Joe Lonsdale - The AI-Driven EMP Weapon Built to Destroy New Jersey Drone Swarms | SRS #151
[Music]. Joe Lonsdale welcome to the show thanks. Sean glad to be here man I am uh super. excited to talk to you I've been. following what you've been doing in a. lot of your different companies for a. while now and. uh I know you're a busy guy and uh I. just want to say it's an honor to have. you here um you know you just you're. involved in so much with technology and. also I love what you're doing with. University of Austin i' love to hit on.
that but um but uh I just I really. appreciate you coming and and uh I've. been looking forward to diving into this. for a long time so I'm excited to be. here it's an honor to be on the show. thank you thank you but uh everybody. starts off with an introduction and uh. we could go on for probably an hour here. but I tried to summarize it up here Joe. Lonsdale you're a real Titan of industry. and Innovation a man whose Journey from. Silicon Valley to the halls of. policymaking reads like a modern-day. Epic you're a Stanford educated.
Visionary who co-founded paler. Technologies a company that's become. synonymous with big data and analytics. helping governments and businesses. worldwide to make smarter more informed. decisions after paler you ventured into. the world of finance and founded adapar. revolutionizing how wealth management. works making it transparent in data. driven of the nine us defense unicorns. billion doll companies youve founded. three and were one of the earliest.
investors in another three you're deeply. invested in education reform you. co-founded Cicero an organization. dedicated to advancing educational. opportunities and policy to transform. lives and societies your influence. extends into policy with your. involvement in 8 VC a venture capital. firm that doesn't just fund startups it. pushes for policies that encourage. Innovation you've been an adviser. deleting political figures advocating.
for a future where technology and policy. work handin hand to solve our biggest. challenges you shape the ideas of the. future with your op-eds and articles. that often delve into intersection of. tech policy and. culture you're a father of five kids you. just had your first son and uh you've. been married for eight years yep that's. right congratulations on your son thank. you Sean he's he's 92 percentile he's a. big little baby yeah nice healthy boy.
huh well Joe I want to do a I want to do. a life story on you starting from. childhood and get into all of your. different companies and involvement uh. with different things that you're in but. um but it just so happens that uh you. know I've been super interested in your. company eparis and uh I've had several. conversations with your business partner. grant for standing and um and uh love.
him amazing guy but uh we got a. situation going on literally right now. in New. Jersey uh with all these with all these. drones and nobody seems to know what it. is so I just want to kind of start the. interview right there what what the hell. do you think these drones are this is. funny I we're you know going to be at. the Army Navy game and so I'm bummed I. don't I I'm going to find out tomorrow. probably from all these guys right cuz. I'm sure I'm sure they know I'm sure.
they know but I haven't texted him and. asked you know I mean if it's not ours. then it's really incompetent right if. this is not ours if this is ours then. it's also kind of weird like why why are. we doing this and freaking people out. but if it's not ours what the heck man. well I mean what it was like two years. ago we're freaking out about a spy. balloon traversing the United States. from what Washington all the way down to. South Carolina I I got a good answer on. that though I'm sure I don't know I'm. sure it's public by now but I think. because of the fact that we let it stay. up we were able to hack into it Trace.
back where the data was going and like. find out a lot about the Chinese and so. it turned out in that case it made sense. and it turned out that xiin ping didn't. even know his underlings had put this by. balloon up and we're doing it and it was. actually bad for China because we used. it to hack in so I think in that case. there's like a competent answer which. makes you feel good that there's like. not totally incompetent people like they. met with Biden they said what they're. going to do he agreed to let him do it. and and that was fine so so hopefully. there's a confident answer for these. drones but it's it's a weird it's a. weird thing man I mean do you think it's. ours.
I I assume it's ours because if it's not. that's insane why would they be doing. why would they fly it over why wouldn't. they fly this over like Area 51 or or. some testing grounds you know what I. found out about government man is that. there are some really great people there. are some amazing Special Forces guys. every once in a while on the dod you'll. have this like genius person in the. strategy group and then the vast. majority of them are incompetent and so. so so so it's just hard for me to say. but I'm I'm I'm hoping they're ours cuz. if they're not ours that's actually a. little bit scary and it's really.
incompetent that we're not doing. something do you think this might be a. distraction from from something going on. in the Middle East or something going on. I don't know maybe some maybe some some. bad juju going on somewhere else and. they're just throwing these things up to. distract everybody if there wasn't. another story then maybe but I don't I I. don't know that's that's an interesting. question we're going to find out really. soon I'm curious I don't I don't want to. make a bunch of stupid guesses and I. come out to be an idiot because it's. it's hard for me to know I actually. don't know the answer well I mean Drome. Warfare is is becoming obviously very.
prevalent absolutely critical this is. the future of warfare is like lots and. lots of manufactured smart weaponized. autonomous drones whether they're flying. whether they're on the water whether. they're under the water whether they're. on the land like that that is a future. of warfare as far as I'm concerned so. you know people one of the reasons I'm. bringing this up is obviously I'm I'm. just extremely curious of what your. thoughts are but another reason is I. mean you know been reading reports on. CNN people are posting the the.
neighborhood watch groups and the. Facebook groups and stuff and people are. they're freaking out and what I. find probably isn't a coincidence but. because I believe in higher power but. you have you founded epis yeah and epis. is a directed energy basically a. directed EMP weapon and it is I mean. it's it seems to me from the reading. I've done on it it's it's it's defense.
against drones epis is a really. important company and I'm proud to be a. co-founder there with it it's not just I. can't take credit for it by myself. there's a few other people who were. critical Nathan Mintz bowar you know. other guys Grant stepped in and was. played a key role you know you the. background on that by the way is you. know I'd gotten out of defense for a few. years because after paler it's just not. it's like hard you have to go talk to. Senators you have to go to the dod it's. like this is stressful stuff I built. companies elsewhere like you mentioned. and but then you know we saw in the. early 2010s we saw a lot of our smart. friends in China were being forced to.
have their Engineers work on Military. projects and we said wait a second this. is not good and then we saw our defense. primes uh you know were not able to. attract the best talent at all so we had. in America uh these defense primes had. all Consolidated in the 90s and. obviously paler how to compete against. them and software side and crushed them. but but their Hardware side was also. going downhill was also getting worse. and this this is a big problem that. China's getting better it's getting. worse here and then it turned out that. shiin ping gu is clearly aami who's. going to try to confront us he's going. to be a serious adversary and and that.
got scary and then a bunch of my friends. three of the best guys from paler with. Palmer lucky started andril and so we. backed that early and it basically. convinced me uh you know at the time. looking at all these things and looking. at andrel we better get back involved in. defense so he said okay we're back. involved in defense what are we going to. do we need to get more of our best and. brightest from the tech World which I'm. lucky to come from and have access to to. work on these problems and we mapped out. about 20 different areas and we decided. to start epis first and decid decided to. build that because exactly the future of. warfare seemed very clearly to be.
heading towards drone Warfare and it's. just not sustainable to fire missiles at. drones right you you're spending a. million dollars or $100,000 to shoot. down something that cost a lot less than. that so you need a one to many effect. you need to be able to shoot cones of. energy and the thing we the thing we. realize really with the help of some. really smart people like Bo and Nathan. is that it turns out that the that the. chips in Silicon Valley had gotten to be. so powerful and so fast that you can. they can help you control Power on very. small time scales and get the power to. hit emitter and then fire way farther.
than anything anyone else was doing and. so the emitters was called gallium. nitride it's just super efficient way of. shooting gallan nitr gallium nitride. it's a gan they call them G an is is the. element you know Co code the gallium. nitride these are super efficient. emitters and these exists in other. places too it's it's a big breakthrough. that was really started to be used in. the last kind of like 10 15 years in a. bunch of different contexts but it turns. out if you use the AI chips get the. power to hit the Gallum nitrate you're. taking a bunch of power and you're kind. of condensing it into like a 10,000th of. a second less of of a thing so this.
burst it's a super fast Burst and the. burst is intense enough cuz it's so. condensed that when it hits the the. Drone when it hits the electronics it. fries them you know it destroys them and. then there's all sorts of things you do. to kind of tune the burst and figure out. how to actually do it most efficiently. and effectively to fry these things as. well and you know we're now I'm not. supposed to say quite out far away but. you're shooting things down for Miles. Away you're shooting miles away it's not. just it's not just the it's not just. like the little tiny like you know you D. DGI drones or whatever they're called.
it's like you know these are the big. things that Iran's making for Russia as. well we could take down quite a far. distance away and and what's really cool. is you're not just doing it so you're. doing it for bases you're doing it for. forward attacks but you can like put. these things you put smaller versions in. the cones so for example you know you. know andral's Road Runner you've seen. that right the thing that takes off and. lands again you can put it in one of. those missiles and you can that one's. not going to work that as far CU it's a. smaller form factor but that missile can. get up and get pretty close to the to. the bad guy drones fire a bunch of them. and then come back and land so like this.
that you do now too so how how many how. many drones could like one of these what. do you call the actual weapon is it. leonitis leonitis is the is the first. version of the product that's being for. deployed with s Comm and and it's just. going out actually in the next month. which is great you know the tests have. shown you could do about 100 drones at a. time in certain cont 100 drones at a. time I mean if they're if they're. together you know flying together and. and then then the thing moves so you. fire fire fire what's great so you know. why it's called epis so the epis was the. bow of Theus Theus was the guy who.
started Athens in Legend right and in. Legend his bow had infinite arrows and. so that's the point here is your firing. electronic poers you effectively have. infinite arrows see this thing can fire. thousands of times and and each shot. costs almost nothing wow wow what I'm. just so that gives us hope so basically. all these drones in New Jersey if we. wanted to they could you know deploy. leonitis and take it down that way and. if they want to they could shoot down. right now with any number of different. types of missiles sure but this this.
exactly I mean I think there's probably. rules from the FAA about there's always. Regulators about what you could do on. Shore and where you could do it and how. you could do it but I mean eventually. you'll probably have things like leus. protecting stadiums protecting airports. that that was another reason we started. up by the way is you know when we were. building pal here one of the big focuses. was was stopping Terror attacks and you. know and working a partnering to stop. Terror attacks you know with with with. the United States intelligence Community. which I think we're very helpful in. doing and so I have it on my mind maybe. it's kind of a kind of a sick thing but.
like what are what's a bad guy going to. do you kind have to put yourself in the. bad guy shoes and figure it out and one. of the things a bad guy could do which. would be horrible may I shouldn't talk. about too much is you can attack a. stadium right you get you can get lots. of little drones you could put little. explosives and cameras on them it'd be. really scary so I think our stadiums are. going to need to be defended by things. like this well yeah I mean. what yeah I mean we just I had uh a. former CIA targeter in here just a. couple days ago we just released the. interview now and uh actually yesterday.
and uh she's talking about you know. there there are at least 1,000 very. well-trained terrorists within our. borders right now yeah it pisses me off. man that's crazy there's some really. amazing judges I know who are one of. them actually was just involved in this. well it doesn't matter really great. decision against the SEC last week but. they would go down to the border and. they assigned them to like help because. they're overloaded right with the cases. and some of the some of the Biden. Administration judges were letting in. people on the watch list and they're. like what are you doing you can't let.
them in he said no we're instructed to. let in everyone and like it's like I. still saying it I don't even believe it. but this is what I'm told by multiple. people there's been I think chip Roy the. congressman wrote about it as well isn't. that crazy they're like they're letting. in these people into our country what. are they doing what do you think they're. doing I think it's like this weird. ideology where they just I mean a they. probably like trying to spend a lot of. money while bringing down inflation by. bringing in more people and B is some. weird it's just some weird open border. ideology I don't understand it but the. fact that you'd let people in even on.
watch list I guess they think it's not. actually dangerous I don't know it's. it's to I think these people don't think. in terms of of like like you and I in. terms of there's bad guys and there's. good guys and we got to keep people safe. and we have this like adversarial. relationship with some other countries. it's almost like they're just like. extremely naive people who live in a. different type of world than we do it's. weird stuff man do do you think that. they want something to happen for a. particular reason.
to start a war it's possible they come. in yeah yeah it's possible and and and. do another terrorist attack then we go. right back to war that spins up the. military-industrial complex there could. be someone there could be someone who's. that sick in the military-industrial. complex I mean I'm I I I fall in between. these factions because on one hand I. think we wasted trillions of dollars. over in Afghanistan and Iraq and. probably shouldn't have been there in. the way we were I obvious think we had. to do something after the 911 attack but. we probably shouldn't have gone this. stay and spent all the money and all the.
lives right but the same so so but the. same time we do need to stop the bad. guys from from causing problems but yeah. I think there are some pretty sick. people who are who are much much more. aggressive about just like always being. at War which is. terrible yeah you know that's one of the. things that's one of the things I love. about what you're doing is is you know. with with the traditional military. industrial complex companies you know. we're we're shooting down we're shooting. down $500 drones with million dooll. missiles it's crazy man it's not it's. not.
sustainable with a company like what you. have epis I mean it's it's not that way. it's an energy it's an energy weapon. this is this is the goal is we're not. cost plus people I think there's this. really sick disease of people that their. whole incentive is Cost Plus they just. want to use more of their stuff and sell. more of their stuff and their incentives. is is are pretty screwed up I think I. think I think I think the better way to. do it is uh exactly you got to you got. to you got to make things you got to. make things much much much cheaper and. better and then change the incentives.
