Opinion
Harrison: Conflict with China would invalidate a huge swath of US naval assets
“The problem with that is that if we get into any conflict with China, there's suddenly a huge swath of our naval assets that we don't want to put anywhere near China, Because they could just demolish it. And so it invalidate even a lot of the exquisite assets …”
Assertion Partly supported
Harrison: $1M in Ukrainian Drones Destroyed a Third of Russia's Bomber Fleet
“So in Ukraine, there was this, I think it was called Operation Spiderweb, where, ah, Ukraine snuck basically like under false floorboards of a truck. They snuck a million dollars of worth of drones into Russian territory. And then the drones basically took fli…”
Opinion
Harrison: Modern Warfare Demands Mass Low-Cost Assets, Which the US Lacks
“That is modern conflict. It's like, you have to be capable of spitting out a high volume of these low cost assets to be able to engage, and we are not, we, like, we as a nation are not good at that.”
Opinion
Harrison: In practical terms, the US is not top dog militarily
“In practical terms, we are not the biggest dog at the party, and so we have to acknowledge that there's some strategic changes we have to make to stay relevant.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
US would run out of munitions in 11 days in China conflict
“If we were to engage in a large scale conflict, I think it's something like 11 days. Like, we would run out of munitions in 11 days.”
Assertion Partly supported
Harrison: U.S. Has Consistently Lost Wargames Against China Since 2015
“We have been effectively losing war games when they model the scenario of US versus China since, I think like, 2015. We have been, the US loses those war games.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Harrison: Rebuilding Fleet Lost in China Conflict Would Take 25 Years
“Half of our naval fleet could be destroyed within the first couple months of a large-scale conflict with China, and it would take us 25 years to rebuild just to get back to where we were. So our shipbuilding capacity doesn't exist.”
Insight
Harrison: Pacifism Is a Privilege of the Protected
“Pacifism really is a privilege of the protected. Like, there is somebody else who is willing to do those things and build those capabilities to protect our right to say, I don't want to be involved in that, and that's fine.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harrison: Conflict over Taiwan could cause a $10T global economic hit
“You look at a conflict over Taiwan, I think people say could be a 10 trillion dollar hit to the global economy. Like bigger than the financial crisis, COVID, anything. I think in some cases combined.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Harrison: Index Ventures bars weapons investments and militarizing portfolio drones
“Index, as far as I know, still to this day, has a clause where they can't invest in anything that is a weapon or could be used as a weapon, and I remember they had investments in, in companies like a drone company, where they uniquely could have contracted a p…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
The vast majority of important tech companies will be built in SF
“Statistically, there are more people in the Bay Area building companies in a specific, within a specific playbook that have specific expectations and shorthands and heuristics that are more likely to lead to success for a company. And so I can simultaneously b…”
Opinion
Harrison: McNamara's Bureaucracy Strangled America's Industrial Capacity
“Basically McNamara has strangled the golden goose that we had of industrial capacity, where he's made it so high friction to build anything, that now every single individual project Is dramatically delayed, significantly over budget.”
Assertion Supported
Harrison: China developed $15M to $20M missiles capable of destroying US carriers
“The Chinese have developed missiles that they affectionately refer to as carrier killers, that literally it's, I mean, these still might be fairly expensive missiles, right, these are 15, twenty million dollar missiles, But they can destroy a multi-billion dol…”
Assertion Contradicted
Harrison: The DoD represents sub-1% of global R&D spending today
“Today it is sub one percent of global R&D.”
Insight
Cost-plus contracts incentivize defense primes to maximize costs and avoid commercial components
“If the incentive is, no matter what it costs you, I will give you 10% on top of that, that's your profit. Well, 10% of three billion is a much bigger number than 10% of a hundred and fifty million. And so, as a traditional prime, you are deeply incentivized to…”
Assertion Supported
Harrison: Anduril took over Microsoft's $22B IVAS contract for EagleEye
“And then a year ago Microsoft basically admitted defeat to some extent, and the government said, we're going to recompete the contract, and Anduril first as a potential partner to Microsoft, and then eventually took over a twenty-two billion dollar IVAS contra…”
Opinion
Harrison: Autonomy delivers higher-quality military outcomes with fewer human casualties
“And so autonomy introduces this incredible capability where we are going to do the things we have to do, whether we like it or not. We need to do those things. This way ensures that the outcome is very likely higher quality and puts significantly fewer people …”
Assertion Supported
Harrison: Anduril is actively working on subterranean warfare technology
“Like several people are working on that, including Anduril, much to the surprise, I don't know if you have heard this story, but there was a story of Palmer talking about subterranean warfare, and the marketing person at Anduril was there, it was like, to the …”
Insight
Harrison: The ocean is often harder to build hardware for than space
“Candidly, in some cases, the ocean is actually harder to build for than space, because space has a lot of just, like, neutralizing effects, right? It's just there. And as long as it's maintained, it can be maintained. I mean, you have satellites that have been…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Harrison: Only a small handful of new defense primes will emerge
“There's not going to be 30 new defense primes. There's probably going to be a very small handful of companies that can check all the boxes you need to be able to do that. Obviously, I think Android can be one of them, and there's maybe a few others”
Opinion
Harrison: The combative divide between hustle culture and work-life balance is unhealthy
“Now there has become this like this combative divide where like people who work hard, think less of, you know, lazy snowflakes that don't want to work hard and people that have a healthy work life balance, look at people who are ambitious and are working and t…”
Insight
Narrative storytelling actively constructs reality rather than objective reality winning out
“When I started writing, I had this really strong perspective that, you know, storytelling is really powerful, but at the end of the day, reality wins out. And increasingly over the last two years, as I've written more and kind of unpacked other people's storie…”
Opinion
Harrison: Anduril has nailed all five core concepts from its original pitch deck
“In their first pitch deck there, if I can remember all of them, they basically had five things, and they had all these weird ways to describe things like, you know, VR for war fighters and perimeter security on a stick and all these things that were, like, the…”
Insight
Harrison: Bureaucracy Imposes a Million Taxes of Friction on Defense R&D
“It's like, if I ask you to build something that you don't know how to build, it requires a ton of experimentation. But if you have a bean counter along the way, where every time you try and run an experiment, they're introducing three to five to 12 weeks of pr…”
