Jun 1, 2023 · 50m · no-priors
No Priors Ep. 19 | With Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf
0:00 / 0:00
▶ Watch on YouTube →
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of No Priors, Anduril co-founder and CEO Brian Schimpf discusses how software-driven autonomy, low-cost hardware, and agile procurement are revolutionizing modern defense. He explores the geopolitical lessons from Ukraine and the Indo-Pacific, detailing how venture-backed defense technology is reshaping military doctrine and deterrence.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The hosts hold 13.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The hosts as informed peer 4.6 Guest teaching 4.2 Guest disagreement 0.4 The hosts pushing back 0.3
speaking balance: gold is the hosts, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 41:05 Rejection of the 'End of History' Fallacy
Brian forcefully dismisses the prevailing tech utopian assumption that globalization permanently ended state-on-state conflict, calling it a naive historical error.
Hardest push from the hosts ▶ 8:24 Sarah Challenges Need for High-Volume SystemsSarah directly questions the intuitive basis of Anduril's core thesis, pressing Brian on why high-volume systems are necessary rather than merely replacing personnel.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:40 The Reality of US Industrial Constraints vs. ChinaBrian provides a reality check on US defense manufacturing bottlenecks, highlighting pilot shortages and sub-2.0 annual nuclear submarine production rates to prove the US cannot win an exquisite attrition war.
The host holds their own ▶ 30:32 Elad Breaks Down Programs of Record MechanicsElad shows deep institutional knowledge by contextualizing how startups languish in pilot purgatory unless they transition into formal Department of Defense Programs of Record.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The hosts as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The hosts pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Schimpf's Background from DARPA to Palantir | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Elad opens with a warm, open-ended prompt asking Brian about his engineering roots and founding journey. Brian provides a smooth biographical narrative without any friction or conflict. | |
| Anduril's Founding Thesis: Software-Driven Low-Cost Hardware | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Elad demonstrates his own venture expertise by recounting the historical context of Project Maven and his rationale for investing in Anduril as a pure-play defense tech firm. Brian explains Anduril's core thesis around software-enabled low-cost hardware. | |
| Lessons from Ukraine and Disaggregated Autonomous Warfare | 4 | 7 | 1 | 2 | Sarah challenges the premise of why high-volume systems are necessary versus traditional platforms. Brian delivers a thorough schooling on U.S. industrial limitations, submarine build rates, and tactical takeaways from the war in Ukraine. | |
| Sensor Processing Toolkits and Counter-Drone Innovation | 4 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Sarah asks how generalized sensor processing can realistically tackle defense problems. Brian systematically deconstructs sensor physics into five fundamental types and highlights how counter-drone systems require rapid software iteration. | |
| Autonomous Systems, Deterministic Models, and Human Oversight | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Elad inquires about the boundaries of autonomy in military hardware like long-duration underwater vehicles. Brian articulates DoD accountability norms, arguing for bounded determinism and human-in-the-loop oversight. | |
| Leveraging LLMs for Military Synthesis and Planning | 5 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Elad brings up LLM utility across synthesis and cyber domains. Brian gives a nuanced evaluation contrasting information synthesis with generative mission planning, reiterating the danger of hallucinations in defense contexts. | |
| Scaling Anduril's Hardware and Crossing the Valley of Death | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Sarah asks for organizational and deployment metrics. Brian provides an inside look at Anduril's 1,600-person headcount, international operations in Australia, and the capital hurdles required to survive defense procurement cliffs. | |
| Securing Programs of Record and Navigating Defense Bureaucracy | 7 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Elad demonstrates strong domain fluency by explaining Programs of Record and DoD budget line items. Brian elaborates on early lobbying investments, Byzantine budgeting cycles, and holistic capability delivery. | |
| Emerging Defense Tech: Mega-Constellations and Hypersonics | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Elad asks about upcoming technological paradigm shifts. Brian walks through the underappreciated leverage of low-cost launch mega-constellations and commercial hypersonics in reshaping long-range deterrence. | |
| The Geopolitical Catalyst Reshaping Silicon Valley's Defense Stance | 6 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Elad references historical defense roots from HP to DARPA, contrasting it with recent Silicon Valley hesitation. Brian strongly dismisses the naive 'end of history' worldview, pointing to the invasion of Ukraine and Chinese posture as wake-up calls. | |
| Indo-Pacific Defense Priorities and Tech Engagement in Washington | 5 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Sarah asks about 2026 budget priorities and Elad asks about Washington engagement and seed-round backlash. Brian details Indo-Pacific tactical constraints and stresses the civic imperative for tech founders to actively engage legislators. |
Statements from this episode (25)
Schimpf: Understanding procurement mechanisms is the most critical part of defense tech
“And having folks with the background in the defense space is incredibly important. How you sell, what that looks like, the types of problems they want to work on, how that whole mechanism works is so different than any other, you know, sort of enterprise sales…”
Gil: Anduril is his only pure-play defense investment
“The only company in defense I ever ended up actually investing in is Andrew. You know, there's other companies that are doing things that impact the defense industry, like scale for data labeling or applied intuition or companies like that. But you're the only…”
Schimpf: Defense tech requires controlling both hardware and software
“To be really successful in moving The, you know, technology forward, you had to control the hardware and the software to really be able to move the needle. The way defense buys at the end of the day is they want to buy a capability. They want to buy something …”
Schimpf: Anduril is developing a 60-foot autonomous submarine
“The largest thing we're working on right now is an autonomous underwater submarine. That's about the size of a school bus. It's about, you know, gonna be 60 feet long, 10 feet diameter. It's a very Big boat. And you know, it'll be able to go huge distances for…”
Schimpf: US produces only 1.7 nuclear submarines annually as workforce retires
“We are producing less nuclear submarines per year, year over year than we have in the past. So we're like, 1.7 per year we can produce these submarines. It's not getting better, and the workforce to make these is retiring.”
