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 51 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
Ulevitch: Taiwan is seven days from a blackout under a Chinese blockade
“This is an island country. That is, you know, seven days away from a total energy block, blackout if they get an oil and gas blockade from China so that they can't bring in ships to deliver oil and fuel.”
Ulevitch: a16z made history's largest bet on US winning next tech century
“We have placed the largest bet in American history on the proposition that this country will win the next century of technology.”
Ulevitch: Project Maven Was Used During Afghanistan Evacuation
“Project Maven was used to make sure that we didn't leave anyone behind in Afghanistan.”
Ulevitch: Exquisite Military Platforms Will Not Win Future Wars
“I think the war in Ukraine really put a very, very bright light On how our exquisite large platforms are not gonna be the platforms for the fight of the future.”
Ulevitch: Surge in European Defense Spend Will Largely Flow to US
“And that spend is ultimately gonna go, there aren't enough incumbents in Europe to have all that money go to companies in Europe. So it's a huge opportunity for their strongest ally, which is the United States, for the companies here to actually go and increas…”
Ulevitch: Three a16z Portfolio Companies Are on China's Sanctions List
“We have three companies now that are on China's unreliable entities list, which is an amazingly named list but they're forbidden now from buying batteries from China.”
Ulevitch: Chinese battery cutoffs have severely impacted a16z portfolio startups
“Being cut off from being able to buy batteries from China is incredibly punitive to a company, and we've certainly seen that happen with some of our startups, and then they have to go, you know, then you find out quickly that the ability to procure and source …”
Ulevitch: Society is underestimating long-term electricity demand for AI compute
“And so, I do think that compute is gonna just, I think we actually probably are underestimating the amount of compute that we're gonna soak up over the, with electricity over the next, you know, 10, 2030, 4050 years.”
Ulevitch: One third of global wind turbines are out of service
“I think I read that globally, one third of all wind turbines are out of service at any given time.”
Ulevitch: Almost all spent nuclear fuel can be recycled and reused
“We should stop calling the spent fuel nuclear waste, because it's really not waste. Almost all of it can be recycled and reused.”
Ulevitch: AI will collapse regulatory permitting times from months to minutes
“AI can just automate all these things that take armies of consultants, You know, months or years to do can be, you know, brought down into being minutes or hours.”
Ulevitch: China is sole nuclear reactor bidder in market US cannot enter
“Right now for instance, there's a country that, that very much would like nuclear reactors for energy in the US is not allowed to sell into that country, and currently the only other country bidding on a reactor is China.”
Ulevitch: Global stability depends on America maintaining its technology dominance
“If America loses its technology edge and its dominance, the entire world will lose as well.”
Ulevitch: Chinese sanctions blocked drone maker Skydio from critical supply chain components
“We work with a company called Skydio, and they were sanctioned by China, and, ah, you know, we usually hear stories about how companies are, you know, sanctioned by the United States from doing business here, but it actually, if you're a company that's an impo…”
Ulevitch: Project Maven controversy sparked the American Dynamism movement
“The Google Project Maven moment in 2018 in many ways as a galvanizing moment to actually wake up a lot of founders and builders and say, hey, wait a minute. I actually do want the government to have the best technology and best capabilities. I do want to build…”
Ulevitch: a16z Will Shift Defense Investments Into Mining and Supply Chains
“I think as you look to the future, I mean, everyone has their own view of what the future will look like for American dynamism, but I think we, you'll see us increasingly shift left. That's why we look at minerals and we look at critical, critical minerals and…”
Ulevitch: National security is impossible without a reliable electrical grid
“There is no safety, there is no national defense, there is no national security without a reliable electrical grid.”
Ulevitch: Future grids will co-locate power generation, transmission, and storage
“The energy grid and electrical grid of the future, it's not just going to be the dichotomy of generation, transmission, and storage, but as Aaron brought up, like, you might do all three of those things in the same place and not have to worry about how... How …”
Ulevitch: Meta contracted nearly all power from Constellation's reactivated nuclear reactor
“I mean, I think that Constellation just turned up a new nuclear reactor, or is reactivating a reactor, and I think Meta immediately sucked up all of the power that they're going to generate, or nine 10th of it, or something from the new Constellation reactor t…”
Ulevitch: U.S. military spends up to $400 per gallon delivering remote fuel
“We've read reports that they spend well over 200 dollars a gallon at times, sometimes after 400 dollars a gallon for diesel, effectively, to get diesel into the right place at the right time.”
Ulevitch: Rival VCs who shunned defense for China are jumping in late
“Other firms, you know, were investing in China and had all this other activity and, you know, now they might be a little bit Johnny come lately and like excited about defense, but they used to say no way to defense, no way to those things”
Ulevitch: Rival VC firms invent terms to avoid saying 'American Dynamism'
“We have competitors at other venture firms that go to just incredible, incredible lengths to come up with alternative phrasing to not say American dynamism, you know, industrial revolution, resilience.”
Ulevitch: Commercializing nuclear energy involves minimal underlying scientific risk
“There's no scientific risk. Like, with nuclear energy, that's another important thing, is we invest in all kinds of things. There's no scientific risk with nuclear energy or minimal, like, we know how it works. The science has understood.”
