Katherine Boyle on Shawn Ryan

24:52The op -ed page is saying, well, maybe we should return to religion. Are you serious? The New York Times is putting this out? Yeah, I mean, they've been putting out some stuff recently where it's like the funniest one, the op -ed page from last week, had three different stories about the declining birth rate. Three different stories about what is wrong that we are not having enough children. And that used to be a conservative, social conservative, religious person talking point about having more babies. And now the New York Times is worried. You know, and they're saying, there was another article that was so funny, I wish I had the actual headline.

25:22It was like, we don't see men anymore. Like, where did the men go? The men need to come back. Come back to us. Like, it's a woman talking about how there's a gulf between men and women. And I'm just thinking, at least they see there's a problem. They don't know the reason for the problem. Like, that's a whole backstory. story, well, you know, like hopefully they'll learn at some point, but they see there's a problem. And so I think I'm at least optimistic that we seem to be kind of turning the corner on, okay? Like it's good to have families. It's good to think about where you want to live, where how you want to raise your children.

25:54And hopefully that will lead to asking big questions about what does it mean to have a good family and what does it mean to be a good person? Well, I had no idea the New York Times was putting pieces out like that. It's fun to read just for opposition and research. It's a fun thing to read just to see, okay, you might not agree with what they're saying, but it's like, wow, they wouldn't have published that five years ago. When did you notice, by the way? Like, when did you notice that men have... Men have disappeared? From society. Or that they have no interest in relationships with women or that they have no interest in marriage.

26:30And it's a... But it was interesting because they're article sort of blamed men for everything. And it's like, well, yeah, like next week they need to have the men's saying, why do the women disappear? Why do the women change, right? And I think that is a huge problem of the, why we have this birth collapse is that really, there's just been a full on assault attack on the family for the last 30, 40 years. And so it makes sense why you see fewer and fewer people having children. How bad is our birth decline? Oh, it is, it is shockingly bad. So we are now at 1 .6 per woman. Our replacement rate is 2 .1.

27:04I thought we were at 2 .1. It's been about, I think, eight years that we passed the 2 .1. And then there was a mild uptick in COVID. So people were hopeful. They were thinking, well, maybe it was just an anomaly those last few years. But then there was a steep decline since COVID as well. So yeah, we're at 1 .6. And the millennials, I mean, the millennial generation, I think it's something like we're older millennials. I think it's 1980 to 1986. It's called the Elder Millennial Generation. Something like 58 % of us have children. That's the lowest in history. So it is going to be a shock, a huge shock when our generation ages and there's no one there to do important services.

27:49I mean, there's a lot of not only economic reasons but just the social fabric of what's about to happen of not having children. I mean, this is how civilization's die. Let's go and do it. How is it going to affect us? So it's something I've talked about. Yeah, so why it's the economic situation's going to get very bad. When you think of, you know, the boomers are the largest, I think, at generational cohort, they're living longer than they ever have. They're healthier, but they're getting to ages, right? Like who takes care of boomers when they're in their 80s and 90s? They're at nursing homes.

28:25You need service workers. You need people to be able to take care of these aging people. It used to be that you were taken care of in the family. We don't do that anymore. Now we have nursing homes. It's very rare that someone moves in when they're at a certain age with their children and they're taking care of. So those jobs, which used to be filled by service workers, there's no one who's going to be able to fill that. On every economic dimension, if you do not have a generation of workers, of people paying into the system, social security, I mean, it's so security's a huge issue, but if you don't have people paying into the system, doing the labor, being able to do the things for the elder generation, society starts crumbling.

29:03And then there's, of course, the social ramifications of not having family is, you know, I'm a firm believer that the most important institution in America is the family. The family used to exist to take care of the people who were weakest, right? Like, it's like, you know, used to have these big families, and sometimes the weakest child would still be living with mom and dad at home, and that was okay. You know, you sort of had empathy for them, but it was like it was the family's responsibility to take care of these people. We quickly moved that to now it's the state's responsibility to take care of these people who, you know, maybe sick in some way, maybe, you know, unable to provide for themselves in some way and it might have psychological issues.

29:40Now the state has to take care of them, which is why you see a lot of these people on the street now because the state does a terrible job of taking care of these people. But as fewer and fewer children exist, It's like you're not going to have a society that can provide for itself, that can continue into perpetuity. And the exponential decline of this too, where it's like, it sounds, oh, well, we went from 2 .1 to 1 .6. That can't be that bad. I mean, in a couple of generations, that means that our population has shrunk by half. And a couple of generations? Yeah. And the best example of this, and I wish I had the numbers in front of me, is South Korea.

30:14So South Korea, I think their birth rate is the lowest of any country, any industrialized country. I think it's .9. And when you have fewer and fewer people, no one's doing the jobs. Japan is also heading this way. Their birth rate's quite low. The only sort of argument that people make a sort of the bright side of this could potentially make up for both the labor loss and also just the civilizational collapse is robotics. Right? You could have robots do a lot of these jobs. But I think it is a very dangerous thing to say we're going to depend on automation and robotics to make up for the fact that humans are disappearing.

30:51I mean, even China's dealing with this. You know, they had the one childbirth policy and then they boarded all of the girls. So now they just have... Extremely short -sighted. And I think the bulk, we're always talking about how dangerous China is. How China's growing and power and importance, the most short -sighted thing they have ever done to their society that will eventually catch up with them is the demographic collapse that they are going to feel because of one child. Like, they're trying everything now, too. They're trying to end divorce, right? Like, so there's now a policy, at least that I read about in China, where you have to have a 90 -day cool -down period so that you don't divorce.

31:31They're trying to encourage young women to have children, young women don't want to have children. They're bringing in women from other countries from what I understand. Yeah. They're sending them out to go find wives in the Philippines, Thailand, Japan, everywhere. Yeah, but they recognize it's a massive problem. And I've probably recognized it before even we did. I think in some ways, the conversation sort of hopped from the social conservative sort of church -going movement of gosh, like this is a huge problem to sort of the, I would say, the sort of techno -optimist Elon Musk talking about the birth rate is a big deal.

32:08It's now become sort of, I think, an issue that's okay for polite society and sort of liberal, you know, New York Times to be talking about, like, this is actually a real, real issue. So, first step is acknowledging it, but it is, you know, 1 .6 is a long way to come back from, especially with a millennial generation that, you know, waited way too long to have children. I think the kind of under, there's a couple underlying factors that I don't think we talk enough about that have caused this is when you look at sort of our parents generation, a lot of people didn't go to college, they started adulthood at 18.

32:40And sort of the sort of, you know, fertile window, you could say for women was between 18 and 40, say. Like that was sort of the nominal window when you could have children and it was socially acceptable. And then we had this incredible push against fertility and it grinsed, you know, having a family young that I think the millennial has really caught window. It's like everyone needs to go to college, extended adolescence, like use your 20s to experiment and enjoy a life, like, you don't really need to be focused on having a family. And what happened is the average age now Now, of a first time, I think, mother in America is 28.

33:13So 10 years after that 18, so you've cut the window in half. The average age of a first time father in America, I think, is 31. That's for both college educated and not college educated. If you add on college on that, which I think is a real issue, it's even higher. It's like the average age of a first time mother is 30. So you can understand how the birth rates being cut in half if the entire window when you can have children is cut in half. because people are so focused on career and finding themselves and sort of their extended adolescence rather than focusing on building a family earlier. You're just gonna have fewer children.

33:45And then when you have fewer marriages, that also cuts it. So it's fewer people getting married, fewer people are gonna decide to have children, which from a millennial perspective to have 58 % of people only having kids. I mean, that's compared to what, 89 % of our parents' generation had children. Wow. Is the baby, do you know if the baby of a woman generation is, are they still the biggest? I believe they're still the biggest, yes. So this has always been a question about that I've had. It's just, you know, what? It's just real estate, but I mean, you see all these 55 plus communities being built.

34:21I mean, you live in Florida. I came from Florida everywhere. They're everywhere. I mean, the village is like, you know, about the village. Yes, yes. It's great. Yeah, there's a, what is going to happen to all these 55 plus communities when that, you know, when that massive generation dies off? Yeah. I mean, are we just going to have, is it going to create a housing crisis? Yeah. I think it'll be a housing crisis, fewer people. And also like our, our, our millennials going to want to, you know, the millennials in, in Gen X or in Gen X is actually a pretty small generation. Are they going to want to move into those places?

34:56Definitely not. You know, in some ways, the bigger question, I think, is also, you know, you've had people on who've talked about longevity, people are living a lot longer, too. Which means they're going to have to work a lot longer, which means they have to be healthier for a lot longer. And so, you know, if you have people living a lot longer and fewer and fewer people who are being born, it's just, it's society inverts on itself. You have a very top -heavy society of people who are older, who can't do the work that needs to be done to actually protect a country. Has any nation reversed this?

35:29You know, not six, like I haven't seen anything recently successfully. There have been some attempts, like you know, some people have pointed to countries like Hungary that are now paying. I think there's a, there's a policy in Hungary where if you have more than four children, you don't have to pay taxes. There's, so there's some extreme policies where you've seen that. The one place, so the one anomaly in the Western world or in the industrialized world where where they are well above birth rate replacement is Israel. And so there's questions about, is it because it's a religious society, they have a pretty large religious orthodox community, that kind of makes up for the rest of the secular society that doesn't have children.

36:08If you have a family of eight, nine, and 10, that's 10 % of your population, then you can make up for some who are not having any. But we don't have that in America. We don't have as many, I would say, we have more than Europe, which Europe is really the cause. really on the decline though. Really on the decline. The Islamic population is reproducing in the vast array. Yes, but even counting immigrant and Islamic population in Europe, they're still at countries, I think Italy is 1 .2. I think France is 1 .5. Everyone always looks at the Nordic nations as sort of the beacon of how we should be doing policy in the US because they pay for free healthcare for mothers.

36:47They pray for free IVF, different things that people say we should experiment with, their population decline is worse than ours. They're at 1 .2, 1 .3, 1 .5. And so I think what's fascinating to me about this is that this isn't a country -specific problem or a cultural -specific problem. It's really all industrialized nations. And there's probably healthcare reasons for it. There's a lot of research on that. Yeah, I mean, I think men are 70 % less have a fertility rate of 70 % less than it was roughly about a hundred years ago. Yeah, sperm cancer are down, you know, the sort of fertile window for women again, cut in half.

37:26It's, yeah, so there's something about the medical side of this and the health side of this that's also happening. But you can't ignore the memes and sort of the cultural destruction that happened since the 1970s in my opinion, which is family bad, you know, individual good, right? Like you shouldn't have to sacrifice yourself for the needs of your family. And the minute that people across the Western world started believing in sort of this like individualism, that's where you see just the family completely destroyed. And just fewer and fewer families means fewer and fewer children. And we're finally waking up to the consequences of that, which is a society that can't grow its GDP.

