All right. Welcome everybody to your weekly
newcomer, Tom Doton here joined by Madeline Renbarger, Eric
newcomer and our guest this week, Will Hurd.
Will is a former CIA officer, three term US Congressman from
Texas, author of the book American Reboot and now CSO at a
defense tech startup Chaos Industries, which we'll get into
later in the episode. Will welcome.
And I think you are Eric, correct me here is Will, the
first politician we've had on the show.
That's a good question. Wow.
Maybe that's I'm gonna say the answer is yes, OK.
Yeah, this. He's the first politician we've
ever had. It's a great honor.
Honor of me, Oh my God, politician on, you know, midst.
What a delight. It's amazing.
I didn't know. OK, this.
You know, we're only entrepreneurs usually.
Glad. So and I mentioned will you are
three term from Texas. What was your district again?
You're like a border district. I was, so it was.
It was majority of of my hometown of San Antonio where I
live now, all the way to El Paso down to the border.
So it's 29 counties, 2 time zones.
It took 10 1/2 hours to drive across it at 80 miles an hour,
right, which was the speed limit in most of the district.
It was the largest border district in the United States.
I roughly I had about 1/3 of the US Mexico border.
Congressman, a fun fact we discussed, you know, a little
bit before recording is you were actually the congressman for my
mom's hometown, where my uncle currently lives and where my
grandparents are from in Uvalde, TX.
My whole mom's, the family is your district basically.
I hope they came to, I hope they came to one of my DC to DQS,
right? I would hold, I would hold town
halls and all the Dairy Queens and I hope they weren't part of
the group that would protest of the DC to DQS.
So you know you'll have to. I highly doubt they were the
protesters. If you're ever in Evaldi then
they maybe stop by. Eric, you've been to you've been
to Texas before. My high school best friend lives
in Midland, TX so I made the trip out there with him.
I've obviously been to Austin for South by Southwest a couple
times. I'm not sure I've ever been to
San Antonio. Midland was not in the District,
but all the counties around it. So I would fly in and out of San
Antonio back in DC-2 weekends a month.
One weekend I'd fly into Midland and hit, you know, hit those
parts of the district. And then one time in El Paso,
you know, it was because it was so it was so big.
I had those three things and and let's do, let's dispense with
the congressman. It's Will.
I don't like being in Congress. I definitely don't like being
called it now that I'm out. So please just call me.
Call me Will. Well, it's a good time to be out
of Congress now, Will, I saw like the approval ratings
recently for Congress for like in the low 20s.
So I can see why you want to not be tagged with that that moniker
now. Congressman.
So I ran, I left the CIA to run for Congress, right?
And, and I lost that first race by only 700 votes.
I don't want to tell that story. Oh my God, Yeah.
How many votes were there? Well, out of two out of I think
it was like 60,000. Like I said, Oh my God, I don't
want. To tell that story anymore.
Yeah, I mean my IT. Hurts.
My understanding of Texas politics from reading the Robert
Carroll LBJ books is that you can kind of fix those things,
you know? So like 700 votes doesn't seem
like that much. So, so box 13 and all those
districts, so, so LBJ, this is, this is legit.
You know, it's been documented. LBJ became a senator because by
I want to say it was like 1821 votes and they basically stuffed
the ballot boxes with people that had, had died.
And the guy that ran this whole operation was called the Duke of
Duvall and some of the areas that he he was responsible for
what some of the places that I represented.
So it's this weird connection between all that.
And one of my favorite books is about this.
It's called Texas Mutiny. And it goes into this whole
thing about the ballot stuffing and how it happened when they
found out. It's it's a fascinating part of
Texas law. But you've been out for four
years now and, you know, been a civilian in the, in the, in the
tech world, in the, in the private world.
I mean, you prefer it, right? I understand there's clowns on
both sides, but like you feel you feel like you're it's.
Got to be fun to be a congressman.
I don't know, really. I'm surprised.
You prefer Which would you? Yeah.
Which do. You what do you prefer?
Of all the jobs I've ever held, from being a working in a
computer lab at Texas AM University to the CIA, to
building a cyber security company to Congress investment
banking and now being at a tech startup, being in Congress was
by far the worst. But I will say this though, I
enjoyed my time, right? Like I got 21 piece of
legislation signed the law in six years, which is a lot.
Most people don't do that much in in two decades.
I was able to do it in six years, but the thing that most
people don't realize is you help a lot of people.
So, so for example, I have I have horrible allergies and I
went to an allergist this week and he comes up to me, he goes,
hey, will, I'd be getting trouble if I don't tell you
this, but my wife wanted me to thank you because he was he was
in the military. He got posted to Iraq.
They got moved from I think Dallas to San Antonio.
All his personal effects got lost.
He had to find it. DoD was saying he should pay for
it out of his own money. Someone told him to be like call
Congressman Hurd's office and we were able to sort it out, right.
And so, so like the ability to help people in the district that
are getting screwed by the federal government, whether it's
on Social Security or helping veterans with veterans issues,
you name it. Like that part was awesome.
And, and these are people, you're never going to know their
names, but those, those are the, that's the stuff that I'm most
proud of. And I miss, I miss that part.
I miss helping out, you know, my community, but you know, the
back and forth and look, I saw I like solving problems.
And my district was 5050. So even if I had every
Republican to vote for me, I, I still couldn't win.
And so to me, the ability to get big things done was what I liked
about being in Congress. And that's getting harder and
harder. I mean, I can't we can't talk
about sort of Texas and bipartisanship and listen, not
talk about the the sort of gerrymandering issue right now.
It looms so large. You're obviously what the
Republican, the Democrats like. What is your view on sort of
what Texas is doing? And then whether like California
should fire back or like, I don't know.
Yeah. How do you how do you look at
this situation? I've always said redistricting
and drawing lines is about incumbent protection.
