On trustworthy, US-sourced robotics for defense autonomy, designed to NDAA provenance requirements — provenance, actuation, embedded compute, and open interoperability.
Three federal yardsticks define 'American-made' differently, and a design done in the US satisfies none of them. What a buyer of robotics hardware should ask.
The model is rarely what stops a defense autonomy program now. The compute riding the vehicle is: power, heat, worst-case timing, and where the silicon came from.
From January 1, 2027, the DFARS magnet restriction reaches the whole supply chain, mine to magnet. A practitioner's guide to what it covers and what to ask suppliers now.
The demos make perception look like the frontier. In the real world, actuation is the quiet bottleneck — and domestic actuator capability is strategic.
Closed proprietary interfaces fragment robotics and lock ecosystems to single vendors. An open accessory-interop standard is the quiet unlock.
Trustworthy defense autonomy needs actuation, embedded compute, and open interoperability you can account for — which is an argument for owning the stack, not assembling it.
As autonomous systems take on more responsibility, one question gets harder to dodge: where did every component come from? Why provenance is a design constraint.
US-sourced should be a design decision, not a certificate collected at the end. Why provenance and export control are separate questions, and what building for provenance costs.