Bold Names The SEAL Turned CEO: Brandon Tseng on the AI-Powered Future of War
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Mar 13, 2026 
Brandon Tseng, former U.S. Navy SEAL and co-founder/CEO of Shield AI, builds autonomous drones and AI pilots for defense. He recounts shifting from SEAL missions to autonomy, designing small clearance drones like Nova, and breaking into defense funding. He explains Hivemind overcoming GPS jamming, scaling manufacturing, and why future forces will mix elite manned assets with swarms of affordable autonomous drones.
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From SEAL Deployments To Building Nova
- Brandon Tseng left the Navy and realized AI and autonomy should command and maneuver military assets by 2035.
- He started by putting an AI pilot on a small pizza-sized quadcopter called Nova to map buildings and reduce risk for troops during clearing missions.
Investor Appetite Reversed Since 2015
- Investor sentiment toward defense tech shifted from hostility to active interest between 2015 and today.
- Early founders faced repeated Silicon Valley rejections for building defense products, but recent geopolitical trends and AI have flipped investor demand.
AI Pilots Beat GPS Jamming
- Shield AI's VBAT uses Hivemind AI to operate when GPS and communications are jammed by building and localizing off sensor-generated maps.
- That autonomy enabled operations in Ukraine to find and strike targets hundreds of kilometers from front lines despite heavy electronic warfare.