around have it be more like a software. thing not like a you know not like a. thing where you're just selling as many. as possible at 6% I mean you. gotta that brings up a whole another. topic I mean what about your personal. security I'm genuinely curious I mean. you've got to be pissing off you know. loy oh for those guys that's funny I was. I thought you meant like killing all the. terrorists but yeah that's interesting. I'm. I'm I mean listen I think the guy who. runs locky Jim he he ran American Tower. he's a great businessman he's like he's.
not from the military dust complex. himself he's been brought in to figure. it out and fix some things cuz there's. some things that are broken there and he. seems like an honorable guy to me I. don't think those kind of guys are are. and you know and then other thing let's. let's be honest I'm like I'm I'm a step. down from like Peter teal and and Al and. Alex carp and fame they're both 15 years. older than me they're both important. mentors to me they're my co-founders I. think I think they're the ones who who. are who have more security than me we. have my security guy outside I'm not. that worried though right on. it's just there's a lot of money at.
stake here for those companies braon. locki you know northr. Grumman interesting though I think I. think I think Sean do not actually in. this case I think it's not the right way. to think about it because it's not like. there's like some Evil Genius behind. rathon or something right raon is like a. conglomeration of all of this stuff that. merged together in the 90s there were. some great families great people maybe. in the 1940s 50s 60s who created some of. this stuff and back then by the way it. was legit it was the best stuff in the. world and you have this conglomeration.
and then you have all these bureaucrats. and all these committees and the problem. with the military-industrial people is. they become more like the broken. bureaucracy in government so and these. bureaucrats they're mostly cowards right. they're mostly like people who just like. automatically want to like do more fill. out more forms they want to they want to. they want to like go along with. whatever's safe so I think part of the. problem with these companies is the fact. that they're actually not bold and. they're not they're not thoughtful and. they're not they're not they're not. courageous and so so so I I'm not really. afraid of the bureaucrats I'm kind of.
just like disgusted by them is that does. that make sense it does make sense it. does make sense all right let's let's. break from Warfare for a second and. let's rewind let's go back to your life. story let's where did you grow up grew. up in Fremont California the East Bay. near Silicon Valley brothers sisters I'm. the oldest of three boys I have two. amazing younger brothers was with one of. them yesterday in Miami and they they. both live in Austin although one of them. spends a lot of time in Asia right on. what did you like I mean what did you.
grow up doing what were your hobbies uh. a lot of sports a lot of video games. what kind of sports uh as a baseball. player as a swimmer got the got the gold. medal and breast stroke for the East Bas. swim league you know nice nice my family. is very competitive we're very. competitive whether it's Sports whether. it's games we were each of my brothers. and I were state chess champions my dad. was the top chess coach we thought was. cuz we were smart after we left my. elementary school he kept coaching they. kept winning the state every year for 20. years no kidding my dad my dad is super. super competitive you still play chess.
for fun yeah you know when you're. playing at that age when we were playing. seriously competitively it wasn't about. being smart it was about my dad training. us and we had to do it 30 hours a week. if we wanted to stay on top so it was it. was a very serious commitment from the. age of like 6 to 12 or so who's the best. chess player in the family I think I am. don't ask my brother. Jeff are you teaching your kids chess. we're starting to it's actually really. funny so my oldest kids are are. daughters you know I have five kids so. my daughters are the older ones are four.
six and seven and a half and and and. they they they do little tactics with me. and stuff but I came in the other day. when I was trying to trying to teach him. and uh and they said Daddy look the. pieces aren't fighting anymore they're. getting married. like I'm working on. it nice nice what kind of games were you. been to uh like every Nintendo game we. played baseball a lot I was a pitcher so. uh just all and we we we played a lot of. we play a lot of video games so the. parents think is bad for kids but I.
thought it was pretty fun how old are. you I'm 42 42 okay so same same age so. yeah you grew up with Nintendo Super. Nintendo yeah all that kind of stuff. right on well what got you what got you. so interested in Tech well you know I. was lucky to grow up in Silicon Valley I. had a obviously was nerdy myself but I. had even nerdier friends who were. teaching me stuff and you know I had I. had a small group of friends who way. ahead in math and stuff and you know. programming and math have a lot in. common so I got these guys teaching me.
how to program at 9 10 11 years old. which is normal nowadays but back then. that was that was pretty unusual and you. know I think one of the friends his dad. was at Intel and they got these they. called the Pentium chips remember back. in the 90s and they'd get him and we did. this rig where you'd like figure out how. to over overclock them and you know use. like liquid nitrogen or whatever to cool. it off and it's just just silly stuff. then makes the Quake 2 game work a. little better but it's just just just I. kind of was in that whole scene and a. lot of my friends older brothers and. people were building compan so I was. really lucky to be exposed to this stuff.
very interesting yeah where did you go. after high school so I went to went to. Stanford computer science which is right. in the area it's in the Bay area as well. and uh it's actually funny my mom made. me apply last minut to Stanford I was. always going to go to Caltech or MIT and. actually I went back and read it I it. was the most obnoxious application thing. ever cuz I was so eager to for them to. think I was so great that I just it's. just when you read it you're like you're. like screw this kid like we shouldn't. let in anywhere cuz he just like he. thinks he's the coolest guy ever it was.
terrible I was it was 17 and it was like. pretty you know pretty overconfident um. but but uh but Stanford one because I. did it last minute and didn't it didn't. sound quite as arrogant I think they let. me in so Stanford you started interning. at PayPal learning from the so all so. all the really smart and interesting. programmers I met a bunch of them who. were a little older than me I I I was. lucky to be a little bit ahead in. programming already cuz I before I got. there so I got to know some of the older. kids and some really bright ones we. going to work at PayPal and we're.
interning in PayPal Etc and so I applied. my freshman year I thought this is. really cool I want to go work with these. people and I I'd known who Peter teal. was he founded the the Stanford review. which I was which I was working with and. became a big editor of and uh and they. they actually rejected me in my first. year I applied there so I applied again. I got in sophomore year no kiding yeah. what was it like I mean I don't remember. what it was like back then but Peter D. Elon Musk saxs Reed Hoffman I mean were. these big names in the space back they.
were they were definitely not big names. no one no one knew who any of these. people were not not at all um yeah so. was like oh it's such a coincidence that. like all these companies came out of. PayPal but now that we know who Elon is. and who Peter tale is and who these guys. are it's like of course they're all. together there you know there's got to. be a lot of crazy stuff that comes out. of it there's a power LW this was this. was a group there actually two groups. right it was Elon had X doom and Peter. had confinity and and they had a bunch. of their smartest friends each building. stuff and they're about companies in the. space in the payment space and these.
things these guys were at war with each. other they obsessed you know this really. talented teams trying to win and they. finally realized they should merge. rather and you know destroy each other. and the companies merge and uh I hear. Elon kept trying to rename it X he. finally got his way later. huh but uh but no it was an amazing. group of people I was just a kid I get. no credit at all for anything that. happened there but I but I learned a. hell of a lot from all these people. that's uh hell of a group of mentors you. keep in touch with all these guys a. bunch of them yeah yeah a bunch of them. yeah David David sxs has that show they.
let me on last week the all in things. entertaining and you know uh Peter's. someone I see a lot and he still backs a. lot of things I do and Elon you know. lives in Austin Texas now and is a is a. good friend I text him and bug him. sometimes I'm trying to be helpful with. the stuff going on in government so yeah. oh you you are involved with that right. I do my best to help I have a bunch of. friends who are involved full-time and. I've passed a bunch of people in and I'm. obsessed with the policy world so yeah. I'm trying to be helpful there good it's. good to have you in there um so after.
PayPal you went on to build in social. media what what were you doing in there. oh I I I didn't build anything in social. media but I I worked for Peter teal. after PayPal and he had a global macro. hedge fund but he also uh was the first. investor in Facebook at the time so so I. don't get any credit for that either but. I got to know really well the Facebook. Founders and the office and the culture. and then right after that he backed me. to start paler with my roommate from. Stanford what I mean what caught your. interest in National security cuz you it.
sounds like you made a switch there you. know you know so so I'd always been. pretty interested in it it was if you. look at so computer science is like. maybe a a a young man who likes things. the young man like there's like there's. like games and there's cool defense. stuff and when you grew up in computer. science in Silicon Valley in in the in. the 80s and 90s you'd constantly hear. stories about stuff the NSA was doing. and the US government was doing that was. way ahead of everything else back in the. ' 60s and70s so it was almost this. mythical thing where where where there's.
just like some of the coolest most. talented guys were there like there's. literally stuff that was done by the NSA. in the 70s that like the very top. academics of Stanford and MIT and Etc. only figured out 15 years later like. what the heck they were doing and why. they were doing it that way so it was. just it was just this like like this is. what the cool guys are doing they're. they're the smartest people are doing. they're working on these problems and. then you know I mean as a kid you you. watch James Bond and you look at this. stuff you want to get the bad guys you. want to stop the bad guys and so I was. always fascinated by that world and at. payal the thing that came up by the way.
this was Central to this was that. Chinese and Russian mafia were stealing. all our money you know about this this. was like yeah so PayPal was losing like. several million dollars a month back. when that was a lot of money and and it. was very unprofitable because you you'd. go you'd go use your car down the street. at 7-Eleven and the cashier there is not. getting paid very well and so they're. like secretly like taking the numbers. and they sell 100 numbers online to the. Russians for like 500 bucks and then the. Russians would take those numbers run. them through a account pretend you did. transactions and you and you get this.
thing later it says PayPal $200 and. you're like I didn't do PayPal $200 so. you say no to your credit card company. it's called a chargeback PayPal has to. eat it and so this was happening at. massive scale and PayPal and his. competitors were were going under thanks. to this and so we had to figure out at. PayPal how do you how do you it's how do. you how do you go after it we actually. end up taking a bunch of our customer. service people building these tools for. them building investigative tools and. then helping them figure out how to like. stop and catch some of the bad guys and. then turn them into Secret Service in. FBI so so I ended up begin to know a. bunch of these secret servers FBI guys.
around 2000 2001. 2002 man I don't I don't uh I don't. remember that at all wow how how long. did it take you guys to solve that. problem it it was a it was kind of a cat. and mouse game because every time you. figure out what the bad guys are doing. they changed their method so we tried to. use AI right you try to teach the AI I. wasn't nearly as good 20 years ago uh. and the AI could detect something you. really machine learning could detect. some things but you really needed the. human intelligence layers you'd have a. have a machine learning layer and you'd. have these tools to let people see what. was going on and you'd keep just.
iterating staying ahead of them and the. tools were good enough we cut down the. fraud by about 90% and that made it. profitable and then eBay was sold sorry. then PayPal was sold to eBay and so so. so the the anti fraud thing was a big. piece of what made Paypal work and we. got to know these Secret Service guys. and these are good guys they're a lot of. them are good old boys they're not Tech. guys they're they're they're just like. you know trying to figure out what the. heck this internet thing is and how to. deal with it and how to catch the bad. guys and so they'd come to us for advice. and I got to know quite a few of them. and they come to me for advice on other. stuff. and we started chatting with them and.
you know cuz the cyber crime was a new. thing and you're helping them out and. then 9/11 happened and then we kind of. saw the government spend billions of. dollars trying to build new tools to. help them do better you know stop future. stuff and the stuff they were building. horrified us it was stuff that was based. on principles for maybe like 20 years. ago and we're like wait a second guys. like Silicon Valley exists we've done. all these new things all the top talent. and it just had and it was just so. disconnecting we realized this is. actually really scary because our. country is spending actually tens of. billions of on this stuff that doesn't. work that's 20 years out of date it's.
just completely not what a top software. culture is and that's when we realized. well we got to got to figure out how to. get involved and how to fix this and how. did you get involved uh we started pan. here with Stephan and I I got about a. bunch of my friends who are in PhD. computer science programs One Summer to. come and sketch draw it up with us and. they all thought we were totally crazy. so we couldn't convince them to join few. of them joined a few years later what. what is paler so I mean at a very high. level palente an effort uh to take like.
the very top technology culture in. Silicon Valley and apply it to solve the. most important problems uh you know in. these institutions it didn't have didn't. have Tech cultures so in the. intelligence and defense world uh but. what is it actually doing so there's. there was really initially four pillars. of pound here it was it was Data. integration uh you know search Discovery. you know analysis Knowledge Management. and collaboration and each of those is. like a really big hard product so what. happens if you have a government. Department you know the time government.
was spending say $36 billion Gathering. data so you're you're you're you it's. your job there's like 5,000 databases. there's all sorts of sants and humit and. other things coming in uh there's all. sorts of rules about how you access this. database what you're allowed to see. depending on the context like what the. hell do you do sitting in the middle of. that that's a that's a weird crazy. problem and and you're a smart guy but. you're not a computer scientists and so. our job is to empower you our job is to. to hook up to all the databases. integrate it so it all could be seen. together let you ask simple questions.
like okay take this guy we found next to. S Bin Laden show me any links to anyone. else around him based on these context. okay now take those guys and monitor. them do they show up in any databases. what do we know about them and just be. able to kind of iteratively explore and. analyze while not breaking the rules on. what you're allowed to see and and you. know bringing things in more easily so. it's it's it's it's a hard problem to. solve I mean this uh it. was from a layman's term it seems like. very it it it helps. predict there's some prediction but.
you're really what you're really doing. so so paler today is different than. paler then paler then was all about. organizing this information to extend. human intelligence into this massive. amount of data because there's no way. that any single human is going to be. able to keep you know 5,000 20,000. databases of stuff of different formats. in their mind at a time so you're going. to have to organize it in a way you can. interact with it ask questions preserve. your investigations share with others. collaborate so that's a problem now now. it turns out that organiz all this. information in all these ways is very.
powerful to then apply AI on top of it. and so as AI has gotten to be more. advanced there are now a lot more. predictive a lot more kind of like. magical AI like things that it could do. thanks to that so paler was was lucky in. a way to have a top technology culture. and to be solving these these kind of. data organization ontology workflow. problems we call them that when AI came. along it was really powerful to add AI. to it and go even faster I mean you guys. were doing this with Al with with IED. and placement too 100% like like to be. able to take all the data and figure. that out I we first started working with.
a bunch of the Special Forces groups and. we really helped them and and you know. figure out some of those hard problems. and partner with them some really smart. guys that who taught us like here's the. data you should be looking at and we. brought together with that partnership. and did it and then the Army Brigade. said wow we need this too because. because they needed it badly and they. couldn't pay for it of course um because. they have some giant bureaucratic. process we just gave it to them we said. just show us the lives you're Sav and. that's all we want to see that's really. inspiring to our engineers and they. started showing us the lives they were. saving and then it came up for bid it's. called the defense Ground Control System.
