Brian Schimpf
Co-Founder and CEO, Anduril Industries. On 3 shows, 8 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveengineer@schimpfbrian ↗anduril.com ↗
In 2017, Schimpf co-founded defense technology contractor Anduril Industries, leading the company as CEO to develop autonomous systems and AI-enabled hardware. Before launching Anduril, he spent nearly a decade at Palantir Technologies, where he served as Director of Engineering.
3shows
8appearances
119statements
27resolved
16supported
4contradicted
59%fully supported
26said about them ↓ Everything Brian Schimpf said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Schimpf: Traditional cost-plus defense contracts are a disaster
“Versus the traditional approach where it's like the government took all the risk and you get a fixed profit fee. That's a disaster. Like everything just gets more complex and more expensive. It doesn't work out.”
Schimpf: Small numbers of exquisite weapons cannot win modern wars
“A low number of really exquisite weapons is not gonna win a conflict, and I think Ukraine kind of definitively showed that to the world, that that is not a winning strategy.”
Schimpf: Anduril found virtually no American-born tier-one manufacturing executives
“Looking for a great head of manufacturing. There's basically no like tier one execs we could find that were American born. We ended up finding someone who was from Canada, but everyone I found who was like great thinking about this differently, like really nov…”
Schimpf: Government grants to Intel are the worst form of industrial subsidy
“Grants are, in my opinion, the worst possible form of this. It's like, you know, giving Intel an outrageous amount of money to build a facility that they didn't believe they had demand for. It's like, why would they not take the money to build a facility? They…”
Schimpf: China possesses 250 times the shipbuilding capacity of the US
“Where there's something like 250 times the shipbuilding capacity you know, massively, massively, probably thousands of times on the weapon side. You know, it is just on drones. It's massive. Like, you just, kind of look category by category, massively outpacin…”
Schimpf: Refusing to apply AI to military decisions is unethical
“Is like, to me, it is unethical to not apply these technologies to these problems.”
Anduril is partnering with OpenAI on counter-drone defense systems
“This is one of the areas we're partnering with OpenAI on”
Schimpf: Defense prime contractor cartel refuses fixed-price government contracts
“So you have a relatively small cartel of these companies who sort of all say we won't do fixed price programs anymore. They won't do things on a fixed cost basis.”
Schimpf: Wargames show key U.S. munition stockpiles run out in eight days
“You know, one of the areas where we see it is showing up with weapons, so when you look at these wargaming sort of scenarios, and you know, all these wargames are sort of questionable in their own ways but pretty consistently the stockpile of key U.S. Munition…”
Schimpf: Pentagon oversight bureaucrats outnumber accountable leaders 10 to 1
“It's just there are 10 times as many people who say no as there are to people who are accountable for doing it.”
Defense startups willing to build weapons are the most likely to succeed
“A lot of the areas that You know, are going to succeed are often the ones that are less popular. It's areas working on weapons. Like, this is not an area that a lot of companies are interested in doing, but I think to succeed in the defense space, you have to …”
F-35 fighters are merely incremental improvements compared to autonomous systems
“The ability to use autonomous systems is, in effect, like a new way of operating, whereas, you know, F-thirty-five and all these were sort of Incremental improvements to, like, a conventional way we've been fighting for quite a long time.”
Schimpf: China holds a decisive military advantage with longer-range missiles
“China has been able to modernize and build new technologies and sort of like they're pretty decisive advantage in countering the way that U S fights the longer range of their missiles. Like all of these things are pretty substantial. So there was a degree of l…”
Schimpf: Anduril Builds Weapons and Believes It Is Ethical and Necessary
“We've been clear. We work on weapons. We believe that's important. We believe you can do it ethically. We believe it's necessary. And we're not shy about that.”
The US could get 2x more capability per dollar on weapons
“I tend to think we can get a lot more bang for our buck on weapons, on aircraft, you know, probably two X from where we are. By just looking at a different mix of these things.”
Schimpf: US defense budgets cannot shrink without sacrificing necessary military capability
“I don't see a world where, like, the defense budgets could magically shrink, and we still have the military that we need to have, but I do think these things can be done wildly more efficiently than they ever have in the past.”
Schimpf: Europe will spend 4x US defense procurement over next five years
“Europe is going to spend something like
Four times the amount of procurement that the U S is over the next five years.”
Schimpf: US has sufficient PCB, composites, and CNC capacity for defense
“Is there enough composites capacity or printed circuit board capacity in the U S or CNC shops? The answer is absolutely yes. There is definitely enough capacity”
Schimpf: Critical defense supply chains require commercially viable factories
“You have to solve this at a commercially viable level, not at a defense specific level. It will always then be too expensive and unproducible. If you just have a defense exquisite magnet factory, like that doesn't work. You need a commercially viable magnet fa…”
Schimpf: Europe will outspend US procurement fourfold over next five years
“Europe is going to spend something like four times the amount of procurement that the U.S. Is over the next five years.”
Schimpf: Russia outproduces NATO in 155mm artillery munitions after two-year ramp
“Russia today is outproducing NATO on one five five munitions and took about two years.”
Schimpf: The US lacks a strategic plan for supply preservation
“We have no strategic plan as a country for how we preserve supply in a catastrophic situation.”
Schimpf: Industrial capacity serves as a vital independent military deterrent
“Industrial production has a deterrence factor all itself, and that it is critical for winning a conflict.”
Schimpf: China has legally banned the export of magnet-making technology
“China has strategically kind of strangleholded that, you know, not only did they have the processing of those rare earths, but now they've exported, controlled, so they don't allow the export of magnet-making technology. That is now a restricted national techn…”
The other half of the tape: Brian Schimpf's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 25 times in 13 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Matt Grimm 7Eric Crispin 4David Ulevitch 3Molly O'Shea 2Dino Mavrookas 2Trae Stephens 1Philip Clark 1Marc Andreessen 1
Statements about Brian Schimpf, by other people (1)
Grimm: CEO Brian Schimpf drives global defense strategy and final company decisions
“Brian is really our, like, I would call him, like, our strategic genius, so he is the one who is looking at, if Palmer has an idea for a new product, or any of our engineers really have an idea for a new product, he's the one who kind of sees the chessboard th…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Sourcery 24
the a16z Podcast 1
2026 5 mentions in 3 episodes 2 per episode
2025 20 mentions in 10 episodes 2 per episode
- Full Anduril R&D Tour: Matt Grimm, Co-Founder & COO · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- How Altimeter's $10B AUM Fund Is Investing In Aerospace, Defense, & Hardtech · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- $635M Exit → $600M Fund: David Ulevitch on Building a16z’s Hottest New Fund · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Trae Stephens on Anduril’s Origin, Peter Thiel, & Palantir DNA · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Inside Thrive Capital: Investing in OpenAI, Wiz, Cursor, Nudge, Physical Intelligence · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- How Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, & David Ulevitch Started a16z’s American Dynamism Fund · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Sequoia Leads $75M Series B Into Nominal | Alfred Lin Joins Board · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Marc Andreessen Reveals His Biggest Wins and Mistakes at a16z
- 2 more episodes that year, every mention in 2025 →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Anduril Industries | 5 | 77 | 72% 13/18 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 NO PRIORSLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Anduril Industries | 1 | 23 | 33% 1/3 | full record on No Priors → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Anduril Industries | 2 | 19 | 33% 2/6 | full record on Sourcery → |