Forge Institute announced the National Security Heartland Innovation Consortium (NSHIC), a research and development partnership among Arkansas State University, Arkansas Tech University, the University of Central Arkansas and the Forge Institute. NSHIC was formed to pursue national-security and defense work - leveraging existing capabilities to support national security mission needs.

Foreign adversaries are increasingly targeting the power grids, water systems, and local infrastructure communities rely on every day — not through traditional military means, but through cyberattacks aimed at systems that are often under-resourced and locally run. These threats are accelerating: artificial intelligence is lowering the barrier to entry for attackers, automating reconnaissance, and enabling more convincing social engineering at a scale and speed utilities have never had to defend against before. Rural and municipal electric utilities, which power much of Arkansas, are exactly this kind of target: critical to daily life, and rarely equipped with the same cybersecurity resources as major metropolitan utilities.

Defense leaders, investors, and community partners are invited to the unveiling of next-generation technologies designed to support warfighting objectives by startups from around the country.