D6 remember his was it called back then. I remember and of course some general. gave it to his friend for like 5 billion. at some other company and and everyone. protested like we're using pal we don't. want to use to wait years for this giant. contract so we ended up suing the. government and and I never Sue anyone. but pentry had to sue because they. purposely just gave it to their friends. and we won and they and it took years. but they eventually used us you know. what was shocking to me is when they. finally eventually used Palante here i'. met a bunch of the guys and they all. said it's the best thing ever it's. amazing we thought you guys were fake we. thought you guys were Liars cuz cuz the.
people who were competing against us had. just like talk [ __ ] about us for years. but we finally got in and made it work. man that had to be that had to be pretty. enraging dude it's pretty frustrating. when you're saving lives and you're. doing it for free and you're like have. all forward to play people just like. working their asses off to like really. help and then and then they treat you. like like crap I said but you know. because paler went through that and. because SpaceX went through something. similar with their whole competition. we've paved the way now where a lot of. the generals and admirals in Congress is. more on the side of new innovation now. they're more open to it they're more.
willing to let it let it then let it. compete which is important cuz that's a. much better place we're in now than we. were 15 years ago man that's uh that's. great to. hear I don't have much trust in anybody. in government but um there's some good. ones every once in a while who really. care and you should got to partner with. those you know being becoming one of the. top serial entrepreneurs in the 2000s I. mean what are some what are some lessons. learned you know when it comes to. building companies you.
know first of all I I come from this. this background in cicon Valley with. these Tech cultures like first of all to. build the really top companies you need. a really great technology culture you. need a place where the very best. Engineers they're fighting to come in so. I think a typical company is like you're. like looking for engineers like oh I. have this idea I got to find these. people I'm going to find who's going to. help and what you what you want is you. want like the very most talented. technologists in the world it's there. and you want people lining up from the. top places to try to come in that's a. very hard thing to build but that that.
to me that's number one if you want to. build a multi-billion dollar company. like like just absolutely A++ Tech. culture because what you could do with a. really great Tech culture is just it's. just you can try like 10 things or 100. things in the time that that the other. guy is like still building their thing. and even and and you're and you you. impress people you make it work you. iterate like with paler we'd be back and. forth every couple weeks to DC that'. have all these objections We Come Back 2. weeks later we would have done. equivalent of 6 months of work for a. typical contractor in the two weeks we. showed them look at it's ready now we. did what you said and we do that do that.
over two years you know 50 times you. eventually you get somewhere really fast. so I a tech culture is number one um I'd. say number two is you have to have a. vision about like this is a gap in the. world that you're really confident in. because building companies is really. hard things go against you things take a. long time um no one actually no one else. actually believes in you and believes. you're going to make it so you got to be. really sure there's this Gap that you're. going after and really sure you're right. and just you know it takes it takes a. certain. take a certain overconfidence almost to.
be willing to go after that and do it. you'd be a little bit crazy. maybe I didn't ask us about your. childhood but I'm curious did you did. you grow up in a fairly wealthy. household or I'd say more middle class. middle class my dad you know I one of. the most obnoxious stories I remember is. when I was like 4 and a half and we were. flying on a plane economy and I I asked. my dad I said dad why aren't we in the. front and he said well you know this. cost a lot more money and we're. comfortable here I said dad but you're. really smart you're smarter than all.
those people why why don't you have. enough money to be in the front of the. super obnoxious kid um my dad was really. smart and he just prioritized spending a. hell of a lot more time with family he. he was one of eight he brought I'm the. old have 19 cousins so he brought them. all out to the Bay Area for. Massachusetts and he he did a great work. but he never really he had a he grew up. little middle class so for him being. middle class and having you know having. enough money was was fine he didn't care. which is which I admire by the way as a. kid I was a kid I was obnoxious but like. there's a lot of lessons in that it was.
really. cool how did you I. mean how did you get going I mean to to. you're talking about you know Lessons. Learned and basically what you're saying. is hire the best tech people there are. how did how were you able to find the. capital to afford to to bring that's a. that's a good question you know at paler. and also at adapar and my other. companies we actually usually try to pay. lower salary Equity so you give them. more upside in the company so they had.
to believe in the company yeah and it. was interesting when whenever we gave. someone an offer we give them three. choices for the offer you could say you. could take more cash but they get a. little bit less you know medium cash. medium or take less cash and take more. take more upside and and like the very. best people the ones who the really best. they always wanted even less cash and. even more upside no kid which is because. because it's like it's like they're just. confident we're just going to freaking. win and it was fun I used to give them a. table of here's what their shares would. be worth if we had a certain level of. success and we'd like we'd give them the. different types of options and the.
biggest option was if we make this. company worth $5 billion here's what. your Shar is going to be worth and. everyone says Joe you can't save $5. billion that's too high that's. ridiculous so that was you know was kind. of fun it's it's 160 now but that took. took 20 years wow what kind of. percentage of ownership were you or or. shares were you like I mean I mean I. mean so for for an early really strong. engineer they might get a you know. depending where we are like you know you. might get a really strong one early on. might get 1% and then but gets deluded. over time right so you get goes down but. then later on people get a half percent.
a quarter percent and and you know. delution is when you raise more money so. you own a little bit less than that but. let's say you started with a quarter. percent you get deluded down to 0.1% but. you know 0.1% of of a few billion is. still still a really big number and 0.1%. of of you know 100 billion is a lot so. so a lot of these guys did really well. wow very how long did it take you to. start how I mean was there a turning. point oh yeah oh yeah you actually you. know three years into pound here. we're building this offu reiterating um.
a few of the top guys were best the. engineering side basically ready to quit. they're like Joe this is just not. working out like we haven't got enough. contracts it just seems like it's really. unlikely it's going to be there and you. know I found this in life is oftentimes. right before the breakthroughs you get. this like really hard time where people. are just like giving up and I think I. convinced a couple of them let's just. push for six more months because we have. these other things coming and you know. and Alex karp did a really great job of. figuring out how to get both the FBI and. CIA to move on something thing and all. of a sudden we had these bigger. contracts and it was good we were.
building but it it came really close to. dying early on this stuff this stuff. takes a long time to build right and I I. said you got to be a little bit crazy. because it's just you just got to push. really hard you're building a bridge and. you don't know if the Island's there or. not that you're building it to you know. man that's uh super. inspiring so from uh from Palante here. where're what was next for you uh I. ended up so I was I was helping Peter. with the with the hedge fund it's my. other passion and I did a lot of finance. and maping that red out and and it was.
after the financial crisis in 2008 we. were thinking like oh there's a lot of. things that are like not organized in. this space and they're messy and we. realized one of the ways to really make. things work better in finance would be. to have like a platform with like Rude. access to everyone's wealth and organize. those problem organize better from there. and and I also just made some money. myself so I had like what's it called a. little bit of a family office like a. small one and instead I I talking to how. do you run your family office I was. talking to what are called raas the. register investment advisers and it was. a mess they all hated their technology.
so I was pretty arrogant at the time. having just had some success you know. and paler was starting to grow really. well I said I'm going to build a company. fixes this space and uh I thought it. couldn't be that hard if for running you. know data globally for all these. intelligence agencies and defense stuff. to do this little Finance thing and so. we started it off and it turned out was. a really hard problem as well it took. about again about three years to get to. work it's called adapar but today adapar. is doing really it took us a long time. but adapar is now by far number one in. the country we just crossed $7 trillion. reported over adapar so it's so so it's.
a leader in that space now you you just. crossed what7 trillion reported over. adapar so if you think of like a big. investment advisor a big bank with. wealth managers or family offices even. some of them here in Nashville you know. with friends you mentioned like those. guys are probably running their family. office and their wealth off of adapar to. do all their data and Reporting and. decisions and how does their accountancy. it how does their lawyer to see it how. does they bring together all the. information figure out what to do next. and you it's really good for finance to. be be more data driven because if things. are not data driven it becomes an old.
boy club it becomes just like insiders. just doing things like insiders do. whereas once you have all the data it's. it's it's able to bring in and and help. new Solutions work and help you know. help people actually break into it so I. think it's been a good thing very. interesting very. interesting you know we're talking about. all things pretty much AI mhm do you. know I mean what what is powering all. this stuff cuz AI takes a tremendous. amount of energy from what I understand. so so going yeah so cuz cuz a lot of. those companies initially were just in. in the cloud and that was a pretty.
expensive thing and Amazon and others. and Google and Oracle set up these big. giant you know things and made a ton of. money like the infrastructure powering. the cloud things you know powering. things like that apart was become a big. business and now all of a sudden you. there a whole new infrastructure of. course with Nvidia chips and everything. else to build for AI and this is like a. it's like a trillion dollar investment. and it's one of the biggest Investments. we've ever made in infrastructure in our. civilization to power all this new AI. stuff we're doing and I'm sure you guys. on your team are using it for for. different things we're each using it for. things um you know we're going to need.
more power I'm a lot of us are big fans. of nuclear but right now we don't have a. lot of nuclear in our civilization I. think still we do have some by the way. it's 20% of what we do is about that but. a lot of us want to want to ramp up. nuclear I think Administration is going. to do that but you know a lot of people. want to ramp up solar in different ways. you know there's there's a lot of there. there's a lot of good options for how we. do this but it is it is a big problem to. to make sure we do that if we're going. to going to keep growing this stuff is s. is solar actually a realistic option. yeah for AI you know so the problem is.
it's actually funny there's this term I. like so a lot of people the old term the. old term is is clean energy of course CU. they call it cleaner which I don't know. if solar panels are that clean you kind. of it takes a mess to make them but you. know it's it's clean in the sense that. when you're using them they're just. pretty clean um there's another term. called intermittent energy intermittent. energy is stuff that's not always on. which is wind and solar so if you're. going to use intermittent energy first. of all we've probably over subsidize. that because if you have too much energy. it just screws you right because it. makes energy cheaper where the Sun's. shining and then everyone's screwed and. there's not you know you have to pay.
people even more who are cor running all. the time when the sun's not shining um. batteries are getting better but and and. there are there are certain like things. for example with air conditioning you. probably that works really well because. you need more energy anyway when it's. sunny outside so listen I think solar is. a big part of the solution um but but. you know I think for the base load I. think natural gas and nuclear are the. obvious things to scale out for now do. you know anybody that's uh working with. cold fusion there's a lot of stuff you. know there's there's a few different. companies there's one called. Commonwealth in Massachusetts that a.
bunch of my friends are invested in and. it's interesting cuz Fusion is one of. those things where for a while my when I. was younger just really skeptical. because it's always supposed to be. coming and you're like this is never. going to come it's crazy but it turns. out you can actually map out uh the. ratio of the energy you put in to get. out and then you kind of graph that. right and so if you graph that it's like. it's called like the thing it's called. The Q Ratio or something if you graph. that it was I think at like 0. 2 like 10. years ago so you only got back a fifth. as much energy out and it kept going up. and up and up and now now it's over one. so Fusion's now over one in terms of. energy coming out I don't know exactly.
it's like 1.2 1.3 starts to get really. economic around 1.5 1.6 and really. economic at too and it looks like you. graph it it's going to cross I think it. crosses two in the early 2030s I think. some of these new designs make that very. likely I'm not this is not something. just happens magically there a ton of. billions of dollars at work but you know. one thing I will say about America. that's awesome is even people I disagree. with politically uh have a lot of. friends you know in the tech world for. example that might be on the might be on. the other side but but there's people on. both sides who including Bill Gates. including all sorts of other guys who. are putting just a ton of money into.
