Presenter
The Honorable Dr. Will Roper
Founder & CEO
Istari Digital
The Honorable Dr. Will Roper is the founder and CEO of Istari Digital, where he is building infrastructure for AI-native engineering and designing the world’s first digitally-certified aircraft for the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin Skunk Works®.
Previously, Dr. Roper served as the Senior Acquisition Executive of the U.S. Air Force and Space Force, managing $60 billion annually across 5,300 aircraft and satellites. His leadership unlocked billions in funding for technology startups, accelerated military acquisition, scaled global medical supplies during COVID-19, and expanded flight opportunities for female pilots by overturning 50-year-old body standards.
Prior to his Air Force role, he was the founding Director of the Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO), leading over 50 advanced prototype projects—including the Pentagon’s first AI program—to pivot the defense strategy toward great-power competition.
Dr. Roper is a Distinguished Professor at Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and serves on several corporate and advisory boards. His writings, including “There Is No Spoon,” helped lay the groundwork for digital transformation in aerospace.
He holds degrees in physics from Georgia Tech and a doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University, where he studied string theory as a Rhodes Scholar. Dr. Roper has received the Pentagon’s and Air Force’s highest civilian service honors.
The Honorable Dr. Will Roper, founder and CEO of Istari Digital, will present a seminar on Thursday, 24 September 2026.
Title: Building a True Cyber-Physical Internet
Abstract: “I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.” — Morpheus, The Matrix (1999)
In The Matrix, the world is simulated nearly perfectly — a massive multiplayer virtual reality most people unwittingly live and work inside, except a handful who wake up in the real world.
Mind-blowing for its time, reality has now overtaken its vision, at least for engineering. Design, testing, and certification achieve virtual realism, and AI agents — not just human engineers — increasingly do the work: designing aircraft, running full CI/CD pipelines on physical systems, and compressing cycle times from years to weeks. The question is no longer whether machines can engineer. They can, and the results now fly.
The question is whether organizations can let them. The barrier to a true digital-physical transformation was never desire — it was trusted infrastructure. Today’s software platforms offer digital superpowers at the cost of digital sovereignty. I AGREE, the entrance sign. No-fail missions need a new button — riding atop a peer-wise protocol — to collaborate anywhere while maintaining control of data everywhere, even when AI does the work. An internet reimagined for the physical world — like science fiction.
Dr. Roper shares how this infrastructure is now real and revolutionizing aerospace and defense: from digitally certifying X-planes with Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, to agentically designed space systems with Blue Origin, to aircraft-as-code with Boeing Phantom Works. He’ll cover what a cyber-physical internet demands of security and sovereignty, and why the next industrial revolution runs on protocols, not platforms.
Come hear from Will how hardware finally eats the world as AI transcends today’s internet.
Click the button below to register, add an invitation to your calendar and join the seminar using the Teams/GovTeams link.
