Kind: captions
Language: en
America is in danger because for decades
merit was exchanged for fairness. It's a
beautiful impulse but a terrible
strategy. Our institutions got bloated,
dumb, and soft. And culturally, we lost
the will to build right as China became
a global powerhouse. While the West tore
itself apart, China played the long
game, assembling the factories, the
energy, the refineries, and the weapons
needed to win any kind of war. While
most slept, today's guests saw it coming
and reacted. Joe Lonsdale is one of the
most prolific billionaire tech founders,
and he's attempting to safeguard
America's future. He's building defense
technology to take down drone swarms,
autonomous ships to control the seas,
and a new elite university to train the
next generation of courageous leaders.
This isn't politics, it's preparation.
To discuss the threats and the
solutions, I bring you Joe Lndale.
you've really been heads down on defense
tech, uh, founding a university,
preparing for a world, quite frankly,
where China may no longer just be a
rival, but an open threat. What did you
see that made you realize we're not
ready? I was in the in the naive
pro-China camp 15, 20 years ago. I I I
love working with the talent in China.
There's so many great people there. And
none of us knew for sure when Xi Jinping
came on he was going to be this bad. But
it quickly became clear that we weren't
allowed to build things there and that
this guy had no interest in free markets
and no interest in being our friend. It
became clear he was a real communist and
you know a lot of our friends there were
being forced to have their top engineers
work for the military. People started
disappearing and lost a lot of lot of
friends who had worked between the two
countries. If you were wealthy and
successful and Chinese and and you
didn't agree with the CCP sometimes you
died in your sleep in your 40s. Were
there any commonalities in terms of the
people that died in their sleep, what
they were working on? One of the biggest
things with the crackdown that was maybe
just a few years ago was it had become a
lot cooler in China to go work in tech.
And that sounds normal to us here, but
that's not how it was there. For 20
years in China, uh this brightest kids
wanted to be in the government cuz the
government were the most powerful. They
were the wealthiest. And so they really
like having the civil service exam and
the top smart people work for
government. But government was becoming
less and less cool because tech was
becoming a place you can make more
money, work on harder problems. And I
think Xi Jinping got really jealous of
these guys. Some of them would speak out
against them. Some of them would say
they're the powerful ones. And so I
think he decided to take them down a
notch and really, you know, eliminated
dozens of them just for the fact if
you're going public with a billion
dollar multi-billion dollar company you
created and you didn't agree with the
government on everything and you told
them, "No, we want to have some of our
data outside of China, the stuff that's
outside of China." like that those guys
just disappeared and and the companies
got back into the control of the CCP.
That's crazy. Now, you've been working
in defense for a while. What was it that
first made you go, "Hold on a second."
Like, we've really got to start looking
at US's ability to defend itself. Was it
about China or was it just a general
sentiment?
Well, you know, my very first company I
started in defense was Palanteer, which
was 22 years ago. And and to be honest,
that was at a time when I was still
somewhat naive about China. and we knew
longterm they could be a problem. Uh I
didn't think it'd be this quickly. The
challenge then was really Islamism and
was really the terror attacks of 9/11
and the fact that there were several
thousand kind of people that wanted to
do us harm and that were planning to do
us harm again. And so that that was such
a major issue and also that the US after
the cold war had basically started you
know really really to decay in terms of
our defense sector but also in terms of
our software sector. So when we were
when I was at PayPal as a kid, you know,
the bad guys were the Chinese and the
Russian mafia. You had to stop them from
stealing your money. And we had to build
all these advanced new systems in
Silicon Valley, right around 1999, 2020,
2001. And there were a lot of big
breakthroughs for how you go after these
guys, how you stop fraud, how you do
investigations with tech. And after 9/11
happened, the US government spent tens
of billions of dollars on its on its own
software, but it was all done with these
contractors that were basically from the
1980s. And so it was all stuff that was
20 years out of date that was way behind
Silicon Valley. And my friends and I
said, "Wait a second. This is violating
civil liberties. It's not actually even
working to catch the bad guys. It's a
joke compared to what we're doing in
Silicon Valley. We got to go help these
people and defend our country." Elon
jokes a lot about, "Hey, really, I'm
just tech support here in my Doge
capacity." How real is that? That sounds
like you guys put your finger on that a
long time ago that we had these decaying
systems. Is is that like a primary
threat for us? It's a major problem for
the US government in so many areas. Um,
you know, and I'd separate out a little
bit. So, so America had the best and
brightest, you know, people in the
defense world for a long time. We had
the top companies in the 20th century.