this Fusion research these Fusion. companies I think we're going to get. there and I think it's really really. good for our civilization if we do if we. have cheap energy man that helps. everyone but it helps the working class. more than anyone else because it just it. just makes everything cheaper and I. think there's a really good chance we. get there can you go into a little bit. of that because I don't think under I. don't think people understand you know. why cheap energy would really help the. economy and middle class lower class. homes oh yeah I mean this is the cost of. everything cost of food the cost of.
driving your car the cost of building. stuff the cost of like building a. manufacturing plant for things you buy. the cost of running the manufacturing. plant everything comes back to energy if. you make energy cheaper you make. everything cheaper and you means all of. us can afford more stuff and by the way. it's not just like like if you make. energy cheaper it's also than cheaper to. clean the environment it's cheaper to to. like to make things more green right so. there's all this stuff that just like in. our society like there just tied to that. and if you look at the standard of. living the last couple hundred years for. like poor midle class it's tracked like.
almost one to one in a lot of cases you. know with the cost of energy it's a. really big deal to innovate on that it's. just this very predictive thing for how. well people are doing what's the hold. back with nuclear energy what is what is. the well there's two different hold. backs the hold back on the fision side. which is what we should be scaling up. now is that we have an insane regulatory. apparatus and so we had uh this like. like this Atomic Energy Group in the US. that was very Innovative and we used to. do things very quickly in like ' 50s 60s.
and we built a ton of plants and then in. like the mid '70s they shifted it and it. became What's called the NRC the nuclear. Regulatory Commission and the nuclear. Regulatory Commission as far as I could. tell and my friends can tell had a. mandate of just stopping anything new so. if you graph like new nucle new nuclear. stuff like this and it flat lines and. and and d and these people like it's. just crazy so basically like so my. father for his job actually was at. something called Raab when he was. selling heat tracing and would sell heat. tracing these different types of. industrial plants and and sometimes he.
would try to sell it to a nuclear plant. and when he had to sell to a nuclear. plant he had to bring like like 60. binders that they had to work on and. there all this stuff of just nonsense. information it made it 10 times as. expensive for them to sell a nuclear. plants so so what these bureaucrats did. is they created so many rules and so. many laws that made no sense whatsoever. and by the way all of us want nuclear to. be safe but this was just like way. aggressive beyond that and so it made it. unprofitable to do new nuclear plants. and so what happened in starting from. the mid 70s you no longer could innovate. on this technology and you only have.
what you had and and so so it really. crushed the industry for really almost a. couple Generations now and finally. finally thanks to great work by a lot of. people I know one of my friends who. started Airbnb his his wife is a model. who's a big nuclear energy promoter it's. really cool they're you know they're. they're just really into this and have a. bunch of other friends who are pushing. nuclear energy it's finally coming back. as a as a bipartisan thing that it's. cleaner for the environment it's good. for for everyone including the working. class it's good for American Business we. should be innovating again in nuclear. energy and building it so so so so it.
looks like we're going to start fixing. the regulations and allowing us to do. more things there I think this new. Administration Chris Wright's coming in. Secretary of Energy he's a very big fan. of it so so I'm I'm seeing really good. things so so that's going to come back. there that's what's been blocking that. on the fusion side we just haven't had. the technology but this big investment. might get us there the next decade B do. you think that do you think that big oil. and gas lobbyists have something it's. very Poss it's very possible that part. of the reason there's probably like if. you look at if you look at Germany the.
green party in Germany which is a left. party was basically founded around an. anti-nuclear energy framework so there. is like a crazy part of the left that's. against nuclear energy but I bit you on. the right there's some interest from oil. and gas that I can't go back in time and. see those conversations in the Smoke. Filled rooms but I bet you some of those. guys you know I love Texas but I bet you. some of those guys in. Texas they might have had a thing to say. about that now now today are they. blocking it n no they're not really. anymore I think I think think we're. going to break through and fix it you. and most of the guys I know Chris Wright.
comes from that you created you know. giant fracking company liberate energy I. think a lot of these guys now aay are. you know they have a lot of money they. love the country they just want the best. solutions to win is what I've seen I'm. sure there's some of them that don't. want it but I think overall the the vibe. shift we're in and the it's just like. let's do what's best for America so I. think we're going to break through and. fix the regulation I'm hoping I mean a. lot of people being included are very. concerned about our power grid you know. and and and so I got I would like to. kind of hang out on this subject for a. little bit I me a lot of people are.
seeing rolling blackouts yeah you know. um power grid structure is extremely. outdated it's old doesn't seem like it's. getting updated anytime soon um you know. how how much is the is our outdated. power grid holding us back it's it's. going to become a bigger problem I I I. agree it's it's especially as you go to. more electric vehicles where it's. distributed and everyone wants to charge. that's going to weigh on these grids. they need they need be modernized uh the. way we've built them right now Sean is.
the regulation again is a problem here. the incentives are all screwed up you're. only allowed to charge certain amounts. or spend certain amounts and it's it's. very much like one of the areas of our. society that's like one of the commi. areas of our society Comm I mean it's. like controlled by topped down by. government and told what to do and so. you know I have two concerns one is it's. not ready to work with what we're going. to need as you know in terms of future. demand the next five or 10 years two. it's not protected very well at all so. if I was an adversary who want to go to. war against America or wanted to harass. America probably lots of ways to break. in hack in take down these utilities and.
you know it's kind of crazy like we. spent all this money on defense we. haven't defended any of that stuff at. all I think we us should leave it to the. local towns but I'm sorry these small. towns aren't going to know how the heck. to defend against the top hackers in. China you know so so there's there's. definitely a lot we'd be doing to fix. that are you concerned that China. manufactures a lot of our energy. equipment oh yeah oh yeah it's uh I'm. concerned in general that we don't have. an advanced manufacturing base that's. nearly as big as it needs to be I think. from a GE political perspective it's. extremely dangerous and if we want to be. ready so in World War II it wasn't that.
we had like a bunch of big defense. contractors that we had a bunch of big. industrial you manufacturers and powers. that were able to be shifted to do. things for the war and if if we we've. basically gotten rid of a lot of that. base and I we need it back if we want to. defend ourselves so I think I think. Trump and is very good on this he. shifted it back I think I think even his. first term actually kind of turned the. whole conversation in our country where. a lot of people on both sides now agree. we need to fix this and so but but I. mean this is where the tariffs against. China if they're done correctly are not. totally insane at all it makes a lot of.
sense to me yeah how I mean how do we. where do we start you know with updating. the. grid we talking I mean we're talking. everything from power lines to power. plants to Transformers I think I think I. think I think I think an effort to to do. more advanced manufacturing here and and. to to give give some kind of you know. General subsidies and have a competition. is not totally insane again to rebuild. our manufacturing base and and then you. know I think I think you have to look.
again at how it's being regulated and. what the incentives are for people to. update these things and you need people. to have the proper incentive to update. them let's take a quick break here. real join me in my special guest for the. next behindth scenes experience. exclusively available on vigilance Elite. patreon the behind thes scenes footage. is raw and uncut this is as close to the. set as you can possibly get you can. expect anything from off topic. conversations Studio tours the final.
moments before the interview starts and. everything in between the behindth. scenes content is constantly evolving. and will continue to bring you more as. we grow you can gain access for just $15. a month exclusively at vigilance Elite. patreon I know everybody out there has. to. be just as frustrated as I am when it. comes to the BS and the rhetoric that. the mainstream media continuously tries. to force feed us and I also know how.
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newsletter all right Joe we're back from. the break we had a little side. conversation about uh the the incoming. Administration and we're both pretty. fired up about it I'm just who are you. most excited about do you have anybody. in particular I'm most excited about. Elon and be and the Doge effort because. this is something I've wanted to see for. forever I'm like probably like one of. the only guys in Tech that's done a lot. in policy on the on the right on the. small government side for the last 10 20. years and it's like the world just like. shifted this way like the vibe shift is. exactly in line with stuff I've been.
thinking and talking about for a decade. so I'm I'm I'm so excited about this. what I mean how fast do you think. they're going to start cleaning this. stuff up they're already doing it man. they can't really officially do it yet. but they're already making all the plans. there's people working hard there. there's guys picking me Joe we need. another engineer for this we're trying. to map this out we need we need more. lawyers for this we're going they're. going right now as hard as they can and. and getting ready so it's it's going to. be really bold you think they'll have it. all mapped out before they even step in. uh well I think the way Elon Works in. general is just like what can we do.
right now and then what can we do next. let's just focus on what we can do right. now so they have what's called their day. one priorities and they're just focus. and sprinting on everything they could. do day one and I think they're going to. have a lot of stuff ready for day one. how many I mean where do you think. they're going to start are you think. they'll go from agency to agency to you. know what I mean will they do it in. sections or will it be all one big sweep. in different St I mean they're they're. bringing in like at least like well over. a 100 people the Doge effort and. they're's going to put a few of them. directly into each agency a lot of the. transition team itself is hiring people.
to put into these jobs who are the polic. you know there's these policy placements. that are all working with Doge and being. lons with Doge and you know they're. they're going to they're going to come. out of the gate with a bunch of General. things a bunch of removing certain. people a bunch of removing certain. regulations uh there's all sorts I can't. I can't go into the details exactly of. what they're going to be doing but it's. going to be really aggressive right from. the start how much push back do you. think they're going to get I and will it. will it affect their their effort I mean. it's a really good thing that the. Supreme Court of the United States right.
now is controlled by the pro-liberty. side that's skeptical of the special. interest of government bureaucracy the. government bureaucracy is one of the. most powerful special interests in our. country it's it's such it's such like a. strong force so you know what happened. is that in the late. 1970s in a very very kind of like. government Union biased uh Congress of. Jimmy Carter's Congress they just put in. all these crazy rules to try to make it. impossible to hold people accountable. I'm sure you've seen this a lot in. government too and so they will fight it. really hard but a lot of us believe and.
I think Supreme Court believes that the. intent of the Constitution is that the. president is supposed to be in charge of. the executive branch it's supposed to. have unitary authority to to remove. people and to fix things and you know. there's another thing called the. empowerment act from the 1970s as well. they tried to force Nixon to say you. know what you have to spend every last. dollar that we procure you know tell you. to spend and I'm I'm not sure that's. constitutionally or that's that's an. unconstitutional like you know thing. coming from Congress on the presidency. so I think controlling the presidency. controlling the courts we only partially. control Congress cuz you really need 60.
Senators to really do something bold but. we partially control that too we should. be able to get a lot done here man I. hope so the whole world's watching man I. I was with someone even like freaking K. starmer's government which which I have. some issues with over in the UK. obviously they're like kind of more. really hard left side like even people. out of there is like they know they have. to cut their brra bureaucracies are like. these cancers man that have grown out of. control they're unelected they think. they're in charge they're laughing and. saying no wor we're be here forever. we're going to stop whatever you do it's. just like level of like broken arrogance.
like we have to if Elon and Trump and VC. and like a bunch of my other friends oh. my smartest friends are going in help. right now if these guys can't do it it's. not possible so so we all have to root. for them for the sake of our. civilization because if we can even you. know get part of what they're doing. right that's a much brighter future for. everyone who else are you excited about. as there's there's a lot of great people. coming in I think we were talking about. I think cleaning out the doj with Kos. Patel it's going to be just so much. corruption so much mess there the stuff. you see coming out it's like they're.
spending all their time going after. white supremacist as opposed to real. criminal the whole thing is just crazy. and and by the way there are good people. in the FBI there's still people in the. FBI trying to find Communists trying to. find bad things happening in our country. so I think we got to be careful it's not. that the whole agency like if you have. friends in the FBI they might be a great. person but there's just so much. corruption so much waste so much. nonsense in these places yeah I'm I am. uh I'm ecstatic to cash got in there I. think he is going to do a phenomenal job. what do you think about Chris Ray.
resigning why do you think he did that I. think these guys are probably afraid at. this point I don't know or maybe maybe. he just knows his you know there's a. Vibe shift he knows he's not supposed to. be in charge anymore you you know you. know the vibe before it was like it was. bureaucratic it was cowardly it was. guilt-ridden like that was like that was. like the vibe for like from like the. whole you know like woke movement and. now instead the vibe is it's it's. greatness it's courage it's joyous. ambition I mean the whole country is. just shifted away like these guys they.
there's this like overvalue on. credentialism right like like fake. credentials and now we're shifting. towards like human judgment and common. sense like like it's like nature is. healing here man things are going back. to the right way and I think a lot of. people know that their time is. over you think we're going to see a lot. of you think we're going to see some. Mass. pardons I'm scared of that I'm scared of. I don't know I mean I get him pardoning. his son although the way he did it was. super sketchy cuz he B did it for the. whole Ukraine period which so you know I. hope he could still do that. investigation and find out what went on.
um I mean the guy it's it's ter such a. crop family it's just terrible you saw. that thing where he paid one of my. friends in in like like a a booklet with. his art that was made with his own own. [ __ ] I can't even say it it's just crazy. you see this stuff it's like he. literally was 300,000 behind on rent so. he tried to pay it with his with the art. made from his [ __ ] it's like and he did. like he got away with it he's pardon now. so's I don't think you can go after him. for anything yeah uh yeah I'm worried. you're going to see a bunch of more mass. pardons I really hope not the joke is. you pardon s SPF because s SPF gave so. much money to the Democrats and and and.
you know crazy guy I really hope not. it's just the whole thing's crazy man do. you have any concerns with the upcoming. Administration yeah listen I I think you. can't agree 100% with anyone I actually. posted on X recently like you know I I. disagree with the with the long shoran. decision that came out recently where. what so so Trump said that we're not. going to automate the ports and we're. not going to and that it's a waste of. money to automate the ports I know about. equipment and it's not worth buying this. equipment and we should just let the. unions keep going and you know and what.