Ulevitch: Marginalized community leaders are top advocates for Flock Safety
“Some of the biggest advocates for flock safety in communities with high crime rates are those community leaders from more marginalized communities.”
Ulevitch: Drones will soon automatically launch from police roofs on 911 calls
“I think we're very close to a moment in time where somebody can call nine one and a drone will be automatically dispatched from the roof of a police department to immediately provide eyes on the sky.”
Ulevitch: Modern search is entirely controlled by an advertising company
“When I think about search today, it's a narrative that's almost entirely controlled by an advertising company.”
Ulevitch: Early Defense Startups Paired Commodity Hardware With Advanced Software
“A lot of the American Dynamism companies, at least the early sort of innings of where they started, a lot of them were using off-the-shelf commodity hardware with really advanced software.”
Ulevitch: Flock Safety's Early Hardware Was a Cell Phone Camera
“So Flox Safety was basically a camera a cell phone camera in a box with power to it and an LTE connection.”
Ulevitch: Defense Hardware Allows Better Inventory Management Than Consumer Hardware
“When you do government hardware or hardware for the Pentagon or across enterprises, it's a much different sales cycle and process. You can better manage your inventory and your pacing and your hardware spend.”
Ulevitch: Almost Every Major European Nation Committed to Doubling Defense Spending
“Almost every major country in Europe has made a commitment to double or more their spending their GDP level spend on, on defense.”
Ulevitch: Georgia's specialized nuclear construction workforce was dispersed after Plant Vogtle
“We had to go out and train, hire and train entire specialized crews, specialized people that work with cement and concrete. Specialized people that work with steel to go build the large Vogel reactors in Georgia. We put them on Vogel reactors three and four. W…”
Ulevitch: AI will streamline grid monitoring, efficiency, and regulatory permitting
“We're also at this sort of technology inflection point where AI can help some of these things not just be a consumption driver, but even be an enabler and facilitating more efficient use of electricity, better monitoring of the grid better, better ways to even…”
Ulevitch: The electrical grid lacks a native control plane for messaging
“The electrical grid doesn't really have that, and so to be able to send messaging and things is very, very difficult, and now a lot of people just do it out of band using the internet.”
Ulevitch: Radiant Nuclear's 1-megawatt micro-reactor fits on an 18-wheeler truck
“It's a one megawatt reactor. It can be put on the back of an eighteen-wheeler and shipped around.”
Ulevitch: Enterprise software equivalents like Splunk do not exist for the grid
“There is no Splunk for the electrical grid. There's no Palo Alto networks for the electrical grid yet. Like there's a whole bunch of things that mirror the IT and OT landscape, whether it's around cyber, And monitoring and logging and analytics. You know, ther…”
Ulevitch: Andreessen Horowitz is the world's largest venture capital firm
“I think we are the largest venture capital firm in the world.”
Ulevitch: Turnkey local clean energy will be solved in 10-15 years
“10 or 15 years from now, the idea that we can't just immediately turn on a reliable and enduring power source for a community, that's going to be unimaginable. Like, it just, it will be a solved problem.”
Ulevitch: Global energy consumption will never decrease below current levels
“Like, we're not going backwards in our energy consumption. That, that ship has sailed.”
Ulevitch: Microsoft formed dedicated nuclear energy procurement teams
“And then companies like Microsoft have spun up nuclear teams, nuclear energy teams to figure out how do they procure energy that comes from a nuclear power plant.”
Ulevitch: Core American Industries Have Not Yet Been Improved by Advanced Software
“Massive industries that support America in the lives of Americans. But which have yet to be dramatically improved by advanced software and technology.”
Ulevitch: Non-technical workers are starting to think and work like developers
“And what gets me excited is that I think we're all starting to think and work like developers.”
Ulevitch: Open source movement could not function without revision control
“The entire open source movement would not work without the revision control system.”
Ulevitch defines low-latency communication as instant human-to-computer instruction
“This is, to me, really simply the art of communicating an idea in your head as quickly as possible into the computer as an instruction.”
Ulevitch: No software exists to optimize sales commission plans using historical data
“Like when I'm helping somebody with a sales commission plan, there's no software that's looking back in time at all the previous sales commission plans and all the performance telling me, hey, if you just turn these knobs, you might improve revenue.”
Ulevitch: Developers automate repetitive tasks due to constructive laziness
“I will say that I think developers are unfailingly the laziest people I know. And I say that as a compliment. Anytime they have to do work that has to be done over and over again, or they have to use a component that they think they might reuse again in the fu…”
Ulevitch: Software market is shifting toward tools empowering users' highest potential
“I think we're in a major transition in the market where people want software that really appeals to their highest and best use, and not just like the lowest common denominator.”
Ulevitch: Speech and brain-computer interfaces are fundamentally command lines
“But all of those kinds of new features coming out, they essentially turn something into a command line. They translate your speech or your thought into a command line. So the sooner that we embrace and adopt command line interfaces, the sooner we'll be ready t…”