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For more than two years, on the small, simple beach in the city of El Segundo, dozens of young people have gathered with a singular mission: to save the United States. To achieve this, they say, by building the next generation of technological marvels. They consider what they build to be real garbage, not what software engineers invent in the North writing code on shiny MacBooks. Instead, these men have a taste for the tangible: they spend their work days toiling in laboratories and production lines, their nights sleeping on couches and bunk beds. Some are making drones to monitor the weather. Others are building nuclear reactors and army weapons to combat China (Russia too, if necessary).
In El Segundo, California, where saltwater-tinged air vibrates with constant air traffic and oil refineries sweep the coast, those founders have settled into a position where they can act as faithful foot soldiers for American industry or as brave men. incubators that alter the Silicon Valley quo.
“We’re pollinating other ideas,” Augustus Doricko, founder and CEO of cloud seeding company Rainmaker, which raised $6. 3 million from venture capitalists in May, tells me. “We are tired of nihilism and crazy software. » Behind him, on the wall of Rainmaker’s office, hangs an American flag the size of a dumpster. Opposite, below, a life-size poster of Jesus Christ smiling benevolently on a bench press. “Right now,” he adds, “Gundo is to hard technology what Florence is to Renaissance art. ”
For decades, U. S. cities have aspired to take on Silicon Valley’s role as the next tech hub. Rumors had recently spread that the business epicenter had moved to Austin and then Miami. Before that, there were Silicon Alley in New York and Silicon Beach in Los Angeles. When it comes to “The Gundo,” the tech zeitgeist of the age is, as in all such places, driven by venture capitalists, who have invested more than $100 billion in defense generation corporations since 2021, many of which are located in El Segundo. (Venture capitalists can rarely be found wandering around warehouse-lined alleys hoping to get a date with an entrepreneur. The monetary frenzy is so feverish that Gundo’s founders joke about renting a double-decker bus, filling it with potential investors, and offering local tours. )
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