I posted is I think Trump's clearly. wrong on this but you know it's okay to. disagree with someone and still respect. them and follow them in other areas so I. don't think we have to agree I'm never. going to agree with someone 100% I'm. never going to be afraid to say it I. think that's how America is supposed to. work and if people don't think America. works that way too bad I'm just going to. keep speaking out because you know and. so you 100% love to Trump's president I. agree with a bunch of stuff he's doing. but like giving in to these like crazy. corrupt Union Mafia people not what I. would have done I get it in the sense. that a there's a Vibe shift where he. want the union vote for the right and B.
like he doesn't want a giant strike to. deal with as he comes into office so I. respect that and that's his decision I. wouldn't have done it in a way that kind. of like attacked automation I think. that's silly yeah that's interesting. I've never thought of that interesting. well let's move back into I know we. already talked a lot about epis but I'm. just fascinated with the subject so. where how did that even pop up on your. radar what what was going through your. head when it started with that pris when. it got started yeah so the thing the. thing was the thing we were talking. about earlier is basically we realized.
that China was going to be an adversary. that this like crazy guy is actually. communist is's coming in that he's. forcing his best and brightest to work. on new ways to get us and we said okay. what is a war look like in the 21st. century like what is Lord Warfare going. to happen have happen and you're going. to have like these massive numbers of. drones is by far the best way to fight. and you're going to need ways to stop. them and so so so so what is it one of. the most important weapons well if if. you get out of force fields if you out. the Star Trek Shields that's pretty. freaking cool and let's let's and it. turns out the inventure capital there's.
two things right inventure Capital. there's there's where's the best talent. in the world and what's possible now. that wasn't possible before we have. access to the best talent we're lucky to. have that so what's newly possible Well. turns out these chips are now fast. enough to control Power on small time. skills to make our electronic warfare. weapons work way better so he said okay. this is a really key area because we. know there's new possibility here let's. prove it out and it was really fun cuz. with about 30 40 Million Dollar on our. side we're able to go to the desert and. have a competition against guys who've.
raised and spent and give give billions. and billions by the government tens of. billions by the government for their. stuff and and when the hardened drones. flew for the same size same power we. shot down the Harden drones nine and a. half times farther away are you serious. nine and a half times farther away the. guys who got billions of dollars of. contracts and it's because there's these. new possibilities that they didn't know. how to do how was it how was it. developed where did you guys develop. this el Elsa gundo Nathan mince boar a. bunch of the guys Andy Lowry bunch are. really key guys on their team who you. know and the DNA was a combination like. we have the DNA from the Silicon Valley.
world we have the DNA from the. electronic warfare world so there's some. people who have worked at some of these. other places because there's just. certain expertise that's been built up. in America that no one else has that you. need to build on what already exist and. build on the kind of knowledge of how. Gall KN TR can be worked with as well as. what's nearly possible is leonatus an. offensive weapon as well as a defensive. weapon there's lots of yeah it's it's. it's it's it's core it's really it's a. defensive thing in a sense that like you. can have something protecting a city or. a base or a squadron but I mean if.
you're going to be attacking the bad. guys and you're going forward you want. to have these things right you want to. have ways of stopping the Drone and. other attacks from getting you during an. offensive so or you Bas by the way you. want to just turn off the area you're. attacking imagine if there's an area. you're going after and all the. electronics go dead that's probably. pretty useful right before an attack. yeah so what would you what would you. point the the weapon at if you wanted to. take out a me could you take out a city. what what mean by that turn off the. power and you turn off the power in a. cone that goes again we're not supposed.
to say how far but but quite a far far. distance and so you could definitely. turn off an area of a town or a city and. you could move it to turn off more. you holy. [ __ ] it's pretty crazy right it is we. used to think we used to think about. this in terms of when I was a kid you. thought about like like the EMP from a. nuke going off in the high atmosphere so. that'd be like it's but you know that's. actually much more aggressive and scary. version of these things but but this. thing definitely be used once this thing. could keep being used without hurting. anyone at all could this could this take.
out a nuke at. flight it could so so it's frying. Electronics so if you think about it for. satellite defense for example which is. not what we're doing right now but is. just just me talking out of my butt so. excuse me if it's if I get something. wrong but but my bias would be that if. something's targeting a satellite it. needs to be adjusting its flight in. order to hit it and so you probably what. you'd want to do with the satellite is. you'd want to blast this and you'd blast. it a certain number of miles away and. then you just said adjust slightly and. the thing's not going to know how to hit. you same thing a cargo plane's a better. example probably right so I think if you.
got a big slow cargo plane and the bad. guy's trying to take it out which is key. for contested Logistics you put one of. these on it you know you always see the. movie where the missiles trying to. follow the guy you blast the missile now. it's a dumb missile and then you turn. right so there's things like that we're. probably going to be doing for defending. planes and that wow so this so these. these might be deployed on planes I. think I think I think some version of. these will definitely be deployed on. planes at some point if we're going to. be having battles now the question is. what type of planes and drones we we. have or use in 10 years but but yeah you. definitely want definitely want cargo.
planes no matter what I think so you. defin use them what other what other. type of uh what other type of stuff are. these things going to be deployed on. naval ships I would ass ships are I mean. our companies tonic which is building. the you know hopefully thousands and. thousands of these smart autonomization. stuff like that too are there different. sizes now 100% so the ones that are the.
ones that are leonitis is a certain size. which which is you know takes out. certain distances much farther if you. wanted to for example if for example. this was put in an andr Road Runner if. we did that kind of partnership like. that would like there's only a small. cone inside the Road Runner so there's. only a certain amount of stuff you could. put in there that might only shoot. things effectively like 20 or 30 meters. for example uh but that might be okay. because the road run can fly up fly next. to the Swarm and shoot a bunch of times. then go back and land again I love that. video that Palmer made with with the. guys on that it's such a cool such a.
cool weapon so combining it with stuff. like that would be great man can you can. you go into the Road Runner a little bit. so I'm I'm lucky to be an early investor. in andil Brian schimp Trey Stevens Mack. a bunch of our superstars from paler. co-founded this with my friend Palmer. Palmer before had started uh Oculus was. the VR company and actually backed him. at the beginning of that he was he's a. crazy kid like 20 21 years old we met. him and he had this prototype and we're. like this is too crazy let's give him a. little bit of money though it's so. impressive and then we actually co-led. the next round cuz we starting to work. and then Facebook bought it and he very.
famously got kicked out of Facebook for. being a republican that's a longer. conversation what you know about this I. didn't know. that yeah know he like put up a. billboard against Hillary and was like. outspoken I mean listen you're all of a. sudden a billionaire and your mid 20s. you have opinions and it's right in the. middle of woke Silicon Valley so they. this Facebook's like famously like on. the other side of it so they just. attacked him like crazy and and you know. all these people were really nasty to. him a lot of people have come out from. Facebook and apologize to him now CU. he's now like this really important. leader in our country doing great things.
and they realized they were wrong to. treat him that way so it's like a it's. like a whole Saga in his life of being. like beaten down and out and discarded. not badly he's a b billionaire you know. just because we're talking about Palmer. I was his wedding he's not going to like. this maybe I was at his wedding and I. was sitting next to like you know Peter. tal and Senator Cruz and all these. people and it's a beautiful beautiful. wedding he's very wealthy guy his 20s. getting married and all of a sudden all. the music goes off and Top Gun music. comes on and then like a helicopter. flies over us like no it lands behind.
the behind in Palmer's flying it he. comes out in in tals and he never. dresses up nicely for the helicopter. goes away and then the normal music. comes back on his wife comes in normally. with her dad but that's the kind of guy. he's just he's hilarious damn that's. awesome he's a basically America's Iron. Man he's like he's a hilarious inventor. guy amazing guy so he invented all this. hardware for for the first real VR in. America that worked and then and then he. partners with my paler guys and they. start andril and they and then and so. andrel has all these crazy cool products. and they're running circles around the. primes they're basically like the next.
new Prime right they just raised like. billions of dollars of like you know. 1520 billion valuation range and so one. of their new products which is amazing. it reminds me of elon's rockets it it's. a missile that can open up launch and if. it's not used it comes back and lands. and waits and gets used again which is. not something that I think the General's. new to ask for but if you think about. Warfare It's all about like dollars per. Effectiveness like if you have bunch of. things attacking you fire 50 these. things use 10 or 20 if you need and have.
the other ones come back and use them. again it's way better right so and by. the way this thing is like a tiny. fraction of the cost of similar. competitive missiles are you kidding me. it's like like it's like it's like he's. literally competing against stuff that. costs like you know depending on what it. is 1 to 3 million I think we're selling. them for 250 can now and still have much. better margins than our other guys and. uh so it's just like which is why you. want to let people not do Cost Plus. because you want to have them. re-engineer from scratch you know what. makes the most sense wow W if you charge. someone Cost Plus your job is to make as. expensive as possible because you get to. keep a piece of that cost right but if.
you don't charge Cost Plus then you have. this whole better framework you know you. get you had kind of mentioned that uh. you know locki Ron Boeing like these. companies the big guys you guys are you. know underneath them I mean do you see. that flipping yeah I mean there's still. some really really amazing expertise in. our military industrial base it's like. America as a military industrial base. that's important and that exists inside. some of these primes so I wanton I. wouldn't want to say there like they're. not going away and we don't want them to. go away that's actually as much as the. military industrial complex like you.
talked about is an issue you have some. stuff we need to know how to do to keep. America safe and to be the best in the. world and so these companies are going. to be important but in terms of anything. really new and Innovative anything with. really hard software they just don't. have the cultures they used to have and. they don't have the top people they used. to have for most things so so so it's. really important that we have you know. Silicon Valley just got so far ahead and. it's really important we take some of. that culture and apply it you know when. I first wrote the check in andrel it's. 2016 I think I had a bunch of people who. we work with in like the bio World say.
we're not going to work with you anymore. if you're doing defense this is so wrong. like you're just just evil why would you. do this stuff like we it's just wrong to. do and a lot of fun just wouldn't even. mean him it's say you know so it it's. like a thing you weren't supposed to do. and and what's really cool is with the. vibe shift that's totally changed you. have a lot of the best people going in. it's popular now which maybe it's too. popular now but that's that's another. problem you know you know you had. mentioned uh you had mentioned Facebook. kicking him out cuz of uh. yeah because of a billboard what do you. think about uh Zuckerberg trying to get.
in with the conservative crowd it's. pretty interesting to watch the you know. I mean well four years ago you kicked. the president off your platform now you. want to Buddy up yeah I mean what's. what's going on here think there's a lot. of that going on listen Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg is an interesting case he is. fundamentally himself not super. political and he himself and I get a lot. of flak for this but he himself like has. always had an appreciation for some of. the Liberty side and some of the.
conservative side which is shocking. given how his company does things but. like I've sat next to him not that long. ago you know at a wedding or whatever. and he's like you know he's he's he's. interested in his his kids learning. about some some of these ideas like. there's a like the Tuttle Twins or. whatever you know there like these. conservative you know libertarian shows. and stuff I think I think he's open to. different sides I think the culture. inside of Facebook that comes from the. universities is so poisonous and so. leftist that I think they get away with. things sometimes I don't even tell him. about so I'm not saying I'm not saying. he's like a perfect good guy on this I. think he should be way Bolder and hold.
his company accountable to stop. censoring conservatives and stop doing. the wrong things so I think he's maybe a. little bit soft maybe I would say a. little bit cowardly sometimes about. these things despite being amazing in. other areas but he himself is not really. a driver of that and you know what. happens a lot of these guys maybe I'd. say he started off moderate moderate. left but with an appreciation for both. sides and he'll start like a foundation. it's called the chance Zuckerberg. initiative czi and what'll happen with. these moderate leftists is they don't. they're not good at keeping out like the. crazy farle and so his philanthropy org.
becomes run by these. activists and and he's busy with his. business and and like they his wife and. him I guess don't want fights or. whatever so you get these crazy. activists and they just start doing. terrible stuff and they're very good at. like sounding maybe to him like oh it's. a reasonable thing it's not actually. affecting things but when you saw it. actually changed the 2020 election the. way they put the hundreds of millions of. dollars to work my my guess is he didn't. even understand or might not even still. understand how much how much they would. screw things up which which which is not. an excuse for him but it's I think. that's just the reality of how these.
orgs evolve you know with these with. these crazy activists inside of him yeah. I see what you're saying so you're. you're basically saying he wasn't. necessarily the Catalyst but he he. wasn't the George Soros he was he was. he's not he's not George Soros he wasn't. like doing the crazy bad stuff himself I. think in general Silicon Valley people. who are moderate on the moderate left. have been way too tolerant of letting. these crazy activists take over their. companies take over their philanthropies. and break things and and then if we want. to fix our country with this Vibe shift. we need these guys to get balls we need. these guys to have a little more.
