The Exchanges

Q What are ways, so we have a lot of listeners who are building things who, you know, interested in helping the Department of War. Like, like, what's the right way to engage? Like, I, I'm, I'm lucky I happen to know you. Like, people don't know you. Like, what's the right way to engage with your team and to, and to work with you guys?

A So we've tried to, uh, declare or tell people in the industry that we're open for business. And what does that mean? That means I've got funding mechanisms and entry points at each stage of the company's life cycle. So at the beginning, there's something called SIBR, Small Business Award. That's very, for early, early stage companies. Um, and then we have something called APFIT, which is, you know, a company, uh, low rate production for companies that have developed something that we need for the Army, Navy, Air Force. And then we have DIU, the Defense Innovation Unit, and the Office of Strategic Capital. So I can, I have many ways to get companies in, and then there's the traditional way. You go try to sell to a service, you build a product that they want, need, to spec.

AI assessment note: “I've got funding mechanisms and entry points at each stage of the company's life cycle.”

Q famously is one of the fastest moving companies ever. It's probably not possible for the entire Pentagon and three million people to move as fast as you guys did at Uber, but can you, can you bring some of that startup speed to the Pentagon? Like, is any of that working so far? Are you, are you, is that even a model at all that inspires you to push harder?

A Absolutely. I mean, every day I wake up And, um, and I think, you know, if, if they have this once in a moment lifetime, this once in a lifetime moment where you have a disruptive president, a disruptive secretary of war, and I'm in this job, I'm not going to do it forever. How do I leave my mark, right? And do, and my mark on behalf of the country. So I wake up every day thinking that way and trying to bring the Uber practices. And some of those are, they're actually kind of normal business practices. When something's not getting done, you call everyone in a room, you do standups every day until you get to the answer. You, someone says, well, you can't do that. I said, well, show me the policy. And you read the, you know, you, you find your way to answers, which is why in two months of owning, being the chief AI, having the chief AI office run in my world, which was a new move, we were able to launch, uh, gen AI, which is Google's Gemini for four million, every, every, uh, employee, military and civilian in the department. And they never had AI on their desktop before. Now it's on every single desktop in two months. So it can be done.

AI assessment note: “Now it's on every single desktop in two months. So it can be done.”

Q Tell me about immigration policy, because obviously it's a huge deal for you, I imagine, your family. You came here, you've been very successful in America. We have a lot of debates what's going on right now, like, like, you know, I think we have eight million people who have come across the border illegally. How do you feel about this?

A It's disappointing in so many ways because for two reasons. Number one, a country is not a country without a border, right? And, and not being able to control comes in means, means you can't serve those who come in very well. And if the idea is we have a melting pot so that everyone who comes in here, we take care of, they're entitled to a public education, to the resources to give them a chance to succeed. Well, you can't do that when it's uncontrolled. Um, so that's one piece. The second piece is, Um, you know, my family did it the right way. We waited, um, we couldn't bring our cousins and our families and we had to sort of go through all the rules that are required. And by the way, every one of those that in my family who eventually came in is doing something important and loves their work and is contributing back to the society and we all bought into this melting pot concept. We're all American. First, and then where we came from second.

AI assessment note: “It's disappointing in so many ways because for two reasons.”

Q You know, zooming out on the gig economy is something Term everyone used to use. We don't talk about as much anymore now. There's AI and stuff, but like, did the gig economy live up to its promise? Did it achieve what it was supposed to? Like, like, was it, was it positively impactful overall?

A I mean, I can't even see an argument in any way where it wasn't. And again, this is the political sort of view versus the actual reality view. Uber over time has probably paid a hundred billion dollars to drivers. A hundred billion dollars. The entire taxi system probably only ever paid You know, a hundred million dollars after 50 years of existence. So, so many people got access to money in a flexible way than the decades before them, in just the last decade. Um, and so, yes, are you saying that limo drivers now make less today than they would have ever? Sure, there are some casualties there, but you now can guarantee a ride to the airport. And do you remember trying to get a taxi in San Francisco, Joe, when we lived there?

AI assessment note: “I can't even see an argument in any way where it wasn't.”

Q do want to serve. This is a very cool way to serve. A lot of them want to make sure, you know, they want to work on the very most interesting things, the bleeding edge, and obviously you can't tell us everything you're doing at the bleeding edge, I assume, but is there anything you could tell us about that's like really hard, fun, challenges you guys are working on?

A I mean, the, the, the AI stuff's for real because I'm not only taking the frontier models and just making them available. I'm doing it across classification levels. I'm combining some of the most, you know, important data that the United States has, uh, from an intelligence standpoint, we're deploying it to war fighters for the most important use cases. And that's not just putting them all in front of them, right? You have, you have to get the data in, you have to do the right training, you have to do the right prototypes and so on. I think it's super exciting. And We've been able to recruit a lot of great people really fast for that effort. We always have DARPA, which is sort of the premier institution for advanced research, and it remains that way, and it's run by killers.

AI assessment note: “taking the frontier models... doing it across classification levels. I'm combining some of the most”

Q Which is, which is, Which at least is good, but there's, there's like hundreds of other people like that at these schools, right?

A Right, and then, and Stanford Law School is a 180 people, so it's a pretty tight community, so it caused a battle, um, for them, and then the dean of the law school wrote, you know, hey, we're a First Amendment first kind of place, and then they're creating a search committee for the new dean, and they put the person who said all these office things on the committee, the search committee, yeah, so. I just had the call to them the other day, and I'm like, these, these institutions don't really get what's happening in the world around them, and that 48, 49% of the country, you know, views the world a certain way, and we're not going to get to a good place if we're shouting down the other side, and that's what, that's the opposite of what academia is supposed to be, right?

AI assessment note: “Right, and then, and Stanford Law School is a 180 people”