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In late October, dozens of federal law enforcement officers flooded Canal street, a busy thoroughfare in Manhattan, arresting street vendors. Some officers donned full military uniforms; some wore plain clothes, baseball caps, and neck gaiters pulled over their faces. All were equipped with tactical vests of various styles and with a medley of identifying patchesHSI, Customs and Border Patrol, Federal Agent, or, simply, Police. They wore markers of power and authority, but with little consistency across them. As news of the raid unfolded, the NYPD released a statement on X saying it had no involvement with the operation. So who, exactly, were all the people with Police emblazoned on their chests? Every decade has its era-defining garments. Think spaghetti strap dresses in the 1990s, low-rise jeans in the 2000s, and athleisure in the 2010s. This year, one garment felt suddenly ubiquitous: the tactical vest. And its not just law enforcement wearing this gear; theres a growing consumer market for body armor and garments that resemble them. Theyve gone from technical gear designed for professionals to normalized accessories. Moreover, these objects have seeped into fitness in the form of weighted vests that are made by the same companies who produce tactical gear. Their form factor has become a chilling symbol of a political climate defined by fear. How the plate carrier mainstreamed These vests, also known as plate carriers, are military equipment designed to protect the people who wear them from bullets and other ballistics. Theyre garments with removable ceramic, steel, and composite plates, and are outfitted with nylon loops and Velcro that enables wearers to attach gear and accessories, a system known as MOLLE, an acronym for modular lightweight load-carrying equipment. Counter protesters at the June 2025 No King demonstration in Houston, TX. June 14, 2025 [Photo: Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images] What began as specialized garments created for active combat has been steadily infiltrating our cities for decades. The vests became more prevalent after the expansion of the 1033 program, which authorized the free transfer of surplus military equipment to local law enforcement for the War on Drugs in the 1980s and 1990s and counterterrorism post-9/11. One interesting part of the business of these garments is that until the War on Terror, tactical clothing wasnt something military actively stocked in the same way as guns and ammunition, explains Charles W. McFarlane, a military fashion historian and author of the Substack Combat Threads. A law enforcement agent’s vest in Chicago, IL. October 4, 2025. [Photo: Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty Images] While body armor had been used since WWII, it took decades to create something that was protective but didnt interfere with movement. Patrol troops in Vietnam, for example, didnt regularly wear it because it was heavy, cumbersome, and trapped heat; however, troops in defense positions and on unarmored convoys did. After Kevlar was invented, in 1965, protective vests became lighter and easier to wear as designers integrated the material into gear. In the 1980s, the U.S. army began issuing kevlar vests to some troops in the Middle East, Panama, and Grenada. Then in the 1990s, Army Rangers in Somalia wore vests with a combination of Kevlar and a hard plate. In 1999, the military began issuing what most closely resembles the tactical vests of today, with removable plate inserts and the MOLLE system on the outside. But it wasnt until 2003 that all soldiers received one suit of body armor as a matter of policy. McFarlane notes that the CIA paramilitary officers who led Operation Jawbreaker, the agencys highly secretive first mission to Afghanistan in 2001, bought their gear at REI. They look like they’re dads on a fishing trip, McFarlane says. As a new market for this gear opened, private companies began to develop specialty products that they sold to the military and the public, too. Brands like Crye Precision, 5.11 Tactical, and Safariland provide gear to the government and consumers. According to Research and Markets, the military PPE marketa categor that includes body armor, tactical vests, and combat helmets among other productsis expected to see an annual growth rate of 8.2%, rising from $19.4 billion in 2024 to $29 billion in 2029. [Screenshots: FC] This stuff has just become so much more available, and if you wanted to buy a plate carrier that is standard issue for the military or one that is used by Special Forces, you can go to the same companies and buy it, with some exceptions, McFarlane says. There are few sales restrictions on tactical gear. At the federal level, its illegal for people with felony convictions to buy plate carriers or body armor, but sellers say enforcement is lax. Some states have stricter rules, like New York, which passed a law in 2022 barring sales to anyone who isnt in law enforcement or the military. A protestor in Portland, OR. October 04, 2025. [Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images] McFarlane links the growing consumer market for this gear to gun culture. Men who are in their thirties, who grew up watching the global war and terror on TV and also probably played a lot of video games like Battlefield or Call of Duty, and it’s like, Oh, I can own a version of that gun in real life. I got the gun. I kind of want the gear now too, and I think it builds out from there. It’s like collecting action figures. A man works out in a plate carrier. [Photo: serejkakovalev/Adobe Stock] Incidentally, 5.11 Tactical, which makes plate carriers and weighted fitness vests, partnered with EA Games on Battlefield 6 to design more realistic combat uniforms and bring an unparalleled level of authenticity to players, said Kyle Peterson, Senior Director of Brand for Battlefield in a news release; co-branded