It always has been. Right now, I don't, I don't
agree with that. So Illinois did this, right?
They redrew the lines and, and and screwed Adam Kinzinger.
Let's look at a place like Maryland.
Maryland had a Republican governor for a number of years,
but no Republicans in Maryland from Texas just redrew the lines
to try to get five more additional seats.
Gavin Newsom is going to attempt to do the same thing.
It seems like. Look, he's going to have he's
probably going to spend as much political capital as he needs in
order to match what Texas is doing.
So, so, so saying one group is bigger or better or worse than
the other. Republicans and Democrats across
the country have been doing this for a really long time now.
If I had a, if I had a magic wand, I would say no district
can be more than +6 in either direction plus 6R or plus 6D.
You know, a, a 56% Republican district or a 56% Democratic
district, in my opinion, is a jump ball.
And so that forces people to have real conversations in
November and that causes people to have to get problem solvers,
not bomb throwers. And, and right now, the number
of contested districts where the people voted for one, for the
person, for the president from one party and the congressman
from another party, it's the lowest has ever been in the
history of Congress. Was that ratio you gave the 56%
or is that about what your former district?
Was it was mine was a little bit worse, right?
But because, but but but but +6 is something is something.
I think the real problem that we often have in politics is single
party rule, right? And, and so, so California and
Texas are the converse of one another when it comes to when it
comes to single party, when it comes to single party rule.
And, and that's the part that that is that's crazy to me.
And also not enough people vote in primaries at the number of
people that vote in, on average in, in a Congressional District
is like 60,000 people. That's crazy.
That means like 30,000 people get to the side.
Majority of people that go in go into districts.
So that would be my one suggestion.
Everybody, regardless of what your political leanings are, if
you vote in primaries, that's where a lot of things get
decided. There's usually better
candidates that may not have the financial resources or the name
ID. But my PSA for today is go
figure out when your primary is and.
I mean, I mentioned it kind of in, in joking earlier, but like,
you look at the approval rate of Congress right now, I imagine
part of the reason you wanted to leave was that you maybe saw
where things were going. And some who is a Republican
that's liked by Democrats doesn't really have a future in
the Republican Party. But that's sort of
gerrymandering and having these wildly, you know, skewed
districts. Do you think that's part of the
reason that overall, there's just such a deeply cynical and
negative view of Congress from both sides right now?
I think that is part of it because you have elected
officials that are only speaking to a very small percentage of
the population. So if, if each Congressional
District is, is roughly, let's call it 800,000 voters, right?
If you take 30,000 voters, the people that get them elected in
the primary, that's like 3%, if my math is right, 3 or 4% of the
entire population. And so, so you have an elected
official that is speaking to a very narrow group of people and
ignoring everybody else. And that is what's creating some
of this these problems. What do you think about these
celebrity kind of Congress people that that have jumped up
in the past couple of years to become these social media stars?
You've you've got your your Nancy Maces or your Marjorie
Taylor Greens. People who exist largely as kind
of quasi firebrand political celebrities that matter more to
people probably be outside their district and the ones you know
within it sure seems like a more reasonable phenomenon to get.
Elected in in their districts, right and and I'm not I'm never
going to criticize somebody for building a large social media
following. You know, if, if you don't know
how to leverage that tool to connect with people and then
you're not going to be able to get elected.
What I would like to see is more people focusing on addressing
some of these unique challenges that we're faced with today.
My concern has always been that the United States of America
staying the most powerful, most important economy in the world
is not a fait accompli. And there's a number of issues
from from federal level issues down to down to local issues
that have to be addressed. And so being able to talk and
like try to solve some of these very complicated issues requires
people that are willing to roll up their sleeves and and solve
problems. And so look, my social media,
the footprint would be 10X what it is if I said, if I said crazy
things, right? That's just, that's just not me.
And, and, and so, so, yeah, I, I would say you would see that,
that the numbers of people that appreciate their member of
Congress higher if people saw problems.
And look, my, my, my time in Congress was perfect example of
that. I had a great name ID amongst
all brands of, of folks, partly because I tried to solve
problems, right. Look, I was the cybersecurity
guy in Congress. I was the IT procurement guy in
Congress. Like nobody's ever when they've
gotten the pulse or be like, what are your top 10 most
important issues in Congress? Nobody ever says cybersecurity,
right, right, or, or IT procurement.
But I was able to work on these real challenging problems and
then articulated why a farmer in West TX should care about
something like that. And and so.
It's see that has nothing to do with the Cracker Barrel logo.
Do they still sell audio books at Cracker Barrel?
That's my question And you know, I don't.
Know did they ever. Oh yeah, I yeah.
I went to actually the first Cracker Barrel I went to in my
life was in your district, was in San Antonio.
I went back a few months ago when I was in Florida and this
doesn't get talked enough about in my opinion, in the discourse.
Terrible food. Just just bad food.
You're not running for office, Yeah.
I guess send your comment to Tom.
We I'm happy to do a whole Cracker Barrel food episode.
This is. This is our strategy.
Bait. You know, elected officials,
former elected officials into shitting.
You know, mainstays of America. Yeah, it's no.
What a federation. But it's.
Exactly that more people know what Cracker Barrel is.
I didn't realize that it was so well known.
But Madeline, to your point, when I left, so I graduated
university a Texas A&M in in May of 2000 and in October of 2000,
I drove my car to Washington, DC and this was, this was literally
the day of the USS Cole bombing. This was the USS Cole, which is
a destroyer in the US Navy off the coast of Aden in Yemen.
And this was kind of my introduction ultimately to Al
Qaeda. And I was renting Clive Cussler
books at Cracker Barrel, listening to them on the way on
the way to Washington, DC So that that always did the.
