SUNNYVALE, CA—Attacking the “ignorant Luddites” who questioned the wisdom and necessity of the program, the nation’s top tech leaders issued a statement Thursday calling their industry’s plan to create an army of AI-controlled bulletproof grizzly bears an unavoidable and inevitable part of progress. “Let’s be real: Sentient machines that control thousand-pound bears with razor-sharp titanium claws are going to happen no matter what we do, so we might as well be the ones who do it,” said Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who, along with leaders such as Alphabet’s Sundar Pichai and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, signed a letter pushing back against critics who had described the Grizzly Project as dangerous, unnecessary, and damaging to humanity. “Any kind of regulation on this front will only hinder America’s ability to design and mass-produce high-quality indestructible grizzlies, which is the way the world is headed. You can’t stop progress, and you can’t really separate deadly bears that shoot acid from their mouths from the technology that helps people every day. Besides, these grizzlies have many nonlethal uses. Do you want to deny an elderly woman a powerful machine-bear hybrid that can carry her groceries and dispense her medication just because it also has the potential to kill millions of human beings?” At press time, Congress had approved $8 billion in research grants for the Grizzly Project after hearing China was well on its way to developing fire-breathing pandas.