38:06I mean, the economist version of this is it's a society that can't grow its GDP and that can't remain successful. But I think the human part of this is it's a dying society. It's a frail society. I mean, how do we fix it? I mean, I think you have to change the culture. I think you cannot change a spiritual and a cultural problem with economic policies. So the sort of easy answers that a lot of economists and sort of people who study to say is, okay, well, we need to make health care free, make birth free, make women feel more, you know, feel that they have more benefits, maybe pay women to do work, right?

38:42Like, pay them to stay at home. And you know, some of those ideas like, you know, I could say, you know, our healthcare system is expensive. It is expensive to have a baby in America. So making that cheaper on the margins, you know, might affect a mother who says, okay, I have two children. Maybe I want to have a third. But I actually think the bigger problem is cultural and spiritual. I think it's the cold. I think it's the culture too. I mean, you had, I think it stemmed from, you know, the feminist movement. Yeah. You know, where it was, get out, get a job, provide for yourself. You can do everything which, yes, but it deterred women from having children.

39:18And then women that do have children. I mean, it's almost like me and my wife talk about this all the time. If you say you're a stay -at -home mom, it's like it's frowned upon in a lot of areas in the country. And it's like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like frowning upon us on a stay -at -home mom. I mean, what's more important than raising your kids? And then you took, and then, I mean, and then I don't even know how single mothers do it. I mean, it's, yeah, the hardest job in the world. It's, you have to make it okay. And you have to take care of the single moms out there. Totally. You know, it's, it's scary.

39:59Totally. And I think about it, it's terrifying. I don't know how they make ends meet. But yeah, I think the culture change is an air mount for that. A lot of the research, it's always fascinating to me, the things you can't talk about. We can talk about the problem, but there's certain things we can't talk about that add to it. And you'll see economics is always a thing people want to talk about, because it's like, oh, if we could just fix it with an economic policy. But no one ever talks about what you said, which is that feminism did change the memes and the culture. But at the same time, no one talks about when you introduce birth control into a society, until women control your own destiny.

40:43That is a huge part of it. All of these declines in the industrial world started at the exact same time that the pill was introduced. We're not going to go back to a world that is pre -pill. That's just never going to happen across both Western society and industrial world. But I think you actually have to acknowledge all the factors. The fact that a lot of the people doing this research won't even acknowledge, oh, something magical changed in the 60s and the 70s, related to health care, related to how we, you know, abortion was made legal in 1973, other nations followed. When you look at those as inputs into this, into the story as well, it's like, there's a reason why the birth rate is so low in these countries.

41:18And it's not just an American phenomena, it's a global phenomena. And you have to take into account all of those things. And I just keep coming back to the culture changed. Like, there was something about what we prized and what we made high status in America, or most people, or I shouldn't say most people, but a lot of people chose to have only one to two children, whereas their grandparents generation and their parents generation had three and four. And a society that changes that dramatically in one generation or two generations is unstable, it's completely unstable. Yeah. Let's get back to your story.

41:54So So, son of a priest who left, who left, talked about your uncle. We'll read into as a kid. Gosh, I was, I was a very precocious kid. Again, my dad was much older. I was, I was the youngest. And so I, I was really into the news. I read a lot of books, but extremely precocious. Like, I, I, I loved, you know, like watching things with my parents. I got really into movies growing up. But I was always sort of this very inquisitive kid. My dad coming from the Jesuits kind of taught our family around the kitchen table, the Socratic method, right? Like you need to ask questions that you can't be afraid of the truth.

42:39He was sort of this philosopher king. I love that. I think that's a huge problem nowadays. Yeah, not sitting down on table. Nobody wants questions. No, yes. And not being afraid to be disagreeable. And I think we're a family of disagreeable people but it was really inculcated in me from an early age. So, you know, I was always just interested in, and whatever was happening on the news, whatever was happening in the world, it was a very good student. My parents were not, they didn't really push me. It was sort of a self -driven thing. I always tell the story when I was in third grade. I got one B in my entire life, and it was in penmanship.

43:18And this is my very hard -ass, amazing saint of a mother sat me down, And she was like, it's okay if you get a bean math, it's okay if you get a bee and reading or whatever. But penmanship means you're lazy. You were lazy. And she's like, it's funny, I have the worst handwriting today. My dad had terrible handwriting. Like, you know, some doctor would probably say, I have a genetic thing, but she's like, anyone can write. And you're gonna sit down and you're gonna practice writing penmanship an hour a day. And within like three months, I had the best penmanship of anyone in the class. I was celebrated for it.

43:50But it was like, it was moments like that where my parents were just so involved and so good, where they never need to tell me again, not to work hard, or that I wasn't working hard enough, or that I was lazy in some way. Like, I just kind of, you learn the lesson very quick. And my parents, my mom actually ran my dad's medical practice. And so the sort of our kind of typical life was, you know, they would take us to the office. We saw all the patients with my dad. We worked in the office, like from a very young age. They opened the office on Saturdays because people have to work and they wanted to be there for the patients.

44:25And so we had this really, really tight knit family of work matters, work as a virtue. Everyone works hard. And the kids work hard too. It's not just mom and dad work hard and the kids get to play. It's like, we're gonna work as a family. And then on Saturday nights, we're gonna go to church, the whole, you know, go out to dinner after the whole family with my grandparents who lived down the street. But it was like a very simple life, but it was very focused on working hard. And there was always these sort of stories in my family where, you know, my dad would always say, like, you're not going to be the smartest in the room.

44:57You know, you're not going to be the best at everything. But like, no one is going to outwork a boil. Like, no one is going to outwork you. And I think that was just sort of inculcated in me from from early age. So I did a lot of things. I made a piano. I was really into piano as a kid. I played sports. I wasn't naturally gifted, but you know, it worked hard at it. But I just had this sort of kind of seriousness of, okay, like, we're boils when we work hard. How many siblings? So my dad had six kids. And it was sort of a Brady bench family. So I was the youngest of his six, and they were much older.

45:31Because he was, as I said, he was 55 when I was born. And then my mother, we had two. So they were older and out of the house, but very much they parted the family, half brothers and half sisters. And I always think part of the reason why I was so precocious, this is because I was around, you know, I was, I was millennial, but I was around all these gen excerpts, right? I was around all these older, you know, babysitters and kids who had come through the house who were, you know, in their 20s, and now, not me, now they're in their 60s. But it was, it was definitely this, you know, this sort of, I was the baby sort of absorbing all of this stuff.

46:01And so I grew up really fast, you know, it's like, I was joking about a, movies I watched when I was a kid, my parents took me to see true lies. In 1994, I was eight years old in the theater, you know, it's like seeing these Arnold Schwarzenegger accistered movies, you know, with the seven or eight -year -old kid. I was like, oh, she's the baby, whatever. She'll be fine. So I was, I was an adult by the time I was, you know, by the time I was a teenager. Nice. See, go to college. I know you had Ancherson become a join in the CIA. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was very interested in politics, foreign affairs.

46:38That was like my, my love growing up. I'd say the big thing that happened and before I went to college, my father got very sick. He was chronically ill. So around when I was 12 years old, he had to retire. And I think that's something where if you're a kid that grows up with a chronically ill parent, like you grow up really fast. Like you start, I'm seeing it happen with my friends now, who their parents are getting older and their 60s and their 70s. And it's sort of like the caregiver, caretaker relationship, and then the provider relationship sort of flips. where, you know, like when you're in your mid -40s, you start taking care of elderly parents.

47:13But I had that when I was 12, right? It was like, he had a severe heart attack and then had a chronic condition that made it hard for him to get out of bed. So my mother was an absolute saint. Man, a 12? Yeah. Which is why I also think kids are resilient. And like, my mother, again, an absolute saint, she didn't try to keep it from me. She was like, your father's sick. Doctor thinks he's probably gonna die. But this is suffering. This is, and he's gonna suffer through it, right? He was such a scientist of the man, too, where your fuse to take pain pills, your fuse to succumb to what was happening.

47:50And he actually lived for a while. He lived until I was in college, but he died when I was in college. And I always think the thing that, if you've had to take care of a parent for a while, you're, of course, sad when they're gone. But the other thing that happens is you have this moment of just relief. Like that was the real emotion that I felt was like, wow, my mother had been taking care of him for eight years. And when it happened, I was like, okay, this is the beginning of my life, right? Because when that's all you've known is, okay, I have to take care of my family. That's when I really just had this moment of, okay, maybe I can go do something big now.

48:27Maybe I can go do the thing, I don't have to worry about family or have to think about anyone but myself. I can be super selfish about what I want. And a lot of my friends were thinking about, you know, joining the agency. I actually had a really interesting thing happen where I worked all through college. And I started walking a lady's dog, like this older lady who lived in Georgetown. She was afraid to walk around the neighborhood at 10 .30 at night. So every night, 10 .30 at night, I would leave the library, go to her house, and walk her dog. And over time, I learned that she was the first female station chief at the CIA.

48:58No kidding. Yeah. And like, you know, I'd go into her house and she had like, I mean, in some ways it looks like a room like yours, just like, like, just mementos of a life well -lived. Like, she'd been everywhere, she'd been all over Asia, just had the most incredible stories. She was like, this very demure quiet lady. You would never know, you know, she's beautiful, just lovely, very well -mannered, but, you know, but, you know, polyglot, like, she could speak many languages, you know, but you would never suspect her. And I just, like, I think it was partially spending so much time with her and looking at her life and just thinking, like, wow, this is really cool.

49:34But then also, I grew up during September 11th, too, right? It changed everyone's mind about, okay, what are you going to do? And that's why I wanted to go to Washington and kind of work in foreign affairs and some capacity. And I just said, after my dad, I'm like, I want to do that. I can finally do that. And going back to sort of, I hadn't ever failed at anything. I was one of these kids. I was sort of the, I don't want to say I was a trophy kid, but it's like again, I just worked hard at everything I did. And it was always a view that like if you work hard enough in life, you can get what you want, right?

50:06So I just assumed going into that recruitment, like, oh, I'm a shoe -in, right? Like I'm top -grout, a George Town, like, you know, like I have all these great references, I have these mentors who've done it, right? Like I'll be fine. It's not to say I didn't take it seriously, I did, but I was not prepared for the response I got in 2009, which was after a year and a half in, like, sorry. You just get a letter back from the recruitment and retention center that says, we do not need your services. You can apply three years from now. And I think that was like the first time in my life where I was like, oh my, I don't have a plan B.

50:42Like, oh, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I can't believe that didn't pick you up. What did you wanna do over there? So I mean, I wanna do ops. Like I wanted to just, but the, because I was thinking, yeah. But the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you know, 22, 23 year olds, like they didn't put, they, they sort of had a training program, right? Like it was like you do two or three years. It wasn't an analyst program, but they kind of put you in this sort of path, right? It's the kids who know how to do nothing, right? Like you knew how to do things when you were contracting, but the, the kids who are just out of college, they have sort of a training path for them and then they figure out where they want to go.

51:16And it's funny. Like I, I, you were in the training path. Yeah, so I had done multiple interviews. Yeah, so it wasn't, it was, yeah, I mean, they did multiple rounds of interviews. And I look back on it so funny. I'm like, I know exactly why they didn't pick me. I am not an easy person. I am a disagreeable person. It's like, after eight -hour interviews where they're really trying to get to know you, there's times where I'm like, I know exactly what I said wrong. Like, you're supposed to answer the question of like, why are you wanting to do this? The right answer is you want to serve your country, which is the right answer.