We were completely dominant, right, in
Operation Desert Storm in that first
Iraq war in the early '9s. So much so
that I think a lot of us like our whole
view of the US is like, "Yeah, we're
number one and we're way ahead." And the
problem was is then after that, of
course, budgets had to be cut after the
end of the Cold War. And so you had this
massive consolidation where all these
companies kind of emerged as what we
call the primes. And so these like eight
or nine big companies came from a merger
of like 70 or 80, you know, smaller to
mediumsiz defense companies. And then
you had the tech bubble. So you had all
this really cool opportunity for great
engineers. And so a lot of the best
engineers left the primes to go work in
tech. And and then these things just
have started to decay. They've really
become like bureaucratic arms of the
government. And so so so the defense
part has just gotten more and more
broken here. But the other really
important point is that American
government was really competent in the
mid- 20th century. It did did some
things that no one else could do. We you
know we fought the two world wars. We
went to the moon. It turns out that we
used to have really hard tests to run
things to the US government. So if you
go allow me to go back a little bit in
the 19th century uh the government grew
a lot after the civil war. Abraham
Lincoln created a lot of new
departments. central government all of a
sudden became like a much bigger thing
in the 1860s and 70s and and by the time
of 1883 it was like it was a mess. Every
everyone agreed this is a mess because
whoever wins the presidency just brings
in all their friends, all their cronies,
their stupid cousin Vinnie, you know,
whoever else. They're all getting paid a
ton of money just to hang out in DC and
and not get anything done. So they said,
"Guys, we need to have tests. We need to
have merit. We need to actually say the
people running things need to be really
smart." So we put in these tests with
the Pendleton Act in 1883. And and these
tests were there all the way through the
moon landing, through everything. And
then come the late 1970s, our country's
become very politicized around
affirmative action. It turns out these
tests have different results on average
for different races. Uh they weren't
racist tests, by the way. Everyone
agreed that the tests actually measured
your performance, but they said despite
that, the activist courts and the left
said no more tests. So around 191 1980
or so, they threw out the tests. I
didn't know that. And and then by the
way, they didn't just throw out the
tests. They made it almost impossible to
fire people. They put in like massive
protections where it's really hard and
slow to fire people. And so starting in
1980, our government is not able to do
tests anymore, not able to do merit. It
just starts getting dumber slowly over
time and dumber and dumber and dumber.
So for 45 years, our government's been
getting dumber. That is interesting. One
of the great revelations of my adult
life, and this actually bothers me, but
is the the degree to which intelligence
matters.
Um, what role do you think intelligence
plays? full stop. Whether you're trying
to improve the government, whether
you're trying to be the baddest uh kid
on the international block or you're
trying to build a company. Yeah. No,
this is a really important point because
obviously intelligence isn't everything.
I think I think integrity, I think I
think faith, I think why you care about
the world matters. I think your motives
matter to help people. But if you
actually want to be effective at
whatever those motives are, intelligence
is absolutely central. Merit is
absolutely central. If you look at the
very top companies versus just an
average company, you have the best and
the brightest. I mean, Palanteer started
off with a bunch of these math champions
and chess champions, just like the best
people out of the PhD programs at
Stanford and MIT and other places and
they brought their smartest friends who
brought their smartest friends and
that's just a huge advantage in the tech
world with the very very top companies.
You don't see just like average people
there. you see just extraordinarily
bright minds and that you know that that
three four fifth standard deviation of
skill is the same way by the way if you
want to have the Oakland A's be a top
baseball team if you want to have a top
basketball team you can't just have an
average guy on the team you need the
very very best you know the top merit in
that area that's how you win and in some
cases it's it's a skill in sports in
other areas in some cases it's IQ and IQ
IQ matters a lot for what we're doing so
what went wrong how did as a country We
go from we're testing people, we want
merit to not. And I think everybody will
hear that question knowing we're a
little bit on the other side of this
now. The pendulum is definitely swinging
back. But to protect against that
decadesl long problem, define it for me.
Problem is if you focus on these hard
tests, if you focus on merit, then then
you get a very different demographic
result. And this is just the nature of
it, right? And this is where the country
is. you're going to get more Asians,
more, you know, more Indians and Chinese
and more Jews and then more white people
and you're going to get fewer of other
groups. And that's just where we are
right now. I'm not, this is not a value
judgment. That's just the that's just
the data very very clearly and that's
going to be the case that that we can
replicate or learn from. Is it just
there's so many Chinese and Indians that
they're likely to have a ton of
geniuses? Obviously, that doesn't work
for Jews because there's so few of them.
Uh but there there is something and is
it replicatable? I think you have to
realize how immigration works. It's not
just the immigration is like this
magical thing that just happened. Like
the people who came to the United States
from India, from China tends to be a lot
of the brightest people, a lot of the
hardest working people. You have places
with over a billion people and it's a
very good selection effect. So how do
you get out? How do you go to a place
where you know you're going to have to
work hard and and and how do you be
smart enough to get there? and the
classes of people who came and who
brought their friends and family. Turns
out we have a very very strong immigrant
culture from those places. There's
different ways different people came to
United States. It's very politically
incorrect. But but but you know if you
if you're paying people in Haiti who are
desperately poor and you're giving them
free plane tickets and you're giving
them cash cards with 10,000 $20,000 on
them as as the last administration was
for hundreds of thousands of these
people who you know that those are not
going to be the most excellent
immigrants versus people who figure out
how to come here themselves, right? So
there's I think things like that are
politically incorrect, but if you use
the logic to piece through it, you start
to get a sense of of why there's
different results. So there's a great
quote that um all it takes for evil to
reign is for good men to remain silent.