merchandise is also part of the deal. An ununiform uniform Tactical vests are evasive objects. Because immigration enforcement agents often wear civilian clothing, the tactical vest becomes a stand-in for a governmental authority. Remove the vest and youve got a pretty ordinary looking guy, which presents a problem since militias and vigilante groups have adopted the same attire. Theres not much visual difference between a January 6th rioter, far right protesters, ICE agents, or a Call of Duty fanatic. Sometimes, the visual uncertainty has had dangerous consequences. The FBI recently issued a warning about people impersonating ICE in order to commit violent crimes. Federal agents and law enforcement stand outside of 26 Federal Plaza, New York City. October 21, 2025. [Photo: Adam Gray/Getty Images] Naureen Shah, the Director of Government Affairs, Equality Division at the American Civil Liberties Union, says that the menacing attire that makes it difficult to identify agents erodes public trust and opens the door to civil rights abuses. The Trump Administration wants us not to know who [the agent] is because it wants to intimidate the public, Shah says. We don’t know if it’s ICE or the FBI or the ATF or the DEA or the National Guard. You really dont know whos behind that vest. I think that’s calculated chaos designed to instill fear, not just in immigrant communities, but in all of us. ICE has a long history of impersonating local police officers, a practice known as ruses, in order to gain accessto spaces and information without furnishing a warrant. This includes wearing tactical gear that says Police and covering up badges that say ICE. New York City, June, 2025. [Photo: Selcuk Acar/Anadolu/Getty Images] Meanwhile, attorney generals in New York and Minnesota recently wrote a letter to congress urging them to pass a law that requires ICE agents to wear agency-identifying insignia and prohibits identity-concealing masks. In 2020, the ACLU filed a lawsuit in Southern California to stop this deceptive practice; in August a settlement was reached that requires ICE field officers in Los Angeles to have visible ICE identifiers whenever they use the phrase Police on their uniforms. If you’re going to be policing the public, then you wear a uniform for that sense of accountability to the public, Shah says. Federal Agents in Broadview, Illinois. September, 2025. [Photo: Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu/Getty Images] The morale of the story The use of military gear, like the tactical vest, in law enforcement represents its own type of psychologyone that projects power instead of the safety and competence that a police officers uniform was designed to do. This distinction is apparent in the ways ICE agents decorate their vests. The same Velcro that brings functionality tactical vests also makes it easier to add flair, or what would be considered a morale patch. As McFarlane explains, the military has been using morale patches since WWI, but they had to be stitched on before the velcro, courtesy of the MOLLE system on tactical vests, became common. Patches with a Superman logo, the Punisher, and slogan from Deadpool have been spotted on tactical vests. The Punisher logo, in particular, has become a co-opted symbol by far right groups. The superhero theme is telling. The way its presented in these stories is that they operate outside of the law, but to a higher purpose, McFarlane says. The Southern Poverty Law Center has been tracking the DHS’ use of hate symbols, which has included white nationalist and anti-immigrant imagery and language within recruitment ads. ICE is currently on a hiring spreeit plans to hire 10,000 agents by 2026and it makes sense that the cohort who responded to those messages would wear those symbols as literal badges of honor. “Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, several top DHS leaders and immigration advisers were drawn directly from hate groups making up the organizedanti-immigrant movement. Agents sporting patches with hard-right emblems follow this disturbing trend,” says Travis McAdam, the manager of research and analysis in the Intelligence Project at SPLC. McAdam notes that the organization has seen an increase in ICE and other federal agents attaching patches to their tactical gear with iconography favored by hard-right movements. One example is the Punisher symbol thats long been a favorite of Three Percent militias, which feature it widely in their logos and merchandise, he says. While its used outside this antigovernment context, agents adopting it is consistent with the Department of Homeland Securitys use of hard-right imagery and language to both recruit employees and celebrate the arrest of Black and Brown people. (Incidentally, DHS made Dean Cain, an actor who played Superman an honorary ICE officer this year.) McFarlane is not impressed with the comic book nods. I think it shows a lack of discipline, he says. That’s the kind of stuff that doesn’t really fly in the U.S. military. You’re not going to see someone with a Superman patchor at least they’re going to have the sense to take it off when there’s a camera or superior around. These tactical vests, as well as the words, phrases, and iconography that appear on them, reveal a shocking dissonance between the people wearing them and the situations they are in: sledgehammering through the car windowing of an asylum seeker, arresting a pregnant citizen, and slamming a senior to the ground. Who really needs protection in these situations? One Columbia psychologist has developed a theory called enclothed cognition, which argues that what we wear affects the way we think and behave. Military-coded garments evoke a combat-ready sensibility and the fact that menacing vests are ubiquitous is frightening. Were not supposed to have federal officials who are designed to terrify people, Shah says. Thats not supposed to happen in a functioning democracy.
