Opinion
Ulevitch: China is far more advanced than US in defense shipbuilding and manufacturing
“If you've ever been to Shenzhen, which I went to even before I joined in recent Horowitz and saw the manufacturing capabilities of advanced, advanced manufacturing, robotics manufacturing you know, and then now we see the defense like shipbuilding manufacturin…”
Insight
Ulevitch: US should build better anti-ship missiles rather than match China's shipbuilding volume
“I'm not sure that the right strategy for America is to say, oh, they can build a hundred ships a year, so we need to be able to build a hundred ships a year. Like, what I would say a better strategy is if China's able to build a hundred ships a year, what if w…”
Prediction Open · timeframe Nov 2030
Ulevitch predicts China will sever U.S. battery supply chain in conflict
“If they all come from China, and we ever get into a real conflict with China, whether it's an economic conflict or an actual kinetic conflict, like, They're going to cut us off.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Nov 2030
Ulevitch: The US will have lights-out factories like China
“I think we're gonna have lights out factories the way they do in China.”
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2026
Ulevitch: Radiant Nuclear will activate first new-design fueled reactor next year
“I think Radiant is going to turn on the first fueled nuclear reactor of a new design in like 50 plus years. I think they're going to do it next year.”
Insight
Ulevitch: Defense tech companies need public marketing to win political support
“Andrel never loses sight of who their customer is, and they have a ton, like, you know, there's tons of, like, collateral and white papers and documentation for their customers, but at the same time, they're hugely dependent on support from Washington for the …”
Assertion Supported
Ulevitch: U.S. defense manufacturing relies critically on Chinese raw materials
“China, their ability to build ships is much, much faster than ours. A lot of the raw materials we need for our own shipbuilding comes from China, the steel and many of the metals. A lot of the things we need for batteries, for motors, for a lot of the ingredie…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ulevitch: Defense tech startups are ramping revenue faster than historical precedents
“What we're already seeing in the market is, A, these companies are ramping their revenue faster than companies have in these categories ever before.”
Assertion Partly supported
Ulevitch: The US has almost no steel smelters left
“We don't have very many steel smelters in this country anymore. We used to have a lot. We have almost none now.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ulevitch: a16z likely holds more invested cash in Anduril than any other investor
“I think we, I think, I don't know, but I think we have more cash in Anduril than any other investor.”
Insight
Ulevitch: Federal R&D overhead gives defense primes a monopoly over startups
“So that fifty million dollars comes with a ton of overhead of auditing, accounting, tons of oversight, and as a taxpayer, that feels totally appropriate, but it's so burdensome for a small company. It's almost impossible for these small companies to cope with …”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Ulevitch: All future autonomous vehicles will be electric
“Part of the shift to electric vehicles, obviously we have EVs today, but as we shift to more autonomous vehicles, all those vehicles are going to be electric as well.”
Assertion Contradicted
Ulevitch: Anduril only releases real product footage without CGI renders or special effects
“Palmer has always said things like, we will never ship renders. Like, we will ship, ship actual videos of our products. So when you see an explosion that, like, an Android, like munition, but like explodes in a video. That's a real explosion. They're not doing…”
Disclosure
Ulevitch: a16z and General Catalyst split Anduril's Series B
“And this was their Series B. And when I went down there, I met Catherine Boyle, who was at a rival firm at General Catalyst and she thought she was going to do the Series B. And so the way we met was we ended up having to split the Series B which Anderil sort …”
Disclosure
a16z launched American Dynamism in 2022 using core venture funds
“And in the beginning of twenty-twenty-two, we launched the American Dynamism practice. It wasn't a fun then. You know, as Catherine would say, it was like a meme that was becoming a movement and we announced that we had committed all this money to it, but we a…”
Disclosure
a16z prepares second American Dynamism fund after $660M first vehicle
“We'd raise, we raised the first American Dynamism Fund, it was six hundred sixty million dollars and then we're now actually getting ready to go do our second fund.”
Assertion Supported
Ulevitch: Anduril's first Sentry tower used off-the-shelf parts with advanced software
“Their first century tower was essentially off the shelf parts that they put together with very advanced software.”