How much of where we got to is that do
you think people saw like, hey, wait a
second, getting rid of marriage is
really stupid or were we all under some
mass delusion? This was a major legal
political battle. uh at the court level.
And so what happened is that our country
was set up by the founders to have
Congress be the most powerful part. And
uh the courts were supposed to be a
check that interpreted the constitution.
What happened is there was a group on
the left that were what are called
activists. They had a different view of
the world. They said we're going to use
the courts to push our vision and and
they got a lot of people in there and
then they used the courts and it was a
big argument at the time. A lot of
people on the moderate side and the
right side said this is insane. It's not
the role of the courts. They said this
is dangerous. you're not letting us do
what we're doing to hire the best and
brightest in these areas. Uh but you
know, it turns out that even then the
legacy media was more biased kind of to
go along with the left and not really
not really call out this crisis and not
really echo the the worries of the
right. And so the left won at that
battle and and this is a consequence of
what happened with our culture of the
left winning at that battle and not
letting us consider merit and
government. And even today, it's like
obviously broken, but they don't talk
about it that way because it's too
offensive, I guess. But and by the way
is it's like there's dumb white people
by the way. This is not a racist thing.
Like if you don't have tests, you get
dumb everyone. It's like yeah there's
but I mean in the government especially
it's like it's like it's not that just
like a it's not this is not like a
racist thing. It's just like you need
tests otherwise the all the wrong people
get in and and and all the wrong people
become leaders and it becomes very
political. So here's what happens if you
don't have a merit-based system. Instead
you have like a political virtue
signaling based system. And so the
people who get ahead are the ones that
are the best politicians. They're the
ones who signal to their tribe. And so a
lot of this like DEI ESG like virtue
signaling stuff is like them signaling
that I'm on your team. I'm safe to
promote like I'm part of your political
group and things become a lot more
tribal. Humans are naturally tribal. So
you don't have these merit-based
systems. You get the tribal based
systems instead. And so you have in our
government these massive tribal based
things going on that are all around
these virtue signaling. And so yes, the
pendulum in public has swung back away
from that stuff, but those people are
still running all these departments. So,
so it's a mess.
Okay. So, if we've got um some
institutional problem where we've got
activists that are finding their way
into positions that are really going to
influence policy and we've got a
national narrative problem. Um how do we
begin to unwind this? Well, I think this
is what you see people like Elon at Doge
and others trying to do with President
Trump is first of all, you have to fire
a lot of the people who should never
been there in the first place because
they've overhired and they have a lot of
bloat and there's a lot of just people
who are not there based on merit, based
on skill. So, you have to replace a lot
of people and then you have to ideally
put back in tests. I mean, that would be
the ideal thing to do. And you know, I
think this Supreme Court, if they could
take a proper case to it, would very
clearly affirm, wait a second, we do
need merit in this country. It's not
against any kind of law to have basic
tests and and to have skills that are
required to run our government. And you
have seen an executive order on this
already to stop using disperate impact,
right? So, so, so to understand what
happens here, there might be like a fire
department in a small town and says we
want people who can understand how to
like follow the rules and procedures for
how to handle a fire. there's going to
be a written test just to just to make
sure basic competence around these
things and and and that test happens to
screen out more people of one race than
another even though it's not racial and
so the so the last administration the
bid administration was coming in and
suing all these small towns and saying
no you can't have these tests anymore
which I think is absolutely insane right
it's crazy right so it's called
disperate impact and so so the Trump
administration's got rid of that that
theory and and and and now the question
is can we actually put in appropriate
tests in these different areas and can
we put in accountability can we reward
people for success. Can can we can we
punish for failure? Just like the same
thing you do in our companies, can we do
some of that in the government? And this
is a big battle. I mean, the the the
government unions are major donors to
the Democrats. They're very powerful
base for the Democratic party. These
people in the government side vote like
90% to the left. So, it's a huge battle
and and it's being fought right now. And
I and I hope we stay bull because they
scream really loud. They fight really
hard. And a lot of people say, "Joe,
it's not worth the fight. We have other
things to focus on." And for me, it is
worth the fight. We have to make our
government smart and confident again and
and neutral again. So, we'll see what we
can do. Man, I'll be very curious to
know what people think that we should be
focusing on. I have a theory that is
people need to be chased by a lion. If
you want to get people to not have uh
stupid operating systems running in
their brain, there needs to be a clear
and present danger to which they are
held accountable. So, in a business, the
clear and present danger is I can't make
payroll. So, I've got to make something
that people actually want at a price
that they're willing to pay or I can't
make payroll. And that is the world's
worst feeling ever. And so, you find
yourself focusing, wanting the best and
the brightest, doing things that you
know work. And it's incredible when it
works. I mean, the what it yields is as
close to magic as you're going to get.
