After Action Report: Drones & Autonomy
Reviewing our summer sprint — and why autonomy is the path to renewal and competitiveness.
Every sprint at the Boyd Institute begins with a pointed question that sparks problem-solving and conversations about American renewal. This summer, our sprint focused on drones and autonomy. We began with a simple but urgent question: if drones are the future of warfare, and America doesn’t control its drone supply chain, what should we do about it?
We brought this question to a roundtable dinner in Washington, DC last June, which included government officials, drone company CEOs, and members of the Boyd Institute brain trust. I expected the conversation to zero in on the nuts and bolts of on-shoring America’s drone supply chain. Instead, the takeaway was broader and more ambitious. We realized what matters most is accelerating the entire market for autonomy — not only in the air, but on land, at sea, and in space. Controlling the supply chain for a small market of airborne drones won’t get us far. But if America leads globally in autonomy across all four domains, supply chain strength will follow.
Out of this insight came the proposal for an American Autonomy Initiative, a national strategy to lead in autonomy across all domains. In early July, we released the framework, drawing on ideas from the roundtable: creating a drone thoroughfare, mandating modularity and labeling standards, investing in jobs training, and using drones for homeland security missions like wildfire response, among others.
When President Trump announced his AI Action Plan a few weeks later, we pitched the American Autonomy Initiative as its logical next step. The message was simple: America must win not only in the world of bits, but also in the world of atoms.
Promoting autonomy forced us to confront a difficult question: what will it mean for American jobs? Autonomy will disrupt jobs, but it could also be the biggest job engine in a generation — if we get the strategy right.
We recommended five jobs-focused measures that could be folded within the American Autonomy Initiative, aimed at strengthening regional economies and expanding skilled trades. The goal is to channel disruption into opportunity, creating new paths for American workers while boosting national productivity.
From there, we dug into real-world examples of autonomous systems across all four domains, identifying 50 of them — everything from autonomous snowplows, to maritime mine-detection robots, to satellites deploying autonomously in orbit.
In parallel, we mapped fifty startups already building the future of American autonomy. These firms could form the backbone of a much larger industry and in many cases represent investable opportunities that deserve more attention.
The more we explored, the clearer it became: drones and autonomous technology are central to America’s geopolitical and commercial competitiveness. Beyond that, autonomy emerged as an answer some of America’s deepest structural challenges. As
articulated in his essay, American Solvency Requires Autonomy, autonomy boosts productivity.At a time when America faces an aging population and slowing growth, autonomy may be the lever that allows us to do more with fewer people. It is a force multiplier on the scale of electrification or the internet — the physical instantiation of AI. Properly embraced, it could expand our productive capacity, reinforce our security, and redefine what is possible.
At the outset, we framed autonomy as a matter of game theory; it was something America had to adopt in order to remain competitive, even if reluctantly. By the end of the sprint, that perspective shifted. We became convinced that autonomy, if embraced with foresight and a smart strategy, could be a path not only to competitiveness but to renewal. It can open up new industries, new opportunities, and new ways of working, even as it disrupts old ones.
One thing is now clear: autonomy isn’t optional. It is the next great lever of American renewal, if we choose to lead.
A Preview of What’s Next
Special thanks to everyone who participated in this sprint and to those who followed along. Your contributions have been invaluable.
Our next sprint will turn to America’s housing crisis, beginning after Labor Day. We plan to improve the process in three ways:
Accessibility — making it easy for people to follow along, giving them a parasocial way to engage in the housing affordability challenge.
Content — producing more material and experimenting with new formats, including video.
Participation — hosting more voices and perspectives.
Over time, we hope these sprints spark broader conversations and transform scattered insights into a shared vision for renewal.
Autonomy Sprint Articles & Artifacts
About The Boyd Institute
The Boyd Institute is a virtual policy lab launched in March 2023 to strengthen American dynamism through bold, creative, asymmetric solutions. We bring together “LFG Americans,” smart problem-solvers and global friends, to tackle one strategic challenge per quarter. We are a 501c3 organizations. To donate, email [email protected]