching the Earth — while also potentially destabilizing weather patterns, food supplies and global politics. He has a degree in mathematics and mechanical engineering and views global warming not just as a human and political tragedy, but as a technical challenge with profitable solutions. Solar geoengineering investors are generally young, pragmatic and imaginative — and willing to lean into the adventurous side of venture capitalism. They often shrug off the concerns of scientists who argue it’s inherently risky to fund the development of potentially dangerous technologies through wealthy investors who could only profit if the planet-cooling systems are deployed. “If the technology works and the outcomes are positive without really catastrophic downstream impacts, these are trillion-dollar market opportunities,” said Evan Caron, a co-founder of the energy-focused venture firm Montauk Capital. “So it’s a no-brainer for an investor to take a shot at some of these.” More than 50 financial firms, wealthy individuals and government agencies have collectively provided more than $115.8 million to nine startups whose technology could be used to limit sunlight, according to interviews with VCs, tech company founders and analysts, as well as private investment data analyzed by POLITICO’s E&E News. That pool of funders includes Silicon Valley’s Sequoia Capital, one of the world’s largest venture capital firms, and four other investment groups that have more than $1 billion of assets under management. Of the total amount invested in the geoengineering sector, $75 million went to Stardust, or nearly 65 percent. The U.S.-Israeli startup is developing reflective particles and the means to spray and monitor them in the stratosphere, some 11 miles above the planet’s surface. At least three other climate-intervention companies have also raked in at least $5 million. The cash infusion is a bet on planet-cooling technologies that many political leaders, investors and environmentalists still consider taboo. In addition to having unknown side effects, solar geoengineering could expose the planet to what scientists call “termination shock,” a scenario in which global temperatures soar if the cooling technologies fail or are suddenly abandoned. Still, the funding surge for geoengineering companies pales in comparison to the billions of dollars being put toward artificial intelligence. OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has raised $62.5 billion in 2025 alone, according to investment data compiled by PitchBook. The investment pool for solar geoengineering startups is relatively shallow in part because governments haven’t determined how they would regulate the technology — something Stardust is lobbying to change. As a result, the emerging sector is seen as too speculative for most venture capital firms, according to Kim Zou, the CEO of Sightline Climate, a market intelligence firm. VCs mostly work on behalf of wealthy individuals, as well as pension funds, university endowments and other institutional investors. “It’s still quite a niche set of investors that are even thinking about or looking at the geoengineering space,” Zou said. “The climate tech and energy tech investors we speak to still don’t really see there being an investable opportunity there, primarily because there’s no commercial market for it today.” AEROSOLS IN THE STRATOSPHERE Stardust and its investors are banking on signing contracts with one or more governments that could deploy its solar geoengineering system as soon as the end of the decade. Those investors include Lowercarbon Capital, a climate-focused firm co-founded by billionaire VC Chris Sacca, and Exor, the holding company of an Italian industrial dynasty and perhaps the most mainstream investment group to back a sunlight reflection startup. Even Stardust’s supporters acknowledge that the company is far from a sure bet. “It’s unique in that there is not currently demand for this solution,” said Murphy, whose firm is also supporting out-there startups seeking to build robots and data centers in space. “You have to go and create the product in order to potentially facilitate the demand.” Lowercarbon partner Ryan Orbuch said the firm would see a return on its Stardust investment only “in the context of an actual customer who can actually back many years of stable, safe deployment.” Exor, another Stardust investor, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Other startups are trying to develop commercial markets for solar geoengineering. Make Sunsets, a company funded by billionaire VC Tim Draper, releases sulfate-filled weather balloons that pop when they reach the stratosphere. It sells cooling credits to individuals and corporations based on the theory that the sulfates can reliably reduce warming. There are questions, however, about the science and economics underpinning the credit system of Make Sunsets, according to the investment bank Jeffries. “A cooling credit market is unlikely to be viable,” the bank said in a May 2024 note to clients. That’s because the temperature reductions produced by sulfate aerosols vary by altitude, location and season, the note explained. And the warming impacts of carbon dioxide emissions last decades — much longer than any cooling that would be created from a balloon’s worth of sulfate. Make Sunsets didn’t respond to a request for comment. The company has previously attracted the attention of regulators in the U.S. and Mexico, who have claimed it began operating without the necessary government approvals. Draper Associates says on its website that it’s “shaping a future where the impossible becomes everyday reality.” The firm has previously backed successful consumer tech firms like Tesla, Skype and Hotmail. “It is getting hotter in the Summer everywhere,” Tim Draper said in an email. “We should be encouraging every solution. I love this team, and the science works.” THE NEXT FRONTIER One startup is pursuing space-based solar geoengineering. EarthGuard is attempting to build a series