Uh, longtime listeners of my show will
have heard me say this before, but
entrepreneurship is the ability to
create a system where you've got inputs
that yield outputs that are better than
the inputs. Like, that's crazy. And to
be able to do that is so difficult that
thinking of it as bordering on magical
is the right way. It's it's really
really difficult. So all right then the
question becomes what is that lion in
the public sphere? And for me and I've
come to this way later than you. So I
held on to my naive
uh a lot longer in terms of this is
great. China's amazing. Couldn't be
happier. Really want to go bucket list.
like just um was so enthralled watching
their rise. It it was really
breathtaking. And then one day I
realized, uh-oh, uh whether I want a
lion or not, I think we're going to get
one in the shape of China, and we really
aren't prepared for this. Um, do you
think that the competition with China is
going to sharpen us or is the
competition with China
dangerous? Yeah, Tom, that's a great way
of putting it because I do agree you
need a line chasing you on these things
and I think there are definitely areas
where it's a really great thing that
actually forces the right and the left
in the US together to embrace things
like merit, to embrace things like
making our defense functional, making
our country functional. However, it's
also extremely dangerous and and in a
lot of ways, China's, you know, I think
the right word is rapacious. I mean,
let's just look at the bio sector for
one. So, America has by far the most
innovative biotech sector in the world.
Have a lot of the very best research in
the world. A lot of the best and
brightest have come here over the last
several decades. And we, you know, we
we've created the vast majority of big
pharma companies and and big
breakthroughs that that positively
impact, you know, billions of lives. And
here's what's happening though is China
is is going after the entire innovation
sector in bio. And they're not doing it
in a way that's like, oh, it's fair
competition. What they're doing is they
say, "Oh, look, America has a slow FDA
that takes, you know, eight years to get
through to make a drug or 12 years to
make a drug, depending on what it is."
And they said, "I if we can make ours
only take three or four years and go
faster." For example, as say I invest
$100 million, my friends in a new really
exciting, you know, therapy that's going
to, you know, save a bunch of kids from
rare disease or whatever it is, and it's
going to be worth, you know, $5 billion
if we succeed. China sees that and says,
"Oh, you've been working on it for a
year. It's starting to go really well.
It's going to take you a decade to get
through, and we're going to go after
that same target now with our new
company in China, and we're going to go
really fast through our regulator
because because we're because we've
super, you know, we sped it up because
FDA and US is slow. and we're gonna get
the result and we're going to sell it to
to to Fizer or sell it to GSK or whoever
for a couple billion dollars before you
even get past your own FDA. And this is
what they're doing. Even just two days
ago, another billion dollar plus sale
and they're going after our research and
our companies and they're taking
advantage of it and and and it's very
clever of them in one way, but another
way this is terrible because if they're
going to do that, then people like me
are not going to keep putting lots of
money from our funds into these bio
things that they're just going to steal
anyway. And so this this is a huge
crisis for our innovation sector in
America. And it's and we have to find
ways to a speed up our own FDA. Sure.
But b we probably shouldn't be allowing
them to operate asymmetrically and going
after our stuff. Yeah, I was going to
ask about that because I have a rule in
my life that I will never utter the
words slow down so I can lead. And if
China is handing us our ass, then we've
got to approach it from the perspective
of listen, these guys are killing it.
They're handing us our ass. They're
playing the game better than we are.
We've got to adjust. If they're using
corporate corporate espionage to steal
things, that becomes very different. So,
is this China's just out competing us
and we better step up or is China
sending um literal corporate spies to
steal the technology? It it's literally
both. I mean, it's literally both. They
are stealing things left and right. They
are spying on everything. They are
copying everything they can. And after
copying and after taking back what we
figured out and after stealing our
target that US spent all this money on,
they're also then iterating on it
faster. So it's it's actually the worst
of both worlds. It's like it's like
there's a form of it that would be like
a fair competition, but then it's a fair
competition plus all the stealing, which
which is which makes what makes it very
difficult to compete against when you
combine those two. M what makes them so
good at uh high-tech manufacturing, at
doing things at scale, at moving so
fast? Like I understand that part of my
youth was uh a story. It was a lie. It
wasn't actually true. But growing up, I
felt about America the way when I look
at China now, I'm like, "Yo, we now feel
like this slow, lumbering, fat kid, and
they feel like super sharp, moving
quickly. They understand the game. They
are playing to win. They understand we
are in a competition. Like there's
there's a level of ferocity from them
that I respect that I don't see here.