Puzzles. The puzzles are what I remember
from Cracker Barrel. I think I went more as a kid so
it'd be all the weird like metal things you have to unwind.
Yeah, I. Remember the anyway.
Why? Why are we having our first
former politician on the podcast?
Because Silicon Valley has identified a gold rush in
Washington and and literally the potential for a golden Dome.
Obviously we've written a lot in newcomer about Silicon Valley
chasing sort of the defense tech opportunity.
You're working at chaos sort of fast climbing defense tech
startup. You know, there are lots of them
obviously like and roll loom super large Palantir sort of I
guess the OG in defense tech. I mean, just to start us off,
has the Trump administration been a boon for Silicon Valley's
effort to get into defense tech or how much is it like a move
from Biden, No fun, you know, Trump, lots of money for defense
tech startups. Or is it muddier than that?
Or what are you seeing in terms of this, this President and the
opportunity? Think, I think, I think this,
the Trump administration is definitely saying, hey, we are
doing things a little bit differently and, and we are
willing to get rid of many of the sacred cows, especially when
it comes into procurement. And there's, there's, you know,
the most recent thing that happened was there was a, an
entity that all the senior generals across the, across the
services would work on requirements.
And some of those requirements, like one simple requirement
would take potentially 800 days to go through this approval
process. This was recently abolished.
So there's efforts. And 800 days to start up might
not live that long. They can sort of get a signs of
revenue faster than that. So for sure, for sure.
But, but I would also say that one of the things that has
really changed and, and, and causes gold rush as as you say,
was the reckon was the Ukraine war and is the Ukraine war.
This has shown that warfare has changed, right?
Warfare is now about speed. How fast can you get that
autonomous thing to do something?
It's about scale. You know, mass and quantity
overwhelms what in in DoD they call exquisite, right?
These are basically it's a fancy way to say something super
expensive and took, you know, years to develop.
Exquisite. I didn't know that was a term
of. Art it really it really it
really is a term. And so so this is how this is
how the changing the way warfare has changed is is what is where
opportunities are people that can that can move fast, right.
But here's the reality now. Some would say, is there a
bubble in defense tech already? You got to be able, your product
has to work out-of-the-box and it has to work every time.
And you better be ready to produce a, a shit ton of, you
know, in a, in a short period of time.
And that is the need in, in, in what in, in, in, in, in, in our
military. So, so you know, if you're, if
you're not able to operate in a place like Ukraine, which is the
current battlefield, the the electronic warfare, the jamming,
the use of autonomy, the use of counter UAS systems.
Drones. Drones to put it.
I mean, drones are key to this, right?
I mean, like drone warfare. That's the thing.
We're building at scale and combating, right?
Or is that dumping it down too much?
No. You, you're not that's the
current thing, right? Like like that.
That is one element that we have to address.
Why? Because of air superiority.
Air superiority is a term that we have forgotten or taken for
granted because the United States of America's military has
always has had air superiority since basically the end of of
the Korean War. And air superiority allows our
troops on the ground to be able to do their thing.
It allows commerce and commercial aircraft to travel
around the the world. And when you lose that because
of this use of drones by adversaries, this is going to be
a a major problem. And we've already recognized
that we don't have the drone fleet necessary.
We see our adversaries like Russia, China and Iran
increasing theirs. And so if you see a increase in
in that drone activity, then guess what?
You need to be able to do the counter drone as well.
And you can't have a system that's $1 billion that shoots a
rocket that's worth $600 million at a drone that cost 20K, right?
So, so, so this is the asymmetry of warfare is one of the things
for being that it is is is that it's changing that is changing
the game. Yeah.
So that seems like, I mean, I was just in Southern California
last week actually I was over at day one Ventures event, but they
also have a ton of portfolio companies in El Segundo right
now building things, you know. They're making making the
rounds. Yeah, I did.
I did. Defense tech startups wanted you
to like, sign NDA's. You have to be like, no, we
write, we write about these. Well, you didn't come knocking
on our door, you know. You didn't bark in our door.
Unfortunately, you know, I have ran out of time, had to go to
the airport, which was right there conveniently.
But I was going to say I met, you know, I met some interesting
founders that are taking, you know, basically beyond defense,
you know, nuclear power, Valor atomics is doing this, you know,
as AI infrastructure. Some other people are trying to
get space superiority like Astroforge.
I think there's like a lot of these really interesting
founders in the area. But you know, your question
about if it's a bubble, I mean, I think there's tons of people
doing interesting things, but and you're over there too.
But what kind of distinguishes, I think, you know, a player
that's early in the defense boom right now to, you know, actually
make it and get, you know, procurement, even if the
administration is more friendly, like, you know, how many of
these companies are going to, you know, make it to the next
step? Look, your product has to to
work. It starts with that.
You can talk a big game, you can beat your chest, you can have
some great your first widget. But that thing has to work
out-of-the-box. Because if our men and women are
using a tool in order to protect themselves, defend themselves,
it has to work every single time.
And I think that is where many companies have a problem.
You do these exercises where the military bases that give us your
product, we're going to run it. They kick the tires in essence,
and the things don't work right. So so that is it sounds so
basic. Because they're hardware
companies fundamentally, right? It's like hardware is hard in
any area of tech. So why within, you know, defense
tech would it be any different? I I sometimes think VCs like
didn't. Understand that when, when they
got into the space as they were like, oh, look at all this money
that's here. Fundamentally, they're trying to
build like highly technical and sophisticated drones that in any
industry, let alone like defense would be hard to like sell and
and, you know, promise. And it's like a battlefield
technology, right? Like this is, it's like the
stakes are higher than it would be for like, you know, a
wearable that doesn't work. Exactly the stakes are higher,
but but Tom, here's the here's the other difference where
you're seeing all these companies that Madeline is able
to go see is because there is now private investments in this.