boldness a little more courage and they. need to come out publicly and like. excise these parts of their orgs and say. you know what I was way too tolerant of. that there's 47 people I just fired. because they were all found to be doing. this crazy stuff censoring conservatives. turning things down screwing with them. Shadow Banning them we're not going to. let him do that anymore like like that's. what he needs to do and he can still be. on the mod left if he wants but you. can't freaking tolerate these crazy. activists man any that's what I that's. what I would tell him I haven't cut up. with them in a bit. I mean you're obviously a m play a major.
player in Tech as well so I mean how. have you how have you kept that rot out. of your companies yeah you got to you. got you got to be really disciplined how. you hire you got to be really fast to. fire um and by the way we have I work. with a ton of people who are on the left. on the right like that's this is not. about left versus right this is about. the activists this is about the crazy. kind of woke like cancel culture liberal. people and as soon as you see that you. can't tolerate it do you build culture. under your companies you have to you. have to you have to have CEOs who I me.
you set the tone by how hard the tops. working you set the tone by the values. and principles we talk about one of the. values of APC is is patriotism you know. you you you have to you have to. explicitly have these values and and say. this is what we stand for this is who we. are we're you know we're you know we're. principled optimists we're Patriots. we're you know we're going to fight for. the truth and you know you want to live. in a world I think I think the vibe. shift we've been talking about is like. is like a lot of people are comfortable. living with lives safely and I think. it's important that a lot of people come. over to live with the truth even if it's.
dangerous it's a great way to put it. that's a great way to put it back to the. future of warfare I mean what what are. some things that other countries are. getting involved in that concern. you well I mean I think the fact that we. let China and Russia become such close. allies is ridiculous I think that was a. huge strategic mistake and I think. they're not necessarily natural allies I. think that was something where we drove. them into each other so that that. concerns me I think the biggest concern. right now is Turkey on top of that. turkey yeah so so so Russia and China.
obviously the biggest concern Iran. obviously but turkey is like the biggest. kind of wild card going out right now so. turkey you know aiter created turkey as. the first really successful secular. Muslim country in the modern world and. it was a really big deal and there's. there's a lot of problems historically. with islamist today with islamist so he. built all these institutions into turkey. to stop the is Lamas from taking over. cuz he knew that would always be a. threat and one of the most important. institutions was the Army to to to make. sure that islamist did not run it and. that his job was to fight and stop.
islamist if they were going to take over. society and erdogan knew this erdogan we. thought a lot of us thought I when I was. a kid but I thought he was a moderate. when he came in 20 years ago that's how. he ran but he secretly like very. strongly on the islamist side and so in. order to make the islamist win again in. Turkey you had to take out these. organizations in society that had been. built to stop islamists and so when he. did the coup eight years ago a lot of us. believe a lot of intelligence believe it. was purposely tripped off as a coup in. order to get all these people to come up. and see who's going to be anti-islamist.
and then wipe them out and so what. happened in society is he ended up like. killing and torturing tens of thousands. of people eight years ago when this. happened anyone who was going to be. against islamists anyone who was kind of. built in to stop that and so those. people were all eliminated the people in. the Army who were against were all. eliminated so for the first time all L. of Turks protections are gone so now you. have this like very islamist leader he's. very pro-islamist and he just he just. like with his forces conquered Syria. because of what's going on in the Middle. East for islamists he also now is when.
wiping out by reportedly huge numbers of. Kurds like you can go look online there. I think a lot more Kurds have died in. the last month than people in Gaza have. died this entire last year and you're. not hearing protests about it because I. guess because there's no Jews involved. but it's like it's crazy they're killing. off the Kurds and by the way a lot of. the Kurds were close allies with a lot. of my friends in the Special Forces who. who had to deal with stuff over there. they were our friends yeah and and and. they don't have a country which I think. they should a lot of their territories. in side tur L ins side of Iraq L inside. of Syria and they're the islamist enemy. the islamist don't want these guys to.
have their own country and so so he's. wiping a bunch of them out and I'm very. scared what turkey does next turkey has. nuclear weapons that you know because. it's a NATO uh it's it's a it's a wild. card like are they going to go after and. help the islamists like take out the. Jordanian King I don't know but there's. like lots of really scary things so I. think I think Iran's On The Run we need. to we need to you know finish off the. whole story with Iran but now there's. this other islamist threat there that's. a wild card that's we're going to be. dealing with and figuring out it's. pretty scary to me [ __ ] I even that. wasn't even on my radar what about. technology are you worried about is.
China developing anything that you're. aware of that we should be concerned. about or has Russia have any technology. that they overplayed their hand maybe. you know China has a bunch of advanced. new technology in all sorts of areas. whether it's hypersonics whether it's. massive numbers of submarines whether. it's all sorts of you know all sorts of. new projects they're working on that I'm. sure I don't even know about um you know. all sorts of things they're trying to. copy SpaceX than God we have SpaceX and. they don't but they're they're trying to. copy they I don't know if you seen the. videos it blows up when they try but. they're but they're might they're going. to get there eventually probably you.
know CU I me elon's really smart but. it's and we have really great program. but eventually they catch up and they. then they do things in space which. scares me I mean I mean if what am I. scared by I'm scared by the space stuff. to tell you the truth I really hope it's. very funny everyone's like don't. weaponize space don't weaponize space. and I agree I don't want there to be. Wars in space that would screw up a lot. of stuff for the world at the same time. if someone else weaponizes space and we. don't we're kind of screwed what what's. going I have no insight into what's. going on in space so I don't have any. clearances around this and so I might. piss people off talking about it but I'm. not cleared so I'm just going to go.
ahead and tell you a few things but like. the number one thing I'd say there's a. natural Network effect in space where. it's very cheap like for the cost of one. aircraft carrier you can put up probably. 150,000 things up there that you can. accurately drop on people within one. meter and and they're much much cheaper. than missiles and so so so you basically. and if someone does that and no one else. does it then like the person who has. that first you never launch a rocket. again cuz it's very easy to see if a lot. Rockets being launched and take it out. so there's a network effect that really. scares me that if there was going to be. a war whoever conquers and who has has.
stuff up there first that's really good. could probably stop the other gra and. getting stuff up there and I don't want. stuff exploding in space but like it's. just it's such a powerful thing to own. for any future battle we need to be. thinking about it I think some people. are thinking about it I'm not sure our. budget reflects that we're thinking. about enough by the way this is why a. lot of us were usually in favor of a. space force behind the scenes and really. glad that President Trump started that. it's obvious you need space force cuz. there just it's like we're talking about. about how Warfare changes like the space. thing is is a scary angle wow is there. anything else you're aware of a going.
on I mean that's that's fascinating in. itself that's a big one I mean the the. other thing in general is that that I. guess I'm most afraid of is that China. has about 200 times our ship building. capacity if you want to say and I think. you probably talked about this before in. World War II you get these like have. this cool painting at at my house of. Montana or ski House of uh of these. American ships hunting down a German. warship and taking it out but we we. needed multiple ships that do it because. the German battleships were actually. better than ours I think and now America. batt ships destroy not battleships.
anymore but America destroyers. everything else they're way more. advanced than Chinese but you know if. someone has 200 times Your Capacity. that's really scary because eventually. have a bunch of them hunted down right. and so so question is what the heck do. we do we need to get our capacity up so. my friends and I started this company. seric we're going to hopefully build 500. ships in Austin next year working with a. bunch of the Admirals bunch of the best. people in the Navy we're teaching them. how to use AI to to have like swarms of. these these I vessels and how they could. work together with the fleet and how we. could eventually have thousands of these. in any kind of you know Mission or.
battle scenario cuz cuz that's really. what you want cuz for the cost of one. big ship by the way all of our shipyards. are delayed they're all behind it's. pathetic it's they're all run by. administrators of terb relations so. there's this nav is just like way behind. and broken so we need to have an. alternate path to help create you know. thousands of these ships that turn the. bad guys that space thing blows my mind. I mean if that if that if that happens. or we're not up there already you know. in and with that one meter thing I mean. when you when You' mentioned you know. you could stop anything else from coming. up there I mean that's that right there.
is that's global domination yeah but we. really don't want there to be war in. space because it's it may be the case. that you start just blowing up certain. things they figure out how to get. missiles or whatever and to blow up. certain things and then then you have. lots of junk up there and then it be. just just just a giant mess and you know. I think starling's really good for the. world I don't hope anyone destroys all. this [ __ ]. wow that's uh that's fascinating let's. go into seric MH that's what we were.
just talking about exactly it's going. the reason this is so important man is. that like there's no interfaces right. now for controlling one to many that. actually work right so do you ever play. Starcraft your world Warcraft kid right. oh yeah and so and so there need there. needs to be like modern AI enabled. versions of this one of my friends is a. really impress impressive video game guy. who built riot games with League of. Legends and stuff there's tons of really. great American talent around there and. and so part of what we need to be doing.
is iterating on and practicing on like. what interfaces work for these things. because right now if you have like a. drone there's like five guys work like. flying one drone in the Middle East. which is fine for that project it's not. going to work for a battle with. thousands of these ships if you have a. hellscape it needs to be some AI I still. want people in charge but the AI needs. to be augmenting them right and helping. them just same way your troops were in. in your Warcraft game you. know man you you. are you are involved in so many things. how about Andel did I pronounce that.
correctly yes so andil is the one that. Palmer lucky who got kicked out at. Facebook and my three pound you know my. three- pounder colleague started uh and. it's and it's doing the Road Runner we. talked about it's doing a bunch of other. great stuff it's a really important. company what do you think about. neuralink I think it's cool I think you. know you know what actually is really. neat there's a bunch of the talent for. neural links moved to Austin where we. are cuz you know a lot of there Tech. Talent people have shifted out of. California. and so that so a lot of the head people. are there and you know it's it's it's. they're making amazing progress It's.
there's probably all sorts of things you. can do with neuralink eventually with. like you know people who are paralyzed. fix that with back pain with I it's a. little bit scary if you really get a. high bandwidth into your brain maybe see. what's going on I don't know I how much. sure I want to know everything about. that you. know I mean does that worry you at. all. well I would say I trust Elon and the. people working on it but in general have. companies have access directly into the. brains of huge numbers of people if it. spreads to be a thing that lots of.
people are touching that is a little bit. of a scary kind of concept if you you. can kind of you know overall it's like. really positive right overall for the. near term 100% like and these guys I can. even imagine I'm claustrophobic I don't. know about you I don't like being stuck. in a small space imagine if you're. paralyzed and you just all you do is. blink your eyes yeah there's guys who. are literally get in this thing and. suddenly they're able to effectively. like you know communicate play games. like do all these things that otherwise. otherwise they were trapped in their. head I mean this just like it's like a. God's gift for for a huge number of.
people so it's like so it's like is it a. good thing 100% it's a good thing but. sure if we're going to speculate 30. years from now where Society can go if. we're all plugged into our brains. there's there's we got to make sure the. crazy things don't happen obviously yeah. you know I read uh something a couple. weeks ago saying that uh it's helping. blind people potentially see 100%. there's all sorts of these amazing. things you could do with this so I think. for people who have issues who are. injured and it may even be like Elon. said at some point for a really bad back. pain or something you could just adjust. it and stuff so there's lots of really.
really I I think we're going towards a. golden age it's really positive I think. whenever there's these positive things. there's always some negative. possibilities and it doesn't mean we. should stop doing the positive things. but we should just keep those in mind. and do our best to make sure we avoid. them yeah yeah let's move into uh let's. move into fighting for western. civilization and your efforts to combat. basically. wokeness yeah when did you start doing. that you know even at the Stanford.
reviews there's a version of that it was. going on there it wasn't called wokeness. back then it was it was like it was. political correctness run out run a mock. run out of control and you know and it. wasn't as extreme back then there were. there were bad things there were dumb. things but it was always like it was. always like there's just generally you. can kind of assume there's going to be. common sense in charge and things. weren't that broken and and I noticed. things really started to get crazy maybe. 2014 2015 it's it's like it's like just. it's like something in society snapped. and all of a sudden you just had all.
these like irrational activists and it. wasn't about truth or what was right. anymore and it was just like everyone. had a virtue signal and go along and if. you're if you're not for just signaling. and going along you're a bad person for. saying anything else and I remember. started getting crazier and crazier. there was these like black lives matter. groups which were clearly like they'd be. on TV saying we are Marxist trained. we're marxists and then my friends who. are not marxists would be like giving. them money and like guys these are. marxists like they believe in like.
creating division that's like part of. what you study as a Marxist is how to. divide society and how to break things. they they they they hate you as someone. who's building things and creating. things they want to take it and give it. to everyone else and they're like Yeah. Joe but this is like the thing to do. right now we want to be helpful and I. just like I've all argu it drove me. crazy like why are you giving these. people money this is insane and and it's. it's uh and I had like that was. literally their answer this is this is. the thing to do right now thing to do. right now to promote racial Justice and. we're just trying to like be like good. citizens to show that we care about. black people and it it was it was I just.
and by the way like what the [ __ ] is. that I mean if you want to Steelman. something like there have been things in. our country from like 80 years ago 60. years ago that were particularly. egregious that that should piss everyone. off right like like you look at like I. mean all the just all these like like. you know in world just just an example. in World War II like they didn't this. like you secretary Knox didn't want any. black people fighting in the Navy and. was kind of a dick about it and there.