of large sunlight deflectors that would be positioned between the sun and the planet, some 932,000 miles from the Earth. The company did not respond to emailed questions. Other space companies are considering geoengineering as a side project. That includes Gama, a French startup that’s designing massive solar sails that could be used for deep space travel or as a planetary sunshade, and Ethos Space, a Los Angeles company with plans to industrialize the moon. Both companies are part of an informal research network established by the Planetary Sunshade Foundation, a nonprofit advocating for the development of a trillion-dollar parasol for the globe. The network mainly brings together collaborators on the sidelines of space industry conferences, according to Gama CEO Andrew Nutter. “We’re willing to contribute something if we realize it’s genuinely necessary and it’s a better solution than other solutions” to the climate challenge, Nutter said of the space shade concept. “But our business model does not depend on it. If you have dollar signs hanging next to something, that can bias your decisions on what’s best for the planet.” Nutter said Gama has raised about $5 million since he co-founded the company in 2020. Its investors include Possible Ventures, a German VC firm that’s also financing a nuclear fusion startup and says on its website that the firm is “relentlessly optimistic — choosing to focus on the possibilities rather than obsess over the risks.” Possible Ventures did not respond to a request for comment. Sequoia-backed Reflect Orbital is another space startup that’s exploring solar geoengineering as a potential moneymaker. The company based near Los Angeles is developing a network of satellite mirrors that would direct sunlight down to the Earth at night for lighting industrial sites or, eventually, producing solar energy. Its space mirrors, if oriented differently, could also be used for limiting the amount of sun rays that reach the planet. “It’s not so much a technological limitation as much as what has the highest, best impact. It’s more of a business decision,” said Ally Stone, Reflect Orbital’s chief strategy officer. “It’s a matter of looking at each satellite as an opportunity and whether, when it’s over a specific geography, that makes more sense to reflect sunlight towards or away from the Earth.” Reflect Orbital has raised nearly $28.7 million from investors including Lux Capital, a firm that touts its efforts to “turn sci-fi into sci-fact” and has invested in the autonomous defense systems companies Anduril and Saildrone.” Sequoia and Lux didn’t respond to requests for comment. The startup hopes to send its first satellite into space next summer, according to Stone. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose aerospace company already has an estimated fleet of more than 8,800 internet satellites in orbit, has also suggested using the circling network to limit sunlight. “A large solar-powered AI satellite constellation would be able to prevent global warming by making tiny adjustments in how much solar energy reached Earth,” Musk wrote on X last month. Neither he nor SpaceX responded to an emailed request for comment. DON’T CALL IT GEOENGINEERING Other sunlight-reflecting startups are entering the market — even if they’d rather not be seen as solar geoengineering companies. Arctic Reflections is a two-year-old company that wants to reduce global warming by increasing Arctic sea ice, which doesn’t absorb as much heat as open water. The Dutch startup hasn’t yet pursued outside investors. “We see this not necessarily as geo-engineering, but rather as climate adaptation,” CEO Fonger Ypma said in an email. “Just like in reforestation projects, people help nature in growing trees, our idea is that we would help nature in growing ice.” The main funder of Arctic Reflections is the British government’s independent Advanced Research and Invention Agency. In May, ARIA awarded $4.41 million to the company — more than four times what it had raised to that point. Another startup backed by ARIA is Voltitude, which is developing micro balloons to monitor geoengineering from the stratosphere. The U.K.-based company didn’t respond to a request for comment. Altogether, the British agency is supporting 22 geoengineering projects, only a handful of which involve startups. “ARIA is only funding fundamental research through this programme, and has not taken an equity stake in any geoengineering companies,” said Mark Symes, a program director at the agency. It also requires that all research it supports “must be published, including those that rule out approaches by showing they are unsafe or unworkable.” Sunscreen is a new startup that is trying to limit sunlight in localized areas. It was founded earlier this year by Stanford University graduate student Solomon Kim. “We are pioneering the use of targeted, precision interventions to mitigate the destructive impacts of heatwave on critical United States infrastructure,” Kim said in an email. But he was emphatic that “we are not geoengineering” since the cooling impacts it’s pursuing are not large scale. Kim declined to say how much had been raised by Sunscreen and from what sources. As climate change and its impacts continue to worsen, Zou of Sightline Climate expects more investors to consider solar geoengineering startups, including deep-pocketed firms and corporations interested in the technology. Without their help, the startups might not be able to develop their planet-cooling systems. “People are feeling like, well wait a second, our backs are kind of starting to get against the wall. Time is ticking, we’re not really making a ton of progress” on decarbonization, she said. “So I do think there’s a lot more questions getting asked right now in the climate tech and venture community around understanding it,” Zou said of solar geoengineering. “Some of these companies and startups and venture deals are also starting to bring more light into the space.” Karl Mathiesen contributed reporting.

