John Rye has a question he likes to ask. If you’re in a self-driving car and that car has to make a split-second decision and makes the wrong one, hitting a kid crossing the street or running into another car, who’s responsible?
As autonomous systems take on more decision-making, the question of who authorized an action, and who remains accountable for it, can become increasingly difficult to answer.
That question is the reason RebelWave Technologies exists. Rye spent 30 years in software engineering, systems architecture, cloud engineering, DevSecOps, and government contracting, much of it in and around the defense industry.
Over that time, he watched a pattern accelerate: as autonomous systems grew more capable, machines were being given greater decision-making authority across air, land, maritime, and undersea domains. The technology was becoming faster and more capable while the human operator was moving further from direct control.
“AI was starting to learn how to control everything,” Rye says. “And we were teaching it, but we were taking ourselves out of it.”
Rye served in the United States Marine Corps before his software career, and the military perspective on this problem is sharper than most. Autonomous systems in a defense context can contribute to decisions with potentially lethal consequences. When human authority over what is authorized and executed becomes unclear, accountability can become equally unclear.
RebelWave’s software sits at what Rye calls the boundary between human authority and machine execution. The system separates those two planes and keeps them distinct. RebelWave separates human authority from machine execution. Human operators establish and authorize the boundaries within which autonomous execution may occur; machine execution remains bounded by that approved authorization envelope
“The objective isn’t autonomy for autonomy’s sake,” he says. “It’s creating a system where human authority and machine execution can operate together without blurring accountability.”
The operating principle is direct: human authority governs, machine execution operates within approved bounds, and evidence supports accountable assessment. The software is designed as a capability, not a replacement. It doesn’t come in to displace command and control systems or any other infrastructure already in place. It enhances what’s there. The separation also allows RebelWave capabilities to integrate with existing command, control, mission, and autonomy infrastructure without requiring wholesale replacement of those systems.
The company is domain agnostic by design. Rye has tested the software in commercial scenarios and is now pursuing defense applications through the SBIR program. He has letters of support from Lockheed Martin and a research partnership with Stony Brook University in New York. Answering SBIR solicitations has also generated new products along the way: a Knowledge Engineering System that transforms fragmented field data into governed, traceable knowledge for government and commercial use, and RebelWave Security Assurance, a tool that continuously evaluates security evidence and establishes contextual trust within existing cybersecurity environments.
“It doesn’t replace cybersecurity,” he says of the security tool. “It’s a cybersecurity enhancement, a capability to add to what they already have.”
Rye is currently at the pre-seed stage. He was solo until roughly two weeks before this conversation and recently brought on a COO. The next steps are SBIR awards, real-world validation on the defense side, and building out a team. He’s looking at pre-seed funding rather than a larger capital raise because he wants more backing behind him before going that route.
Getting to this point required a kind of growth that had nothing to do with code. For 30 years, Rye was a builder. He knew how to design systems and solve problems. What he did not know how to do was explain any of it to someone who wasn’t already deep in the field.
The Founders Institute, which Rye graduated from in the spring 2026 cohort, put a sharp edge on that lesson. So did Warrior Rising, a veteran-focused program he completed the previous fall. Both pushed him to think less like a developer and more like a CEO.
But his best training ground was closer to home.
“I used my mom, who’s non-technical at all,” he says. “And I would go talk to her about it. I talked to my daughter, and she’s like middle road technical. And if she had that deer in the headlight look I knew I was talking too much. If she was asking questions I knew I was right there.”
His advice to other founders is grounded in the same stubbornness that kept him building alone for more than a year.
“There’s been many a times over the last year and a half that I’ve just thought, wanted to throw my hands up and just say, ‘The heck with it,’” he says. “But I believed in what I built and I believed in what it can do, and having that belief has kept pushing me forward.”
He’s equally direct about protecting what you’ve built. Don’t give equity to the first person who reaches out to help. Don’t let someone ride the coattails of what you created alone. If someone wants in, they earn their way.
“I don’t give anything away,” he says. “If you’re gonna come in, I need the help. I do need the help. But I need you to prove what you’re bringing to the table.”
Thirty years of writing code. A Marine who builds systems designed to make sure a human is always the one making the call. And a founder who tested his pitch on his mom until it made sense.
John Rye is the Founder and CEO of RebelWave Technologies Inc., a veteran-owned defense and aerospace software company focused on maintaining human authority over autonomous systems. A United States Marine Corps veteran with more than 30 years of experience in software engineering, systems architecture, and government contracting, Rye designed the RebelWave ecosystem around a clear separation between human authority and machine execution, enabling autonomous systems to operate within explicitly authorized boundaries while preserving human accountability. The company’s portfolio includes bounded tactical autonomy, knowledge engineering, and security assurance capabilities, and it is pursuing SBIR contracts with partnerships including Lockheed Martin and Stony Brook University.