51:47And I said it multiple times, but by like the fifth time they ask it in a different way, I said something that was probably the through line of my life, which is, uh, I just can't stand not knowing. I just can't stand not knowing. And of course, that's like the wrong answer. And to the lady who was interviewing me is credit. She was like, honey, you think you're gonna know in here? Like, you think you're gonna come in here and you're gonna know anything? Like, like, and again, it's like, okay, you have 23 -year -old, like, little girl who's never been told, like, like, get out of here about a joke.

52:21Damn. So, it's on me, like, and they're right, right? Like, I am not the, even today, it's like my colleagues are like, it's amazing you can actually work at a company, right? You were such a disagreeable, and they mean that lovingly. But, like, I am not someone who doesn't say what I think. I'm not someone who takes orders very well. So, I think they probably looked at my character after, you know, it's like spikes in certain areas, like probably very good at getting information and meeting people, talking to people, you know, doing the things that you need to do, but also probably not gonna be able to deal with the culture.

52:55Yeah, probably for the best. Probably for the best. I mean, things always work out the way. And the short amount of time I have known you. Yeah. A lot of things over there would have driven you away to say. Yes, I would, I think she did be a, she did be a favorite, but it was definitely like coming out of college, you know, 24, no idea what I was going to do with my life. And it was sort of serendipitous how I ended up at the Washington Post because I had taken a job and I had friends who were already sort of in and they're like, you got to be in DC, just take a job, but like take any job you can get.

53:27And so I got this kind of ridiculous, like there's a copy editor job, but it was at a newspaper called The Express. So if you've ever been in DC and you've gone on the Metro, it's the free Metro paper that the Washington Post hands out. Everyone, you know, who's ever been on the Metro members this paper loves this paper, sort of the snarky, you know, free, free newsletter thing. And they needed someone who was just good at writing, but unbi -line, so you don't have a record that you worked there, whatever. And I was like, that sounds great. Like I can just, you know, just write during the day for, you know, three to six hours or whatever and then do what I need to do for my real career, my real job, right?

54:02You know, I was so convinced that was going to happen. And so when I got the letter, I was like, wait, wait. I'm just a, right now, I'm just a copywriter. the lowest person on the total pool inside the Washington post without a byline, without anything. I'm not even a real reporter. Like, what am I going to do? Like, what am I going to do? Like, I should probably figure out if I can actually make this a real career. So I sort of, you know, I sort of convinced myself that intelligence isn't that different than reporting. Right? You have sources. You have to have a network of nodes and people who are telling you information about whatever you're covering.

54:37You know, you have to be really good at asking questions. you have to be good at listening, reading people, knowing what's true, knowing what's false, making decisions very quickly. Part of me was like, okay, if I can't do that in the agency, I could do that at the Washington Post. I just have to convince them to let me do it and turned out to be the most opportune time to be in media for a young person. Because I was cheap. I mean, I was making $30 ,000 a year and I would write as much as they wanted I'm like, I have no obligations, right? I can come in on Sundays. I can do whatever story you want me to do.

55:11So I found an editor inside the Washington Post, and she's like, you can write as many stories as you want. We just need people to fill the actual physical paper, because they were slashing the people who were, you know, well -known reporters left and right, because the business was going under. And I was - I was a going under. Oh, I mean, just the business of media with the internet. I mean, everyone thinks that the media really started declining, like maybe 2014, 2015, 2016, but the first wave of real layoffs were like 2008, 2009, where there was just an understanding that Google and then Facebook, but Google really was just eating the lunch of these companies.

55:47The business models of every major newspaper, up until this point, of regional newspapers were classifieds, you know, subscriptions, and then syndication. So syndication, sending out the story, people paying to have to reprint it. That was Google. Google completely took that, right? Like so all the stories would go on the internet for free. No one was paying for the digital copy. The Wall Street Journal figured it out, but none of the other papers did. So they were just hammering subscribers. And then the advertising, it was like, well, if people are advertising online, like why am I going to advertise my store in your newspaper?

56:26No one's reading the physical paper anymore. But they still had it. and they still had subscribers that were reading it. So it was actually a great time to go in and just be like, okay, I'll work for basically, very little, and I'll work a lot and I'll fill your paper. And so after about a year of that, they brought me on full time as a staff writer because I was breaking stories and things as someone who really wasn't affiliated with the paper. But it was not what I wanted to do. It was not like my dream was to be a reporter, but there was something about just being in that place at the right time where I was like, okay, I can make something out of this major setback, or this thing that I thought was a major setback.

57:05And I can learn a new trade, even if it's not the thing that I thought I would be doing. So did you develop your own sources and all of that network? Yeah. How'd you do it? Where'd you start? Well, yeah, I mean, it's a good question because it's also what venture capitalists do. Like, how do you get dropped into a culture you know nothing about, which was the case with VC, and start meeting people and start building up relationships? And I think the interesting thing about doing it as a reporter is they give you a beat. My beat in the beginning was retail and the business of almost like the business of arts and culture.

57:38And then it moved on to nonprofit investigations. So I started researching the Smithsonian Institution and all of the government funded agencies in Washington, D .C. and art agencies and different things and sort of where they were getting their money from and kind of follow the money but if the nonprofit area is. But it started out as like, okay, like you get your assignment and then you just start calling people. And the thing I know you know better than anyone else is like people just love to talk. People will tell you anything if you will sit there and listen. And when you're a 24 or 25 -year -old, it knows nothing.

58:11And you call someone and you say, hey, I'm, you know, this reporter from the Washington Post I was coming to get coffee. I just love to hear more about what you know. Can you show me what I should know about this beat? You do that over and over and over again, and people will tell you what you need to know. And then they start seeing your name in the paper. And then they know that you're the person who's gonna write the story about something. I also think there's something to, some people are really good at listening, and it's a gift growing up in a big family was probably that, allowed Irish family, I learned how to listen.

58:42But I'm always amazed at the stories I would break. It would just be someone coming up to me at a cocktail party or a book party or something. Not even necessarily knowing that I was a Washington Post reporter, finding out and then just kind of sharing, just like just getting it off their chest and me saying, you know, that's actually a really important story. Can I write it? But I think people are desperate to talk and they're desperate to get that type of attention. And so it really, like in some ways, I think the reporting thing was easier than when I got to Silicon Valley and was nobody, right?

59:16I was like, I was a Washington Post in Washington DC, you know? You've already built it. You've already built a network at that point. Yeah, but not a network in Silicon Valley. But you had the fundamentals down. I think you can get dropped into any culture and learn it very quickly. If you know, if you know the types of people that are going to talk to you, and if you're actually willing to listen. What got you, so you're at the Washington Post, what ended it? So I kind of knew it was going to be a temporary thing just because of how bad the business was. I mean, it was all we talked about was, you know, this was before Jeff Bezos bought the paper.

59:53And I actually decided to leave right as he was buying it. And a lot of people said that was the saving grace of the paper. You know, one of the richest men in the world buying it, you know, putting money into it so that it wouldn't go down the drain. But what happened actually was my best friend at the Washington Post, she was the religion reporter. Her husband was in the Navy and he had just left the Navy and he was going to Stanford Business School. And I knew nothing about business school. I was stunned he got in. I was like, I didn't know your husband knew anything about business. I thought he was in the Navy.

1:00:24And she's like, no, no, no. Like the business schools take like 5 % of their class every year. They call them non -traditional candidates, a lot of them are veterans. But they'll take people who know nothing about business to just kind of almost like create a, create a, like, an interesting group of people for the class, right? Like, you're not there because they think you're going to be great at business. They like, they want to create a diverse sort of class of experiences. And she's like, he got in, like, you know, he, he, this is how he got in. Like, he spent hours every day learning the, the GMAT.

1:00:53Like, he, you know, she, she told me kind of how he did it. And I was like, you know, I, I've never had any interest in business until working at the Washington Post where I see this this grand paper just completely collapsing in on itself. Like the most important lesson to me at the Washington Post was it was it was like watching the leadership. It was you know the phrase rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Everyone who worked there was in complete denial that the Internet was changing their business. Are you serious? It was it was shocked it's shocking to me. What is it? Is it ego? It's ego, it's desperation.

1:01:25It's I don't want to lose my job. It's we're we're bigger than this. where the Washington Post, where the brand, you know, where like everyone needs us. But I think this is true of humans that are in these kind of grand institutions, they can't recognize when something's crumbling. You see it happening with universities today, where these universities are sort of in some ways in major crisis because of what the students are doing, and they just can't ever see that things need to be reformed. You know, federal government, too. Can't see that things need to be reformed. But that was certainly like a learning from me where I saw it, because I wasn't wedded to it.

1:01:57I hadn't been there during the heyday where, you know, everyone was getting to fly wherever they wanted. They could be bureau chief of any country they wanted to be bureau chief of. I mean, we had shuttered all of our international bureaus by the time I had gotten there. So it was, it was, it was a paper that was clearly in decline. And I saw it. For me, it was just, okay, this is a job. I can learn something and like, original James didn't work out. But I knew I had to leave. And when she told me that her husband got in, I was like, well, I'm different. I know nothing about business. If it's really, there's really no, you just have to get a decent score on a test and write a good essay.

1:02:33I'm like, I know I can write an essay. It's like probably one of the few things I can do. So I got really, really lucky. I got off the wait list last minute. I actually found out I was on the wait list on a reporting trip to Beirut. I was like, I was on the plane and I was like checking my phone and you're supposed to get a phone call from the dean of the school and like no one's ringing and as I'm like taking off to go to Beirut from DC, I'm like, I'm not getting in. I'm just going to be a reporter forever and I land and see the email and it's like, you're on the wait list and I'm like, okay, that's not a no.

1:03:06It doesn't mean they want me, but it's not a no. And so I just, I sat a letter pretty much every day. I was like, I'm in Beirut. You know, every time I would go to a new place to do a story, I was like, this is the story I'm working on and I think it's relevant to the class because of this. And I think after enough annoying emails. And this is a really important life -larity, but if you're the most annoying person to any admissions group, but really to any company, if you're just constantly pounding down the table, any customer, people just finally give in. People will not say no 25 times. So I got in last minute, and it was like, okay, I'm going to Silicon Valley, and I'm just gonna figure it out.

1:03:46Wow, so you just, why didn't you look at any of the other intelligence agencies, Static Curious. Well, you know, it's interesting. My, the woman, the mentor who, you know, had been at CIA, she was like, do not go to CIA, I go to state. And I was like, that sounds boring. I don't want to go to the state department, right? Like, there were certain things where I was just like, that's not gonna be interesting. Mm -hmm. And I also think like, I, like, when I look back at my career, everything I've done has been like, information trading, but it's been very human -centric. I wasn't interested in NSA and like I like the human connection.

