China’s upper hand in a test of military tech power comes down to the interconnectivity of its various parts and moving pieces, Shubhi Mishra, CEO and founder of Raft and a two-time winner of the prestigious Wash100 Award, told GovCon Wire in an exclusive interview.
“China is already moving like one machine. Their systems talk to each other. Their decisions are fast. Ours aren’t. We’ve got world-class tech—but none of it’s connected. Data doesn’t flow. People can’t act fast enough. That’s what gets people killed,” Mishra stated.
It’s Mishra’s contention that the federal government is quicker to fund a patch on a system that is isolated and unable to effectively ‘talk’ to other systems than it is to put its money into constructing a truly interoperable tech infrastructure.
“If we can’t move as one across platforms, partners, and people—with the speed and scale to handle transformative data integration challenges from ground to space—we will lose to our adversaries,” Mishra told us.
Mishra will moderate a panel discussion on this important topic, entitled “Winning With Data: Outpacing China Through AI, Integration and New Primes,” at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Air and Space Summit on July 31. The GovCon conference will be held at the Hilton McLean in Virginia and will tackle all of the essential questions for how the U.S. can maintain an advantage in the air and space domains. Register now!
What Is the US Strategy Against China?
Mishra, and her organization Raft, which specializes in data fusion and operationalization, and in agentic artificial intelligence, have big ideas about how to reform the way contracts are awarded and tech is built. These changes could have life-or-death impacts, the CEO said.
Ending False Open Architectures
Companies that supply tech to the U.S. military today, especially big, traditional primes, sometimes promise tech that works via open architecture, but then require “additional payments every time you want two systems to talk,” Mishra said.
She continued, issuing a call to industry: “Stop the false promise of ‘open architecture.’ True open architecture means systems connect seamlessly … We need genuine interoperability where integration is built-in, not sold separately. Build tech that works and thinks together from day one.”
Faster Sensor-to-Shooter Speeds
Rather than continuing to produce an array of “world-class tech” that doesn’t interconnect, the military desperately needs “sub-200-millisecond sensor-to-shooter speeds and the ability to fuse data from hundreds of sources simultaneously,” Mishra reported. But this doesn’t even necessarily mean starting over and building new equipment. The data and tools the Department of Defense has now just need to be connected via channels to enable speedy intelligence intake that raises the precision of decision-making.
A New Prime
Raft, which Mishra founded in 2018 after a half-decade stint with Booz Allen Hamilton and a period of independent consulting for a major federal health agency, fashions itself as a “new prime.” The company says they are equipped to deal with tomorrow’s problems, not those of a past fight, that aims to fulfill what warfighters are clamoring for right now.
Raft’s Offerings
The Raft Data Platform, dubbed [R]DP, is designed to integrate radar feeds of the U.S. with those of Canada at the desired sub-200ms comms speed. It’s currently being utilized by the Air Force Advanced Battle Management System (the service’s contribution to the DOD-wide Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control, essentially the effort that Mishra is saying we need most). The platform is also being used by the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the U.S. Northern Command.
“We don’t do vendor lock-in—everything talks, from IL-4 to IL-6+ classified environments. We’re solving Golden Dome’s data integration challenges and scaling mission-critical operations across the space domain. That’s why we are the New Prime,” Mishra concluded.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, who was recently tapped by President Trump to oversee the Golden Dome for America project, will be a keynote speaker at the 2025 Air and Space Summit. Attend the July 31 event to hear his exclusive insights and for productive GovCon networking with executives like Mishra! Save your spot now.