LONDON — The British government said it opposes attempts to cool the planet by spraying millions of tons of dust into the atmosphere — but did not close the door to a debate on regulating the technology.  The comments in parliament Thursday came after a POLITICO investigation revealed an Israeli-U.S. company Stardust Solutions aimed to be capable of deploying solar radiation modification, as the technology is called, inside this decade. “We’re not in favor of solar radiation modification given the uncertainty around the potential risks it poses to the climate and environment,” Leader of the House of Commons Alan Campbell said on behalf of the government. Stardust has recently raised $60 million in finance from venture capital investors, mostly based in Silicon Valley and Britain. It is the largest ever investment in the field.  The emergence of a well-funded, private sector actor moving aggressively toward planet cooling capability has led to calls for the global community to regulate the field.  Citing POLITICO’s reporting, Labour MP Sarah Coombes asked the government: “Given the potential risks of this technology, could we have a debate on how Britain will work with other countries to regulate experiments with the earth’s atmosphere, and ensure we cooperate with other countries on solutions that actually tackle the root cause of climate change?” Campbell signaled the government was open to further discussion of the issue by inviting Coombes to raise the point the next time Technology Secretary Liz Kendall took questions in parliament.  Stardust’s CEO Yanai Yedvab told POLITICO the company was also in favor of regulation to ensure the technology was deployed safely and after proper public debate. Some scientists and experts, though, have raised concerns about the level of secrecy under which the company has conducted its research.  Stardust is proposing to use high-flying aircraft to dump millions of tons of a proprietary particle into the stratosphere, around 12 miles above the Earth’s surface. The technology mimics the short term global cooling that occurs when volcanoes blow dust and gas high into the sky, blocking a small amount of the sun’s heat.  Most scientists agree this could temporarily lower the Earth’s surface temperature, helping to avert some impacts of global warming. The side effects, however, are not well researched.  The U.K. has one of the world’s best funded research programs looking at the impacts of its potential use, via its Advanced Research and Invention Agency.  “We do work closely with the international research community to evaluate the latest scientific evidence,” said Campbell.   POLITICO has meanwhile been blocked from receiving internal government advice on solar radiation modification. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has refused to release the documents, arguing this would have a “chilling effect” on the candor of advice by officials to ministers.  In a response to a records request, DESNZ Director of International Climate Matt Toombs said: “Our priority is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from human activities and to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Any research into cooling technologies in no way alleviates the urgent need for increased decarbonization efforts.” Stardust boss Yedvab said: “We are very happy to see policymakers engaging with this issue and making it clear that robust regulations are needed. “Stardust will deploy its technology only within an adequate regulatory framework established by governments. “Starting early next year we’ll disclose in peer-reviewed scientific publications all the details of our solution, including the evidence substantiating the safety of our particles, for the review of the scientific community.”