When I left, when I left Congress in I guess it was 21
January 21, I was a free agent and I joined Allen and company,
you know, the New York Merchant Bank.
Nobody wanted to invest in a company that was dual use,
right, let alone Uncle Sam is, is is customer number one.
And only the ability, look, the ability for a company like US
chaos to have half a billion dollars right is going to allow
us to have a runway to produce that product in a time to meet
the procurement cycles of the government of the thing, the
evaluation and then and then administration.
Maybe there's a good time just to say directly what chaos does,
so the the sort of people know. Yeah.
Look, Chaos, we are a defense tech company.
We're based there in, in in LA, technically Hawthorne.
We have an office in in Washington, DC and one of our
first products is is a radar. It's a counter UAS radar.
One of the things that's special about us is we can see big and
and high and far and small, low and near all at the all at the
exact same time. We've operated, we've been
operating, we've operated in Ukraine in the cold and it's
been baked in the hot sun of the Middle East.
But we're in and activities with the Army and we're doing a
number of projects with with with the Air Force and we have
figured out a way to be a fraction of the cost about 10
times less and then others and see even further it.
The idea is you don't, if one thing is blown up, it's not
going to like ruin the whole budget, right?
That's that's part of it. And sort of tracking these
drones everywhere. Absolutely.
We, it's multi lateration. We use a thing called coherent
distributed networking where we're able to have multiple
things work with each other like like as one unit.
And so we can put two systems 4 kilometers apart and you
basically have a radar that's 4 kilometers in diameter, which is
really big and it's a fraction of the cost.
So it's survivable and we can upgrade it and update it over
the air and at the edge. And then we have we're very
Expeditionary. So, you know, two of us on this
call could carry this into a place and see further than
anybody else, as was was validated by a, a a combatant.
And and so this it's, it's a fascinating, you know, I didn't
think for me, you know, when I was leaving investment banking,
I didn't think I was going to be slinging radar.
Have you carried one around with somebody?
You're saying any two of us could carry it?
Have you? Have you fact checked that?
Like if you try are you? Well, no, we we like that's how
we put it. That's how we put it in places.
But but but what was great for me was the team.
You know, it's an amazing team. Our our two Co CEOs, Beau Maher
is, is literally a genius, right, that has leading this
tech John Tennant has been in on the kind of one of the early
godfathers of, of defense investing and was doing it
before before anybody else. We have PhDs folks that are
mentioned in in Nobel prizes, which I think is pretty cool.
We have a Navy SEAL. We have folks that have served
and then we just have some amazing engineers and and and
and and operators who are been on the other edge, right.
And the thing that ultimately it's hard for many people to
understand this because of our ability to see further, that
gives the war fighter 5 to 10 more minutes.
When you're getting shot at or bombs are dropped on your head,
5 to 10 more minutes is an attorney.
An attorney to understand. It's an attorney to decide what
you could do. It's a turn.
It's an attorney to be able and it gives you time to act and so
that mission of giving the warfighter additional time is
been great and it's kind of me getting back to my roots.
Well, let me quickly bring it back to drones and air
superiority. Now this came up a lot in the
story that Maddie and I did. We've been writing a lot of
defense tech stories recently. Is the concept is the
possibility of air superiority in a time.
I mean, we're like a military tactician podcast.
Now this is great. Yeah.
Is it is it possible in a time where you can get these, you
know, 10 thousands of dollars Shahed drones, you know, pretty
effectively fighting people, you know, in in in Yemen, you know,
on behalf of Ansar Allah or whatever is going on in Ukraine
right now with, you know, Iranian made and Russian made
drones fighting against American made drones.
I guess, you know, with like Iran, there was this, you know,
Israel was able to to develop air superiority and that allowed
them to shoot, you know, you know, their munitions at the,
the nuclear facilities. But in general, are we like at a
time where we're just post air superiority and everything is
just about these 5 to 10 minute moments of advantage that you
can get at a, you know, day by day basis?
A great question and the answer is no, the days of air superior
not over. However, the days of air
superiority is not a given. And that's why we can no longer
pull out $60 million systems that are defending against
these, against these cheap drones.
So to be able to detect the threats is, is, is possible and
that's that's why we've gotten the investments we have.
We've got the interest. And what do you do about the
threat, what what's called closing the kill chain and this
is, I'm sure Madeline and many of the companies that you saw,
we're trying to work on this. And so an area of opportunity is
really a cheap way of destruction of stopping those
drones from happening. Now you get into a whole nother
kinds of questions. So if you have a drone that's
flying around LAX airport and you take it out, when do you
take it out? How do you take it out?
What do you take it out with? You know, is it big enough?
Is it is it big? Is it small?
Where does it go? So there's a whole number of
conversations about when you defeat that that system.
But to your point, Tom, one of the big, one of the big topics
in Washington, DC right now is Golden Dome.
And, and, and look, Golden Dome is important.
Being able to defend against ICBM intercontinental ballistic
missiles that get launched from one of our adversaries, land, go
into space, come back down and hit something right.
And, and, and defending against this is important.
But the reality is the real threat and the most immediate
threat that's going to happen to us is that van that has a bunch
of drones park next to a power plant.
It's going to be a cruise missile, which is low and slow.
And I'm sure y'all watched a Maverick Top Gun 2.
Top Gun. Maverick.
Yeah, Top. Gun Maverick.
Yeah, go on. Great move speaking my leg,
right? Yeah, but that part where they
all had to fly real low under the radar, like that's a
reality. Like that is not just some
Hollywood Fang, you know, that's a reality in in real life.
And that's what cruise missiles and drones, you know, are able
to get under and take advantage of terrain masking and fly under
the radar. So you got to be able to see
that stuff. And that is probably the more,
the more likely threat because it's cheaper.