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E-Commerce
There is a strange gravitational pull in the AI ecosystem right now. Every founder wants to raise a monster round. A $50 million seed. A $200 million Series A. The kind of fundraise that makes headlines, melts your inbox, and gets your parents to finally understand you have a real job. Ive raised both kinds of rounds. A $12 million one that looked incredible in TechCrunch. And recently, an intentionally small but oversubscribed pre-seed for my new company, Empromptu.ai, where investors fought for allocation like we were handing out Taylor Swift tickets. Having lived on both sides, here is the truth no one in AI land wants to say out loud: A mega round might be the fastest way to screw up your company. The perfection problem When I raised $12 million at my last startup, CodeSee.io, I thought I was winning. Fewer than 30 Black women have ever raised that much venture capital. I thought big money meant big validation. And yes, years later, it was validating. CodeSee.io was Cursor before Cursor was cool. But what people forget is that everything had to be perfect. Perfect product, perfect engineering, perfect marketing, perfect sales, perfect timing. You are signing up for perfection with capital that large. And the second you fall short, the clock starts ticking on the next round, your runway, and your teams morale. Here is what no one tells you until you are already living inside the pressure cooker. A mega round is a contract with the future, not a celebration of the present. You are promising you will grow like a weed even while the world is chaos. In AI especially, half the market is noise and the other half is vaporware. You are still finding product-market-something, but your fundraising number tells the world you are already at product-market-fit. Now your job is not to build truth. It is to build momentum. Markets change, timing changes, and your optimism doesnt pay your investors back. Big rounds push you toward optics instead of output. You start building for the board instead of the customer. The louder the round, the more deafening the expectations that follow. Before chasing a headline-sized round, you need to ask yourself hard questions: Based on your actual GTM enginenot the one you hope to havehow much return can you realistically deliver? Do you have the sales pipeline, category dynamics, and team structure to grow 10 times or even 20 times the capital you want to raise? If an external shock hitsan economic downturn, an AI bubble burst, or a sudden shift in whatever latest metrics investors care aboutdoes your business have the frameworks and adaptability to survive it and still justify your valuation? Raising the stakes Most founders dont run these numbers honestly. We romanticize optimism. But fundraising is not about what you believe your company could be worthits about whether you have the machinery to make that valuation real in the harshest version of the future. A mega round multiplies every assumption you make. Every risk. Every blind spot. And ego makes it even harder. Getting told your company is worth $50 million at the idea stage is intoxicating. Its human nature to want to believe the flattering version of your story. But the best founders know how to put their ego on the shelf long enough to look at their business objectively. Investors dont care how good the number feels; they care whether you can return their fund. Most importantly: AI is changing too fast for giant commitments. Todays hype cycle is tomorrows graveyard. You do not want to be the founder forced to keep shipping an outdated strategy because that is what you raised money for. Momentum is a blessing only if you are pointed in the right direction. If you are not, it becomes an anchor. With Empromptu, we kept the round intentionally small and tight, at least for now. We chose discipline over dopamine. And here is the secret: Small money gives you big freedom. You can pivot. Experiment. Say no. Build weird things. Build the right things. Build your company instead of your investors portfolio theory. Raising less does not mean thinking smaller. It means thinking smarter. You do not need a mega round. You need real progress, real customers, and real clarity. And if you still want the $100 million round, at least go in with your eyes open. Sometimes the most powerful thing a founder can do is grow at the speed of understanding instead of the speed of capital.