CLIMATEWIRE | A once-outlandish idea for reversing global warming took a major step toward reality Friday when Israeli-U.S. startup Stardust Solutions announced the largest-ever fundraising round for any company that aims to cool the Earth by spraying particles into the atmosphere. Its plan to limit the sun’s heat raised $60 million from a broad coalition of investors that included Silicon Valley luminaries and the Agnelli family, an Italian industrial dynasty. The disclosure, critics said, raises questions about involvement of venture capital firms in driving forward a largely untested, thinly researched and mostly unregulated technology that could disrupt global weather patterns and trigger geopolitical conflict. The investors were “putting their trust in the concept of, we need a safe and responsible and controlled option for sunlight reflection, which for me is [a] very important step forward in the evolution of this field,” Stardust CEO Yanai Yedvab said during an interview this week in POLITICO’s London office. He and co-founder Amyad Spector, who also flew in for the interview, are both nuclear physicists who formerly worked for the Israeli government. The startup’s fundraising haul was led by Lowercarbon Capital, a Wyoming-based climate technology-focused firm co-founded by billionaire investor Chris Sacca. It was also backed by the Agnellis’ firm Exor, a Dutch holding company that is the largest shareholder of Chrysler parent company Stellantis, luxury sports car manufacturer Ferrari and Italy’s Juventus Football Club. Ten other firms — hailing from San Francisco to Berlin — and one individual, former Facebook executive Matt Cohler, also joined Stardust’s fundraising round, its second since being founded two years ago. The firm has now raised a total of $75 million. It is registered in the U.S. state of Delaware and headquartered outside Tel Aviv but is not affiliated with the state of Israel. The surge of investor enthusiasm for Stardust comes amid stalled political efforts in Washington and other capitals to reduce the use of oil, gas and coal — the main drivers of climate change. Meanwhile, global temperatures continue to climb to new heights, worsening wildfires, floods, droughts and other natural disasters that some U.S. policymakers have baselessly blamed on solar geoengineering. The new influx of cash is four times the size of the startup’s initial fundraising round and, Yedvab argued, represents a major vote of confidence in Stardust and its strategy to land government contracts for deploying its technology at a global scale. It also shows that a growing pool of investors are willing to bet on solar geoengineering — a technology that some scientists still consider too dangerous to even study. Even advocates of researching solar geoengineering question the wisdom of pursuing it via a for-profit company like Stardust. “They have convinced Silicon Valley [venture capitalists] to give them a lot of money, and I would say that they shouldn’t have,” said Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School and author of the book “Geoengineering: The Gamble.” “I don’t think it is a reasonable path to suggest that there’s going to be somebody — the U.S. government, another government, whoever — who buys Stardust, buys the [intellectual property] for a billion bucks [and] makes the VC investors gazillions. I don’t think that is, at all, reasonable.” Lowercarbon Capital did not respond to emailed questions. Stardust claims to have created a particle that would reflect sunlight in the same way debris from volcanic eruptions can temporarily cool the planet. The company says its powder is inert, wouldn’t accumulate in humans or ecosystems, and can’t harm the ozone layer or create acid rain like the sulfur-rich particles from volcanoes. It plans to seek government contracts to manufacture, disperse and monitor the particles in the stratosphere. The company is in the process of securing patents and preparing academic papers on its integrated solar geoengineering system. The startup would use the money it has raised to begin “controlled outdoor experiments” as soon as April, Yedvab told POLITICO. Those tests would release the company’s reflective particles inside a modified plane flying about 11 miles (18 kilometers) above sea level. The idea, Yedvab explained, is that “instead of displacing the particles out to the stratosphere and start following them, to do the other way around — to suck air from the stratosphere and to conduct in situ experiments, without dispersing essentially.” He said the company could have raised more money but only sought the funding it believes is necessary for the initial stratospheric testing. Stardust only took cash from investors who are aligned with the company’s cautious approach, he added. The fundraising round wasn’t conducted “from a point of view of, let’s get as much money as we can, but rather to say, this is what we need” to advance the technology, Yedvab said. Stardust’s new investors include the U.S. firms Future Ventures, Never Lift Ventures, Starlight Ventures, Nebular and Lauder Partners, as well as the British groups Attestor, Kindred Capital and Orion Global Advisors. Future Positive Capital of Paris and Berlin’s Earth.now also joined the fundraising round. Corbin Hiar reported from Washington. Karl Mathiesen reported from London.