Our adversaries are, are being inventive in developing these,
these kinds of, of systems and we got to be able to protect
against that. But air superiority, domain
superiority is not something we can give up.
And we, and we've been talking a lot about air space.
And part of Golden Dome is defending things in space.
But space is, is truly a, a contested environment.
Now the Chinese are, are building satellites that have a
claw. OK, let me tell you, the only
reason you have a satellite with a claw is you're going to grab
something and knock something else out.
And most people don't realize people like space space, who
cares, right? The amount of stuff that happens
in space that that impacts us terrestrially is super important
from the GPS and how we get around to our our
telecommunications. So that's another area that is
really kind of cutting edge and a lot of investments in the tech
space are going into the space. I met with this, you know,
company that was, you know, considering the, it's called
Starpath. They're building the devices to
help us, you know, colonize Mars really moon shot idea, but
they're talking about Mars as, you know, like a frontier that
we want our people on, you know, as as as we go into space and
space you said remains uncontested.
A lot of this investment is really looking to the future in
that part of the country where you're head company's
headquartered right now. But that sort of gets to what I
was going to ask. You know, it's like, OK, Mars,
like, it's good, good to have a position in there someday.
But what is like, what is the war that this defense tech
industry is building for? Like you said in the beginning,
this idea, OK, we're learning a lot from Ukraine about how war
is being fought. Maybe we'll be in this war, you
know, supporting this war for a long time.
And do you think it is about Ukraine?
Obviously there's this like, will we have conflict with
China? I mean, I personally, you know,
and I think I've said on the podcast before, I feel like
we're in this very weird political moment where the right
has a lot of hostility to China, but doesn't necessarily seem
like it's psyching itself up to go to war over Taiwan.
So I don't, I don't personally see, at least with the the
current elite Republican elite, like where we're going to war
with China. I'm yearning for the simple days
of post 911 when we knew we were fighting terrorists and what
kind of war it was had. And so the defense industrial
complex knew what to build. Like, what are all these
companies? What war are all these companies
aligning around to fight? Well, even around Ukraine too,
you, you have people like David Sachs who would be happy.
I think he's consistent on this point to pull the plug tomorrow
and stop all support for Ukrainian troops.
Right, there's such a divide within.
War. There's such a divide between
China hawkishness and what a future conflict with China could
look like combined with pretty, you know, isolationists.
Like we don't intervene. Like, why are we spending our
resources on this kind of thinking?
So I mean, also with all this build up like is there, you
know, what do you think about the possibility that this could
just, you know, be turned off too, you know, like the money if
if conflict doesn't end up happening.
So, so I've learned not to try to prognosticate about what's
going to happen in the future because anything's possible.
But here, here are a few things we do know.
Here's a few things. Vladimir Putin has made it very
clear what his intentions are. He is trying to re establish the
territorial integrity of the USSR, period, full stop.
Right. Like this is his intent.
You know what happened with Transnistria, W Ocasio Moldova,
You know, like it's a long list of what Vladimir Putin is trying
to do. I just came back from the Center
for European Policy Analysis, invited me to go to Denmark and
Norway to talk about autonomy in the Arctic Circle, right?
And, and our friends over there are Scandinavian and Nordic
friends. The Arctic Circle is about what
the, how the Russians are trying to control that in order to have
a second strike capability on the United States, right?
The, the Russians have made this very clear.
So we have to be prepared for that.
So there's no debate now how we prepare what we should do.
Oh, and by the way, I think it's better to deal with Vladimir
Putin, the Russians by spending 2% of the.
Right. Obviously I'm aligned with that.
I feel like the Democrats are aligned with that, old school
Republicans are aligned with that.
Everybody but like one guy and Tucker Carlson seem to be
aligned with that. But it's just like you never
know if the mood is going to change or where where things are
going to go. Because guess what?
My brother who sells cable here in San Antonio, TX, you know,
he's like what? How does this affect, affect me?
NATO has been one of the most important alliances in the
world. 70 years of peace and prosperity in Europe has allowed
the United States to have a trading partner.
That has increased our economy, has increased our way of life.
Now China, we know that the Chinese government is trying to
surpass the United States of America as the sole global
superpower. And they're going to do that in
about 17. I think it's 17 to 22 different
technologies. They are the the the Xi Jinping
wants to re establish and reunify China.
That means bringing in Taiwan. Now, will we defend Taiwan?
It's a very good question. I know the answer.
You talk privately with people in Washington DC Republicans and
Democrats recognize the importance of that.
But we have to be prepared for that.
The Chinese are trying to create the dominance in space.
The Chinese are trying to go to the moon.
They're trying to build a physical structure on the moon.
Why are they trying to build a physical structure on the moon?
Because it gives, it's easier to continue doing operations down
terrestrially if you have an actual presence on the moon.
And so, so part of these things that we have to be prepared for
this, we still got to worry about what is Iran's response
going to be, right? What's happening then?
Is there going to be another terrorist organization or group
to do things? We know narco traffic contes are
bringing in drugs into the country using like these are all
the things that we have to be prepared for.
But the thing that's missing, and I think all three of y'all
have explained this, is we haven't explained to the voting
public why all these things matter and why we should be
spending hard earned federal tax dollars towards these efforts
and these initiatives. And at the end, it's to ensure
that the United States of America has stays and the most
important economy and power in the world.
And, and one way to do that is to our hard power and our soft
power. And we got to have friends.
Do you think we will have a new one or two new Silicon Valley
primes in a decade? For sure, for sure.
Because the existing primes are weak and will fall out or.
Just I mean, Andrew has basically, I mean Palantir is
basically they're, they're a $500 billion company at this
point. And then Andrew?
Software, Andrew, that's more. But Andrew is like, look, I
believe me, it would be a more interesting story for me.
But I have not gotten a single person to tell me that they they
don't have the goods to actually be able to deliver the things
that the military wants. Maybe you can be that guy.
