The Exchanges

Q You know, you're the CTO of Palantir. You, you've made, you know, infinite money at this point, and, you know, you're a husband and a father, yet last year you joined the U.S. Army Reserves. Why'd you do that?

A In part, to honor dad's sacrifice. Like, this country has given us more than we deserve to have, and I think, uh, a sign of a, of a functioning society is that those who succeed in it are willing to invest their time, energy, money, resources, attention, and, and give back. Uh, I think that the micro reasons are like, this is the example I want to set for my children. Um, I want to make sure that they have the same gratitude as maybe a generation removed from the visceral violence that we escaped. Uh, they should have the same gratitude that, that I had, that dad imparted in us. Um, and I think, I'm not sure I had A lot of differentiated skills to give the Army at 24, but I think at 44, uh, I've learned a thing or two along the way that I think can hopefully help the Army go faster.

AI assessment note: “In part, to honor dad's sacrifice.”

Q It does kind of feel like the world came our way a little bit, huh? Like from, from the last 20 years.

A Yeah, I, I think there, there's certainly a number of us who've kind of been seeing, inside and outside of government, seeing, like, the trends of the world. I mean, part of the thesis of the book is, if you really go back to 2014, you have the militarization of, you have the annexation of Crimea, the militarization of the Spratly Islands in 15, Iran with breakout capability for the bomb, you've had a pogrom in Israel, the Houthis holding Red Sea trade hostage, global trade hostage from the Red Sea. It, it's pretty hard to look at this and not think, perhaps we've lost deterrence. And as a country that spends a trillion dollars a year on defense, you know, how is this happening? Why is this happening? And I think there are a lot of lessons from our past. You go back to World War II, the early Cold War, the fundamental innovative American spirit that actually provided for our defense. Now we have a huge number of founders who've shown up to invest in the national interest. We have, uh, bold leadership, uh, throughout our military services to seize that opportunity. And I'm, I think this is the moment.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, I, I think there, there's certainly a number of us who've kind of been seeing”

Q Product engineers back home. And it's, it's interesting because nowadays with AI, I guess it's easier to, to be more across the spectrum or, or do you still, or do you still have the really strong distinctions though?

A I think actually, so we still have the really strong distinction because it's like, are you accountable to your customer succeeding? Are you accountable to the product succeeding? Obviously you want both of these things to work. And so there's a question of, do you think you're going to get them to work by collapsing it to a single person who's accountable for both? Or do you think you're going to get to work by wiring up an elegant tension that you manage between the two? I think the thing that most people don't understand about this is, um, it is an unstable equilibrium. So if you were going to pursue a strategy like this, it actually requires a dictator to sit between these two organizations to manage that tension, to make sure it's a productive tension, it doesn't get counterproductive, and to, to make the strategic calls along the way.

AI assessment note: “we still have the really strong distinction because it's like, are you accountable”

Q Which is why we got to fix that in, in a hundred exit. Well, we're working on it with Saronic and others. Are you, are you seeing any, any companies in particular you're working on, you're excited about for scaling up manufacturing?

A Well, I think, I think a lot of the new entrants are going to have a huge role to play. Hadrian, Saronic, Andrel. Uh, but I also think like reinvigorating the existing industrial base is a huge part of this. We have a huge number of, um, smaller, very small. They're not even medium sized enterprises. They're small businesses that make parts They're, they're coming up on a succession challenge where the, the, the owner has a sole proprietor type thing or limited partnership, and it's going to need to be transitioned. You need kind of outside capital to reinvest in the machine toolings and modern processes. So I think, I think we're gonna have to get both of these things to work. Certainly we're gonna need a high, low mix. We're gonna, our exquisite stuff is exquisite. As we see with Epic Fury, this stuff really works. The real problem is that we don't have a hundred times more of it. And we're gonna need to invest in, in scaling the low end of this as well, uh, to, to, Kind of fight the future war.

AI assessment note: “I think a lot of the new entrants are going to have a huge role to play. Hadrian, Saronic, Andrel.”

Q It's one of my favorite books, actually, is when he writes about before World War I. And it's like, He just, like, fired all these bureaucrats and pushed everyone out of the way. I feel like it'd be harder today to have someone that strong able to push through, but it's needed, huh?

A Yeah, you build up, you know, the entropy of the universe is against you. You, you build up these bad practices, and I think part of his understanding is, like, you, it's not an ad hominem critique. It's a structural critique. Uh, the other example I love is Andrew Higgins, this foul-mouthed Scots-Irishman down in Louisiana. He was a huge, anyone from Louisiana knows Higgins. You know, he, he, he was a boat builder. And in the, in the twenties, he observed how Chinese bootleggers were able to build these shallow draft boats, uh, to kind of outrun the policing. And he, and he used that to inspire his own boat building. So Higgins, he built the boat. Um, the Navy wouldn't let him compete. Then finally, there was a enterprising Marine first lieutenant who got him in. He won the competition. Then the Navy tried to steal his IP and build the boats themselves. They couldn't, they couldn't even steal the IP. In the end, 92% of all boats in World War II were Higgins boats.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, you build up, you know, the entropy of the universe is against you.”

Q that does create some kind of thing that you might call a killer robot, and maybe breaks the rules, and then all of a sudden you have something that Is very scary and causing problems. I mean, it sounds ridiculous when I say it, but people are worried about this. Like, what should we be talking about? Like, how are we going to protect people for this not to happen?

A Well, if you're concerned about that, like, why, why aren't you worried that someone in a garage is going to create a killer robot? You know, I think the probability of that happening is really no different. So then that becomes almost like a technical question, not a matter of will. You know, it's like, it's just not how weapon systems are developed. Like, you know, you'd have to believe that there's a conspiracy where a rogue actor can go do something like this in the, in an organization the size of the department. And I, I think it, it under, it fundamentally underestimates the moral fiber of People who are in our uniformed services. Like, these are people who take the law incredibly seriously, who work very diligently, who have put their lives on the line to defend the nation, to defend all of us. Uh, and I think we owe them the benefit of the doubt in this capacity here.

AI assessment note: “it's just not how weapon systems are developed”