For years, the Pentagon promised drone dominance would change everything.

Then Iran shot down an American fighter jet.

Colin Demarest has been covering the future of defense at Axios long enough to know the gap between Pentagon strategy and battlefield reality. As the author of the Future of Defense newsletter, he’s been inside the Iran conflict coverage since the first strike — tracking new weapons systems in their first real-world test, watching war costs climb past $16 billion and rising.

We get into whether drone dominance is actually delivering, what the U.S. dismissal of Ukraine’s anti-drone technology offer tells us about how Washington processes advice from allies who’ve been in the fight, and whether the defense industrial base can sustain a long war.

The future of defense isn’t theoretical anymore.

Part Three of the April Axios takeover of The Friday Reporter.

The Pentagon just tried to blacklist an AI company from all government work. Not because its technology failed — because the company refused to let its AI run autonomous weapons or surveil Americans at scale.

That’s not a contract dispute, it’s a new kind of power struggle. And it’s reshaping the entire AI industry.

Maria Curi is the AI+Government reporter at Axios and the author of the newsletter that drives tech policy conversations across Washington. She breaks down how the Defense Department is using procurement as policy — and why the stakes extend far beyond one company’s government contract.

We get into who actually controls AI governance in this administration, what the Pentagon-Anthropic standoff means for every AI lab now doing business with the federal government, and the question Maria says nobody is asking yet — but should be.

It’s Week Two of the April Axios takeover of The Friday Reporter.

Local news is disappearing. And the communities left behind aren’t just losing a newspaper — they’re losing accountability, connection and a shared sense of place.

Holly Moore is helping change that.

As Executive Editor of Axios Local, she’s leading one of the most ambitious efforts in journalism to fill the news deserts spreading across this country — and to remind audiences that what happens at city hall, in their school district and on their block still matters deeply.

We talked about what’s been lost, why it’s so hard to get back and why Holly believes local journalism isn’t just worth saving — it’s worth rebuilding from scratch.

This is a conversation I didn’t want to end.

Axios Owns April. Again. — Episode 1 of 5