The Exchanges

Q We need to start off with your background. You have one of the most intense backgrounds I've come across. Can you just break this all down? Don't leave anything behind.

A Yeah. Um, I spent a summer in high school, um, studying Al-Qaeda and writing, uh, pretty extensively on it. And, uh, it just so happened that summer was the summer before nine, 11. So like literally on, on nine, 11, I was like, oh, there's an Al Qaeda attack. I had this huge paper that had been written, um, critiquing us foreign policy with Al Qaeda up until that date, um, saying it wasn't gonna work. And, uh, that sort of kicked off this crazy sequence of events that, you know, Led me to get recruited into like a strange section of the Navy out of college, two tours in Iraq, doing fun stuff there, and then working at the intersection of emerging technology and defense, both in uniform and then out. Left active duty, went to the private sector, joined a startup, and then, yeah, had an old boss, Mike Flynn, call me up and say, hey, come to the White House, and then spent four years And owned all cyber, telecom, supply chain, and crypto policy at the White House on the National Security Council for four years, and then started Galvanic. It's been, ah, it's been a ride so far.

AI assessment note: “spent four years And owned all cyber, telecom, supply chain, and crypto policy”

Q Oh my gosh. That's great. Well, so we're at re-industrialize the heart of this industrialization movement of America. We need to talk about Galvanic. This is what you're building now after your tour of duty in and out of the White House, in and out of service. How did we get here?

A It was the number one problem that kept me up at night when I was in the White House. We have connected the most essential equipment in our world, in our lives, in our economy, uh, to the internet. And that has huge follow on effects, many of them positive and then some of them negative. And so, you know, for four years, I was the guy that had to get the phone call at three AM, um, Do we wake up the president when weird things are happening on our critical infrastructure, strange, you know, digital actors trying to undermine X or Y or, oh, we found someone in this system, very sensitive. And I had a, when I was in the military, I also had some exposure to that problem as well. And so left the White House, took a breather, went out, talked to some friends and figured let's do something at the intersection of cybersecurity, And industry. And this is what we came up with.

AI assessment note: “figured let's do something at the intersection of cybersecurity, And industry.”

Q I want to talk about the vulnerabilities and new exposures that we'll have as AI advances more. AGI becomes a thing. A company I recently came across is Turing and they helped build and deploy next-gen AGI within real world problems across industries. How is AGI either going to help you or what do you now need to consider?

A So part of what we do is extract and organize, uh, one of the most unique data sets in the world, which is, you know, for our customers, we don't hold onto that data ourselves. It's their, it's their data, but we're extracting the information off their production system. So certainly in the future, um, you're going to need those types of data, you know, structured data, uh, um, you know, elements in order to understand and then build those types of capabilities. From a security perspective, you know, AGI is very interesting, AI is very interesting, whatever you want to call it, because the vulnerability side of the cybersecurity world is really critical to running many operations, not all, but some significant portion. So Finding holes in code is an art. There's some science, there's a lot of art, and very smart people have been doing it for a very long time. And one of the biggest things that people talk about in terms of AI and cybersecurity is that you can essentially now do this at a certain degree of scale with these artificial intelligence platforms. Um, we're starting to see some of that stuff come online. So what it really means is one, the discovery of vulnerabilities in systems is very likely Going to experience this like Cambrian explosion, as people say, right? What took a single person or a group of people, you know, a lot of time, a lot of energy to try and find a…

AI assessment note: “the discovery of vulnerabilities in systems is very likely Going to experience this like Cambrian explosion”

Q So have you been focused on cyber the whole time?

A Um, yes and no. I think the interesting thing is that if you, at a philosophical level, I, Like this mental model of thinking about layers of reality. So like, the spoken word is a layer of reality, like we're communicating using that layer. I could communicate through the written layer of reality by writing things. Um, money is another layer of reality, and then raw digital information is like sort of the most pressing layer of reality that exists right now that I think is changing the way in which things happen, and so I think a lot of my work over the past 15 years has been, um, trying to find where we can use those layers of reality to positively affect America's national security. So, you know, forward in Iraq, the, that had to do with like running operations to find out critical information that we needed to know to, you know, find people that we wanted, stop things from happening that we didn't want to happen, et cetera. And you can use the various layers of reality to do that. And then, you know, at the White House, you know, crypto is like one version of that layer of reality. Um, cyber, obviously, Is a huge part of that layer of reality. We've basically connected everything in the world to the internet, and we're just now seeing what that actually means for security, prosperity, all those things.

AI assessment note: “yes and no. I think the interesting thing is that if you, at a philosophical level”

Q Felix wanted me to ask you about your take on Taiwan. When do you think we're gonna go to war or when do you think Taiwan's gonna get overtaken?

A I desperately want the Taiwanese people to want to defend themselves, and so my gauge on that potential conflict has to do with what I see the Taiwanese people doing. Are they equipping every military age male from 15 to 50 with AK-forty-sevens, thousand rounds of ammunition, body armor, and then forcing them to go out, not forcing, but asking them to go out and drill and train and learn how to operate those and other weapons systems. Are they going out and procuring things that are going to survive the first 24 hours of an absolute onslaught of the Chinese Communist Party's People's Liberation Army And People's Liberation Army Navy, which is what it's called. And That's how I gauge whether or not I think they are going to want to actually preserve their way of life. It really is a fight in their own hearts and minds. Like they have to make the decision. And I think America has always tried to be a friend to free peoples everywhere. And so we'll see. Um, I certainly don't have the most up-to-date information on what it is that they're procuring and buying, but When I do talk and do engage with folks, that is exactly where I go. It's like, tell me about, tell me about the official, you know, National Guard militia type entities that they have there. And let's talk through, you know, what training is happening? What are they doing? Who's interested?

AI assessment note: “my gauge on that potential conflict has to do with what I see the Taiwanese people doing.”

Q I think taking a step back, what role do you think this team and this company has in re-industrialization?

A I've said to several people today, um, the easiest way to defeat a weapon system is on the factory floor. And so the defense industrial base is where the fight is happening right now. That's why re-industrialization is so important. And if you can't manufacture things and know that the way in which they were manufactured is the way that you wanted them to be manufactured. The software that's being, you know, deployed onto them is what you want it to be deployed onto them. They're made to the specs that you wanted. And in the steel example, you want to make sure that those systems continue to function and can continue to function. Um, it's critical. You know, if you don't have a secure industrial base, you don't have an industrial base. It means that industrial base exists because your adversaries allow it to exist. So unless we're able to protect that, all of it's for naught.

AI assessment note: “unless we're able to protect that, all of it's for naught.”