Observation 7714-B. The dominant tribe of the western landmass has elected to increase its spear-budget by 40%, a figure their elders arrived at through a process the locals call "proposing" and which resembles, structurally, our adolescent bargaining rites.
The spears in question are small flying machines. Two workshops, Anduril and Mach Industries, have been declared more valuable by factors of two and four respectively, despite producing roughly the same quantity of physical object as last solar cycle. The valuation appears to occur entirely in the mouths of a smaller tribe called venture, who exchange belief for sand-tokens at a rate of approximately 1.7 convictions per quarter-orbit.
Specimen Ross Fubini, identified as the man who wrote the "first check" — a ceremonial paper indicating willingness to lose money attractively — explains that most new spear-workshops will die in a place called the Valley of Death. The tribe has named this canyon, mapped it, and continues to march workshops into it at a steady cadence.
Per the All-Plains Institute for Procurement Ethnography, 87.3% of entrants do not emerge. Fubini, whose own pouch contains nearly 2 billion such tokens, nods gravely while describing this, as one nods at weather.
Recommend continued monitoring. The spears get smaller. The valuations do not.
Based on the original article "Defense tech is flooded with money, but who's built to last?".