Maybe you can you can be the Andrew naysayer because Palmer
lucky bothers me. Believe me, it would be a great
story. I was a big Clarkson fan, which
I take personally. Well, well, Palmer and I spent
some time on the border when I was in when I was in Congress.
We were, we were humping through Carrizo Kane in Valverde County.
And because I was talking about making, we need a smart wall and
some guy named Palmer lucky calls me.
He's like, I got your small smart wall.
And I was like, have you been on the border?
And you know, we took him and Brian Shrimp and and some of
those guys down to the border. So, so look, I think what what
they have built is fantastic. I think Palantir as your
example, but but absolutely the the the innovation, the ability
to scale it. We're seeing some some companies
will there be a roll up in the future of a lot of these
companies? Who knows.
But having another defense prime that's involved in hardware?
Absolutely. And and like I said, that's what
we're trying to build on that Chaos industries as well.
As how? How much do you think you know
the government people see it has you start up folks versus like
every company having its own brand?
Or how much does one company sort of screwing up hurt
everybody versus you think people are savvy enough to know
these are different efforts? Think, I think the the US
military buyers are sophisticated enough to know the
difference, right. And, and look, it's like
anything, it's pattern recognition, you know, people
that when they come that, you know, they're probably could be
inaccurate or they're adding a little bit more yeast into that,
into that story. And so, so this is, this is
about testing evaluation, right? Like nothing is done by a
handshake. And when it comes to DoD, you
got to drag your equipment somewhere, prove it can do that
thing, and you got to do that thing multiple times.
And so, so I, but, but look, there's, there's frustration
with the folks that have been doing this for decades.
There's frustration when people that have been doing it for for
for only a couple months that is going to continue exist, but
those are going to be successful are the ones that deliver and
and that gets known very quickly.
What? Was your yeast putting a little
yeast in it or like this sort of both insanity and people over
inflating their startups. I don't know what was your read
seen a bunch of inhaling a bunch of defense tech startups at once
or what's what you read on the insanity level right now?
Yeah. I mean, you know, it's hard not
to get like, really rah, rah. We're going to take on China
when you're down there for a little bit if you go hang out.
Drinking the kool-aid too much? Hang.
Out the there's a, there's a tiki bar in El Segundo.
Well, I don't know if you've been to the purple Orchid, but
that's where everyone hangs out. It's if you go there too long,
you get a little, you know, let's go to the moon.
But I think there's a ton of enthusiasm, right?
And I'm sure will, you've seen it there.
But a lot of these guys, you know, I don't not all of these
teams necessarily have what I would say like in some cases,
maybe you maybe other, you know, generals on their board, people
from Congress, people with, you know, intelligence information
guiding them going into this. So is that going to be a
hindrance? Like, at some point, do they
need to have, you know, kind of the adult in the room to make it
work? That's that's always been a
Silicon Valley problem, right? Like lots of, you know, Uber
famously Travis, like personal did some of the like adults in
the room, you know, so there haven't there have been Silicon
Valley companies that have been good at sort of saying, no,
we're never we're never going to learn the lessons of the big
industry because we're trying to disrupt them.
On the other hand, you know, selling the government.
Well, what is it? What is the adults in the room?
What is the, what is the adult in the room really mean for
defense tech? It's really about like, listen,
if you want to milk the government, if you want to get
like all those dollars for a product that maybe doesn't work
for 10 to 15 years, here's how you do it.
That's, that's the game here. We're we're, we're primes.
We do. And real cynicism from Tom.
Yeah, I know what? I'm saying we know the question
is on on the podcast is. Come on, I look at those
watching Martin stock. Prices.
It's OK, brother. Yeah, how's that F35 doing?
So, so, So what is the adult in the room to kind of hit all
these these kinds of questions? Yeah.
The government has a sale cycle just like anybody else has.
It's just longer and it's more complicated.
And so so the ability to know the right people and translate
what things happen. A senior general may slap
somebody on the back and say, man, I love your products.
I want to be your be your advocate.
And then often times that company runs off be like, we're
going to get a government contract tomorrow.
It's like, no, it doesn't work that way, right?
And so, so part of it is understanding that sales cycle
that happened in the government that that says, hey, the cut the
bravado, right? Let's go in and demonstrate the
how this thing works, right? Look for for us, it's, you know,
we've had people be like your products too cheap, right?
Like like, like, like in by cost, right?
Like it's expensive. See, that's what I'm talking
about. That's.
What I'm talking about it's like, but it's like, look, the
cost is the cost and this is the value of what you have to do in
order to survive where we the future of warfare.
So we're trying to bring a different system to people.
So having folks that understand a very opaque complicated
process, if you don't have that, it's going to be hard,
especially if you don't have the capital to last a significant
period of time. Yeah, how much he's the
government willing to sort of say, we know you haven't totally
figured this out. Like you're being open, not your
company, but like this hypothetical startup that it's
like we but we want this so bad that effectively we're almost an
investor by sort of paying you some money to keep building it.
Is that something that's happening, or it's more like,
no, you need to get this locked down with your Silicon Valley
investors before you bring it to us?
So there's some of that, right? Like this is where the color of
money and the types of money, the types of of contracts, you
know, Sibber grants, small business grants, Karetas, you
know, this is working with the government on a particular thing
that they need. The problem with some early,
early startups is the the articulation of the need and the
problem is often times classified.
So if you don't have it's one of these chicken or egg problems.
But to go and understand this complicated classified problem,
to address that problem if you don't know the details.
And so everybody talks in vague, opaque terms.
And sometimes that that, that that kills, it slows, it slows
the process down. And that goes back to having
people that have spent time, you know, I was on the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, right?