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E-Commerce
As autonomous AI agents increasingly browse, compare prices, and complete purchases on behalf of consumers, one challenge is becoming unavoidable for merchants: trust. On Wednesday, Akamai Technologies announced a strategic collaboration with Visa aimed at addressing that problem. The partnership integrates Visas Trusted Agent Protocol with Akamais behavioral intelligence, allowing merchants to authenticate AI agents, link them to real consumers, and block malicious bot traffic before it ever reaches sensitive systems. The move comes as agent-driven traffic floods the internet. According to Akamais 2025 Digital Fraud and Abuse Report, AI-powered bot traffic surged more than 300% over the past year, with the commerce industry alone seeing more than 25 billion AI bot requests in a two-month period. We all continue to be excited about the proliferation of agentic AI use cases, said Patrick Sullivan, CTO of security strategy at Akamai. Were seeing billions upon billions of requests coming from agentic AI use cases. When AI becomes the intermediary For decades, digital commerce has been built around a simple assumption: A human is on the other end of the transaction. Agentic commerce breaks that model. Instead of navigating a merchants site directly, consumers increasingly rely on software to search, compare, and sometimes buy on their behalf. For instance, whereas previously buying a new suitcase might involve exploring a dozen retailer’s sites, soon you might have AI do the legwork for you. That shift introduces a new intermediaryone that can be helpful, harmful, or fraudulent. Theres a new entity thats now sitting in between the merchant and the consumer, said Rubail Birwadker, Visas global head of growth. Things could go wrong. From a consumer standpoint, that raises questions about refunds, disputes, and chargebacks. Whose fault is it if you asked for a black bag and received a dark blue one by mistake? From a merchant perspective, it creates uncertainty around intent, legitimacy, and risk. If youre a merchant, and youre thinking about your website, there are a lot of changes coming your way, Sullivan said. You built your website originally in the era where there was going to be a human on the other end. Now, discovery may happen through an AI-powered chat interface. Browsing may be conducted by an autonomous agent. Even the browser itself may be software acting on behalf of a user. We need to make sure that its still on behalf of the right human and its not a fraudster taking advantage of some new evolution in technology, Sullivan said. Proving both the agent and the human At the center of the VisaAkamai partnership is a dual-identity problem: verifying not just who the human is, but who the agent acting for them is. Its important for us to always know who the human is, Sullivan said. But then, as we see these agentic use cases emerge, its important for us to get signal from Visa of who that agent is in that interaction. Visas Trusted Agent Protocol provides authentication signals indicating whether an agent is authorized and whether it intends to browse or pay. Akamai reads and reinforces those signals using behavioral intelligence, often before traffic reaches a merchants core systems. Youre going to see traffic before it ever reaches a merchant system, Sullivan said. That allows us to build a trusted user profile so we can understand that Jim is actually Jim. Because Akamai sees end users repeatedly across the internetshopping, banking, reading newsit can establish consistency and spot anomalies early in the transaction flow. That allows us to very, very early in the transaction reduce attempts at fraud and impersonation, Sullivan said. Scale changes the threat model The surge in AI-driven traffic has raised concerns about whether volume itself becomes a security risk. Sullivan argues scale cuts both ways. Weve seen AI bot traffic surge 300 plus percent this year, he said. But while the numbers are in the billions, thats still sort of a rounding error for the overall traffic that we see. Still, Sullivan expects automation to accelerate abuse over time. Anything that can be automated, its just so much more profitable for attackers, he said. If you can automate your attack, you can pull off more attacks. Thats why both companies emphasize operating at global scale. Visa processes transactions across nearly 200 markets, while Akamai manages traffic and bots at internet-wide levels. These are two companies that operate at massive scale, Sullivan said. Its companies like ours that we think will stand up to the pace of these automated processes. Why merchants matter most While consumers may benefit immediately from smoother discovery and purchasing, Birwadker said the heaviest lift lies with merchants adapting their infrastructure. A large amount of change really lies on the acceptance side, on the merchant side, Birwadker said. Their infrastructure needs to keep up with all the changes that are happening. Merchants will need to decide what information agents can access, how pricing and inventory are exposed, and how loyalty and personalization work when an AI, not a browser, is driving the interaction. This is just keeping up with changes to consumer behavior, Sullivan said. Theyre having an AI agent do something on their behalf. A compatibility play for the future Neither Visa nor Akamai claims to know exactly what agentic commerce will look like three years from now. But both frame Trusted Agent Protocol as a compatibility layerone that allows commerce infrastructure to evolve without losing control. Our goal is just to make sure that our ecosystem remains compatible with the agentic world, Birwadker said. Its more about compatibility than about almost anything else. As AI agents move from novelty to necessity, that trust layer may determine whether merchants embrace agentic commerceor shut it out altogether.
Category:
E-Commerce
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