Um what what are they getting so right
that allows them to scale like that? You
can't have more than one god in a
culture. And our culture used to embrace
this sort of like fierce competition and
building and common sense and getting
things done. And our culture now does
not embrace that. Like when you go and
try to get a permit and if it's taking
way too long and you like complain in a
blue city, they laugh at you. They don't
care, right? And this is just tolerated
like in in America 30 years ago or in
China today like like that bureaucrat
would lose their job. I mean in China
they probably be shot or something. It's
like but I'm not necessar shoot people
but like I mean come on. This is
disgusting, right? And it's like it's
just fine. It's just no big deal. It's
just like if you want to tolerate
mediocrity and you want to say, "Oh,
well, what's more important here is
you're a white uh cisgendered male who's
like trying to already built a lot of
other things and he's just so obsessed
with his privilege. You should just like
be quiet and like sit on the side." Like
like there's literally apparently a lot
of voters who think that way. And so
it's like we just have this like weird
ideology that's crept in and it's
getting in the way of merit and common
sense and competition and and and it
drives me crazy. I mean, we we were the
faster ones and now and now it's like
this like this like this [ __ ]
political class is just allowing it to
be broken. So, yeah, I'm very frustrated
because I still think that a lot of us
could compete and beat them, but we need
to clear this like out of the way and
and and people aren't willing to do it.
Like, they just they vote for the
idiots. I I don't get it, man. We'll get
back to the show in a moment, but first,
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show. All right. Well, talk to me about
Palunteer, Androl. You founded
Palunteer, you um were early investor in
Androl, both focused on defense. How
have you been able to pull that off
given that you're still in a broken
system? So, basically, after the primes
consolidated like we talked about, and
you had these like very dominant
companies that became bureaucratic arms
of the government, it became very clear
to us they were starting to embrace
things that were not based on merit. I
mean, you go like see all the trainings
at places like Lockheed and they were
like really focused on DEI, really
focused on all the white men had to
learn about their privilege and as
opposed to like spending time on how to
how to be the very best, right? So,
these places themselves got to be very
corrupt and there were really only two
companies that broke through at first.
Like a lot of people tried, but really
Palanteer and SpaceX were the two
companies and and they were so much
better. They were so much better that
they eventually kind of shamed their way
through. In each case though, Tom, both
Palanteer and SpaceX separately had to
sue the government for illegally trying
to block them. Like we caught them doing
things they were. Isn't that crazy? And
this is actually doing it because it was
an ideological difference, you know? It
was much more about just like it's how
they've always done things is they work
with their friends and they and they
give contracts the places that their
friends went and worked. and and you
literally had with Palanteer this
deployment in Iraq that was like helping
find all the IEDs for the special forces
and saving their lives and the army
brigade said oh can you go with us too
uh you know our bosses won't let us pay
you of course because you know with
their want to give all the money to
their friends but we said of course like
we're patriots here's a system for free
just like report back give us feedback
and they showed us how we were saving
massive numbers of lives by by
automatically like you know bringing
together you know communication from the
British and the French and different
parts of America
deployments and really reduce a lot of
the lives lost. And it was wonderful.
And then of course when it finally came
up to like bid out the new defense
ground control system, of course they
gave the $5 billion contract like no
contest right away to their friends
Rathon. Oh, I thought for sure you were
going to say and that's how we got our
beach head. No, no, exactly. They give
it so of course they give it to the big
company and and it turns out there
actually were laws passed in Congress
that they had to consider off-the-shelf
software. They had to consider working
with new entrance, but of course they're
like, "Oh, we can't work with new
entrance. always just give it to one of
the primes and so that so we actually
won the lawsuit. You know what's crazy
is the general in charge told them to
destroy the records of Palanter saving
lives and it but fortunately we and
another person on the army side had kept
a secret copy and so they tried to
assert that there was that never
happened and then we showed it and the
judge was horrified on our behalf and so
we just crushed them obviously cuz they
were just liars and and and then
eventually Palanteer, you know, wins the
program and it was fascinating to me is
that once Palanteer finally got in and
finally was running all this stuff, all
these people said, "Wow, you guys
actually are way better. We were told by
everyone that you were schemers and and
too and not complete and broken and not
all bad in all these ways. And so
they're very very good at like at like
badmouthing their their opponents and
trying to keep you out. But here's
what's happened, Tom. And is this is
this is optimistic. So Paler breaks
through it starts to really win over the
last, you know, eight nine years.
