Nick Blair in simpler times, during his father Tony’s 1997 campaign to be prime minister.<\/span>Tom Stoddart\/Hulton Archive\/Getty<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Tony Blair, the former British prime minister,<\/span> pushed the United Kingdom into a needless war in Iraq<\/a> in a wild-goose chase<\/a> for weapons of mass destruction. Then, he helped<\/a> British companies make money from that war. Now, his son Nick is carrying on the family legacy.<\/p>\n Nick Blair, a 40-year-old former football agent<\/a>, is seeking funding for a military technology startup called \u201cPyra\u201d to the tune of 200 million dollars. It\u2019s not clear what, exactly, Pyra needs all that money to do: its website<\/a> only says \u201cDeploying Summer 2026\u2026Stand By.\u201d Blair is at the moment the only active officer of the company, according to UK government filings<\/a>. In an article published this week, an unnamed source told the Financial Times<\/em><\/a>, vaguely, that Pyra \u201cis developing technology that will allow users to integrate different systems into a single source.\u201d<\/p>\n During his time as Prime Minister, Blair\u2019s father helped UK companies cash in on the Iraq war<\/a>. After he was forced to leave<\/a> the country\u2019s government amid growing discontent over the war<\/a>, he built a dizzyingly massive global business empire<\/a>. And he\u2019s making moves that could allow him to profit from the reconstruction of war-torn places: in January, he was appointed<\/a> to President Donald Trump\u2019s so-called Board of Peace<\/a>, charged with overseeing international efforts in Gaza.<\/p>\n Blair the younger, meanwhile, is now founding his second military-tech company. His first, Skyral, is a war-games simulator. Its co-CEO, Naomi Hulme, recently described<\/a> its work as \u201cFortnite on steroids.\u201d The company won a $2.7 billion dollar contract to train the British military, which is betting big on AI<\/a>. Pyra, meanwhile, does not yet have a product\u2014but hopes to raise a great deal of funding nonetheless.<\/p>\n<\/article><\/div>\n
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