1:04:24Like I've never, you know, it's like even in my business career, I was never interested in things that didn't have, like where you're negotiating with people, which is a lot what VCs, I know we'll get into it. But there's something about the human component where I think that's what I wanted to do. And it was also, I don't know, I was probably so dejected. I didn't have that many mentors, right? I didn't have people who were like, oh, well, you should go this path or you should do this or talk to this person. It was more like, okay, they rejected me. There must be a reason. And maybe I'm supposed to be doing something else.

1:04:55So how do you, out of all the different business avenues you could have done, why Silicon Valley? So Silicon Valley was more of, okay, the biggest story that I'm writing about. And you see patterns in the stories you write. And the stories you write every day sort of tell the story of the country, of the ethos. I was actually a culture writer too. So I would write, I had a really broad swath of things I could write about, but a lot of things I was writing about were, you know, how technology is impacting this industry or how technology is destroying another industry. And just the conversation at the Washington Post day in day out was we're all going to lose our jobs because, you know, Facebook is is gaining momentum and everyone wants to read their news on Facebook, like there's no business model.

1:05:37And so there was something I really want to, like to me, this is the biggest story of my life. Like, tech is the biggest story. I don't understand it. And a lot of the Washington Post people I worked with, they hated tech. Right? Like, tech is what's destroying their livelihood. And they have every right to hate it. But me, I was like, I want to understand it. Like, I want to go out here and understand this culture. Like, I don't know nothing about it. I've never met anyone who's worked in tech or Silicon Valley. But like, it's clearly have an impact. And this is like the biggest story of our time.

1:06:07and I'm a reporter, like I should go out and kind of figure out what's going on out there. What year is this? This was 2014. So it was right sort of, it's funny when I arrived, and this is like a funny thing people always say about Silicon Valley, they say, you know, you always feel like you're too late, like you missed the big ones. So I had missed Facebook, I had missed Airbnb, you know, it was these palentier, felt like I had missed this Palantir in 2014, which is comical, because, you know, even last year, you couldn't have missed Palantir, right? And it's like that company is a rocket ship.

1:06:39So it's, it's, it's like, you always feel like you've missed the boat. But when I got out there, you know, in some ways, not knowing anything was really helpful because I just was sort of this, you know, former reporter, emailing people, just trying to figure out what's going on. And you know, you and I talked about this earlier, Silicon Valley is for, for all of its weirdness, the best part about Silicon Valley is, everyone is afraid they're gonna miss the next thing. And so a young person with no experience with a Stanford email, emailing you saying, hey, I'm a former reporter and I'm really interested in your job or I'm really interested in your company.

1:07:15Can I sit down with you for 30 minutes or get coffee or get on the phone and just hear about what you do? People will pick up that, like people will take that call. And so that's kind of what I did. I was like, I am so confused. like I was the worst culture shock of my life. Like, I had been around the world, but I had not experienced sort of that insular culture of how tech companies are built. And I'm always impressed with how many people picked up that call. So hold on. So you were 100 % out of Washington Post by this timer. Yeah, so I quit my job. So you quit your job and just inserted yourself on the middle of Silicon Valley and just started emailing people.

1:07:54Yeah. And did you have any idea what your business was going to be? No. What you were going to be doing? No. You just immerse yourself in it to figure it out. No. And it's interesting because I know Dino has been on your show and he talked about what it was like as a veteran going to business school, right? Like you go to business school and you say, go, I got two years to figure it out. So you get to business school and recruiting starts immediately for jobs. I had no idea. You know, I was like, what do you mean? I have no idea what I'm going to do. I'm a former reporter. So there was sort of this, like, kind of, you know, You feel like you're on sort of really shaky ground, but my personality is I do very well in those situations.

1:08:28I do very well when I have no idea what I'm gonna do and I have to make an ex -move. So, crazy story of how I ended up in venture capital is it was 2014 in the fall. And I always show up no one in Business School reads books and they have a library at the Business School that has only Business Books, but they don't have real books and I'm a reader. And I walked into the library one day and there's this new book called Zero to One. It's on the shelf and it's by the Skyrim Peter teal. And I heard of Peter teal because I was a reporter and I had read about the Facebook, you know, Facebook IPO and things.

1:09:01And I knew who he was, but I didn't know he was as big of a deal as he has an Albi Common and kind of is in Silicon Valley. So I reached out to Peter teal. And what's crazy about this is, again, I wasn't expecting a response. I was very good at reaching out to people, but not everyone would respond. And I didn't get a response from him, but he had forwarded my email to one of his kind of junior partners' principles at his firm Founder's Fund, named Tray Stevens. And Tray and I had overlapped in school. He had actually been at one of the agencies. And whatever I said in my email or whatever kind of context he had, Peter thought we would hit it off.

1:09:38And so I started talking to Tray, who was brand new inventor capital, Peter had brought him on from Palantir to really look at national security and defense. And I kind of told Tray, my story, I was a former reporter, it turns out he had one point wanted to be a reporter in his life. So we really just hit it off talking. And I said, you know, I'm really bored in business school. I need to do something this summer, but I'd also love to like just work for you guys. Like, can I just, can I just intern with you? And again, to the point of people will not say no more than five or six times. He said no, probably five or six times.

1:10:09He's like, we don't have a job for you. Like, what do you even do here? Like, you don't know anything about technology. You literally just showed up. You know, like, it's nice. like we could talk, I could try to help you in things, but like you really should work at a company. Like we can't have you in our firm. And I just kept emailing like, hey, you know, like I don't really want to work in any of these companies. Can I please work for you? And after about like four or five knows, he finally said, okay, fine. Like you can come work at Founder's Fund. So, you know, Founder's Fund's a pretty iconic venture firm.

1:10:37I didn't know it at the time. But, you know, they've invested in SpaceX, you know, Tray would go on to be the chairman of Anderl. He would go on to incubate that company with Palmer. But this was a year and a half before that happened. So what do they have with no tech background doing it? And is that for? I helped try just look at companies. So I sat down on every pitch. We were just kind of surveying the landscape of, you know, which companies are operating in the defense space. Are there any sort of government companies that are actually interesting? We met the shield AI team. Like, you know, like there were, there were handful of people in and around the space, but not very many.

1:11:12And I always say it was like a gift, right? Because it wasn't like I was giving them anything, right? Like, they would tell me, hey, like, maybe look for some companies or whatever. And I would try to find things that could be relevant throughout the National Security Mission. But it was really a gift. And like, that is, frankly, that's how all of tech works. Where someone gives you a break. And if you show up early, you're the first person there, you work your ass off. Like, you do any job they want you to do. Like, that's often what it's like to be in a startup. And I always tell you know, I coach a lot of veterans because I have so much empathy for, you're coming from a culture that is so different.

1:11:47Veterans will email me and they'll say, Miss Boyle, and I might do not call me Miss Boyle. Call me Catherine. You call a seven -year -old, famous venture capitalist by their first name. You have to shed whatever you have learned in your previous life and realize you're going into a totally new culture, and you have to blend in on that culture. You have to learn the culture. That's what your first year in Silicon Valley should be. You should go to a crazy early stage startup or a venture firm that's totally different than anything you've seen, and you should just listen. Because once you learn the culture and once you learn the language, then you can be an operator.

1:12:18But you have to learn the culture, and you have to respect it. So, you know, first day at Founders Fund, actually, one of the EAs came over to me. I was wearing heels, you know, and I can dress like this now because I'm a Florida lady, but I was in San Francisco. And I was wearing heels and, you know, like, nice... Like, I dressed like I was going to a nice internship. And she's like, you need to take that off. I'm gonna get you a SpaceX hoodie. Like, you need to wear jeans. you need to blend in here. Like this is not gonna work if you can't blend in. And I'm very grateful for that, because it's like she's right.

1:12:51Like you're learning a new culture. Like you were learning how to operate inside of an ecosystem that's nothing like what you've experienced before, and when you understand it, then you can start being kind of yourself. You can start being a little more flamboyant when you're accepted, when people accept you as one of their own. But when you're learning the culture, like you're there to listen, and you're there to work your ass off. And that's kind of what I did. And it was an incredible gift to be able to see how companies that are so iconic that no one believed in even 2015 SpaceX was still seen as, oh, well, how big can that company become?

1:13:27It wasn't what it is today. And so to see people how they make bets on the future. And sort of the philosophy of how they take bets on the future, like that completely transformed, like, and sort of catapult to me into venture capital. Wow. Wow. What's the first company that you found interesting that you presented? Well, so when I left business school and I ended up working at another venture capital firm, that was right when Palmer and Tre and Brian and the guys were founding Andral. And so I had the luxury of spending, a year with these people, like really understanding how well they understood the mission, understanding like how valuable talent your talent is to people who actually worked with the government and sort of that model.

1:14:11So I was probably six months into the job at this new fund and again, like lowest on the totem pole. Like, you know, like - Loist again. Yes. Oh yeah, because you come out of school and then you're the junior associate who's there to take notes, write memos. You know, you're there to learn the trade. It's an apprentice job. You can ask questions, but like you, you know, you're there to source too. You're also there to find companies and to be the first person to touch a company and bring it in. And so it's actually funny story. I was with with Trey at Inquitel, which is the CIA's investment arm.

1:14:44They have big conference every year. And we were at that conference, and he's like, we're starting the company. It wasn't even named Andrew Liet, but he's like, we're starting the company. I knew what that meant. He's like, Palmer has just been fired from Facebook. He cares a lot about defense. I think we can convince, you know, the head of engineering at Palantir. I think we can convince, you know, some of these guys to join. and we're gonna start it. And I just said, I don't care. And of course, I didn't have the authority to say this, but I said, I don't care whatever you're doing. Like, I wanna be an investor in it.

1:15:14I want our firm to be an investor in it. I'm gonna get it done. Of course, I can't make that promise because I'm nobody, right? But I immediately, you know, drive home, call the partners and say, like, homerlucky starting this company. And we need to be a part of it. And usually in Silicon Valley, they'd be like, oh, that's great. Like, this famous founder who sold a company to Facebook book for $3 billion to start a new company, we won in. We won in on the second time founder who knows how to do it. But it was like, homer lucky? The guy who just got fired for the Hillary bill board? Like the fascist?

1:15:47The fascist guy and Silicon Valley, and what's the company do? Well, they're building a border security company. Oh, they're building a border security company to help ICE? Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Like, it was immediately I was sort of outed in my firm or a Catherine's kind of insane, but they're like, we're not gonna do that. And it was, you know, pushing, I pushed a bunch, and finally we got a tiny little check -in, and the conversation wasn't even about the company. The conversation was about, well, if it's this small of a check, like, you know, like, we'll see what happens, right? But it sort of like kind of, kind of, you know, skirt it in a small check -in to the seed round, but that kind of gave me entree.

1:16:28What's a small check? Like a couple million dollars. And they'd raised what was at the time a very big seed round. It was a $17 million round. And people thought that was insane. I mean, now you're seeing seed rounds of hundreds of millions of dollars. But this was because, you know, Palmer was extraordinary. He was an extraordinary founder. He had an extraordinary exit. But there was definitely concern, particularly among the, you know, the early investors of, okay, like, is this a company that's even going to be able to raise capital? Because no one actually believes that you can sell into the Department of Defense.