SpaceX, I mean, if you have to be blind
not to see it, right? They're doing
things at one of cost. Like I think, you
know, more things have been sent to
space by SpaceX than anyone else at this
point. Obviously better. And these
things are so much better. They kind of
laid these train tracks and said, "So a
lot of generals, a lot of admirals,
they're actually a lot of them are
really good guys. They care about our
country. They're patriots. You know,
they're there for the right reasons and
and there's still some merit left in the
military for sure." So these people say,
"Wait a second, these new things are way
better." And then Andre comes along and
it's just like running circles around
the primes. It's doing things for like,
you know, eighth the costs that are
clearly better in every way. And so
Andre now is a big new prime. And then
that's actually opened it up. We have
like seven or eight new companies valued
over a billion dollars. I've started a
couple more of them that are, you know,
one of them, for example, uh, Epis, I
don't know if you've heard of this one
yet, but we're able to turn off you.
Yeah. We're able to turn off enemy
drones miles away. So, swarms of drones,
which is how warfare works right now.
It's like magic. We did a contest
against the primes. The guys didn't take
us seriously, like, oh, we're the
primes. Why are you guys here? We shot
down the hardened drones nine and a half
times further away for the same power
and size. Just just wipe the floor with
them. literally never understand uh what
the world view is that somebody at that
kind of classic prime is running. You're
going up against the best and the
brightest coming out of Silicon Valley
which has shown over the last god knows
how many decades that they out innovate
everybody. And so I don't know if
they're just thinking, oh you guys can
do Instagram, Facebook, but you can't
translate that over. That's what it is.
That's what it is. I mean they they you
guys are software guys. We build the
arsenal of democracy. I'll give you
another one.
uh is this company we started a few
years ago and it's already delivering
you know hundreds of boats now to the
Navy and teaching them how to use AI but
this is a very new thing no one's done
that from Silicon Valley before and and
to be honest it's not just Silicon
Valley we need a talent that came from
advanced manufacturing world we needed
talent that came from the Navy the guy
running it Navy Seal and we're doing
things that the primes can't do and this
by the way China has 200 times our ship
building capacity so this is so that's
why I'm as fast as I can I want to prove
we can build thousands of ships again
we're going to do it in the next year or
Yeah, this is where I think the national
mythology of what World War II was for
us has lingered for so long that people
don't realize that yes, when Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor, we were able to
shift this incredible manufacturing
um you know area of the economy over to
wartime stuff. We don't have it anymore.
And so all of that has atrophied, gone
away, been shipped overseas. And so as I
started watching the rise of China and
it clicked over in my head that well
hold on a second uh these guys I would
clock them as current rivals that could
become adversaries. That's where I'm
like uh the fact that they can make 200x
the number of ships that we make that
sounds like us back in World War II.
Exactly. But now it's not us. It it is
our adversary. What happened to our
adversaries when we did it? They lost.
And so it's like, yo, this is a little
too predictable if we don't start
building these capabilities back up,
whether it's um Androl and what they're
doing with ship building. When you're
spinning that up, are you guys thinking
specifically about China and that being
this um inevitable threat on the
horizon? Are you thinking, nah, it
doesn't matter who it is, we just need
to be prepared for uh anything and
everything that could come at us. How do
you guys think through that? Well,
listen, I think the Islamists around the
world are a major threat. I think the
communists are a major threat. I think
those are the two biggest totalitarian
philosophies. It's actually scariest to
me when they work together. Uh but you
know, we're going to be facing our
grandkids will still be facing Islamist
as a major problem. I think we don't
take it seriously enough. Uh and then
our our grandkids will probably still be
facing some form of communism as well.
It seems to be a recurring kind of like
broken part of the human brain to to
want this if it's not educated properly.
Right. Thomas Jefferson thought the
whole point of having public school was
to teach against the ills of despatism
which is basically another form of like
teaching against the ills of
authoritarianism and communism right so
it's like we we ironically our public
schools teach the opposite now I think
we encourage our kids that didn't go as
planned we we need to we need to c we
capture those we're working on that's a
whole another issue we're working on uh
but you know seronic especially was
created because Dino and I and a few
people around us in touch with our
friends who run the Navy said wait a
second exactly we're going to lose
uh if we don't actually be a make
thousands of ships. And by the way, a
warship in 2025 should look completely
different than a warship in 2000 cuz you
don't need people on on it. You don't.
And so that means you could design it
much cheaper. You could have way more
firepower. We have a new 150 foot boats
we're working on. We bought a big uh
shipyard in Louisiana. We're putting a
few hundred million dollars into it.
We're building this 150 footer
autonomous ones and it has all sorts of
different possible configurations for
different types of weaponization. Uh
there's all sorts of different types of
controls. We actually hired some people
who came from like the gaming world of
course because you want both uh people
who know actually how naval battles work
but also for command and control you
know you you just it's it's a whole
different design for how you deploy and
use AI and how you you control hundreds
of these at once in any kind of battle
scenario. Uh so it's so interesting Joe
because I build video games. I know we
talked very briefly before we started
rolling. The thought that the things
that we have to figure out in terms of
how to get an enemy to act intelligently
that that would play out in real
military that is fascinating.
