Emil Michael, Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, compares Pete Hegseth's leadership to past defense leaders.
Opinion
Michael: The Iraq and Afghanistan wars were a net negative for US
“The second war in Iraq and the Afghanistan war, and there were long, expensive conflicts where the benefit to the United States, looking back on it, was negative. It wasn't even neutral, right? It cost a lot of people their lives, and Afghanistan is still, Afg…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Michael: China is building hypersonic missiles at costs the US cannot match
“So they've developed certain capabilities in certain hypersonic missile categories, ah, at a price that, ah, that we haven't achieved yet, which is why one of my critical technology areas is high, scaled hypersonics at cost.”
Insight
Michael: Critical technology areas lingering for a decade signals failure
“These critical technology areas were almost 10 years old since 2018, and if something's critical for 10 years, that means you're not making much progress on it.”
Disclosure
DoD prioritizes adapting commercial AI over building in-house foundation models
“Applied AI is number one. And the reason I call it applied AI is because the big companies, OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI, they're all investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI and AI infrastructure. So all I need to do is take that and adapt it for the departm…”
Assertion Supported
Michael: Department of War closed three critical mineral deals in 45 days
“The three I'm most proud of, ah, in a very recent term, is we've done three deals for critical minerals, ah, to reduce our dependency on China in like, 45 days.”
Opinion
Michael: Palantir is fundamentally a nuts-and-bolts operational software company
“But I think they're really a nuts and bolts software company with forward deployed engineers, That are smart, that sit with a warfighter, and solve, like, everyday problems you would in any organization, ah, as much as they do the other stuff.”