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 47 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
Pentagon pays Google 47 cents annually for Gemini deployment
“They were the first of the big frontier AI companies to say, we want to work at Department of Defense. They were easy to work with on the contract. We're paying 47 cents For the whole year for all of this. So they're like taking, taking a loss to make sure tha…”
Emil Michael: Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky could not have built Uber
“And now I would argue that Brian Chesky could not have built Uber.”
Uber would be worth $600 billion today without leadership disruption, says Michael
“Six hundred million? Five X. Yeah, six hundred billion. We would have been Instacart. We would have had a payment system because we'd have so much share of wallet. There was so much more we would have done.”
Michael: Uber beat Lyft by 20x despite Lyft launching ridesharing first
“What's the difference between Lyft and Uber? We started at the same time. Lyft is worth six billion dollars today. That's a 20 x difference. The single difference was leadership and ambition, right? The only thing you could attribute it to, because they starte…”
The Pentagon issued an RFI for space-based missile interceptors
“We just did a RFI for space-based interceptors, which is how do you put something in space that could take something down in space.”
Palantir, Anduril, and SpaceX sued the government for initial major contracts
“And one of the examples I use Palantir and Roland, SpaceX, all had to sue the government for their first big contract, because the primes were sophisticated at selling, sophisticated at protecting their interests.”
Michael: US military has caught up and surpassed China in many areas
“I think we're already caught up in so many areas and surpass them, but they've made a lot of ground.”
Pentagon deployed Google Gemini to four million personnel in two months
“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 gen AI, which is Google's Gemini for four million, every, every employee, military and civilian in the department…”
Michael: US must scale affordable hypersonics to deter China
“So we know how to build our own, But we have to do it more cheaply. We have to do it at scale. We have to do it, and it's a deterrent effect, right? It's just like we had nuclear missiles, and the Russians did, or Soviets did. If China, the China has them, we …”
Palantir and SpaceX sued the US government for first defense contracts
“Palantir and Roland, SpaceX, all had to sue the government for the first big contract, because the primes were sophisticated at selling, sophisticated protecting their interests.”
Pentagon Office of Strategic Capital has 200 billion dollars in loan capacity
“So what that does is it gives government loans to companies that can scale a technology that already exists. So we'll take a minute. It's for the defense industrial base. Half of it, half of two hundred billion dollars. So a hundred billion dollars is to make …”
Michael: Elite university students fear speaking and lack critical thinking skills
“What you know it is now is a place where people are walking around with fear to not say what they think. They're not challenging their ideas. That means they're not coming out as fully formed adults with the ability to critically think through problems and sol…”
Emil Michael: Nation-Building Cannot Modernize Unwilling Countries
“You could, there is no way you could take a country that doesn't want to move into the 21st century Into the 21st century, no matter how many schools you bought.”
Michael: 99% of Uber Alumni Call It Their Best Career Experience
“99% of the people who went through Uber say it was the best experience of their life. What you read about is that one percent, and I think people are really longing for that culture again in business.”
Emil Michael: Uber has paid roughly $100B to drivers over time
“Uber over time has probably paid a hundred billion dollars to drivers. A hundred billion dollars.”
Office of Strategic Capital has $200B for defense and critical minerals
“Half of it, half of two hundred billion dollars. So a hundred billion dollars is to make sure that we have solid rocket motors, brushless motors, batteries, all of the components that go into our weapon systems. The other half of it's for critical minerals, an…”
The Pentagon will not spend $100B building in-house frontier AI models
“For these frontier AI companies, for example, I'm not gonna try to build our own model here and spend a hundred billion dollars. Why would I? Why wouldn't I work with the best minds in industry, have them make something that, for our use case, that builds on w…”
Pentagon Is Deploying Frontier AI Integrated With Intelligence to Warfighters
“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 from an intelligence standpoint, we're deploying it to warfig…”
Emil Michael: Pentagon is deploying AI across corporate, intelligence, and warfighting tiers
“So the Google win was just getting everyone the basic access to AI so they could get familiar using it and understanding it. Then we're going to do it. Then I would say that's a corporate use case, right? Like any big organization. Then we're going to do the s…”
Pentagon will not spend $100B building custom frontier AI models
“For these frontier AI companies, for example, I'm not gonna try to build our own model here and spend a hundred billion dollars. Why wouldn't I work with the best minds in industry, have them make something that, for our use case, that builds on what they've a…”
Pentagon is deploying frontier AI models across classification levels for warfighters
“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 from an intelligence standpoint, we're deploying it to war fi…”
Emil Michael: Uncontrolled immigration prevents successfully integrating new arrivals into society
“A country is not a country without a border, right? 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 …”
Michael: Ben Sasse successfully depoliticized University of Florida
“University of Florida where Ben Sasse He's done a really good job sort of taking the politics out of school and letting people speak and debate and come out critical thinkers.”