were even some of these Heroes like I. don't know if you know like Dory Miller. and like 1941 and Pearl Harbor ships. gets attacked he go he goes and he saves. a bunch of these people carrying him out. then he's like he's like not even he's. not even train he runs up to the. anti-aircraft gun and he shoots down for. the Japanese arrows and just like a. total badass and and they still treated. him like [ __ ] because he was an. African-American at a time when people. were being Tre like [ __ ] so I think I. think there's like this generation. that's like traumatized correctly from. like horrible we were and I think that's. still in the psyche so so that's like. the steel man okay there is something. there we should be like remembering and.
and and piss off about but then but then. like the answer is not to do things that. divide us further and and to suppr. Marxism and so it was a very weird it. was very cowardly because everyone kind. of knew yeah this is kind of wrong. doesn't really kind make fully sense but. I don't want to think about it I just. want to go along because I don't want to. have trouble in my life and it's just. swept through our country and when I. think of black lives I think of burning. towns down yeah it's just like this. anger is just this like just anger.
expressed aggressively and righteously. and and and and it was people Fanning. the Flames of that anger and that. divisiveness and you know it's really. sad because I feel like in the 1990s. we'd got to like a really good place in. our society where where like you know it. was it become like much less racist. everyone of all backgrounds was much. more optimistic on how we're going to. work and live together and I feel like. there were these race grifters who like. just like reignited a lot of stuff and. and caused a lot of trouble like that. that's that's the perspective from my.
perspective is that is that and and and. you know and the woke stuff's not just. about race by the way though the woke. stuff's about is about just general. liberal energy and in general kind of. like it's not about truth it's about. conquering things for the farle and. demonizing anyone who stands in their. way and it's is a very it's a very very. scary time in our society the last. decade and you know a lot of our. universities have basically been been. conquered by these forces by these Neo. marxists it's all like if you stand up. and you speak out against anything.
that's part of their omnic cause they do. their best to crush you and and and and. if you're if you're if you're a. professor in a hisory history Department. in a sociology Department in an. anthropology department like you do not. allow any Professor to join who doesn't. agree with your kind of woke view of. omnic CA and your Neo Marxist View and. so for for quite a long time now we've. not been graduating professors who even. understand you know the his from the. other perspective and you know you John. Stewart Mill one of the great kind of. like like like liberal theorists liberal.
and kind of you know Pro Liberty sense. in a classical liberal sense you know. one of my favorite things he he would. say is that you know if you don't if you. don't understand the argument other. argument you don't understand yours very. well either and this is the case now in. most of our society in in these. institutions they don't actually deeply. understand the side because they've. demonized it and they've kicked it out. and it's it's very. dangerous how are you combating this. stuff there's a lot of different ways. one way is is as as a leader to role. model speaking out and role model that. role model Courage the classical virtues. are really powerful against this stuff.
and the more the more one person shows. courage a few more people show courage. and it's snowballs and and once once. people are showing courage they can't. get us anymore you know they they need. us to be afraid another thing we got to. create new media right um you know. investor in Barry Weiss is Free Press I. think that's really important what she's. doing there I'm I'm uh investor of my. friend is something called Arena. magazine we're trying to build more. these media sources what is the magazine. Arena a n Max Arena magazine yeah which. is was a new which we're creating we're.
creating new we're creating new you know. so basically what happened is like there. used to be all these things in. technology world like wired and. Scientific American and Tech Crunch and. they're all conquered by the crazy woke. people who hate markets hate America and. so I don't want my entrepreneurs going. to talk to this Tech crunch thing when. it just constantly is attacking us in. line about us like let's talk to. something else right so let's be build. New Media so things like Arena we're. pushing we're growing that quickly um. and then I think you know you University. of Austin is based on this as well so. you know my friends Barry Weiss and Neil. Ferguson Neil's probably the greatest. living historian taught at Oxford and.
Harvard really really bright guy uh and. Barry Weiss runs the Free Press uh you. know we thought listen there needs to be. at least one top university in the. country that's not conquered by these. goddamn marxists man that's a I mean. when did the University of Boston start. our first class actually just start took. us three years to to launch it which is. was pretty fast because there's lots of. barriers thousands of pages of. Regulation the new universities don't. want competitions try to block you out. the creditors try to block you out but. you know in this case we found one. that's pretty good and uh we have we.
have we got 92 students in the First. Class A lot of these kids turn down the. very top schools to be there the idea is. Pursuit Of Truth the idea is you know. it's a it's it's a patriotic institution. but we have people who think on both. sides this is not this is not like a. conservative institution like I wouldn't. want to be that'd be a failure because. you need to understand on both sides. right but it's an institution that. really is going to engage with the last. thousand years of great ideas and the. great debates that kind of built Western. Civilization if you look at Western. Civilization for me there's three great. Traditions you have to understand you. have to understand the classical virtues.
you know the classical World in Rome and. Greece and all the wisdom that comes. from that that's like a core base of who. we are amazing stuff and you have to. understand I think judeo Christianity I. think I think you have to understand. like what what the wisdom came from that. like that like gave us that gave us. modern Europe and really the Dignity of. the individual right so I think if you. only have if you only have this. aristocratic like uber manichi kind of. classical view then I think human life. becomes very cheap and that's very. dangerous because I think Christianity. has has a lot of wisdom in the fact that.
there's like a radical dignity to every. human life and so you have that base and. then on top of those two Traditions you. have the scientific Enlightenment and. the philosophical Enlightenment which. you know really started in 17th 18th. centuries they kind of gave us this. understanding of the modern world with. with Adam Smith and The Wealth of. Nations and how trade works with. Scientific Revolution uh with you know. that kind of led to the Industrial. Revolution led to what we have today so. we have these like really important. three traditions and if you want to be a. top leader in society and you want to be. an educated leader in society I think I. think our schools should be should be.
teaching those Traditions to these. people we should be engaging them. debating about them and applying them to. today and if we're not doing that with. our leaders by the way that that is what. our leaders had who created our country. our founders of this country they. understood deeply and were well read in. all of those traditions and they had a. lot of wisdom that they used to craft. our constitution we're really lucky to. have that there's this amazing thing. based on all that wisdom and if we don't. apply that today to our modern problems. instead we kind of go off in these kind. of woke or nonsense directions like. we're going to break our civilization so. let's have leaders who are courageous.
and who who know these things you know. man man so 92 students is the first. class we're going to try to do more than. 100 next class you know it's very funny. you're not allowed to be officially. accredited fully until you've graduated. the class so all so all the trolls like. oh the unaccredited University it's like. yeah that's the rule but do our best. man how how big do you think it will get. yeah know Stanford and Harvard have like. 1600 1900 kids I'd love to Skittle that. over 20 years it takes a while to get.
there you don't want to you don't want. to go too fast because you want to have. like really top experiences for the. students you really want to and there's. going to be things that aren't perfect. there's going to be parts that are. amazing that they love and there's going. to be parts that we got to keep building. keep improving I want to launch a. master's degree in a couple years uh on. uh I want to compete with Stanford and. Harvard Business School and how it be. like an innovation master's degree where. if you want to be part of the Innovation. world and you want to like work with. like the people who built the top. companies come here and we'll teach you. how to be part of our Innovation world. and then kind of bring you as a leader. there and we want people obviously. there's a tech and stem side but again.
you want to train leaders how to think. about our civilization and how to be. kind of Fighters for America who are you. know we call them philosopher Builders. we want we need more philos for Builders. people like Elon who are going to fight. for our civilization as well as build. wow how many applicants do you guys have. we got we got we we got several hundred. applicants it's interesting the Common. App is where most applications come. through for most universities now we're. not allowed on the Common App until. we're credited so our number of. applications even though it was even. though it was silver hund the first. class I think it would have been a lot. higher but kids couldn't check it off on. that so but we're still getting a lot of.
great people trying to come how are you. vetting the professors uh so Neil. Ferguson himself is a really great. professor and then we have like we have. a set of amazing people are we have a. bunch of really really top team who are. who their their job is help recruit the. new professors and getting some pretty. famous names applying right now and. coming in so hopefully we'll announce. some really great great new people but. we have we have a really great set of. about 25 really top professors that I'm. it's really fun for me actually get to. go learn from these guys too so it's. it's a good set of people are you. spending a lot of time there yeah I'm. the chairman of the board and try to.
design this new master's degree trying. to make sure we create opportunities for. the students giv scholarships through. really top students to come right now. all the students are on scholarship we. get extra even give I even give extra. scholarships for like really really top. students to turn down you know very best. places and come and uh just trying to. make sure it's a great experience for. Wow Wow any scholarship what's that any. scholarships yeah so so so so so. basically everyone everyone there gets. gets get their tuition covered right now. which is which is great so we're saying. and we're giving scholarships beyond.
that too for great people I mean it. seems like you guys are getting a uh a. lot of uh interest in there I saw it was. on 60 Minutes um is anybody or any what. I mean what is the media saying sounds. like there's a lot of troll a lot 60. Minutes was surprisingly positive I. really appreciate that they came and. they looked at it and they and they. think they gave it a fair treatment. which was which was great listen when we. launched everyone at act and mocked us. these these other universities they. don't want competition they don't want. something else there but we're getting a. lot of positive news from a lot of.
people I think we have we have several. thousand donors now I think we have. dozens of donors who've given over a. million dollars each so so a lot of good. supporters have come out of the woodwork. and a bunch more really helping us it's. it's a movement whose time has come like. we need in America is what you do if. things are broken if things aren't doing. what they can you know you get together. you build something new and it teaches. everyone else and so right now you have. dozens of other universities that are. referring to us on their boards that are. saying why don't we do this why don't we. do that why don't we take these ideas. which which is great that's the whole. point is let's let's bring everything. back in the same direction you know man.
I love it I love it let's move into the. uh the Cicero Institute yeah what is it. cisero Institute is our policy group so. uh basically what we do is we we work in. States not in DC for the most part it. turns out there's 50 states in our. country and our Founders Founders. intended stuff to happen at the states. like this is this called the United. States this is an alliance of states so. that's that's the that's supposed to be. where most of government actually. happens the most in our country like. obviously we have federal state and. local but states are supposed to be now.
Federal Goen too big so it does too much. right now but states still have a lot of. power and they're really important and. we've seen obviously people moving. between states a lot because some states. are doing the right things some states. are doing the wrong things and so. there's a lot of different ideas for how. to how to make things work better you. can test and prove out of the state. level and what we tend to do is we like. to fix broken systems we like to fix. things that governments usually by. mistake broken or Especial is broken so. so for example I'll give you one I like. is vocational education vocational. education was a lot more prominent in.
the US to the 60s and 70s and a lot of. people said n let's let's send them to. college instead it's racist not to have. everyone go to college it's it's bad not. to have all poor people go to college. and it turns out a lot of people went to. college they get these studies degrees. you know they don't come out with any. real skills or any real jobs I don't. think everyone should be going to. college necessarily I think they should. be doing what they should to get a great. job and and so and a lot of people agree. with me so we fund these vocational. education schools are starting to come. back up the problem is what if it's a. badly run vacational education school. what do you do how do you decide to fix. it so for example in Texas there's 27.
high-end Technical vocational schools. teaching it to be like a highend. manufacturing job like really good jobs. coming out these if you do it right but. they weren't working that they weren't. working nearly as well as they could and. so what we did in Texas uh is he said. Texas said we're going to fund these. schools based on the average salary. coming out so we're going to tell each. of these schools you better figure out. how to get your students succeeding and. if you do you're going to get more money. if you're going to get less money and. you know what happened is the school. started saying okay what skills do we. have to teach what businesses do we. partner with how do we figure this out.
wow salaries doubled coming out of these. schools no kidding and so so that's an. example of where you could take a law so. we draft the law we kind of go to the. legislature find the sponsors go to the. governor's Administration convince them. it's right uh help write op-eds along. with the people in the legislature and. and we have to hire lawyers to draft the. appropriate law for that state you get. all the like stakeholders involved say. here's what here's who's not going to. like it these special interests aren't. going to like but here's why they're. wrong you kind of prepare them ahead of. time we have this 20-step process and.
and you and you partner with all these. people in the state and you get the law. passed and and then and then it fixes. the problem how fast is this spreading. uh so it takes usually uh usually it's. two or three years to get a law done and. we've been doing it for eight years and. we got dozens of laws passed in 17. States last year we have teams in 20. States now and what you'll do is you'll. hire someone who used to like you know. be the lieutenant governor or the. speaker of the house or whatever and. they're a lobbyist but it's the coolest. typee of lobbyist relationship because. lobbyists are usually sick of having to. help businesses try to ask for things. for themselves and these guys charge us.
way less than anyone else because they. get to work on something they agree with. and so you hire these guys like yeah. this is really cool I get to work on. this with you and and they'll work. because every State's different every. state has different you know ways behind. the scenes of getting things done and so. you just you just have to you have to do. it and push it through but rather than. play the lobbying game for the bad guys. is playing it for the good guys which is. a lot of fun are you guys in Tennessee. we do we already do have teams in. Tennessee governor Bill Lee has been a. great guy to work with and he has been. he has been he has been he's a strong. he's a strong Governor a lot of pro.