BRUSSELS — As Europe prepares to enter a new technology race, the hurdles it faces to beat out the U.S. and China are all too familiar. After rapidly falling behind in the global rush to artificial intelligence, Brussels has a fresh chance at an economic success story in the emerging field of quantum technology. But in a new strategy to be released Wednesday, the EU will warn that promising homegrown quantum tech risks being snatched up to make money abroad as the bloc continues to lag in turning research into “real-market opportunities,” according to a draft seen by POLITICO. “Europe attracts only five percent of the global private quantum funding, compared to over 50 percent captured by the U.S. and 40 percent by China,” the undated draft read. Governments and technology companies — most notably in the U.S. — are plowing billions into the quantum wave, which would be revolutionary because quantum computers would surpass the problem-solving capacities of current computers by vast orders of magnitude, revolutionizing industries from communications to drug development. Europe is the global leader in the number of scientific publications on the technology. “Europe has been falling behind [when it] comes to the technology in many sectors. This sector is something where we are several years ahead of other countries,” said Juha Vartiainen, co-founder of the Finnish quantum computing company IQM. But in the race to commercialize that research, Europe risks falling behind quickly, ranking only third in patents filed, behind the U.S. and China. To many, it’s déjà vu. Europe is generally best in class in the research that precedes revolutionary technologies, as it was in artificial intelligence. But the U.S. and China leapfrogged the continent in building the companies to deploy mass-market applications. A major point of debate is whether Europe will give its quantum industry free rein. Quantum computers are considered sensitive technology since they are expected to break the digital encryption that protects data and communications from being surveilled and stolen — making the technology a matter of national security. Several European governments have already imposed export restrictions. CASH FLOW PROBLEMS U.S. tech giant IBM recently announced it expects to have the first workable quantum computer by 2029 — adding urgency to the timeline for Europe to get its house in order. For decades, Europe has failed to overcome its fragmented financial market and pool funding on the scale that the U.S. and China can provide. Efforts to overcome the barriers to investment through a bloc-wide capital markets union have yielded no significant outcomes. U.S. tech giant IBM recently announced it expects to have the first workable quantum computer by 2029 — adding urgency to the timeline for Europe to get its house in order. | Anna Szilagyi/EPA The strategy notes significantly more investment will be needed to roll out reliable technology that is widely adopted by several industries. “Raising a scale-up in Europe is super difficult, because we lack the European instruments, the European venture capital … large enough to support that,” said Enrique Lizaso, CEO of Spanish software company Multiverse Computing, which is crossing quantum-inspired software applications with artificial intelligence. Multiverse last month raised €189 million in a funding round that included both U.S.-based and European investors. Lizaso said that if Europe wants to help scale its companies it must be prepared to invest €100 million per company, “which is what you’re going to have from the U.S.” According to IQM’s Vartiainen, “we would need to have funding levels which are significantly larger than they have been so far.” In an interview Tuesday, the EU’s tech commissioner Henna Virkkunen said that Brussels and the capitals have jointly funded quantum technology with €11 billion. “Now it’s important, because we are quite fragmented, that we are putting different dots together,” she said. PICKING WINNERS Both Brussels and EU capitals have rolled out public funding plans to complement private funding, but the industry fears these are insufficient and lack focus. Europe’s approach has been to be “technology-neutral” and fund several strands of quantum technology, Vartiainen said, but spreading out funding can dilute its impact. Europe should follow the U.S. example of unlocking larger investments for focused “challenges,” he said. Under a program led by the U.S. government’s DARPA defense research agency, 18 companies have been selected as part of a larger bid to come up with an error-free quantum computer by 2033. Those companies could reportedly tap up to $300 million if they pass all the stages. The EU’s draft strategy promises to launch “two grand challenges” between 2025 and 2027, with one focused on quantum computing and another on quantum navigation systems in “critical environments.” Another way for governments to support companies to commercialize the technology would be if they are the primary buyers of technology, which then lowers the bar for the industry to follow suit. Some industry voices have warned that the EU’s approach to regulating AI offers a cautionary tale. | Etienne Laurent/EPA The draft strategy said the Commission would “support innovation-oriented procurement schemes,” but didn’t offer much detail on how it would do so. Companies are adamant on what they don’t want from Brussels: regulation and restrictions on quantum technology, like restrictions on the export of the technology. Some industry voices have warned that the EU’s approach to regulating AI offers a cautionary tale. Worried about the potential harms of the technology, the EU rolled out the world’s first AI rulebook, only to quickly backtrack to focus on AI innovation and commercial success. “We cannot afford to regulate what is not yet mature,” said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, director general of DigitalEurope, one of Brussels’ leading tech lobbies. “Otherwise, Europe risks losing the quantum race.”

PARIS ― European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Monday slammed U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign against American higher education as she unveiled a half-billion-euro plan to attract foreign researchers. “The role of science in today’s world is questioned. The investment in fundamental, free and open research is questioned. What a gigantic miscalculation,” von der Leyen said. “Science has no passport, no gender, no ethnicity or political party.” Appearing alongside French President Emmanuel Macron at Paris’ storied Sorbonne University on Monday, von der Leyen said the “Choose Europe for Science” initiative would put forward a €500 million program from 2025 to 2027 to attract foreign researchers to “help support the best and the brightest researchers and scientists from Europe and around the world. “ Several speakers at the event hit out at Trump’s efforts to gut federal research funding and threats to cut funding to universities like Harvard to the tune of billions of dollars over conservative criticisms of higher education and allegations of antisemitism on campuses. Both French Minister of Higher Education Philippe Baptiste and Robert Proctor, a prominent professor of the history of science at Stanford, called what’s happening across the Atlantic a “reverse enlightenment.”  The head of the European executive did not name-check American researchers or Trump, but her targets were clear. She even framed her speech around the story of Marie Curie — the groundbreaking, Nobel Prize-winning scientist who fled Russian-occupied Poland for France.  Von der Leyen also announced she would put forward a “European Innovation Act” and a “Startup and Scaleup Strategy” to cut red tape and boost access to venture capital to help turn innovative science into business opportunities. She added that she wants EU countries to spend 3 percent of their gross domestic product on research by 2030.

