{"id":11706,"date":"2026-06-21T18:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-21T18:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/he-dropped-out-of-mit-at-19-to-build-americas-drone-arsenal-its-working-strictlyvc-la-2026\/"},"modified":"2026-06-21T18:33:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-21T18:33:14","slug":"he-dropped-out-of-mit-at-19-to-build-americas-drone-arsenal-its-working-strictlyvc-la-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/he-dropped-out-of-mit-at-19-to-build-americas-drone-arsenal-its-working-strictlyvc-la-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"He Dropped Out of MIT at 19 to Build America&#8217;s Drone Arsenal. It&#8217;s Working | StrictlyVC LA 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Thornton started Mach Industries at 16, dropped out of MIT, and is now running six simultaneous defense programs: jet <!--more--> engines, cruise missiles, a surface-to-air missile system, and a new 40-foot VTOL strike aircraft just contracted by the U.S. Navy.<\/p>\n<p>At StrictlyVC Los Angeles 2026, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos sat down with the Mach Industries founder and CEO for a rare on-stage conversation about what it actually takes to build a serious defense hardware company from scratch \u2014 and why the U.S. has no choice but to move faster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan Thornton started Mach Industries at 16, dropped out of MIT, and is now running six simultaneous defense programs: jet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11710,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}