Emil Michael
Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense. On 7 shows, 9 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
executiveinvestorpoliticianoperator@emilmichael ↗emilmichael.com ↗Wikipedia ↗YouTube ↗Instagram ↗
Emil Michael is best known as the former Chief Business Officer of Uber, where he helped raise nearly $15 billion and negotiated international agreements with Baidu and Didi Chuxing. He also served as COO of Klout, held executive roles at Tellme Networks, and leads defense technology and R&D modernization for the Pentagon.
7shows
9appearances
208statements
79resolved
44supported
11contradicted
56%fully supported
97said about them ↓ Everything Emil Michael said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Emil Michael: Benchmark Capital lost its nerve ousting Travis Kalanick from Uber
“I was taken out with Travis because benchmark capital lost their nerve.”
Michael: Inherited Pentagon AI contracts created dangerous vendor lock-in
“Well, they came up now because as I started to look at the contracts that had been written during the last administration for the use of AI. I had a whole, holy cow moment because there were things not well beyond what you've been hearing in the press in the l…”
Michael: AI vendor questioned software use in Maduro raid
“And then second, after the Maduro raid, one of the primary vendor for this had raised the question, senior exec about whether their software was used during the Maduro raid, which is one of the most successful op military, military operations of our lifetime. …”
Michael: DOD diversifying AI vendor base following software terms dispute
“So that set off a series of events of, whoa, are we single-threaded on a vendor who's concerned about how we're using their software after the most successful military raid and the terms of service do not comport with the future world? We've got to get other p…”
Michael warns China is stealing US AI models to unguardrail them
“Your models are getting stolen by the Chinese. They're going to unguard rail them and use them against us.”
Emil Michael: Anthropic exec asked Palantir if AI was used in Maduro raid
“After the Maduro raid, one of their execs called Palantir, who we buy themselves through and asked them was our software used in that raid, which is by the way, classified information.”
Emil Michael: Sam Altman urged Pentagon not to label Anthropic a supply-chain risk
“He was trying to protect anthropic to his credit. He was like, don't do, don't call him a supply chain risk. That's bad for the industry. Let me, maybe I can negotiate terms that they'll find acceptable.”
Michael: Pentagon feared Anthropic would shut off military systems during crises
“It was really the, you worry, I worried about them shutting off our system at a moment of need or them messing with our system at a moment of need. Those were, we were scared.”
Michael: Pete Hegseth is already the greatest Defense Secretary in our lifetimes
“Pete Hegsus, I think, is going to be, and is already, probably the greatest Secretary of War in our lifetimes.”
Emil Michael gives Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi an 'F' grade for performance
“He was a diplomat. He was able to get the company public, but in terms of hiring talent, innovating, and succeeding from a financial standpoint, you know, it's not, it hasn't happened. It's a, it's an F, you know.”
Emil Michael predicts Benchmark's fixed $435M fund model will fail
“That's why I think Benchmark ultimately is going to, is, has no innovation. Forget the reputation, which most entrepreneurs, if they do their deals, will find out about, but just not innovating stuck at four hundred thirty-five million for the next 10 years is…”
Michael: Anthropic's autonomous weapons concerns were driven mostly by marketing
“The idea that autonomous weapons were an issue was sort of, I think, more marketing than anything. Because we have our own policy before that showed up that talks about that.”
Michael: AI vendors restricting kinetic use pose legitimate military supply chain risks
“If Lockheed Martin builds a weapon for me, and they're using, ah, a technology to help them do some of these science-oriented things, physics, aerodynamics, and so on, and the vendor has expressed an unwillingness to want that to be part of the use case, well,…”
Michael: AI labs' apocalyptic rhetoric justifies strict Pentagon scrutiny of management
“So these companies are talking about their things in apocalyptic terms, which make it necessary for us to judge the management teams, judge their actions,
Look at the terms of service.
Understand how they fit in our supply chain.
This technology is like nothin…”
Michael: Anthropic's First Amendment retaliation claim against Pentagon will fail
“I think the notion that a First Amendment claim is going to hold up is, is, would be shocking, because that means that the government has no choice to make.”
Michael: DOD AI adoption grew from 80k to 1.2M in 90 days
“In 90 days, I think we've had 1.2 million of the three million people at the department. Use some form of AI when that was, that number was 80,000 before I started.”
Michael: Commercial AI constitutions cannot dictate US military command and control
“It can't, the software, the soul, someone's soul of their model, their constitution, which is not the U S constitution. Can't be dictating our command and control environment and telling generals and war fighters what to do and not do.”
Emil Michael: No scenario for protracted U.S. ground war in Iran
“In terms of boots on the ground, there's no scenario where we have some protracted boots on the ground, Afghanistan, Iraq too, like scenario.”
Emil Michael: Anthropic follows its own constitution, not the US Constitution
“Anthropic has its own constitution. It has its own soul. It's not the U S constitution.”
Michael: Defense contractors are banned from using Anthropic for fighter jets
“Boeing wants to use it to build fighter jets. I can't have that because I don't trust what the outputs may be because they're so wedded to their own policy preferences.”
Emil Michael: Anthropic will be excluded from Pentagon AI contracts under current posture
“And Throbic's not going to be one of them if they continue sort of with their sort of posture.”