Like, like having, you can have some of these broader
conversations. When I was in Congress, one of
the things that I try to do was to be able to give people
companies, you know, it was a kind of like a new
classification where they can be explained a problem.
Look, I get it. You should have ATSA top secret
clearance if you're going to be engaging with government
systems, interacting with our our a man and control models.
But to hear a problem and try to solve it, to tweak your widget,
we got to do a better job of articulating that and we could
see some things move. But but yet some of that
conversation is happening. And that's why companies getting
all the the i's dotted and T's crossed to have classified
systems is important because you learn more about the specific
requirements. The Golden Dome, how loose do
you think it is or fixed? Like is it shoot down things
like the Iron Dome in Israel or is it generally defend us in
lots of different types of companies you think also?
Did they really just pitch Golden Dome to Trump?
As in, like, you know how you like the Iron Dome, but you know
how it's not gold because you like gold.
Well, well, I think. You have a golden version of
that. Change happened because Iron
Dome was was copyrighted. Really.
I didn't know that. That's fast.
Who? Owns that IP.
But but look, is it I didn't know that.
So yes, it is the shoots make sure that at the space layer
that you know comes on called the transport layer, something
leaves like boost phase, which is when it first gets shot out
of the ground from a missile silo.
You want to try to hit it there. Then when it goes into space,
right, trying to stop it while it's in space, that's where a
lot of the focus and attention of Golden Dome is now in the
terminal phase, when it comes back in to the atmosphere to to
come down, you know, that means you've missed the other two
times. And it's like, holy smokes, this
is getting real and you got to do it.
So, so there's needs to be some improvement there.
And so yes, it is, it is ICBM's, it's hypersonics, it's glide
vehicles, basically something that is basically falling out of
space and it's harder to detect in the sea.
And, and then and then what I think is a major component is
what we call the underlayer. This is cruise missiles, the the
county Uas's. And so yes, like, like this is
complicated. General good line has been given
a difficult task. A lot of the services have
already developed some of these kinds of capabilities.
So part of that is bringing it into one kind of command
structure. Right.
I would hope like if somebody shoots a missile at us right
now, we have some plan, right? I guess this is sort of the I
assume I thought we could deal with that like are we not
capable of if somebody. Fires a missile.
There's a lot that you. Can't say you're not.
There's only one way to find out there.
Just look at, just look at, look at, look at the 12, the 12 day
war. I think that's what we're
calling it in between Israel and Iran.
So the Israelis shooting everything down was not just the
Israelis by themselves, right, right.
And, and so, so part of this and This is why our partnerships and
our alliances matter. A lot of times you, you shoot
that thing down before it leaves the airspace of the adversary
who's shooting it right. And, and so, so, so that's why
this is layered. And, and, and again, you're
never going to see a PowerPoint presentation that says these are
the three things we can't do right, because that's super
classified and we don't want our adversaries in order to know
that. But there is a lot of stuff,
let's just say I sleep well at night.
I sleep well at night, knowing that we can, you know what we're
able to, to, to defend it. But but, but this is evolving
and changing and moving at a speed that none of us, that none
of us can, can understand. On golden Dome too.
I mean, how much do you think Elon really fucked himself by
getting into the fight with Trump?
Because it seemed like SpaceX was sort of a shoo in to win a
huge amount of golden Dome money.
But it's unclear to me now how much his falling out with Trump
is, is going to cause, you know, them to actively look for an
alternative. I mean, is there, is there
really an alternative to SpaceX ultimately with with a lot of
these kind of higher level satellite based defense systems?
Well, so here's what's fascinating.
I think there is going to be a lot there.
There's several companies that could could potentially get to
where SpaceX is at a fraction of the time.
It is fascinating to me how space has has become a real
commercial enterprise even in the short period of time that
I've been I've been in Congress. So so again, I, I think SpaceX
is a is an important company to to American National security.
What they may win or not when I I don't have you.
A former congressman hasn't forgotten hasn't forgotten all
his tricks. I did not hear Elon and fucked
your answer there. There's some other interesting
stuff. I'll let you we'll let you not
let Tom bait you on that. I wanted to talk before we run
out of time about just open AI. I mean, you were on open a eyes
board. You know, a funny sort of
footnote of history is, you know, you, you're, you depart
and that sort of helps to leave room for the the board mutiny
after you leave. I don't know if you've said
anything about where you stand, but yeah, I'd love any sort of,
I don't know, takeaways from working with Sam, your time at
Open AI and your views on that industry.
Well, my, my time at Open AI was, was fantastic, right?
I got to know Sam. I held the first hearing on AI
in Congress and, you know, I thought we were going to be
having conversations about me being able to drive, be in my
driverless car barreling down Interstate 10 and have
Whataburger drops by a drone. A man can dream.
It it, it deteriorated into a conversation about, you know,
the drones going to be peeping in people's windows.
That's delivering. It's like the FedEx, you're not
worried about the FedEx guy peeping in your window, right?
But so, so I did that and I wrote the first national
strategy on AI. So that's why I got to know, got
to know, Sam, go on the board. It is.
It's fascinating how people didn't think that, you know,
generative AI was we get to where it was in the wild, being
inside and having access to, to ChatGPT or we call GPT 3 and GPT
4 before it, before it came public.
I only walked away from the board because I, I ran for
president and I had away from, from all of my, my, my had to
step away from all my commercial activities.
So everybody knew about this. I still don't know why the coup
happened and and when you look after kind of whenever we
figured out what was going on and you had all the employees
basically say, hey, we're walking.
If Sam's not not not put back in place is I think testament.
These are the same people that were working on safety issues
and things like that. It's fascinating.
There's a number of legal battles that are happening.
I'm curious to where things would get learned through
discovery in that process or really happening from the by the
from the coup lotters. Interesting.
