The DC area's premier defense technology hackathon. Come build solutions for tomorrow's national security challenges.
The organizations making this hackathon possible. Providing funding, API access, mentorship, and real-world problem sets.
Put your brand in front of the next generation of national security technologists.
Logo on all materials, website, and event signage. Direct access to 200+ top students.
Meet and recruit from a curated pool of technical talent interested in national security.
Design a custom challenge track. See teams build prototypes using your APIs or data.
Send engineers as mentors. Build relationships with participants firsthand.
The Critical Ops Hackathon brings together the DC area national security community to build technology-oriented solutions for America's most pressing security challenges.
The United States faces an unprecedented array of technology-driven national security threats. From adversarial AI to cyber warfare, from supply chain vulnerabilities to space domain awareness, the challenges are growing faster than the workforce to address them.
This hackathon exists to bridge that gap. We bring together the next generation of engineers, policy thinkers, and entrepreneurs from DC's top universities to prototype solutions that matter.
Whether you're a software engineer, policy expert, or an operator who can code, there's a place for you here. The best national security solutions come from interdisciplinary teams that understand both the technology and the mission.
Tackle challenge tracks designed with input from defense and intelligence professionals. Build tools that could actually be deployed.
Get guidance from engineers and leaders at defense tech companies, national security agencies, and top AI labs.
Sponsored API credits from OpenAI and other partners. Build with cutting-edge models and tools at no cost.
Compete for cash prizes and get direct exposure to hiring teams at leading defense technology companies.
Each track is designed around a real capability gap. Build a prototype that addresses one of these domains.
Build autonomous systems and decision-support tools for contested environments. Unmanned systems coordination, human-machine teaming, or autonomous ISR platforms.
Develop solutions for sustaining operations under degraded conditions. Resilient supply chains, predictive maintenance, distributed resource allocation, or last-mile delivery in denied environments.
Address biological threats and opportunities at the national security frontier. Biosurveillance, detection tools, medical countermeasures, or biosecurity risk assessment platforms.
Defend critical infrastructure against sophisticated adversaries. Automated threat detection, zero-trust architectures, incident response tools, or offensive security capabilities for red teaming.
Have a national security AI application that doesn't fit the other tracks? Build it here. LLM-powered analysis tools, multimodal intelligence systems, or novel AI applications for the defense community.
36 hours of building, learning, and competing. Full schedule TBA.
The event is open to the broader DC area national security community — professionals, researchers, and students alike. We especially encourage participation from builders across the DC metro area. All backgrounds welcome: engineers, policy experts, operators, and domain specialists.
You can register as an individual or with a team of up to 4. We'll have team formation activities at the start for individuals. Cross-university teams are encouraged.
Your laptop, charger, and any hardware you want to hack with. A government ID for check-in.
Yes. Registration and API credits are free thanks to our sponsors.
You own everything you build. All projects will be open-sourced and posted publicly on GitHub at the end of the hackathon.