BENS Member, Raj Shah

Mr. Shah is the managing partner of Shield Capital. Dr. Kirchhoff helped build the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit.

The First Matabele War, fought between 1893 and 1894, foretold the future.

In its opening battle, roughly 700 soldiers, paramilitaries and African auxiliaries aligned with the British South Africa Company used five Maxim guns — the world’s first fully automatic weapon — to help repel over 5,000 Ndebele warriors, some 1,500 of whom were killed at a cost of only a handful of British soldiers. The brutal era of trench warfare that the Maxim gun ushered in didn’t become fully apparent until World War I.