President Donald Trump’s pick for deputy Defense secretary declined to say Russia invaded Ukraine when pressed Tuesday by senators and defended massive Pentagon firings — a sign he’s unlikely to challenge the dramatic changes underway at the department. Stephen Feinberg, a Trump donor and billionaire investor, told lawmakers during his confirmation hearing that he didn’t want to “speak out of turn” and undermine the president’s negotiations. The hearing for the Pentagon’s No. 2 offered a stunning split screen. Democrats pushed Feinberg on Trump’s controversial purge of top military officials, a reshuffle of the next military budget proposal and the layoffs of thousands of civilian employees. Republicans sidestepped the developments, instead asking low-key questions about accelerating innovation and expanding shipbuilding. “This was a Russian invasion of Ukraine, and at the highest levels of our government right now, we have folks who won’t speak the truth,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said. “It is important that we not let these things just pass by unremarked upon.” Feinberg’s reluctance to acknowledge Russia as the aggressor in the three-year war occurred amid Trump’s recent criticisms of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and discussions with Russia about peace talks that exclude Kyiv. He’s the latest administration ally to avoid questions about the war’s perpetrator. “I’m not privy to the details of the negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, what the sensitivities are, what the president’s trying to accomplish — so I’d be afraid to speak out of turn and undermine that,” Feinberg said. “I do have confidence that the president is very skillful at this, and he’ll find the right way to help the United States.” The CEO of Cerberus Capital Management, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee, also defended the administration’s plans for a dramatic culling of thousands of Pentagon employees. “We have more than 900,000 civilian employees, so while every person counts and is, of course very important, there’s going to be some change,” he said, adding that job cuts would likely stem from voluntary retirements and exits. Feinberg said he would devise a “concrete, specific, granular plan.” Senate Armed Services ranking member Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and other Democrats argued indiscriminate cuts would undercut national security and cripple the military. “When you’ve run companies, have you ever walked in and fired thousands of people without any analysis of the cost of benefits?” Reed asked. Feinberg didn’t answer directly but framed the move as an efficiency effort. “In these kinds of reorganizations, there’s always turnover, and without turnover, you can’t become an efficient organization,” he said. Republicans largely avoided the layoffs, except for Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), who commended the Trump team’s willingness to “make hard cuts” and take on the national debt. Democrats pushed Feinberg to weigh in on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s involvement at the Pentagon. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) solicited Feinberg’s pledge to protect classified information at the Defense Department in the wake of DOGE’s apparent access to sensitive personal data from other federal agencies. On this, he agreed. “We have to follow the laws, and you can’t allow classified data that is not legal to be in other people’s hands,” he said. “We’ll make sure that transfer, if it happens, is done by the appropriate ways.” Democrats also asked Feinberg to reconcile Hegseth’s directive to cut 8 percent from the Pentagon budget with congressional efforts to increase defense spending by $150 billion. “I don’t think the cuts haven’t been determined, so I think there’s a chance to make them correctly,” he said. Feinberg said that — with an eye on China — he planned to tackle ammunition shortages, prioritize hypersonic weapons, enlarge the Pentagon’s venture capital arm and expand its adoption of autonomous vehicles.