1:16:58Maybe the border security thing can happen, but like, this is so crazy. Like, everyone felt like they were, you know, kind of... Yeah. I don't want to say throwing away their money, but it's like, this is kind of a crazy... Crap shoot. It's a huge crap shoot. Um, and then it was about like a year and a half of like, really working with them. Because I was, you know, I was, I was young, I was enthusiastic, but I, you know, you know, Joe Lonsdale, who had already sold multiple companies, he was involved in the company. They were a handful of other people involved. Um, but for the first, you know, the first big round they were doing about about a year and a half later, I was like, I wanna leave this round.

1:17:30I wanna put, I want our firm that I was at to do the big investment into your company. And it took six months of diligence and meeting with as many different types of customers and operators, but anyone who could possibly talk about what their tech was doing and to really showcase it to our firm. And the crazy thing that happened was the story of, I think it was like 2019 when they went out to raise Palmer pitches, you know, what they've done. And they already have, you know, towers on the border that are actually working. Like, they're already selling to the Department of Defense. They've moved exceptionally fast.

1:18:07And he goes into the room after I've done, you know, all this work to try to show that this is an incredible investment. And one of the partners kind of raises his hand at the very end and says, like, are you ever going to build missiles? Are you ever going to build weapons? And Palmer says, of course, like, we're going to build but the DOD wants us to build to protect the warfighter. A great answer. Like, he leaves the room and people are like, we cannot invest in this company anymore. And we cannot invest in this company. Because... Shit. Yeah. And that was how they were viewed across a lot of Silicon Valley.

1:18:38It's like too much headline risk, too much fear, that, you know, that Palmer is a little bit of a wild card. But also, it was like, we're not going to support the Trump administration and the things that, like, like we can't do that, we're Silicon Valley. Like we'll lose our shirt or LPs will be upset, right? And it took, like, to the credit of the firm I was at, like it took maybe three days where I said no, no, no. Like these guys understand ethics, they understand just war theory. I ended up writing like a 16 page memo in addition to like the investment memo that talks about like the numbers and how big this company can get on just war theory on like, you know, why this is an ethical product, like how the, how the DOD thinks about ethical products.

1:19:19You know, Trey got on the call with all the partners, and he has a theology background as well, and was talking about, you know, how, why they, why they're, you know, seeing this as an ethical company. I mean, just things you shouldn't have to do, right? Like if you're in Washington, D .C., if you're in a place that understands defense, you should not have to explain why supporting the DOD is good. But this was right after Project Maven, it's right after the Google employees, they walked out and said, we are not supporting the Trump administration and the DOD. And, you know, I haven't told the story before, but I had this moment where they were debating the ethics and I was asked to leave the room because I wasn't one of the managing partners and the partnership was gonna make a decision.

1:19:57And I walked down across the street to this church in St. Dominic in San Francisco. And I just like kneel down and I prayed to God, I was like, okay, like there's a reason why I've spent a year and a half on this company. Like this is like the most important thing I've ever done. Trying to get capital into this company. And like if it doesn't happen, I'm gonna walk in there tomorrow, I'm going to quit my job because you don't want me to venture capital. Like, this is not where you want me to do. I'll figure out something else, right? Like, I've done that before. I've changed my career. I've done things before.

1:20:27But like, if, if indeed, like, this goes through and we end up leading this investment into this company, like, this will be my mission, investing in America. Like, this is it. This is, this is all I care about. And like, these are the companies I want to invest in. This is, this is, this is what America needs more than anything. Silicon Valley doesn't get it yet, but they're going to. And the minute I leave that church, you know, walking back home five minutes later, I get a call from one of the managing partners and he's like, you have the green light. Go give Palmer a term sheet. Wow. Wow. That's incredible.

1:20:58Yeah. So it was a crazy story, but that was my first big investment in defense. How? Good pick. I mean, it's been a good one. I mean, how long did it take you to get that kind of insight to know, like, to feel, you know, of this is the company. So a lot of it comes from the people. And that's like, I don't know much about technology, right? Like I've never built anything in technology. I'm not a technologist by nature. I've learned a lot having been in the industry for 10 years. But that's not how I make decisions. There's a lot of venture capitalists. They always say that venture capitalists have sort of three different dimensions they judge.

1:21:37They judge the market, how big is the market size? DOD has a very big market. Small market for startups, but a very big market. it's 800 billion and growing every year, right? It's a massive, massive budget. The product, so a lot of technologists, people who are really, really good at, they've worked at Facebook or Google or these different companies, they come out, they become VCs, and they always wanna talk about the technology. How does it work? How does it operate? And those are people who oftentimes are genius level. We have a lot of them on our team, but they know how technology works and they have a theory of where technology's going.

1:22:10I don't care about any of that. Like all I care about is the people. And almost I'm almost maniacally focused on it. I want to know their story. I want to know who they know. I want to know their network. I want to map their network because I want to know who their first 10 hires are. I want them to tell me who their first 10 hires are so that I can verify those people are probably going to join them. Like I want to understand sort of the network node of who these people are and how it's going to expand. And I always say like early stage investing, the best early stage investors are building relationships with someone who's gonna build a company before that person even realizes that they're gonna build a company.

1:22:48Like it's in some ways there's a lot. Say that again. The best thing you can do as an early stage investor is to build relationships with people who are, you know, director of technology or some sort of, you know, I would say very good engineer at a company where you know in two or three years they're probably gonna leave and start a company. but they don't know that yet. They have no idea that that's on their horizon, but you know they're gonna be a great founder. And so you start building a relationship for them so that when they do leave, you're their first call. And so it actually has a lot, you know, there's a lot in common with intelligence operations, where you know if someone's gonna flip, right?

1:23:27After you're spending years of time with them or months of time with them, or like you know if someone is gonna give you good information even before they know. And it's the same thing with sourcing and reporting. Like, you can spend a lot of time with the source and then give you nothing. And then, you know, six months into building the relationship, they have a story they want to give you. The best reporters are like that. Same is true of venture capitalists. It's figuring out who are the people who matter and making sure that they call you first. And so, you know, that then became, I'd say, after Andrew, one after Andrew, it became clear that like, Catherine doesn't, like, Catherine's gonna invest in this stuff, right?

1:24:02Like, it's like, this is what she cares about. I started writing very publicly about it. A lot of people weren't even talking about it, right? Like, people were still afraid of it. There were firms that still couldn't invest in it because they're limited partner agreement, the sort of governing docs of how the funds they operate work said they can't touch weapons. So there were firms in Silicon Valley that could not invest in Andral because their limited partners wouldn't let them. But even after in 2019, like when I made that investment, the number of founders who said, like one year in idiot, like that's a dumb investment, they're never gonna make it.

1:24:35Like that was common. But there was another class people who said, like, wow, you're fascist too. You're a bad person. Like you must really, you know, you're really on that mega train. You know, like just like the horrible things people would say. And it's like, I care a lot about my country. That's why I'm doing it. And I think there's a business opportunity here, right? It's not just, oh, I'm a patriotic capitalist and I'm throwing money away. Like I think this is the biggest business opportunity of our time. And it's sitting right in front of my face and no one's looking at it. And so I'm gonna invest in it, and I'm gonna be the first call of these people who wanna work here.

1:25:08Wow. That's a serious insight. I mean, at that time, I mean, you just brought it up, but there was a strike at Google. I mean, very, I mean, whatever you wanna call it, anti -Trump, but anti, it seemed like anti -US, like it, like you just, like nobody wanted to upgrade our defense tech. And I mean, you're on the precipice of that change. What was it that changed? I mean, it seems like Silicon Valley's done a complete 180 now. Yes. A lot has changed. I think it was multiple things changing at the same time. So the first thing that changed is Silicon Valley likes winners. We're very mimetic. You know, it's like VCs will feel very strongly about, oh, I don't want to work with defense company in 2017.

1:25:55And those same VCs will be begging to get in around three or four years later. So things move very fast and Silicon Valley. People will completely update their knowledge. And so what I think happened is SpaceX became an extraordinary company. Palantir went public. And people started realizing, oh, there are examples of companies that have just really taken off. Andral changed this for defense where, in the early days, it was controversial. But the minute that Andral just started just getting all of the great engineers, really just crushing it on the contracting side and just building really cool products.

1:26:29Silicon Valley just loves to be around cool things. And the thing that I think Elon did for the rest of the ecosystem is he made hardware manufacturing, he made space, he made these really difficult things cool again in a way that no one had ever. I mean, aerospace before him was just like a backwater. No one was majoring in aerospace engineering and colleges. No one wanted to work at those companies. In the first 10 years of SpaceX were hard, but like by 2015, 2016, they were, you know, relanding rockets. Like, they were doing some really cool stuff. They're about in 2019. They're about to start a link, which was, you know, kind of this crazy idea that no one thought was gonna work and look at it now.

1:27:05So it's like Silicon Valley likes winners. So the minute that they started seeing winners, it's like, okay, like you can make money doing this. And so that kind of brought a lot on. I'd say the rest of the ecosystem, people who maybe weren't as interested in DOD, but they started seeing things change. And then on the DOD side, I mean, I would actually say that this movement was really created by the DOD, like former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter in 2015 launched D .I .U. And he was the first person, I think, inside. It was during the Obama administration. He said, you have all of these incredible engineers in Silicon Valley.

1:27:38None of them know anything about the military. Like, they don't see anyone in the military. We're not out there, right? Like in Washington, D .C., if you live in D .C., you go on the metro, you see people in uniform, they're headed to the Pentagon. It's part of your life. So you're not as weirded out by defense culture. It's part of daily life. Silicon Valley, they don't see anything. And a lot of these people, you know, many people are new to America. Like they have very different views, right? So it's, we have, like his view was we have to go out to Silicon Valley and like actually have an outpost there.

1:28:08So we started D .I .U as an experiment. It's now, you know, it's now much bigger. What is D .I .U? Defense Innovation Unit. So it was the DOD initiative of we have to make, again, it was as much a relationship initiative. Now it's a contracting initiative. They actually have real budget and the third iteration of how it structured. But in the beginning, it was like, we just got to go out and introduce ourselves to these people and show them who we are, show them what we care about. These are the things we understand, again, people on the ground understand the technologies that are being built, really create a kind of real communication.

1:28:43And so, you know, you had the DOD really focused on this, then you had winners in Silicon Valley, people who had been at SpaceX for 10 years, leaving and saying, well, maybe I'll start a company in deep tech or hard tech or physical world and what should I do? Well, maybe defense is where I want to do it. Maybe I want to do another aerospace company. Maybe I want to build a nuclear company. And so you just had this exodus of extraordinary talent, who had all been trained by Elon. And now it's happening with Andral too, all been trained by Palmer, where they just know how to manufacture things.

1:29:12And it's been extraordinary to watch the number of young people who spend a couple years at a great company. Palantir has this tradition as well where it's like it just mints founders of new companies that operate in the government space. So it's like one you have winners, two you have the the customers changed his view. And then the last thing that I think really changed was COVID happened. I think people sort of lifted their head and said okay, like something is wrong with America. And people started really thinking about how do you how do you solve real problems? and then right after that, the Russian invasion in Ukraine, that changed everything for a young generation of engineers who had never seen war.

