Susanne Hake: Space greatly influences your day-to-day life
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Photo illustration: Axios Visuals. Photo: Courtesy of Vantor
Most people fail to realize how seriously space influences their daily lives, Vantor's Susanne Hake told Axios in an interview.
- "Many people feel that space is this distant, strategic high ground that feels far from their day-to-day lives. But it's not," she said.
- "And it's becoming so congested. It's like a lot of traffic jams — and there are not a lot of friendly drivers up there."
Why she matters: Hake has years of experience in the defense, intelligence and business communities. Before joining Vantor (then Maxar) she was at Palantir Technologies.
- Vantor on Feb. 25 announced an additional U.S. Army One World Terrain contract worth as much as $217 million.
Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind?
A: It's not just about collecting more data, which is something we've been doing for a long time. It's about connecting data and then pushing that connection into prediction.
- You can still go to any watch floor or mission operation center, and you see your analysts with four screens and 10 different legacy systems, and they're still manually stitching together information. There's still that gap.
- How do we think about going from situational awareness to true anticipation?
Q: What's the biggest challenge the defense industry faces at the moment?
A: I know you hear this from everyone, but I do think it's the acquisition system. It's just not built for where we are, in terms of modern technology.
- When AI is improving every hour, and software is coming out every few days and procurement cycles are still taking years, it's just really challenging to get new capabilities out in the field.
- I am optimistic about the progress we're making and some of the new policies coming out.
- But the changes aren't going to be made unless both the contractors commit to making changes and the government commits to making changes.
Q: What's your secret to a successful overnight flight?
A: Well, I don't think there's such a thing as a successful overnight flight. Maybe I start by asking you to rewrite the question.
- For me, I'm super impacted by jet lag. Any time I travel internationally I've been using the Timeshifter app. A couple of days in advance, it sets a schedule for you.
Q: What's a piece of gear or tech you can't go without?
A: At first I was going to say my phone, but that's so obvious. I would say my Oura ring, though.
- My goal is to improve my sleep and reduce my stress levels.
