The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 37 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Torsten Reil: Foreign allies will eventually lack capability to protect Europe
“Over time there just won't be, I think the capability even of partners and as it looks to also not the willingness to do so.”
Torsten Reil: Founder ambition matters more than regulatory or tax policy
“I actually think none of this stuff really matters that much. I think what really matters is founder quality and founder ambition. So I think for a country to be successful, they should attract the most aggressive founders. And everything else is a lot less im…”
Torsten Reil: A Russian threat to NATO's eastern flank is extremely plausible
“I think the threat is extremely plausible in the next few years.”
Torsten Reil: A China-Taiwan conflict will occur much sooner than 10 years
“I, again, I think it's plausible that there will be a conflict. When? It's hard to tell. I don't think it's 10 years away if it happens. It's probably quite a lot sooner than that.”
Torsten Reil: Exceptional teams work best without process, stand-ups, or deadline forecasts
“I used to think that, that you needed to make sure that there was always a degree of process when teams work together on something and including something new. I have now learned that it's possible with exceptional people to let's, let's just let them get on w…”
Torsten Reil: If running ByteDance, he would immediately shut down TikTok
“Probably ByteDance, and I would shut down TikTok immediately.”
Helsing's 2021 pitch deck predicted invasions of Ukraine and Taiwan
“When we started Helsing in March, 2021, we actually put one of our slides that we thought there were going to be two galvanizing events. One of them was going to be an invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the other one an invasion of Taiwan by China.”
Defense primes risk a Tesla-style disruption if they ignore software
“The thing that we have to avoid is the Tesla moment for the defense sector. If we collectively, including the primes, don't understand that and don't adapt, the same thing is going to happen to defense, As happened to the car industry.”
Torsten Reil: Four exceptional engineers outperform eight good ones for less money
“You can achieve a lot in particular around software with three to four exceptional people. And so we'd rather have a team of four exceptional people than eight good people. It makes everything easier. It's also cheaper, by the way, even though you pay above ma…”
Torsten Reil: Needing weekly 1-on-1s with senior leaders signals operational problems
“The people I work with are usually senior and don't need that much guidance. If I need a one-to-one with them every week, I think something's probably gonna, is probably going wrong.”
Torsten Reil: Eliminating 1-on-1 meetings had zero negative impact on performance
“I used to do them religiously, by the way, I just stopped doing them. It hasn't had a negative impact.”
Torsten Reil: Most Western drone companies build low-volume, boutique hardware
“Most drone companies right now build small numbers of quite exquisite drones. They're quite expensive. You know, it's sometimes a bit of a boutique business where people really care about the hardware and the carbon and everything else.”
Torsten Reil: Deterrence requires software speed and tens of thousands of drones
“You can counter them but you can't counter them with the current systems that we have. You can't just have exquisite, exquisite systems like tanks or artillery guns that are not particularly well connected that take a while to take a shot. You need to work bas…”
Torsten Reil: Single operators will control autonomous drone swarms by 2025
“At the moment you have one operator operating one drone. That's going to happen It's going to happen quite quickly that that's going to change, and you'll be able, as a single operator, to control multiple drones, and that trend, I think, we'll see playing out…”
Torsten Reil: Cheap strike drones make expensive tanks and artillery obsolete
“If you just think about the economics of it, you still have a really strong asymmetry, and so it'll become harder and harder unless you find a way to really counteract these systems, which is hard, to send expensive tanks and artillery systems into battle when…”
Torsten Reil: Deploying human soldiers against mass AI drones will become impossible
“You'll, it'll be impossible, and I think ethically extremely problematic, to send humans into a battlefield that is essentially Facing large numbers of autonomous intelligence systems on the other side.”
Torsten Reil: Traditional defense primes spend less than 5% on internal R&D
“In general, they're not incentivized to Spend a lot of their own money on R&D. I think it's probably less than five percent or so.”
Torsten Reil: Extremely few new defense prime contractors will emerge
“A very small number. An extremely small number.”
Torsten Reil: Long-tail defense startup investments will lose value
“I think for some of the more fragmented tail, I think they're maybe not to zero, but I think they're going, going to go down.”
Torsten Reil: VC defense startups cannot all become primes due to talent
“So, so all of these companies would be competing for a very small pool of people, and I, it's just impossible to have turned them all into primes. It will just, it just not gonna happen.”
Torsten Reil: Performance improvement plans actually work and turn employees around
“Well, I, I've seen actually quite a lot of people turn around, including at my previous company as well, in, on a performance management plan. So it's not a foregone conclusion.”
Torsten Reil: Constant hiring pressure is necessary to manage low performers out
“You need to basically always have pressure on the pipeline of good people coming in, in order to be able to manage other people out, and so that you end up with a pool of people that are amazing.”
Torsten Reil: Heavy capital lets defense startups bypass grants for major contracts
“And the second thing that allowed us to do is, is to not go for innovation you know, projects in defense for incubators and, you know, little grants here and there, but because we were quite well funded, we could go for programs of record. So the official larg…”
Torsten Reil: Defense tech companies must build ethical standards beyond export law
“But I think if you want to have people really engaged with these kinds of technologies and capabilities in a company, you need to go further than that. You need to build a view that goes beyond just what is quite static export law.”
Torsten Reil: Governments spend under 1% of equipment budgets on startups
“I think it's less than one percent.”
Torsten Reil: Ukraine and Russia each produce 1.5M FPV drones annually
“I believe Ukraine is, is building one and a half million FPV drones, the small first person view drones, drones a year. I think Russia is building roughly the same.”
Torsten Reil: Product-market fit is only one-eighth of building a defense prime
“But I had to learn that, that is just a very small part of building a prime. It's like one eighth, maybe, or something. It's product market fit. Then you have to do all the rest.”
Torsten Reil: Europe does not lack early-stage venture capital
“I don't think that there is a lack of capital in Europe. Certainly not seed, series A, symptoms even series B.”
Torsten Reil: Europe can establish tech sovereignty within five to ten years
“I'm not sure whether we'll be able to create those companies kind of in the next two or three years to a point where they provide sufficient sovereignty, but I'm very sure we can do it over the next five to 10 years.”
Torsten Reil: Founders who work smart and hard always win
“Because you need to do both, clearly. You know, you're always out-competed by someone who works smart and hard, if you're a work smart, not hard person.”
Helsing raised a €100M Series A four months after its seed round
“So the seed was eight and a half million euros, but then we were lucky to have Daniel Ek and Prima Materia invest a hundred million euros about four months later or so.”
Torsten Reil: Complex defense tech startups cannot be built by solo founders
“I would say Helsing is a company that you can only co-found. You need to have multiple founders.”
Torsten Reil: Best defense investments are scaled firms with record programs
“I think it is, so, I mean, I'm biased, but I think it is around those companies that have got to scale, that have programs of record, and that are basically active in a conflict.”
Torsten Reil: Helsing would have prioritized EW and GPS independence earlier
“We would have focused all of our efforts on specific systems to deal with the problems in hand, which were, which are now the ones that I talked about earlier. It's electronic warfare resistance, GPS independence you know, being resilient to comms jamming.”
Torsten Reil's NaturalMotion licensed animation software for GTA V and Harry Potter
“We ended up using it in, and licensing it for visual effects in big Hollywood movies, like Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Spider-Man, then for big video games like GTA IV, GTA V Max Payne and many others”