Yeah. But in the end, in the end, I
think what Sam and the team and people like Mira, I know Mira
Mirati is not not there anymore have built is is is a pretty is
a pretty fantastic tool. You decided to go into sort of
defense rather than AI, obviously the two hottest
sectors. Was that just a matter of your
like expertise or you were more bullish overall on sort of?
Look, I, I think, I think it's a mix of things, right?
I, I, we had an amazing team, right?
You know, being able to have a team of great scientists,
engineers, operators, that investors and that was awesome.
That chaos. Yeah, chaos.
Yeah, Doing it with people doing a mission where we're helping
the war fight. It was awesome.
And then to have a product that has been worked in places like
Ukraine and the Middle East, like those were all all some of
the things. So the area that I think is
fascinating and doesn't get enough conversations is this
debate between PLMS and and PLMS personal language models or
smart language models. NVIDIA just came out with this
research report about how we look at like a gentic AI that
the future of that is these small language models to be
efficient. So personal language models, you
know, entities like personal AI companies like that is really
fascinating to me because it solves the security concern
about, hey, this is my stuff. Like I don't want all of my
information or corporation being able to get accessed by, by
others to be able to wall that off.
And then you address the issue, personal language models, it
addresses the hallucination issue because it restricts the
ability to respond only to the stuff that it's been, it's
ultimately been trained on. And so I think that's a, that to
me is an interesting, fascinating area in the broader,
the broader space around AI right now.
Do you see smaller models having, you know, I mean, now
that you're in back in defense world defense applications, you
know, for like edge cases and things like that?
For sure, there's, there's, you know, in the, in the
intelligence community, the, the need and desire for these small
language models is super important a lot because of the
issue of security around the information that you're that
you're putting it in right. And so, you know, also ideas are
like having a second brain, right?
Like this is, this is a concept that I think is is is is
definitely to be able to be used in in defense and and
intelligence. I wanted to ask one question
just sort of like, I guess, you know, important in America right
now. Barack Obama, you know,
retweeted Ezra Klein column today where he was talking about
ICE and sort of saying you could see it as sort of like one of
these optical illusion images. On the one hand, you know, Trump
got elected saying, OK, we're going to increase border
security. We're going to like deport
people who shouldn't be here. Like obviously we're going to
fund things like ICE. On the other hand, it feels like
a very loyal Trump sort of a government apparatus.
I think ICE is like perhaps bigger than many of the, you
know, agencies and for entire countries elsewhere.
So it's enormously large. Obviously you dealt with this as
sort of a having a border district.
How authoritarian do you think things are at the moment or what
is what is your view on this sort of scope increase of ICE
and these sort of authoritarian risk here?
Well, again, the the specific as a client article.
I, I don't know, Yeah. Yeah, I know.
We. You.
You.
See this happening? Right.
And and so look at at the end of the day, I've worked with the,
the men and women and ICE and they're doing their jobs, you
know, to make sure people that are not supposed to be in the
country get, you know, not put, you know, are deported or are
not here. And so has there been abuse of,
of power in in instances? Yes, You know, I talked about
that a lot when, when I was in when I was in Congress.
But look, with, with great power, you know, you got to make
sure you're doing things the right way.
So the, the specifics that, you know, not really, really matter.
When I, when I see things here in Texas and people that I work
with in Texas, they're making sure folks that shouldn't be in
our country aren't in our country.
Now, I also think on the, the flip side, we should be talking
about is how do we get, how do we improve and streamline legal
immigration to get people here the right way, right?
I want want more foreign kids to be going to our great
universities and when they graduate from our universities,
I want them to stay and go right Lindo and all those work at
those companies that Madeline got to got to see.
And so, so, you know, we have benefited from the, the, the
brain gain of every other country for the last couple of
decades. And I want to continue to see
that. And I think both of these issues
of making sure people that shouldn't be in our country and
that we get more people that we want in our country, you got to
balance those two things out. And and there may not be as much
of the focus on the on the on the ladder, you know, in the
last couple of months. You think you'll ever run for
office again? Yeah, sounds like a guy who's
still thinking about running for office.
Well, look, look, my, you know, the I am.
It's a fool's errand. Think about anything other than
the next election. And definitely, I'm definitely
not on the next one. Look, I'm I'm enjoying my time
at chaos, right? I just had a daughter.
She's she's six months old next week.
Congrats. No, it's, it's amazing.
My wife is due in October, so. We Oh, well, look, I'll give you
a whole. I'll give you wonder weeks.
The one weeks app is like is like a must.
Is it? Is this one of the photo apps
where you sort of keep track of every?
Or no, this is like this when you, this is when your your
child is going to be fussy. This is a 2 week period where
your life is going to be brutal, you know, and it kind of warns
you of the things. Two weeks.
No, no, like this two weeks and then the next two weeks it's
like I. Don't know a promise?
3 days. It's going to be cute, but get
ready because you know. I know somebody was just telling
me, oh, you know, the first two weeks they lull you into a sense
that this is going to be OK. You're like, oh, it's overrated.
And then they're a terror. You know, I feel like everybody
has their own story. So I will say this, this will be
my this is our secret weapon. Brown bear, Brown bear.
But the brown bear. Brown Bear.
Sure, Eric Carl can't beat. It yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's it's it's that has that has solved many a problems in the in
the herd household. Nice.
Thank you so much for joining the show.
This is great. Yeah.
Thanks, Will. This was a lot of fun.
We'll have you back next time. We didn't even get to discuss
Afghanistan. I kind of want you to solve that
for us. Yeah, you should come back and
solve that and I'll let you know if I'm ever visiting my uncle
anytime soon and back. Come on.
And when you come back to El Segundo, you know, come on.
Yeah, and then I'm going to come to the Chaos office tour, if you
love. That's right.
Well, hope to have you back soon.
Thanks so much for joining. Us.
Thank you.