1:29:50Like they, again, they're like 20 years old. They'd have no memory of September 11th. They maybe had no exposure to military, but like they're watching how FPB drones are being used on, you know, Ukrainian battlefield. And that is inspiring them, okay, we need to build for this mission. Interesting. Interesting. We kind of talked about a little bit about the culture over there, Silicon Valley. I don't think we got too into it though. So I am curious, what was it five years ago? So I mean, five years, I think a lot of things have changed about how Silicon Valley, not only views, you know, American interest, but just the sort of how people view the business opportunity but also the mission.

1:30:39So I think, you know, talked about how Ukraine really did change everything for these young engineers. But there was this culture, and this is a longstanding culture, you know, say from 2000 all the way up until Andrew even existed, where there was a belief that you could not sell into the Department of Defense, like functionally because of the procurement process. It would be impossible for startups, again, that are working, you know, on these 18 month timelines, if they take capital, they're supposed to get big as quickly as possible, and hire more people and grow, that they would hit the valley of death of the DOD, and it would be impossible for them to break through.

1:31:13So you had a kind of a financial class, but also a founder class that just really didn't think about the DOD. And then it was also sort of this interesting time in Silicon Valley. And I think a lot of people look at the old school of Silicon Valley, Bob Nois, sort of the Fairchild Semi -Conductor, which was one of the earliest venture -backed big companies, and then Intel, you know, that type of engineer, you know, he was an Iowa farm boy. It was sort of the people who put a man on the moon. Those types of engineers were sort of the old school Silicon Valley. And I always think something really shift, sometimes people point to like the early 2000s.

1:31:51I think Silicon Valley really shifted for a couple of reasons. The first reason I think it shifted was kind of post -facebook. So Facebook started in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room. A bunch of kids went out, then a bunch of Stanford kids joined it. But what I think Facebook did, it was sort of the first company alongside of Google, was they made tech sexy for a certain type of worker that is not technical, that goes to a fancy school. It used to be if you went to a Harvard or Yale, you'd go work on Wall Street, you would go work in investment banking or something. And around like 2008, 2009, that's when you started seeing a lot of these really talented, really bright, But sort of indoctrinated like Ivy League types come out to Silicon Valley and they brought with them sort of this The same thing that the journalists, you know have the same sort of activism the same sort of I have a certain set of beliefs about how the world works And I'm going to bring that into the company culture Mm -hmm Google was really the the kind of you know they encouraged it They were sort of bring your whole self to work like you know, it's like we have laundry here and we have you know free free Jim's all sorts of free perks for you to stay here constantly and work, but it was really like a bring your whole self to work kind of identity thing.

1:33:05And a lot of sort of the kind of I think kind of kind of radical activism we're seen on campuses now, but really have seen for like the last 10 years got imported into Silicon Valley with Facebook, with Google, and with these sort of what we call app companies, sort of the kind of web 2 .0, you know, the big companies of the last generation. Twitter. Yeah, the people who were working there weren't sort of the, I mean, yes, they had sort of the cracked engineers, right? But then you also had sort of this keyboard class, this sort of keyboard warrior where it was really, really sexy to work in tech.

1:33:39It became sort of the sexy dominant thing coming out of these sort of prestigious schools. And I think they brought a lot of sort of the kind of liberal sort of liberal trends, liberal fads into the companies that looked very different than what tech was in the 70s and the 80s and the 90s. And it was really, before it was these hardware engineers, these guys who just really wanted to build things, right? And then when you kind of get into post -internet and the app culture, it really, it became something totally different. At the same time, what was also happening in Silicon Valley is, Silicon Valley is about 40 minutes south of San Francisco.

1:34:13So that kind of hubs for Facebook and different places in Google, they're down in what's known as the South Bay. But San Francisco is, you know, it really was in a tech city until like 2009, 2010, Twitter had quartered itself in San Francisco in 2009. And you saw a lot of tech workers sort of moving to the city. And San Francisco was one of the most radical, most open sort of kind of iconoclastic cultural, you know, cities in the world. It's its own weird culture. Anything goes, you know, you kind of get these radical sort of cult -like experiences. There's a great book about San Francisco called Season of the Witch.

1:34:51And it talks about how the spirit of San Francisco has always been sort of this, like, people joining cults, the hippie movement, like, these are the most radical people in the world. And you meld that with the tech people who are also sort of iconoclastic. And they're also sort of, you know, like, again, they go to schools like Berkeley or, you know, Harvard or Places and they get these sort of radical ideas and it's like, okay, we're going to bring that into the company. And Twitter actually, they think became kind of the iconic example of this, where they became so radicalized about certain ideas and viewpoints that they would start completely de -platforming people who misgendered someone or de -platforming the president of the United States after the 2020 election.

1:35:36So it's like the sort of radicalization of Silicon Valley, I think was happening at the same time that you had this other shift happening, which was, you know, things are going radical. A lot of people, you know, have their sort of extremist, I would say liberal beliefs, but then you have sort of a backlash to it. And I would say, like, Andrew, in many cases, was a huge backlash to it, where it's like, hey, we just want to build stuff for our country. If we're not Democrats, we're not Republicans, you know, like, we're just a bunch of engineers who want to build hard things, and we want to put our heads down and work.

1:36:07And I actually think that's kind of the underpinning of the American dynamism movement. It's like people got sick of the culture wars. And particularly the culture wars that were being fought all of Big Tech. Even Big Tech has gotten sick of it. You know, it's like you kind of see Mark Zuckerberg has completely changed his tune on a lot of things. He's kind of gone, you know, he said, the culture became too feminized at Facebook. And what he's really saying is we became way too radical. We became way too hall monitor in our views of social media and free speech. And so I think... I think you wonder how much it's taken, I mean, how much time was wasted on that kind of stuff?

1:36:40and how much more innovation would have happened? Have they not been so wrapped up in their own ideologies and cultures? Totally. That's why when Elon bought Twitter, I mean, he was saying we could fire 75 % of the people at Twitter and the service still ran perfectly, right? What were these people doing? Well, they were, you know, de -platforming people, and they were the trust and safety team making sure that things on Twitter were fine, right? Like, there were some massive problems at Twitter. I mean, like, there were still ridiculous amounts of porn and child pornography on Twitter that they didn't deal with when they were there, right?

1:37:12It was, but Elon got in and saw, he's like, this is completely backwards. We need one fourth of the people who are here. We need great engineers. And we need to solve the real problems at this platform. And we need to have free speech. You know? So in some ways, it's like a lot of these companies got really fat. Business models were good. They were really bloated, but people weren't working and what were they doing? They were becoming activists. And I do think there's, you know, across, it's not just tech. It certainly was happening at the tail end of my time at the Washington Post, but a lot of these young people go get out of college.

1:37:44They think they're activists. They go work at a company and they want to be activists. They don't want to do the work of the company, which is to build an app or to write a story. They want to go there and they want to shake up the company. They want to be activists inside the company. And what really changed, I think, in Silicon Valley, that sort of led people to say, OK, we can build hard things. One, and I think that's why there's a lot of people focusing on like let's build things that are so hard that you don't get these activists to your company. But there was another company called Coinbase where the founder of Coinbase said believe it was 2020, Brian Armstrong, he wrote a letter called the Coinbase memo and he said if you want to be an activist, it was during BLM and just after me too.

1:38:25He said if you're going to be an activist, you can go somewhere else. Our mission is to focus on crypto. It's to focus on ensuring that we have the best customer support and that we serve our customers who are interested in crypto and we expand that customer base. And if you care about anything else at this company, you can walk out the door. And he lost, I think, 6 % of his company that day. No kidding. And he's like, you know, he'll say it publicly. That's the best thing he's ever done because those are the 6 % of people who were causing a lot of problems. And the same can be said about Google and Project Maven.

1:38:57It's only a tiny portion of people inside of a massive company. I think it was like 2%, 1%, less than 1 % of people signed the project maven letter and walk out. We're not going to work with the DOD. But that can cause so much damage to a company. If a company allows the activist class to control them. So I think the thing that people learn from watching Elon just completely remake Twitter. And now that Brian at Coinbase really say like, hey, see the door. I think a lot of founders are now saying, hey, we can work on these hard problems. We also don't have to be beholden to an activist class. We have free speech now.

1:39:30We can say what we want on X, right? Like we're not going to get in trouble if you, you know, I could get reported to HR, if you say the wrong name of someone or some wrong word. And I think that was happening at the same time, sort of the backlash against all of the, the wokeism and sort of, you know, rigid orthodoxy of how you have to act. And that kind of opened up the way for American dynamism. Because I really think that the companies that are building these hard things in the physical world, like they just want to put their head down and build. They don't want to talk politics. You know, they don't want to know who you voted for.

1:40:01They really just want to build hard things and they care about the country. And it's like that, they care about the mission they are working on. How long was this process? Because like I said, from an outsider, it looks like it was in about a year. Yeah. Like a light switch to get rid of that rot. Yeah. Was it a lot longer than that? It was a lot longer. I mean, for someone, so I can say, like, you know, there were a handful of us. You've had Joanne, you've had Palmer on, you've had people on who, you know, Sean at Palantir, like, right, there's a handful of people who I think have been sort of saying the same things over and over and over again about like, it is okay to build for government.

1:40:43It's okay. My own sort of kind of experience of where I saw just a huge change is, you know, as having lots of conversations with Mark Andreessen, who's the founder of our firm, about a lot of the issues that were happening in Silicon Valley. And, you know, I kind of told him, I said, I think that this category of investment is not just, you know, it's not just one -off companies. It's not just going to be SpaceX and Andral, but there's going to be an explosion of these companies. And this was during COVID. So I wrote this memo for him. I ended up joining the firm. My partner, David, you will have it tonight.

1:41:17We always choked. We were sort of competing for the same companies. But there were such a small group of people who were competing to get on the same deals. He called me one day after we had dinner with Mark. And he was like, do you just want to come do it here? Like just come here. Come here and build help build, like let's build a practice together around these ideas. And so, you know, I always give major credit to Mark and David for having the foresight of saying, hey, like this is a real thing because a lot of people didn't think it was real. A lot of people thought, okay, yeah, you'll have an Andral, but there's only going to be one Andral.

1:41:45You'll have a SpaceX. There's only going to be one SpaceX. But all of these other young companies, you know, the denos of the world, the shield AI, like these companies, they're, you know, we only need one of each. And our view is like, you know, this is the next 10, 20, 30 years of American invasion. If the first 25 years of the, of the second American century, right, 2000 to 2025, if that was investing in apps, investing in software, software eating the world, the next 25 years are taking all of that software and building for the physical world. So it's, it's critical minerals, it's aerospace, it's defense, It's infrastructure, logistics, all the things that touch the physical world.