I was always very interesting. I was a
big video game guy. I'm a fan of Enders
game like from Orson Scottard and all
these things. You you actually have to
you actually have to simulate in the
water though because there's things like
rogue waves that just destroy your ships
when they're sprinting and stuff. So you
actually have to like practice a lot in
the water and then echo it and then
practice again and echo. You can't you
don't just want to simulate. It's really
dangerous. You can make a lot of
mistakes. You know this is it's an
engineering engineering is about
scarcity, right? If you want to build a
bridge, this thing is an important point
for people. If you want to build a
bridge, it's very easy to build a bridge
on anywhere that will stay up no matter
what. If you have infinite resources,
right? You spend a billion dollars on
your bridge. It's tons of metal. Fine.
You have a bridge. It's going to work.
But but but engineering is about how can
you build that bridge that's just as
good for $20 million and therefore you
can make 50 bridges. And in a war, it's
it's like how many how can you make, you
know, thousands of these things that can
work together by doing them more
elegantly and cheaply. And so there's
some cases where you want something
underwater, but for the same cost, you
might be able to have a hundred small
things above the water. That's going to
be more useful in some cases. So you
definitely want both. Now, you guys got
into this when the prevailing attitude
was that working for a defense company
was immoral. Um, one, how did you think
in a contrarian way? What facts were
stacking up? And then what are the
ethics and morality of building weapons?
Yeah. No, this is this is a great this
is a great point. So when we started
Palunteer, of course, we were more on
the software side and even I have to
admit growing up in the western culture
in Silicon Valley, you know, in
California. I was very squeamish about
weapons. I mean, you've seen all the bad
guys in the movies make weapons. And so
Palanteer is like, well, we're going to
stop the bad guys. We're going to
protect civil liberties. We're just
doing software, so we're okay. We kind
of got around that problem. And then we
saw Xi Jinping as a crazy communist. We
saw China building all these really
advanced new things with the top
engineers. And we saw our defense
companies were declining. We're not
hiring any of our best and brightest
friends. We said, "Wait a second. This
is a really big crisis." And so three of
our former Palentier guys partner with
Palmer Lucky, start Andreal. And kind of
clicked like, "Wait a second. If we're
patriotic and America is going to be
around and be a dominant force and not
fall the next 20 years, we have to do
this." And it and it was really hard.
Even for a lot of my team, it was hard.
We do a lot in like bio innovation which
I was talking about earlier. We do a lot
in other areas of tech that not related
to defense. I think some of those people
especially the people in the bio world
said if you guys are going to do defense
we don't want to be your friends
anymore. It's just evil. We're trying to
save lives. You're trying to destroy
lives. And it was like no guys like
actually it's good for the the good guys
to not lose the bad guys. And so I'm
going to work on this. And it was it was
a tough conversation to have. And you
know, it wasn't really until the Russia
Ukraine thing that the zeitgeist really
flipped and that people realized that
that you need to do this. But it was it
was interesting for a few years there.
It was it was very contrarian. Yeah,
there's no doubt. Um, how do you
personally think about the idea of
maximum lethality? I recognize that this
is a fact of the human existence that
people are going to come and take your
life and your resources if they can. Um,
it's just history bears that out over
and over and over. Uh, and at the same
time, um, like yesterday there was
something, I think it was Trump or the
White House that posted and it was like,
"Don't worry, we haven't forgot about
jihadis and then it just showed a video
of like 10 of them or whatever getting
taken out by uh presumably a drone or
something." And it's like, damn. Like
that was just 10 people that just they
existed and then they stopped existing.
We helped do that thousands of times uh
with Obama and and others because you
know if mercy for the evil bad guy is uh
is cruelty to the innocent, right? And I
think this is a very important part of
being an adult is to be able to to
grapple with these things. And I think
we have very few adults in our society
versus 80 years ago. I think during
World War II it was very obvious like
what you had to do. And I think a lot of
people now they have this like extended
adolescence. They never really grow up,
never really have to make these tough
choices. And this is important for for
war. It's important for terrorism. But
Tom, it's also important in our cities.
I mean, just here in Austin just last
week, there was this 30-year-old Indian
kid who was this great entrepreneur.
He'd turned down a top jobs to be here
building his company. He went on a bus
and a homeless guy who'd committed over
like a dozen felonies in the past
stabbed him in the neck and killed him.
