How technologies rise or fall beyond what inventors had in mind.

I have a simple rule of thumb: if anyone promises a technology in five years or more, I don’t believe a word he says (unless it’s Elon Musk, whose track record is impeccable). We have heard of potential cures to diseases or revolutions in energy, and, after years, we hear nothing again. It’s okay: one job of an entrepreneur is to be Chief Cheerleader (ChCh). When I did some tech validation work for a local venture capitalist, my job was to ignore everything they told us and look at patents, markets, technology, and competitors to figure out if my boss should invest in the company or not. He eventually let me go as I couldn’t give a thumbs-up on the companies I saw. To date, he’s never had an exit from any of his investments.

One of the promises during the recent fighting in Israel was a laser-based interceptor system. Rafael, one of the big Israeli defense contractors, promised “Iron Beam,” which was supposed to allow for interceptions for a few dollars of electricity in place of $50,000 Iron Dome missiles. There were scattered reports of the laser system being activated on the Hezbollah front, but there was no real confirmation as to its performance. And then very recently, it was announced that Iron Dome has been upgraded, and voila, now includes the Iron Beam as an integral part of the Iron Dome system. Maybe the laser helps in guidance or speeds up target destruction. I don’t have too much data right now, but clearly Iron Beam was initially pulled out of the oven before it was fully baked. And this is no surprise.

One can go back to the history of submarine warfare during World War II and learn a great deal. While the Japanese had particularly good torpedoes, early American versions tended to hit a target and not explode. Daring captains and crews risked their lives to approach high-value ships only to hear “thud” as metal hit metal and there was no boom.........

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