Michael: Trump did not instruct Pentagon to drop Anthropic over donations
“It's a criticism on me because it's not like Trump, President Trump dipped in and he's like, hey, Emil, by the way, those guys didn't get me any money. You can't use them anymore.”
Emil Michael: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called Donald Trump a 'wannabe dictator'
“You called president Trump and your 5000 word essay on Friday, a wannabe dictator. You're gonna have to apologize to more people than just me.”
The other half of the tape: Emil Michael's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 89 times in 26 episodes across the shows. 8 statements on the record name them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 24Alex Kantrowitz 20Shervin Pishevar 9Molly O'Shea 8Travis Kalanick 5Scott Kupor 4Rory O'Driscoll 4Rafael Ilishayev 4
Statements about Emil Michael, by other people (8)
Pishevar: Firing Kalanick from Uber was tech's worst mistake since Jobs
“And so they got two, two of the greatest minds in Silicon Valley were taken out of the company. This is the greatest value destruction that's happened since firing Steve Jobs at Apple. And it was a massive mistake.”
Pishevar: Uber nearly acquired Lyft, but Lyft demanded too much ownership
“Andreessen, having lost the Uber deal, ended up doing the Lyft deal, and we had, you know, Travis and Emil, you know, they were close to acquiring it acquiring Lyft which, you know but they wanted too much ownership so that luckily didn't work out”
Pishevar: Kalanick and Michael initiated SoftBank's $12B Uber deal
“So the SoftBank conversations, ironically, Travis and Emil started those conversations, the ultimate twelve billion dollar investment from SoftBank Vision Fund.”
Kalanick: Uber held secret meetings with a16z during Lyft rivalry
“There was also this other thing that would happen, so this is like, 2000, I think this really started in 2014, 15, et cetera, is Emile and I would meet up with Mark and Ben at this, Super undercover restaurant.”
Sacks: Emil Michael's Perplexity stake was approved by Government Ethics
“As I understand it, Emile's ownership of shares in that company was blessed by the Office of Government Ethics.”
Business development and partnerships should operate like a venture capital portfolio
“BD and product partnerships should be the VC arm of a company. And this is what I tell my team is like, look, we need to look for pole vault opportunities, but we're going to fail sometimes like, yeah, Navon zip are going great, but there's a bunch of other pa…”
Pishevar: Emil Michael architected Uber's $15B fundraising efforts
“He architected the fifteen billion dollar raise he had a massive impact on the trajectory of Uber, and he became really Travis's right hand and sparring partner in building, building Uber.”
Pishevar: Uber's Series D valuation was negotiated up to $17B from $10B
“So that Series D, like a year after the Series C, which Google and TPG did, that was at three billion. This was at seventeen billion, and we started off at 10. So, Emil was able to negotiate from, like, 10, eleven billion valuation to 17, because there was so …”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 42
Big Technology 20
Sourcery 9
the a16z Podcast 7
All-In 6
American Optimist 4
No Priors 1
2026 43 mentions in 13 episodes 3 per episode
- Dario’s Choice and Anthropic’s Future, Apple’s AI Devices, Netflix Loses WBD
- Jensen On The Ropes, Sam Altman’s Conflicts, Allbirds’ GPU Pivot
- 300 Pages on Anduril: Inside Modern Warfare · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- Should the US Ban Chinese Open-Source Models | OpenRouter's Chance To Sell | Stripe Buying PayPal
- Building a Company in Stealth | Travis Kalanick with a16z
- Anthropic vs. The Pentagon, Bloodbath at Block, The Citrini Selloff
- Ben Horowitz on American Dynamism and the Future of AI | The a16z Show
- The $2.5B Drone Company Trying to Become the Toyota of Defense
- 5 more episodes that year, every mention in 2026 →
2025 28 mentions in 4 episodes 7 per episode
- Shervin Pishevar: What Really Happened in the Firing of Travis Kalanick | E1245 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- America’s New AI Strategy: "We're Building a Tech Force" · Joe Lonsdale
- No Priors Ep. 125 | With Senior White House Policy Advisor on AI Sriram Krishnan
- Brex’s Road to IPO and The Golden Age of M&A · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea
- every mention in 2025, scene by scene →
2024 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2023 2 mentions in 2 episodes 1 per episode
2022 12 mentions in 3 episodes 4 per episode
- Hadi Partovi: How I Became an Advisor to Mark Zuckerberg; Lessons from Steve Ballmer | 20VC #961 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- GoPuff CEO Rafael Ilishayev: The Plan to Make GoPuff Profitable by 2024 | 20VC #944 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- Brian Armstrong: Coinbase’s Failed NFT Launch, Thoughts on SBF & FTX, Crypto Winter | 20VC #946 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
- every mention in 2022, scene by scene →
2020 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Emil's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMERICAN OPTIMISTLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 3 | 47 | 42% 8/19 | full record on American Optimist → |
| ALL-INLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 1 | 37 | 61% 11/18 | full record on All-In → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 1 | 32 | 47% 7/15 | full record on 20VC → |
| BIG TECHNOLOGYLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 1 | 31 | 75% 6/8 | full record on Big Technology → |
| NO PRIORSLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 1 | 30 | 55% 6/11 | full record on No Priors → |
| a16zLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 1 | 17 | 60% 3/5 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Under Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense | 1 | 14 | 100% 3/3 | full record on Sourcery → |