1:42:24And so it was actually January 2022, it was three weeks before Russian -Vated Ukraine. I just joined the firm. I put out this manifesto called American dynamism. And I wrote about how the next 25 years are going to be these categories. And named companies like Andral, we'd already invested in those companies, knew them very well, but I said, you're already seeing so many extraordinary engineers leaving these companies and wanting to build new versions of Andral, new versions of SpaceX, building building the next generation of aerospace and defense, public safety, like the entire public safety field has been completely transformed by technology.

1:42:57And we have great companies that are operating with police forces across the country doing really important work using machine learning and AI. And it's, you know, we were seeing this, but it was sort of this kind of secret. People hadn't been talking about it publicly. So we announced the thesis. And I've never seen such an explosion. Like to me, this was probably the biggest moment. And my career have seen the number of people emailing me, retweeting it, saying, like, this is where Silicon Valley is going. And within six months, the term American dynamism had become this kind of hilarious internet meme.

1:43:33It was everywhere. People were using it as a joke. People were using it as, hey, I'm an American dynamism company. Investors were raising funds off of it. Same, we want an American dynamism practice. We ended up raising a very large fund to invest in the category. And it really, like, the thing I think I'm most proud of, because it was a huge shock. It wasn't a shock to the engineers. It wasn't a shock to the veterans. But it was a huge shock to the investor class when we said the word America. No kidding. And I'd, you know, I have been saying American dynamism for a long time, but I said, this practice has to be named American dynamism.

1:44:08And when people ask us what it is, it is a very clear meme. We're investing in companies that are supporting the national interest full stop. And we're not going to be ashamed about it. Again, it was, you know, 2022 is before Russian made a Ukraine. We're not going to be ashamed of it. But like by their nature, these companies have to sell to the DOD. They sell to the DOD before they sell to other countries. They're not global companies. They are American companies. They are very different than the software that sells all over the world that can operate on the internet. These are physical different things.

1:44:37And we have to be very clear with our language that these are American companies. And the investor class, I think, was stunned mainly because a lot of our rival firms were still investing in China. Like, they had still made so much money in China, and this is a whole other story. But when we said America, it was like, we planted the flag of our own country and said, yeah, we're going to build for this country. And it was probably the most refreshing thing to founders because they had never heard an investor. They had never heard. And again, having Mark Andreessen say it, you know, it's like, I'm just a little old me, right?

1:45:10But when Mark Andreessen, the founder of the internet, basically, like the Godfather of Silicon Valley comes out and he says, we're investing in America, people perk up and they listen. And so it completely changed the game. Later, it became a meme. Other people started raising funds off of it. But the thing I think I'm most proud of is within a year, a lot of peer funds, or what's called peer funds, like firms of our size or other famous firms that operate in the valley, almost all of them had decoupled from their China practices. At the same time, you know, like Mike Gallagher and the China Special Committee that was happening in Congress and a bunch of people in the DC side, they kind of woke up about this.

1:45:52It's like, okay, Silicon Valley is actually, Silicon Valley is saying, hey, we need an investment America too. Like, people, important people in Silicon Valley are saying that. And so, you know, they started putting, I think, a little bit of pressure. The TikTok wars were happening, right? Like, people were really starting to say, okay, Like, how was TikTok being weaponized against American kids? And it just became too much for a lot of these firms who had been investing for 15 years in China to be able to make a good faith argument that it's fine, that we're sending American money, American know -how, and that we're making tons of money off of technology that's being used as a weapon against the United States.

1:46:27And so pretty much all of these firms had to divest, or decouple themselves. They turned into separate funds where there was no sharing of information, sharing of carry of sort of the economics among the partners. But I think five years ago, I wouldn't believe that would have happened. It was just, it was too much money, it was too big business. People had way too many in trends and should interest in China. And if anything, what it taught me is, if you speak truth, like if you say, I'm not afraid to say, I love this country, and that I don't care about making money in China, because I love this country.

1:46:57And if you say that, people will get in line. Like most people believe that in Silicon Valley. They just, they just never heard it before. That's great band. Kudos to you. That's incredible. I mean, it's in some ways, you know, it shows the power of memes because it really only takes, you know, one Joe, one Mark, right? One of these guys, right? One Shom, you know, one Palmer, to stand up and say the hard thing. And if you say it enough, like Palmer had been saying, this was 2017, like the CCP is our enemy, right? Like the CCP is our enemy. We should not be supporting, you know, anything to do with China, we should not be supporting them, we should not be investing there.

1:47:35And it just, in some ways, it's like, it wears people down, people hear that the meme large, like long enough. And in some ways, I feel like the sort of meme of American dynamism is even more powerful than the investing practice. It's not just an investing practice. It's a true philosophy that like, if we are going to build hard things in this country and go back to an era of the moon landing in the Manhattan Project, like we have to be clear about what we are investing in and we are investing in American interest. How did you, so how did you, how did you meet Mark? So it's a, it's a funny story.

1:48:13I'm, I'd say there were a handful of people I think during COVID who kind of saw the craziness that was happening in Silicon Valley. So I'm sorry, I saw the craziness of the culture war. This has been reported before, but you know, I, Mark's very big on the group chats. So I, so I met him through, actually, actually this is, this is very funny. I met him through, there was an app in COVID called Clubhouse, where it was sort of like a... I remember Clubhouse. Yeah, sort of like Twitter spaces. Like, yeah. But I was very bored. I was also pregnant with my, my first child, you know, I was kind of locked up in my house.

1:48:52And I always joke, my husband was like, you know, after like the first month of COVID, it was great that you had clubhouse, because you could talk to other people. You could stop it away, me. So I was like, you know, I was like, you know, up at the middle of the night talking on clubhouse. And of course, there were a handful of people there and Mark was one of them. So I got to know Mark through clubhouse and through, you know, a lot of these, I'd say, these kind of, you know, chats of people who, I think we're really interested in these ideas of where Silicon Valley going. What does it mean, you know, again, like this was, was sort of the height of the culture war.

1:49:24And I do think it was forbidden. It was like, you know, people were getting left and right kicked off of Twitter. And so there were sort of these, you know, underground, it's kind of funny to say now because all of the things that were being said are being said publicly now. It's not like there was some crazy, you know, conversations happening, but it really was sort of this. You were so forced to sort of falsify your preferences publicly if you didn't want to get canceled. That you really couldn't talk about things. And you could on Clubhouse in some ways, and you couldn't the group chats. And so I got to know Mark and David and a bunch of people at the end of recent Horowitz.

1:49:56And I'd say a lot of these ideas were really sort of talked about and sort of debated on an app that was sort of the sephemoral thing that was really important during COVID, because no one had a way to connect. But I also tell people a lot, especially young people, like you'd be surprised you can meet on the internet. Like you'd be surprised like the people you can connect with and have deep relationships with, even if you haven't, you know, have lunch with them. Like, you don't have to go to someone's, you know, house or office and have coffee with them. Like, you could have deep connections with people just by writing and thinking online.

1:50:30And, you know, I spent a lot of time on the internet. And I live in the middle of nowhere, so it's like I need to spend a lot of time on the internet. But that's how I got, you know, acquainted with Mark and with a lot of people in Silicon Valley and with a lot of people at my current firm too.

1:50:49It's just, it's, it's just really incredible that, you know, you, you come from zero tech background until where you are today. I think that's just really fascinating. Yeah. But, um, but I do think, you know, it's, it's, I look at someone like Dino who I think your conversation with him is extraordinary, right? Like in some ways, he's even, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's the example of speedrunning that process even more, right? because it's like he's building, he's the CEO of a massive company. And he had no tech relationships. You know, it's like he knew a little bit about tech, but he's not a cracked engineer himself, right?

1:51:27Like he went from being a Navy seal to now running one of the most important companies for the Navy in three years. I mean, he went to business school, yes, he went to private equity, but the things he was doing in private equity are not at all like what he's doing here. And so I think it says something about the culture of tech, which is, and I always tell veterans this because, you know, so many people say, how do you transition? It's like, it is a very open culture. By its nature, people are open about meeting people, talking people. Yes, yes, it's kind of monolithic. But if you have an idea that's different, there are people who will take a bet on you.

1:52:01If you, you know, seem to know what you're talking about. If you, if you know the right people, if you're, you know, if you have a talented team surrounding you. And so I do think it's probably one of the few places that, like, misfits can go in America, you know, it's like you couldn't go to New York City and kind of crack your way into different parts of finance. You know, it's like there's there's too many places in New York where they care who your daddy is or you know what school you went to, what high school you went to, right? Like there's too much of that kind of elite culture in Washington and and and Newark.

1:52:30But something about Silicon Valley is, you know, you can just be allowed on the internet and get people's attention and have everyone important Silicon Valley talking about you, making fun of you, mocking you, right? But like you can you can become the center of attention and very quickly. Interesting. And so I really encourage young people to do that, especially if they're talented engineer. Like you don't have to know anyone. How does venture capital work? It seems to me like venture capital runs Silicon Valley and you know if I've had a number of these guys in here, all for blade, it's insanely smart.

1:53:06And the trend seems to be, go to Silicon Valley. Start talking about your idea, start working on it, and somebody is going to invest in it. Yeah. I mean, you learn a lot. Like, it's not guaranteed someone's gonna invest in it, but what's interesting is Silicon Valley used to be, it used to be like, it's like the Florentine Five families, right? You have like five venture firms, they all sit on Sand Hill Road, which is like the classic place where all these firms were built. And companies would go by and they'd pitch. And then, you know, a firm would pick one company. It's not like that anymore.

1:53:44It is ruthlessly competitive. There is more capital than there has ever been in the asset class. I think there's something like $300 billion of dry powder just raised now, which dry powder is the amount of capital on the sidelines that's going to come into companies. Something like 1 .25 trillion AUM. I mean, it is not a, these to call it sort of a cottage industry. People used to ignore it. It's not. It is how we've built companies over the last 25 years. Now, I always pointed this graph, I wish I had the graphic, where if you looked at the Fortune 100, and then if you even went further down and you said, what are the 10 most valuable companies in the world in 2000?

1:54:19Four of them were American companies. I think two of them were tech companies. If you do that same experiment in 2025, nine of them are American companies, eight of them are tech companies. And the only company that's not a tech company, that's the most valuable company in the world in America is Berkshire Hathaway, which owns a massive chunk of Apple. So, tech is the story of the 21st century. It's how we've built companies. A lot of the companies that are now in the most valuable 10 weren't even founded in 2000, like Facebook wasn't around. Google had just gone public in 2004. It is extraordinary that we've been able to build companies that big that surpass all of industry across the world in 25 years.

1:55:00But part of that is because of the venture capital industry, which is not this cottage industry of a couple people sitting around doing out money anymore. It is billions of dollars given by what's known as institutional limited partners. So what they are is they're the big pension funds. The big, you know, every state has massive pension funds, you know, nonprofits, university endowments, sovereign wealth funds across the world. So like, you know, every country has sovereign wealth money that they want to put into various things and now they all want to put money into technology. And so when you add all of that up and you say like everyone recognizes that they need exposure to high growth venture capital companies, backed companies that are going to go public and that are going to be the next Uber, the next Stripe, the next, you know, the next Facebook, the next Google.

