The Exchanges

Q So, who was involved in, like, what was the actual process?

A So it started as each of us writes. We have a research team within Contrary. So I run the research team. We have an editor, we have a research associate, and we have basically a small army of research fellows that are more people who are working in the industry. They're engineers. They're working in investing, whatever it might be. But in order to get exposure on the writing side, they will come and write with us about things they're interested in. So we have this massive army. So over the years, there have been a lot of contributors to that, that, uh, project. I have been sort of the main driving force in trying to, in trying to get it across the finish line, um, and then in terms of process, it started out very much as, like, me just consuming everything there was. Reading every Anderil blog post that they've ever put out, every press release, listening to dozens of interviews with each of the individual founding members, and all kinds of different reports, and white papers, and, and stuff like that. Reading several books, eventually, once we get into the deeper military history, then it's It's not enough to watch a YouTube video. You actually have to go back and read the literature. And so a lot of it was just immersing myself in a ton of the underlying resources. Then the team collaboration really came from, okay, how do you take this mountain of context and structure it in…

AI assessment note: “We have an editor, we have a research associate... in terms of process, it started out”

Q And so whenever a new war breaks out, do you have to go back to the drawing board and edit? Like, what was that like?

A It was there, I'll tell you what, it's actually, it was, it was dueling forces of urgency, because on the one hand, the global climate was changing frequently, and there was frequent things we had to change. At the same time, Anderil is probably one of the, the most prolific shippers of product, um, new iterations of things, and new versions of stuff, entirely new projects, things that they weren't talking about that we thought we had kind of like a sneak peek. And then by the time we got around to putting it in print, they'd already talked about it and stuff, like, so Anduril's pace of execution against the backdrop of like a global environment that's changing super fast, you know, I think we were on draft 35 by the time we were like, okay, lock, like we have to, at some point we have to actually print the book, um, but it was, it was a lot of iteration.

AI assessment note: “we were on draft 35 by the time we were like, okay, lock”

Q Um, so after reading This book and writing this book. What are the key takeaways that you learned from Anduril's leadership and their ability to perform over and over again?

A When I reflect back on the last couple of years of, of feeling like I was just spending a lot of time with the Anduril founders, you know, indirectly of like hearing what they have to say and how they think about things and how they articulate things in different contexts. Um, you know, throughout the book we had, I think, over 500 individual sources that we've referenced a thousand plus times, but, um, specifically if you look at the dozen or so interviews with the founders, uh, I went back and looked at, at transcripts of those things, there are, the, the word hope appears 44 different times, and there is this fundamental hopefulness in everything that Anderil, that the company builds and the, and the mission behind the company, Is this idea that if we thought all hope was lost, we wouldn't be doing this. We're doing this because we, we continue to have hope, and I think that that speaks fundamentally to what a real mission is. Trey Stevens talks incredible essay about choosing good quests, talks about it all the time. Um, I think that this speaks truth to what a good quest is, and it is not a specific product. It is not a specific solution. Even for Anduril, it is not defending a specific nation, right? It is not It's not just making the U.S. capable of protecting itself. It is protecting a specific subset of ideals and values that represent this sort of idea of Western demo…

AI assessment note: “there is this fundamental hopefulness in everything that Anderil, that the company builds”

Q Yeah, it's true. A lot of content marketing, um, can't, can't escape its own bias. Um, which is really hard to read between the lines of sometimes. So with, with all the research that you have, is there a certain area that you're like super excited about that the team is excited about? Um, where have you been spending most of your time?

A Yeah, well, it's interesting because I, we sit at a very interesting place because we have a lot of people that we can see, like, you know, at this point we've covered. 300 different companies. We've covered maybe two dozen different categories and industries and stuff. So we, we have a broad surface area of stuff. And then on that we can pay attention to like, what are people looking at? Where are they paying the most attention to? And I'll, I, you know, unsurprisingly, a lot of that correlates to hype. Like where are people excited? So obviously open AI gets a lot of attention. Stripe gets a lot of attention. Like there are these pieces, you know, but one of the things that I think people have been trying to sort of wrap their head around is, you know, you talk about, um, the excitement in, in El Segundo and defense and aerospace and manufacturing and like, you know, building in the physical world and stuff like that. There is a lot of excitement there, but there's a lot of people who are like pragmatic business builders. Who are trying to wrap their arms around who maybe they're not as caught up in like the zeitgeist of the excitement, but they still, even if you abstract away from like the hype, you still feel like there is a moment in time where, you know, de-globalization is real. Increased global conflict is real. Like those things create market opportunities. And so peo…

AI assessment note: “we're actually right now we have a project... deep dive into... military and defense tech”

Q amazing place to grow a career. So I'm not like talking down to the bay at all. I love visiting there. I think it's great, but yeah, maybe to your point, there's not much culture. So to wrap up, I just want to end on a positive note. So what are you most looking forward to this year and what kind of ideas do you have for writing cooking up?

A Um, well, I think that this year Um, the things I'm most excited about, so I'm, I'm seeing a lot more, and I've written about this a few times before, I've called it the age of acquisition, where there are companies that demonstrate that they, you know, they're really interesting as a product, but maybe not, they don't make as much sense as a standalone company. And you're seeing a ton more acquisitions. And I talked in the piece that I wrote about, you know, large plus large, right? Like a Microsoft buying an Activision or whatever, a large and a small, Um, and then even like small and small, right? Like startups acquiring other startups and things. And I'm starting to see a lot more of that. And I actually like, so there's a tweet that I talk about a lot, uh, that Harry Stebbings deleted. Um, but that I, I, I saw and kept and have told him that I really liked it. I wish he hadn't deleted it, but it's like, he, he talked about this idea that there is a natural selection in startups. Startups are supposed to fail. Like that's like, there are ideas. It is literally a mechanism of iteration and experimentation. Like startups are supposed to go out, try something, experiment. And if it fails, then the capital and the, like the, both the like, um, currency capital, right. And like the monetary capital and the human capital are supposed to get recycled back into the system to be red…

AI assessment note: “the things I'm most excited about, so I'm, I'm seeing a lot more”

Q builds realistic reinforcement learning environments and data systems based on real operational traces, the kind of infrastructure Frontier Labs need to train superintelligence. Visit Turing.com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. So I'm curious, um, I've had people wonder, like, which parts, and I don't know if you know this information or not, but, like, which parts of these products are actively Ready to use? Like, which ones are actually ready to be deployed?

A The biggest, like, proof point of, of Anduril's sort of capabilities is you look at, like, in Ukraine, um, Palmer says that, uh, Anduril has had products on the ground in Ukraine basically since day one. Um, they were over there pretty quickly, you know, deploying assets and stuff like that. I think that one of the things that is most important to understand about Anduril's go-to-market Is that what you're doing is trying to enable specific capabilities for both the US forces and our allies, right? And so you look at things like, um, ghost sharks in Australia. So Anduril went to Australia, set up a factory specifically for, um, production of dive assets under these autonomous undersea vehicles. Um, They specifically set up shop to produce those, because Australia represents, so there's this, um, so AUKUS is the, like, sort of collaborative group of, like, Australia, UK, US, like, that collaborative force. Australia is sort of, like, the, the tip of the spear for that effort, because they are right there in the Pacific, close to China, um, Taiwan is, you know, nearby, like, Their, their need for a undersea capability is the strongest, and so you go set up shop in Australia, and so that contract that they have, I think it's a, you know, multi-billion dollar contract at this point, if I remember correctly, but it's like a massive contract with the Australian government, maybe a co…

AI assessment note: “Palmer says that, uh, Anduril has had products on the ground in Ukraine basically since day one.”