Michael: Steve Ballmer Agreed in Two Hours to Buy Tellme for $760M
“Within two hours, we had a handshake on a deal for 707 hundred sixty million dollars. His corp dev guys were going nuts, because he was making deals on his own.”
Pentagon tagged Pakistani fertilizer plants to track IED supply chains
“And I was on Jieda, which is the joint IED on, you know, task force. So we would do crazy things like sprinkle markers into the fertilizer plants in Pakistan that were used to make the IEDs so we could Track them.”
Emil Michael: US Should Never Deploy Mass Ground Troops Again
“These days of sending hundreds of thousands of ground troops into a meat grinder, it's nothing country, this country should ever do again.”
Uber's Milan general manager faced cartel death threats and a home break-in
“We had a female general manager in Milan, and they posted her face all over the city saying, kill this woman. They snuck into her apartment at night and hung a sign from her apartment to the apartment across the road, Saying she, you know, she has a relationsh…”
Emil Michael: Bain consultants make better startup operators than McKinsey consultants
“A thirty-something former Bain consultant, because they had a little chip on their shoulder relative to McKinsey Consultants. They want to win, they're more analytical, so less theoretical in strategy, and more like, okay, I'm going to do this.”
Michael: Uber lost 500,000 customers during #DeleteUber campaign
“We lost half a million customers.”
Emil Michael: US will innovate on AI faster than anywhere else
“The next wave of AI, which is going to produce mass efficiency, mass knowledge dissemination nowhere but here. You know, we're going to have the first of everything in this new platform that's building. If you thought about the last platform as the iPhone and …”
Biological organisms can produce TNT, gunpowder, and other energetics
“Biological organisms can create TNT, gunpowder, you know, energetics, if you will.”
Michael: Adversaries Dump Rare Earths to Create US Tech Dependencies
“And we've been behind again because some of our adversaries have been dumping Dumping, like with rare earth metals to get us dependent on battery technologies, on critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, you name it.”
Missiles fired by Iran at Israel are not hypersonic or maneuverable
“Not maneuverable, but they're not going at hypersonic speeds also.”
Michael: US must produce cheap hypersonics at scale to deter China
“So we know how to build our own. But we have to do it more cheaply. We have to do it at scale. We have to do it, and it's a deterrent effect, right? It's just like we had nuclear missiles, and the Russians did, or Soviets did. If China, the China has them, we …”
Michael: Adversaries dumped rare earths to make US dependent
“Right, so fun stuff, and we've been behind, again, because some of our adversaries have been dumping, dumping, like with rare earth metals to get us dependent on battery technologies, on critical minerals, pharmaceuticals, you name it.”
Emil Michael says Pentagon issued RFI for space-based interceptors
“We just did an RFI for space-based interceptors, which is how do you put something in space that could take something down in space.”
Michael: DoD Used Mobile Payments to Prevent Afghan Warlords Skimming Troop Pay
“So so we then did a mobile payment system so that we could pay them, they got to keep it and we would prevent the warlords from taking it, and then we sort of were able to consistently get them on their side, so they wouldn't be doing IEDs against us.”
Emil Michael: Uber raised $15 billion between June 2014 and June 2016
“We raised fifteen billion between June of 14 And June of 16. So in two years. So all that fundraising we did, I was there for four years, was concentrated in two years.”
Uber launchers could not leave a city until achieving ten-minute ride liquidity
“You can't leave until you do two things. You create liquidity in that market. Liquidity meant you could get a ride in 10 minutes or less anywhere in the city. That means you have to find out where the drivers are, you have to market to consumers, you have to d…”
Emil Michael: Global Citizens Still Prefer the American System Over Any Other
“If you surveyed every other person in the world who is living in America now, what's the one country they would want to live in? What system that they think is the best for their children? They would still choose this system. They wouldn't choose China, Russia…”
A Pacific conflict will force the military into extreme remote operations
“And if there's ever a conflict in, in, in the Pacific, we'll, by definition, be remote. And frankly, you know, the most remote place you could imagine.”
Emil Michael: Office of Strategic Capital Loans Cost Treasuries Plus 100 Bps
“So it's a basically treasuries plus a hundred bips.”
Emil Michael: The United States Currently Has 250 Medicines in Shortage
“We have 250 medicines on shortage in the United States.”
Every DARPA employee has their exit date on their badge
“So everyone at DARPA walks around with their exit date on their badge.”
Michael: United States Has 250 Medicines in Active Supply Shortages
“We have 250 medicines on shortage in the United States.”