How America Wins the Invisible War
El Segundo is different. Unlike most American cities, the big buildings don't have finance or software company names on top. Instead the corporate logos of Raytheon, Lockheed, and Boeing loom over this sun-bleached refinery town just south of LAX.
Nathan Mintz's office, on the other hand, is the bottom floor of a non-descript building. He greets me in jeans and flip-flops saying: "It's a great day to be in defense."
Mintz has been building American defense tech for over 20 years. First he worked 14 years at Boeing and Raytheon - or "the big Soviet tracker factories," as he calls them. In 2018 he left to co-found Epirus, which makes microwave weapons that take down drones. After building Epirus to a billion dollar "unicorn," he launched Spartan, designing software to sharpen the vision of automotive radar systems.
Now Mintz is back with his third venture, CX2 Industries, to solve an urgent problem. "America has a reputation as a global innovator, yet we trail in the dark arts of electronic warfare," Nathan says. Not good. Electronic warfare may well decide the Ukraine war, and future wars.