President Donald Trump fired Chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. C.Q. Brown on Friday night, and said he intends to dismiss the Navy’s top admiral and the Air Force’s second in command — an unprecedented shakeup of the Pentagon’s top brass that will trigger ripple effects throughout the military. Trump, in a Truth Social post, said he was nominating retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Dan “Razin” Caine to take Brown’s place. Caine is a partner at Shield Capital, a venture capital firm. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, minutes later, said in a statement that he is “requesting nominations” for replacements for Chief of Naval Operations Lisa Franchetti and Air Force Vice Chief Gen. James Slife. The Pentagon chief also said he was also looking for new nominations for senior judicial officers — the services’ top lawyers — for the Army, Navy and Air Force. The firings wipe away decades of military experience and could create a cascade of hasty promotions down the ranks that impact U.S. leadership across the globe. Brown’s firing became public while he was in Texas visiting troops on the southern border, and days after he huddled with European allies at a defense leaders summit in Germany. Franchetti learned of her firing in a call from Hegseth on Friday night. Both had been historic picks. Franchetti was the first woman to serve on the joint chiefs. Brown — who was tapped by Trump to be the Air Force’s top officer in 2020 before ascending to the military’s top job under former President Joe Biden — had been just the second Black chair. Brown’s four-year term would have run through September 2027, although Trump has the authority to remove him. Such a decision, though, exposes a lack of confidence in the current crop of military leaders and signals to officials that they can be fired at any time. “Well fuck,” said one defense official caught off-guard by the news. Trump and Hegseth offered little justification for the dramatic firings. But the Pentagon chief said it was part of an effort to put in place “new leadership that will focus our military on its core mission of deterring, fighting and winning wars.” Brown has long been a target of congressional Republicans who accused the Pentagon of prioritizing diversity and inclusion programs over the military’s fundamental tasks. Defense officials have feared for weeks that Trump would remove Brown based on the perception he is out of step with the president on those programs. When Trump urged the Defense Department to crack down on the George Floyd protests in 2020, for example, Brown spoke publicly about the challenges of rising through the military as a Black man. Brown appeared to briefly come back into Trump’s good graces, interacting together at the Army-Navy football game ahead of the inauguration. And on his first day at the Pentagon, Hegseth indicated he supported the military leader. The decision to replace him with Caine is an unusual one. Pulling a former officer from retirement isn’t unprecedented. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld did the same in 2003 so Gen. Peter Schumacher could serve as Army Chief of Staff. But a retired military officer, who like others was granted anonymity to speak frankly about a fast-moving issue, pointed out that a 3-star general has never been nominated as the chairman of the joint chiefs. Trump also has claimed Caine donned a ‘MAGA’ hat during their 2018 meeting in Iraq, which is against military regulations. Senate Armed Services Chair Roger Wicker made no mention of Caine in his Friday night statement congratulating Brown for “his decades of honorable service to our nation.” The move led to an immediate uproar from Democrats on Capitol Hill. “Firing CQ Brown as joint chiefs chair is completely unjustified,” House Armed Services ranking member Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.) said in an X post. “Smart, competent leader to be replaced by a retired 3 star? More weakening of America.” Some Democratic lawmakers ascribed a racial motive to Brown’s firing. Brown “earned his position as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and his firing is a disgrace,” Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s top Democrat, said in an X post. “For this administration, if you are black, qualifications don’t matter … they only see people of color as DEI hires.” But some of Trump’s allies cheered the decision they considered another step toward removing an overemphasis on diversity in the military. “Making our military great again means destroying wokeness and firing the generals that promoted it,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-Ind.), a Senate Armed Services Committee member, said in an X post. “We must refocus on lethality. President Trump is right to clean house!”

Mosa Meat has lodged the European Union’s second application for a cultivated or “lab-grown” meat, specifically a cell-based beef fat, as research and development continues to drive down the cost of the novel food, the Dutch food tech company announced Wednesday. The cultivated fat would be blended with plant-based ingredients to make hamburgers, meatballs, empanadas or bolognese that more closely resemble slaughtered meat in flavor, texture and cooking quality (with a higher melting point that retains juiciness upon frying).   “It’s been a long time in the making,” said CEO Maarten Bosch. Founded in Maastricht in 2016, Mosa has long been a front-runner in the nascent market. Its chief scientific officer, Mark Post, produced the world’s first cultivated beef burger in 2013, a patty that cost €250,000 and was paid for by Google co-founder Sergey Brin.  “We used a lot of very expensive ingredients,” reflected Bosch. “If we produce now, it’s really at restaurant price level,” he told POLITICO. “Not the fast food joints yet, [though] that’s really within sight: it’s more the normal restaurants.” Financially speaking, the novel food has sometimes been perceived as a culinary curio at best and dead investment at worst, with the post-2022 disappearance of venture capital cash shuttering many smaller startups. Achieving price parity is therefore seen as crucial to turning the product into a viable alternative to cheap, subsidized meat.  “That’s really what our product does,” said Bosch, though he emphasized that its climate-friendly credentials are just as important. While energy intensity remains a challenge, the fact it needs practically no land or agrochemical inputs and little water makes cultivated beef much more environmentally sustainable than eating farmed cows. There are a few obstacles, however. Research on cultivating muscle has gone slower than for fat, meaning “we are a bit behind there,” noted the Dutch CEO. Economic volatility doesn’t help the funding space and the EU submission is only the beginning of a one-and-a-half to two-year evaluation. This consists of a nine-month risk assessment by the European Food Safety Authority followed by a seven-month risk management process in which EU countries ultimately vote by qualified majority (at least 55 percent of countries representing 65 percent of the bloc’s population) on whether to allow the product. Politics could easily bleed into the process, with Italy and Hungary already having tried to unilaterally ban the novel food over a mix of ideological and farmer-protecting arguments. Possibly for that reason, when French food tech startup Gourmey filed the first EU request last July, it led with cell-based duck for cruelty-free foie gras.  Bosch says he’s unfazed. “It’s easy to complain, but we just have to deal with what is there.”