1:55:47It's just so much bigger than it was even 10 years ago. And it's become, I'd say it's become really competitive because, you know, any really talented engineer now that has a group of people with a good idea, like it's never been, I don't want to say it's easy. It's easier to get seed capital. It's easier to get someone to bet on you because there's more capital in the industry. And what was a problem five years ago is that because American dynamism didn't exist, because this category of innovation didn't exist, you couldn't go into a venture capital firm and say, I'm going to build a hypersonic company.

1:56:20People be like, what? Like there's no ecosystem of people who are going to invest in that. There's no downstream capital of people in the later rounds. And the way venture capital structured is every, every 18 months, 18 to 24 months, a company will raise an additional round of capital. And if they're successful, it makes their valuation go up, it makes the, the amount the companies worth go up. And it allows them to expand, it allows them to grow the number of engineers, the number of people working there, their number of products they're offering, and the goal is don't go out of business, but grow as fast as possible.

1:56:52And each new layer of investor will come in with a bigger check to fund the research and development, to fund the growth of the company until you go public. And the sort of, it sounds completely, again, it sounds completely different if to any other way that we build businesses, but the kind of speed at which you're supposed to grow is the faster you grow the better. And so there's sort of a view that, you know, that is the best way to build companies, but that did not exist. I'd say five years ago for this category building the physical world. There was just, there's no way that you're going to be able to get through the valley of death, get later investors to put hundreds of millions of dollars into a satellite bus company.

1:57:31And I think the biggest thing that's changed is all of those partners that I talk about, the people who are investing in the funds, the sovereign wealth funds, the pension funds, all of those people in the ecosystem now believe that you can make money off of defense companies and they want exposure to it. They want to invest in the next androle. And so to me, whenever I go to the DOD, I'm like, this is the biggest spoon for you. Like this is going to save us because you have capital from all over the country, every endowment, all over the world, frankly, that wants to invest in American innovation, American dynamism, and you don't have to use taxpayer money to do the R &D.

1:58:08There's hundreds of companies in El Segundo right now that are all doing the R &D, that are all raising outside capital from people who know that they might lose their money. But that's the business model. You lose your money in some cases. You win in some, you lose in others. And it's like, that's in it used to be directed at America. Like, it did not used to be directed at the Department of Defense. It's never been directed at these categories in the way it is today. So it's a... It does on the outside look easy. like everyone can just come in and raise capital, but you do have to have a great idea.

1:58:38You have to know the right people. You have to network with the right people, right? Which is not impossible. Like that's what I love about Dino's story. It's like, you know anybody. You didn't know who Joe Lanzdale was when he took him out to do a workout, right? He just wanted to do a defense company. And so there's so many stories of just being young and hungry and determined and have a good idea. And like the right people will find you. I mean, would you're looking for these companies? We've talked about it. You look at their network and you look at who they are as a person and their values, but what about the idea?

1:59:09So, I mean, the idea matters a lot. I mean, there's examples where I've invested in people pre -idea. But I... Re -idea. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I have a great company called Cape that's building a MVNO, a mobile network for privacy. And the founder, I knew the founder from another company that I invested in called Man of Our Labs. It's working with a lot of the agencies in DOD. He was on the board. And he was the head of government sales agency sales at Palantir for a very long time. And so he just knows government sales better than anyone. He had been in the army and then went to Palantir. And I always just said, hey, if you're ever leaving Palantir, please, please let me know.

1:59:54And one day I got the call and it was like, I don't care what you're doing. And I just want to back you. And within a couple weeks, he told me what he was doing. and I'm like, oh, you're building a new mobile carrier for privacy. That's going to be like the hardest thing I've ever heard. Like, you're building the hardest company. But it's been, it's, he's done an excellent job and is working with, you know, a number of different, you know, parts of the DOD to make it possible to basically be on your cell phone and to not be found. I mean, every, that's sort of like the Holy Grail if you're an operator, if you're part of the DOD or if you're a high net worth individual who's worried about privacy, to be to travel around the world and to not ping different cell towers so that no one can track you.

2:00:33But it actually doesn't exist. All the different carriers can take your data. And so he's a great example of, I didn't care what he did. He just knew the biggest problem because he had been at Palantir for so long and I wanted to invest in him and I knew he was going to have a great team. But on the flip side, most of the time, we invest, post -idea. We invest, post, people having a story. And I always think you're testing for or a couple different things, you're testing for how quickly someone can learn in the depth of knowledge. And you know this better than anyone in the interviews that you do.

2:01:05If you just sit there and ask questions, you can learn a lot about how deep someone's knowledge goes, right? Well, tell me more about that. Like, actually, is that how it works? Like, what other companies operate like that? How do you invest somebody a pre -idea, though? I mean, what are you investing in? Well, where do they put the money? Oh, well, only they, so in John's case, who's the founder of Cape, I waited until he had the entity formed and then we gave him the company. So when I say we invest before the company even exists, there's a company. Sometimes he doesn't know what he's going to do.

2:01:39There are some founders where I even say Andrewl is a great example of this where yes, they started off with Century Tower, but products three and four and five, they had no idea what those products were going to be and some of those have just been extraordinarily successful. And so a lot of founders kind of, you know, they learn on the job, right? Like they, they're talking to new customers every day and it's like, actually, maybe we should do this instead. They call it the pivot. You know, it's looking valley. It's like it's infamous. It's like, oh, companies pivoted into a different direction.

2:02:07But a pivot isn't seen. It's a bad thing. It's seen as, oh, they learned something new and they're taking that knowledge and they're building something with it. It's much more common to invest in a company, you know, post idea, post team. You know, the pitch deck, you know, is, is oftentimes explains the problem and the solution, oftentimes there's a product built. But for early, early stage investing, which is where I like to invest, sometimes you don't need it. Sometimes it's just about a credible team coming together and you having belief that that team can actually pull it off based on their history.

2:02:39You know, a lot of the teams that I've invested in, it's like, you know, the head of manufacturing was doing something at SpaceX, which makes me know that they know how to do manufacturing. Or, you know, the head, the CTO was at, you know, another company that were it's very clear that you can reference them and know what they actually built. So there's reputations sort of precedes them. They wrote this paper or they built this product at Palantir or Brian Schimpff, who's the CEO of Anderol. I mean, he's sort of legendary as one of the best engineers, best coders that's ever come out of Palantir.

2:03:13And so it's like, when you hear that about someone and it's like, okay, now they're going to come be CEO of Anderol, you don't worry that much about whether they're going to be able to to build just an incredible product. You know? Gotcha. What are some of the companies that you're most excited about that you guys have invested in? Yeah, so I'd say the thing that's happened that surprised me the most, you know, it's like everyone kind of knows the Anderles, the Sironics, the companies that are selling directly to the DOD. The thing that surprised me the most is how many companies want to build, you know, the Tier 1 supplier, like basically rebuild the defense industrial base and not sell directly to the Department of Defense, but sell to those Raytheons, the Lockheed Martins, and the Andrals, right?

2:03:54Like they'll work with anyone, but really build out the supply chain. And that's where I've been investing a lot, like we have a company, a great company called APEC Space that's building modular satellite buses, and the view in the space industry, and space, I mean, space is, to me, space is gonna be the next theater. It's gonna be the next space warfare or something we really have to think a lot about. But you can't be good at space warfare if you don't have enough stuff. Like if you don't have the actual platforms to send payloads up to space on. Logistics. Yeah. Well, and it's like, we have, you know, SpaceX can get things to space.

2:04:28But the biggest problem that the DOD has, and it's a problem that China is really focused on as well, is it can take three years to get a satellite bus, which is just, you know, it's not the payload. It's not the thing that you're sending to space. It's the thing that, you know, has the energy. It has the comms equipment. It's really every satellite can operate with the same bus. Like, you don't need the way that, again, going back to how the primes do work is, the government will say, well, we're sending up this payload, and this is how we want it designed. And so they'll design a brand new bus every time they do new non -recurring engineering for the product.

2:05:04And then they'll send the payload up, and it can take three years to get a satellite bus. So this company is building satellite buses in 30 days. Like, why should it take so long to build the same bus over and over again? And so it's called, does - Is 30 days from three years to 30 days? That's the vote, yeah. They went from clean sheet design to their first mission in 13 months. Like, first working mission with payloads in space and low -earth orbit. And it's like, if a brand new company that at that time had only 30 employees and had raised, you know, tens of millions of dollars, but, you know, wasn't SpaceX, right?

2:05:38but if a brand new company can go from forming a company to putting something in space with important primes in 13 months, you should be able to do the Henry Ford manufacturing line of satellite buses and be able to build thousands and thousands of satellite buses a year for the DOD. And that's what China is doing. I mean, China is is, is, maniacally focused on space and they are maniacally focused on how do we build as many buses as possible so that we can own the satellite infrastructure and low -earth orbit. And it's something that we're going to have to very much worry about, because right now we're in the lead in space.

2:06:10I actually think that's the theater where we should feel the most confidence because Elon and SpaceX have done an incredible service for this country in terms of what they're doing with Star Shield and Star Link. But the other companies coming up, like they want to be able to build as quickly as possible and as fast as possible. And the big fear that I have is that government's going to say, oh, well, we've written the requirements so that we need this thing on this bus. And it's like, no, like we just need the bus that can do 90 % of the job and just get it up as fast as possible and make them as fast as possible.

2:06:42We need to produce as quickly as we can. So this company just, it's a bus, brings things to space. Yeah, so they can take any payload to space. They have three, like in some ways it's like, it looks a lot more like consumer technology. It's like we have three models. We have one for Leo, we have one for Geo, we have one for, you know, the different orbit that you're going to. but for 90 % of payloads, that bus is going to be perfect. And because they're only designing something three times versus designing a brand new thing every time they need to send something up, you take out all the design work, you crunch all the R &D, and then you build a system that allows you, it's designed for manufacturing.

2:07:20You manufacture as quickly as possible. And that methodology of manufacturing, again, this is, I think people underestimate the impact that Elon Musk has had on the country. He's had an incredible impact on a bunch of companies. But the thing that he taught people, again, is the best part is no part. It's you have to make the product as simple as possible so that you can manage factory as quickly as possible. And if you make it simple and if you make it modular, something that can just be churned out where it doesn't have to be every single time something happens, you have to design something new and you have to change your manufacturing process.

2:07:55You'll have fewer problems with the quality control. you'll have fewer problems with, you know, is something gonna blow up, is something gonna, you know, malfunction. If you're only designing a system where you don't change it and where you keep it simple, it's gonna be far more successful in space, it's gonna be far more successful on the road. And like that process, he's now graduated 10s, 10s, 20s, the thousands of people out of, you know, Tesla and SpaceX, like these engineers who understand how to design for manufacturing and how to engineer and that engineering and manufacturing have to be linked.

2:08:28And for a very long time, that is not how people viewed how you build. I mean, actually, Vice President JD Bands actually talked about this, he came and spoke at our summit. And he said, the biggest lie that America was ever told about manufacturing was that you could divorce the design from the manufacturing. And of course, we did that. