Final Presentations & MVPs: Stanford’s Hacking for Defense (H4D) Course Solves National Defense and Intelligence Problems with Exciting Solutions

Special thanks to H4D financial sponsors, problem sponsors, mentors, and students for their hard work and innovative solutions – what an exciting quarter!

The 2024 Hacking for Defense spring quarter at Stanford University has come to an end, marking it another successful session of the graduate-level course. Eight student teams tackled some of the toughest national security problems posed by sponsoring agencies, including the U.S. State Department, FBI, Space Force, and more.

Each team worked diligently for ten weeks to understand, analyze, and develop innovative solutions to a range of national security challenges. From dynamic space operations to harnessing renewable energy in the Caribbean, the H4D students applied the H4D methodology and Lean Launchpad principles to create practical, impactful solutions. Following are some of the H4D problems and the teams’ solutions:

1. Team Spectra Labs and the Race to Conquer the Battlespace
   Sponsored by the European Command (EUCOM), this challenge focused on US EUCOM analysts who needed a way to ingest, orchestrate, and visualize data from disparate autonomous systems capabilities used in land, sea, and air domains to better understand the battlespace to inform operational decisions. The H4D team Spectra Labs, who made their final presentation from Kraków, Poland, conducted 112 interviews and developed a MVP that was a cheap, unclassified, modular sensing solution.

2. Team Caribbean's Clean Climate
   The State Department tasked students to work with the Barbados Office of Energy, which needs a way to harness existing renewable energy and store it to reach their climate goals and strengthen their energy infrastructure. Team Caribbean’s Clean Climate conducted 102 interviews and shifted their MVP to be a website of aggregated information that was a one-stop-shop for Barbados energy system resources, contacts, applications, that supported the stakeholders interested in Barbados energy transition.

3. Team Protecting Children – Fostering AI for the FBI
   The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and FBI Intelligence Analysts had H4D work on streamlining the process of utilizing AI/LLMs to prevent crimes against children by identifying, locating, and disrupting individuals and groups producing and proliferating Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM). Team Protecting Children conducted 120 interviews and noted that 36 million tips are received every year by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) and discovered that the volume of tips are increasing, but new AI tools are not being properly leveraged. Their MVP was to develop a centralized software suite that could be utilized and was decentralized to use in every FBI office.

4. Team L ∞ (Infinity) – If You’re Not First, You’re Last
   In partnership with In-Q-Tel, this challenge addressed the need to work with F1 Formula crews who need a standardized methodology to gather and communicate information reports via telemetry to efficiently operate their car when faced with issues by other competitors on the track. The team soon realized the focus wasn’t really Formula 1 and instead focused their efforts on satellites as a fundamental issue was the communication between satellite companies. After pivoting their MVP a couple times, the team landed on creating a tasking auction marketplace where satellite companies could bid on jobs they might want to perform or offload lower market tasks they may not want to handle, becoming a satellite to satellite and customer marketplace. This concept works for dual-use options for both the Defense Department and the commercial marketplace.

5. Team CENTIMENT - Area Sentiment Assessment
   Central Command and the J39 Information Operations Division at USCENTCOM tasked students with developing the ability to assess social media natural language queries over long periods of time to assess public sentiment within the USCENTCOM area of operation so operational effectiveness can be measured. After 116 interviews, the team CENTIMENT had some ups and downs, but in the end, built and tested a solution that was a MVP that standardizes how message effectiveness is benchmarked and then communicated to teams so different messages could be compared and evaluated effectively.

6. Team Guyana's Green Growth
   In collaboration with the State Department, students in Team Guyana’s Green Growth worked with food producers in Guyana who needed sustainable measures to increase the production of high-value agricultural products to reduce food insecurity in the intra-Caribbean region. Through 166 interviews ( a H4D course record!), the core problem the team identified ended up not being agriculture, but rather water management. The team created a MVP that addressed a major issue with the current Koker System of dams (hand cranked doors), and added technology to them to manage the dam doors, versus being manually operated. ARK - the AI Retrofitted Koker system - uses AI to know when to open the Koker doors and small hydro stations to power the system as well as a winch to raise and lower the doors in the dams so that humans did not have to operate them, therefore eliminating human error.

7. Team Juno Astrodynamics – Dynamic Space Operations
   Sponsored by the Defense Innovation Unit and the Space Force , students tackled a challenge for the Assured Access to Space Office at Space Systems Command (SSC/AATS), which needs the ability to safely grapple and dock between spacecraft (without inducing a tumble, damaging, or creating debris) to reconstitute space vehicles and capabilities on-orbit by enabling spacecraft maintenance, refueling, upgrade, construction, and manufacturing. After 112 interviews, the team focused on a swarm based system with different sensors for different crafts to maneuver and created a MVP of rapidly deployable autonomous small satellites for training and inspection needs.

8. Team Precision Match - House of Laws
   The Office of the Secretary of Defense Commanders’ and Agency Directors' Staff requested a consolidated repository of all law and federal policy that they can query to provide data-driven recommendations to leaders making operational decisions. After 140 interviews, the team Precision Match created a MVP that uses AI to predict government trends and sell that information to contractors  - a dual-use contracting navigating tool, focused on government and acquiring commercial tech. The team was admitted into Y Combinator to further develop their solution.

To learn more about these H4D teams and their work, check out Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2024 – Lessons Learned Presentations by Steve Blank, co-founder of the H4D program, in his in-depth blog on the problems, solutions and what is next for these incredible teams at steveblank.com.

Hacking for Defense bridges the gap between academia and real-world governmental needs, fostering innovation and producing solutions with far-reaching impacts. These exciting presentations and compelling MVPs will power the Intelligence and Defense communities to look at problems differently. Many of the H4D students have been also inspired to further develop their solutions, with some even launching startups, to serve government and commercial markets. Stay tuned for future updates!

The Hacking for Defense program at Stanford University has created 20 startups that have generated 660 jobs and raised more than $350 million. To learn more about the H4D course at Stanford University, visit h4d.stanford.edu; to learn more about H4D around the world, visit h4d.us. To read excerpts of the NEW  upcoming H4D textbook, subscribe to the H4D Stanford Substack at stanfordh4d.substack.com.