LONDON — It’s not about the kind of weapons a military has anymore; it’s the software on which it runs. That’s the pitch with which European artificial intelligence champion Helsing is taking the defense-tech sector by storm, at a time when European governments are hurrying to funnel cash into new military systems and weaponry. “Defense is turning more and more into a software problem,” the company’s co-founder and co-chief executive officer Gundbert Scherf told POLITICO in an interview.  Helsing, headquartered in Munich, Germany, was valued at €4.9 billion in July, just four years after its inception. Its motto, “artificial intelligence to serve our democracies,” is emblematic of the defense-tech industrial complex that has spun out of the war in Ukraine. The company said it processes millions of data from sensors and weapon systems of European militaries to enable “faster and better decisions” by humans and increase the lethality of weapons. So far, it has signed contracts with the British, German, French, Estonian and Ukrainian governments. “You see fighter jets, frigates and satellites, but really, what you have to look at is that each one of those systems produces an unbelievable amount of data,” Scherf said. Despite the upcoming third anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Europe still has gaps in its air and missile defense systems, said Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commander of the United States Army in Europe, during the recent Warsaw Security Forum. Scherf said the bloc needed to achieve “technology leadership” in core areas where it’s falling behind, such as AI, or otherwise be beholden to “our U.S. friends.” Helsing has secured a series of government contracts, including the German Eurofighter Electronic Warfare upgrade with Saab, the AI infrastructure for the Future Combat Air System — a multinational joint initiative between Germany, France and Spain — and Airbus’ future Wingman system. When the company was founded in 2021, ChatGPT hadn’t had its major breakthrough and Russian tanks hadn’t yet invaded Ukraine. Scherf said many in the tech space didn’t want to touch defense.  Google employees famously protested the company’s involvement in a Pentagon program called Project Maven in 2018 that used AI to interpret video imagery to improve the targeting of drone strikes. Other big tech companies struggled with their relationship to military contracts, too. The U.S., Israel and others built up strong links earlier between their militaries and the modern-day tech industries that grew in the internet era. European countries, on the other hand, lack strong programs to invest heavily in innovative defense technology through local tech sectors. Europe still has gaps in its air and missile defense systems, said Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, former commander of the United States Army in Europe. | Gregor Fischer/Getty Images Scherf, who worked in the German Ministry of Defense before starting Helsing, said he thought the only way technology would filter into the European system was if someone was making it. “There was this gap, which structurally nobody could or wanted to solve,” said Scherf. “We didn’t start the company because we thought everybody was going to do this, we started it because we thought nobody was going to do this.” The problem wasn’t talent. In fact, Europe has always had a very strong presence in research and development. Scherf pointed to Microsoft, Google and Amazon all having crucial innovation hubs on the Continent.  The problem was money — and in some ways it still is. Helsing’s Series C funding round that raised €450 million was led by American investment firm, General Catalyst. Money in Europe is hard to find in venture capital and pension funds generally don’t invest in defense technology, said Scherf. Helsing’s first funding round was completed with contributions from British, French and German individuals who believed in the mission, he said. Later on, Spotify founder Daniel Ek poured in €100 million through his venture fund Prima Materia — and faced criticism from some artists on Spotify for doing so. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the European mindset has slowly begun to change. In May, the EIB waived the requirement that funding for technology used in both military and civilian applications — so-called dual-use tech — could only go to projects from which more than 50 percent of revenue came from civilian uses. But the defense industry since has called for the EIB to further shake off its shackles. Scherf said Europe needs to stop shying away from putting real money into its armed forces directly to ensure they have the very best technology. “Why do we need to always hide behind dual use?” asked Scherf, referring to a European Investment Bank’s policy of only investing in technology that has both civilian and military use.  “Either we believe in our democratic armed forces and we support them with the best technology,” he said, “or we have to have a different debate.”