freedom things here um there's uh. there's I think a bunch of stuff we're. working on for next time I apologize I. should have checked the notes for. exactly what we're doing here it's all. good all good I just love that you guys. are operating in here you got a strong. you got a you got you got a strong set. of leaders here you got a you got a I. think the all three house houses that. the to that Congress both sides of. Congress and and the governor are are. red and there's a lot of bold things. that we can get done here amazing what. other states are you guys in do you know. uh we do a lot in Florida we do a lot in. Texas of course where I am now um you.
know Missouri uh you know lot of stuff. in Georgia there's there's all sorts of. places that we all over the country. Arizona was a big place for us it's. harder now with the current governor but. but even even sometimes with moderate. Democrats we get along I'll tell you. what happens most of the time when our. laws pass we get people from both. parties voting for them and the modern. Democrats love a lot of our stuff too. because it's like helping fix things. with incentives right and accountability. the farle hates us cuz the farle SES. those government unions I was talking. about they don't want anything to be.
held accountable they don't want spend. to be tied to metrics because then they. can't capture the spend for their for. their corrupt groups and so the farle. tends to be like really against us and. and so therefore when you have a left. Administration you usually you can't get. through the far left but but but but. we're still getting a lot done in purple. and in red States what about. homelessness that's a big one for us so. we've passed a bunch of laws in a bunch. of areas there so I come from San. Francisco remember originally in nearby. area and San Francisco is just totally. screwed because of homelessness and what.
happens is you get these special. interests the NGS and these guys Lobby. for money and then even 20 years ago. people like wait we're giving you all. this money how about we like tie the. money to results or to outcomes or to. goals together and they're like no no no. you can't do that and they screamed and. yelled and and they're so powerful. because once they have all this money. they become the biggest donors and so. all the politicians don't want to piss. them off so they don't hold them. accountable and when you look at it. these NOS they started giving free. houses to a lot of their their friends. the people in their groups because. there's there's houses you're giving out. of course you started like actually.
having incentive to bring more homeless. there with like super generous stuff you. started giving like free drugs all these. people because that's what the homeless. people want it makes them come it's just. a total mess I'll tell you the worst I. think the worst part of it is a. vulnerability index for homes have you. heard of this before no so if you talk. to the people in the very far left. they're not really big on incentives and. some of them are well meaning of course. and they say well we want give homes to. people who need homes it sounds like a. nice thing but of course there's an. infinite line in America for homes. everyone wants a free home it's okay we.
have to prioritize people who are more. vulnerable so how do you prioritize them. this is something that came from both. HUD and a bunch of these blue cities so. he said you get more points towards a. free home if you're on drugs you get. more points you're on drugs you get more. points if you're not in a recovery. program because you really need it. better more if you're not in a recovery. program you get more points if you. commit a crime you more points if it's a. violent crime more points if your kids. are Trent so basically there's all these. points you get for bad things and they. say well these people deserve a home. because they're going through all these. bad things I'm like no no no if you give. them points for bad things you're.
creating an incentive so you look at our. cities and say why are they so effed up. is you literally have insane amounts of. money being given out based on points. for bad things and so we like followed a. homeless guy around in a bunch of. homeless people around in Austin try to. be helpful and we map it out and like. one of them goes in the first time he. goes in he says you know I'm trying to. look for job training what do I do to. get out of my situation and this like. young blue-haired Progressive woman says. no no sir you deserve a home and I'm not. sure we're going to have enough from. right away cuz Republicans aren't. funding us enough but you deserve a home. you sign this here's how we get your.
tent he's like oh I was going to stay. with my cousin and she said don't tell. me that it's better if you have a tent. you're going to get home sooner so he. gives him the tent to go set it up in. the city and he comes back two months. later and he doesn't not quite qualify. for a home and he says but you know I. heard that if I was on drugs I'd be more. likely to have a home by now and she. said yeah that's technically true but we. don't like to think of it that. way you believe that this is enraging. this there p yeah exactly why do you. think I get so involved in policy pisses. me off it's crazy it's breaking our. country and so we passed a bunch of laws.
in Georgia and Florida and a couple. other places uh you know where where. we're actually like just completely. fixing the inent was completely getting. rid of this nonsense the red State still. need to hold these NOS accountable. there's there's these really sketchy Nos. and you know probably shouldn't be. illegal to run one of them in the red. state but the very least if you get any. money from government you should have to. be way more transparent on your outcomes. way more transparent on on everything. you're doing because because a lot of. these things are just actually lobbying. groups for the extremes do you think any. blue States will start to adopt this I. think I think I think so I think it's.
and this is this is one of those things. that you have to first do it somewhere. and prove it works and then it becomes. like and then it becomes clear that the. moderates are going to do it in the blue. state to fix it as well so I I think. that is the fight I have a lot of. friends who are moderate Democrats in SF. and they're fighting hard against the. farle that's the battle it's the. moderates against the far left and I. think the moderates are going to win and. they're going to start putting in these. accountability putting in these. incentives defunding the stuff that's. corrupt that's what we have to do to fix. our cities so I'm I'm bullish it's going. to happen it's it's a really tough. battle because there's just there's so.
much money for these extremists in our. country right now like in California. there's over two million people working. for the government they all have to give. a piece of their paycheck to the. government unions who then who then are. part of funding this whole complex so. just there's a lot of there's a lot of. corruption in our country and there's a. lot of money going towards the wrong. things but you know what I think like I. said there's a Vibe shift it's a Vibe. shift away from the bureaucracy away. from the cowards away from the away from. the people who are acting based on guilt. and you know it's going towards. greatness going towards courage going. towards kind of like a a positive. ambition so I think we're going the.
right way that's amazing that's amazing. to hear um I also see you're involved in. uh trying to fix the prison and parole. systems yeah you know that's and that's. really similar in some ways to the. vocational thing we talked about. obviously they're different systems but. think about it if you if you're running. a probation system if you're running a. prison system whether or not you're on. the right or the left like there's. certain things we want to have happen. like we don't want people to have to go. back to prison but we want people to. succeed and not commit a crime right and. we don't want someone's going to come. out of prison you want them to have a.
job right you want to be employed so so. what do you do you want to create. incentives in the system for the people. running it to hit certain goals to have. more people come out and be employed and. it's start it turns out there's lots of. programs that work to make people more. likely to be employed and there's lots. of programs that don't and in fact right. now most of our prisons they're terrible. cultures the guards hate the Prisoners. the prisoners hate the guards it's it's. it's run bad there's exceptions to this. but there's most run badly and there's. bad leadership and I you you can't. automatically create good leadership but. you can't replace bad leadership you can. incentivize good leadership none of our.
states do this pretty much right now so. there stuff like that that we're trying. to work with the governors and work with. the legislators and like let's just make. these systems work better for society. you. know am I missing anything with this. what else are you working on that's a. lot I don't. know that's fun man I mean how do you. you're involved in so many things you. got five kids you're married I mean how. do you manage all of the tech companies. everything the University of Austin.
everything that you're involved in how. do you well you have to have really. great people around you who are in. charge of each of the. organizations somehow Elon stays a CEO I. don't know he's I think he's an alien. he's great he's a genius but like for me. I can't be in charge of all these things. at once nor would I be as good at it if. I was trying to do all no it doesn't. make any sense so like so you get. someone who's better than you at it and. and you and I work as usually a chairman. with them or as a co-founder with them. and and we partner together and and the. more you could surround yourself with. attracting more and more great people.
who come and want to work with you who. are inspired by stuff you're doing and. want to be part of it the more Advantage. you have so it does kind of like be. Snowball the advantage like just keep. trying to find and get really great. people and we don't always get things. right lots of our things screw up. there's lots of mistakes you got to. iterate you know it's not like we're. we're not infallible we're making. mistakes all the time but you just got. to do your best to push in the right. direction do you want to talk about any. of those mistakes to anything big that. you've learned from. oh goodness there's it. everywhere I mean there's just a general. thing for me you asked how I do it all. at once I think when I was younger I.
thought I could be in charge of a lot of. things at once and if you're in charge. of too much at once then a lot of it. starts to break at once and then you're. really screwed right so like my new. worldle right now is I'm only. responsible for the failure of one thing. at a. time I'm going to take that advice it's. it's important because especially once. you start to have your success this. happened to all my friends who've been. really successful is then all of a. sudden you try to do a lot at once cuz. you're like I can do that thing I can do. five things and it turns out no actually. now you're totally screwed so you really. want to have other people who are each. responsible for for whatever's going on.
you want to have teams that are great. that are that are responsible by the way. they have to own a piece of it too this. is why nonprofits are really hard for me. because I do I get a lot more. for-profits because in a for-profit the. people there they own a big piece of it. they're going to sleep thinking about it. they're waking up thinking about it and. that Equity works really really well. just like you give people real upside. and things and then they own them how do. you recruit them I'm just I'm curious. because I'm trying to build my company. out and I have no business s so we we. have a pretty big Talent Network we. spend a lot of time on this we have. teams that about not teams but we have. like fellows and you know people we we.
nurture and take relationships with at. about 20 different universities we have. people on our team we spend a lot of. time figuring out where is the top. talent right now making sure we're. helpful to them make sure we get to know. them be in the right circles and you. know but it's I'm still figuring it out. it's one of the reasons I want I'm happy. to be on here maybe maybe some smart. person we'll hear we'll hear about it. they want to come work with us you know. right on man right on what do you do you. have anything particular one of your. Ventures that you're the most excited. about you know I think some of the I. mean obviously defense stuff's really. exciting I think some of the bio stuff.
for me is really important because it's. it's it's cool because it's saving lives. it's it's like it's like a defense does. save lives too but there's almost. nothing that doesn't that feels more. pure than when you build like a like a. therapeutic company that's actually. treating and saving lives or where you. invest in one of these things so there. there's a bunch of that stuff that's. really working well right now like for. example I'll just give you an example um. you two one example is this company Orab. bio uh is amazing Founders we backed. relatively early on and they're able to. sort cells one by one uh using. semiconductor technology it came out of. Stanford lab and and it turns out this.
is really useful for cell therapies and. so cell therapies there's been there's. been like a trillion dollars invested in. cell therapies they're amazing is what. they are is it used to be uh that all. the all the Pharma guys were chemists. and they would do things with molecules. and all the drugs were molecules and. then with Genentech and others in the. 1980s you had what's called biologics. and so instead of using a molecule to. treat you you'd use like a peptide or an. antibody something that came from your. from a body right to treat you and that. was a really powerful way to cure a lot. more things and now instead of just. using that you're using like a whole. cell to treat someone so like if this is.
a peptide like the whole building is a. is is a cell right it's a much more. complicated thing that we in just in the. last 10 years learned how to program. them and use them so all this is going. on but the simplest form of cell therapy. it's been around forever is for example. it's called a bone marrow transplant so. someone has late stage blood cancer. they're going to die pretty much for. sure in 6 months what you do is you can. give them a bone Maro transplant uh. reboot the immune system good chance it. cures the cancer now unfortunately it's. like playing Russian roulette you'll die. 15 20% of the time with a boneo. transplant right because it it could be.
rejected just kill you so you only do it. if someone's about to die anyway of. cancer and then maybe it saves them now. turns out with this new cell therapy. sorting thing these guys are doing. they're able to make it so the rejection. rates almost nothing so as opposed to 15. to 20% there's very very few rejections. even those were not not fatal and so so. here's what's really cool about this not. only is that going to save you know. thousands more lives per year people who. have these blood cancers uh it turns out. that when you reboot someone's immune. system it seems to cure autoimmune. diseases so autoimmune diseases are like.
crones or multiple sclerosis you may. have heard of we lost my aunt. unfortunately to Multiple Sclerosis. we're starting a phase one now with the. FDA where we think we may have a. potentially have a cure for multiple. sclerosis so there's there's stuff like. this happening right now with with bio. that's really exciting man that's. incredible it's fun stuff right there's. like the breakthroughs coming out of our. top universities with the latest. technology is just it's just really. inspiring I feel like we're going. towards a really positive direction for. our society if we can if we can keep. things functional you know wow man.
um. congratulations you're doing just. phenomenal things not only for the. country but for the world and well I'm. honored to be part of this stuff that. all these other amazing people are doing. too that I get to invest in and get to. back and try to help because our man we. live in an awesome civilization there's. so many smart people doing so many great. things here and we should be more. positive about that you know I'm I am uh. I'm just honored to have you here and. and I'm so thankful that we met that. you're an amazing human being who are. three people you'd like to see on this.
show um at some point you got to get. Elon on of course he's the he's the he's. the he's the king of the moment um you. know uh probably my my my my other two. most important mentors Clara Peter T and. Alice carar I'd say those are the guys I. learned the most from in my youth and. they're they're both extraordinary. individuals Alex is my co-founder a. paler I was Peter and uh and Peter. obviously was co-founded PayPal and was. kind of one of the intellectual leaders. that I think I think even though Peter. was not involved in this election he a. lot of the things he created kind of led.
to this stuff happening and he's he's. someone I really admire well maybe you. can put a word in for us I'll let him. know but uh Joe it was seriously it was. an honor to have you here and um I hope. to see you again I really do thank you. Sean but thank you. [Music]. no matter where you're watching Shan.
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