And why was a homeless guy who committed
a dozen felonies out? For the same
reason that people are afraid to kill
the jihadis who are going to kill us,
right? For the same reason they're
afraid to work on defense is that is
that they they want to have mercy for
the guilty. They feel bad for the bad
guys. I'm sorry, but once someone's
committed multiple felonies, you got to
put them in jail. And once a jihadi is
very clearly trying to kill us, you got
to kill him. Otherwise, that poor
innocent kid, his family's distraught,
his friends are distraught, and he was
just killed for no reason because we're
too afraid to put bad guys in jail. And
it just it drives me crazy. I saw a
video the other day of um a Muslim who
was like, "We are specifically coming
into liberal countries because we know
that we can come in and uh we'll be
welcomed and then we will slowly become
more of the population." He didn't say
politically and economically powerful,
but that was like the idea. We're just
going to grow and expand and essentially
take over uh the space. And the
interviewer said,"Well, how would we be
allowed as a Christian to go to your
country and do the same?" And he
chuckled and was like, "Uh, don't think
because you're liberal that we're
liberal. We would never put up with
that." And I was like, "Oh, damn." Like,
uh, that's a thing. So, what do you
think about what Douglas Murray calls
the strange death of the West? the way
that there's um the notion of empathetic
suicidal empathy. Yeah. Yeah. Know
Douglas Murray honestly is a good
friend. He's someone I really admire. I
think he's written some of the most
important books on these topics. And
suicidal empathy is obviously a massive
problem coming from the left especially
right now. Although I think a lot of our
people make the mistake too. And it's
it's a paradox of liberalism. We've been
talking about this for for for a century
or more. uh you know you want to be a
liberal society but you but if you
tolerate illiberalism if you to if you
tolerate the authoritarians coming in
and and and pushing things and it's
going to break you eventually this by
the way you know I'm a chairman of a new
university that is attracting a lot of
very top students very top professors
and we debate this a lot because the
goal of university just like the goal of
like how you run your country it's it's
to be open it's it's to be liberal in
the classical sense it's to pursue the
truth it's to have dissenting viewpoints
and learn how to have humility and
debate and you want include everyone.
Like I don't mind if there's a professor
who's a communist uh next to a professor
who's a free market person. As long as
that communist professor isn't trying to
stop people he disagrees with from
coming in and and so as soon as you have
that liberalism, as soon as you have
that attempt to block others and to
conquer, and this is what's happened, by
the way, at all of our universities
because it's the same idea you just
talked about. If you look at the top 100
universities in the country, the vast
majority of their departments got to be
51% or more illiberals, some version of
communist, some version of socialist,
whatever. And then they don't let anyone
else get hired who doesn't agree with
them. And suddenly you have departments
that are like 18 kind of commies to to
maybe one moderate and and and there
used to be one Republican there, but he
died, right? Cuz he was the old history
professor or whatever. And now you have
a whole department with only one point
of view and and they're brainwashing our
kids. And it's like these places are
broken. And so if if a liberal place
tolerates illiberalism, then it becomes
illiberal. And that the university
should be a warning sign for our entire
society. We have to be very careful. We
should not be letting in immigrants from
these places that are illiberal. It's
crazy to be bringing people from Somalia
who have those views. It's crazy to be
people in general from a lot of other
parts of the world with illiberal views.
And they're very misogynistic cultures.
They're very broken cultures. So I, you
know, and Europe's basically committing
suicide. It's very frustrating. H if you
had to rank order the threats to the US
specifically, but the West in general,
um top two or three, what what would you
rank order them? This is really hard. I
I think I did this like quiz on my on my
ex the other day and the I think the the
one that people voted as the biggest
problem was the immigration Islamist
issue and I do agree that's really big
problem. Uh what's really tied to that
is the polarization and dysfunctional
government issue. I tend to think if we
can actually make our government more
functional and we can find a way to
collaborate between the moderate sides
and have this like merit-based kind of
common sense government, I think that
we'd be able to work together to like
solve all the other issues, right? Cuz I
mean, listen, there's AI threat we can
talk about and I'm very bullish and
optimistic on AI, but there's obviously
ways people could use it to do terrible
things. But I think I think to me it's
the government issues the biggest, but
then if you don't solve that, you're
just going to get swamped like Europe
and you're going to lose your liberal
society. So you're more worried about
internal own goals versus rise of China
uh rise of Islamism. You're more focused
on we got to get ourselves right
internally. Listen the threat the
threats are very clearly very clearly to
me it's the internal own goals and lack
of merit and dysfunctionality is
probably China as an adversary and the
problems there because it's just this
very active rapacious adversary that's
destroying things actively right now.
The longer term is probably the Islamist
and the immigration stuff and and you
know we had this crazy activist party
that Elon and others have talked about a
lot where every part of the government's
funding migrants secretly to come here
and to swamp things and to shift things
more towards the kind of leftist
authoritarian direction that other
countries tend to vote and so so yeah so
all of these are very big problems.
They're all tied together and and my my
goal so I have something called the Cyro
Institute you know where I have teams in
over 20 states. have a lot of people
working and helping in DC and this is
all about just like moderate common
sense incentives, accountability, fixing
things. We're very public online about,
you know, I think we have over 50 laws
that already passed this year in
different states and just like making
government smarter and more functional
and less stupid. And I think that's
actually like the prerequisite for
solving the rest of these problems.
And so I think a lot about China. That
is admittedly my personal obsession.
There's two things I worry about. money
printing because of all the downstream
consequences includi