Schimpf: US cannot outbuild China on expensive military platforms
“So we're not going to outbuild China. That's not an option. On these large, you know, very expensive platforms. It's just, it's not going to work. It's a bad strategy.”
Schimpf: Autonomous Defense Tech Makes Invading Taiwan Immensely Hard
“It actually really favors the defender. Now, if you can operate in this new way it would be immensely hard for any sort of successful invasion of, you know, Taiwan to actually play out because of You know, what we've learned and what we've seen and how the US …”
Schimpf: Military sensing is physically limited to five core sensor types
“There's still physics limits to all of this, and you only have like five types of sensors. You're really only going to be talking about. It turns out, you know, you're going to take a picture of something. It's either going to be thermal or it's going to be, y…”
Schimpf: Anduril does not do AI research, focuses on applying state-of-the-art
“We don't do AI research. We're not interested in any of that. We're looking at how can we kind of best take what is working in the state of the art and apply it rapidly into these defense problem sets.”
Schimpf: Low-cost drones give adversaries cruise missile equivalents under $100K
“Historically the US has been one of the few countries that has been able to make like cruise missiles, but with the low cost of drones, now effectively Iran and nearly every country has the equivalent of low cost cruise missiles. For, you know, like a 100,000 …”
Schimpf: Adversaries deploy new drone technologies in months, not decade cycles
“This was not like 10 year development programs. They're able to turn new drone technologies in months.”
Schimpf: US will not adopt autonomous robots making lethal strike decisions
“The U S is not going to adopt systems that have autonomous robots going out and making sort of lethal decisions about, you know, what to attack or not. That's not really how the U S works. We assign accountability to the person that employed a weapon system. T…”
Schimpf: Bounding non-deterministic AI is essential for military tech adoption
“A lot of these areas that are more non-deterministic, so, you know, things like reinforcement learning or, you know, potential applications of LOMs into the space, they are inherently non-deterministic, and that is a risk. And so kind of quantifying that, know…”
Schimpf: Defense hardware scaling is difficult due to episodic demand jumps
“The reality with working with a defense customer is you kind of, you know, you have very few buyers, right? It's like, there's not that many customers you're working with. And so you, you're kind of subject to their timing and desire for what they're going to …”
Schimpf: Anduril landed a $1 billion counter-drone contract with SOCOM
“We had landed a counter drone contract with SOCOM for a billion dollars to, you know, kind of scale out and get these technologies deployed.”
Schimpf: Anduril established a Capitol Hill lobbying group on day one
“To convince the government you are a good partner and trustworthy to do this, we've established a lobbying group day one of the company, right? We were on the Hill talking about what we do, why it's beneficial to national security and why it's beneficial to th…”
Schimpf: The DoD buys full organizational capabilities, not standalone tech
“What the Department of Defense buys is a capability and a capability to them is not just The hardware and the software that does the thing. It's the support. It's the training. It's the logistics. It's the manufacturing. It's the, you know, it's all the integr…”
Schimpf: Starship will enable mega-constellations for the cost of four satellites
“Just, you know, the dollars to launch, you know, any given amount of satellite with Starship is going to be so cheap. It changes things so fundamentally that, I don't think people have fully realized how monumental a shift that is going to be in terms of the a…”
Schimpf: Hypersonic startups operate at 5x pace and fraction of Lockheed's cost
“There are multiple companies doing very credible things on, you know, hypersonic air vehicles, hypersonic rockets and missiles that will be wildly cheaper than the state of the art defense. And it's something that, you know, historically you would have said th…”
Schimpf: Drones and satellites will eliminate need to risk carrier strike groups
“Proliferated satellites and drones you know, an ability to consume mass amounts of information, make sense of the whole battle space, and the ability to engage with targets at outrageously long ranges on a very quick timeline, that fundamentally alters the cha…”
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: Few commercial companies pivot as substantially as the DoD has
“They have been operating for, you know, over a century and they have substantially changed the way they operate and organize multiple times over. There are very few commercial companies that can say that is true. Like that is just not actually common. So they …”
Schimpf: Ukraine would 100% strike deep into Russia if given tools
“You know, you don't want necessarily to give Taiwan the ability to strike deep into mainland China, that Ukrainians would a hundred percent be doing that if we gave them tools to do that into Russia.”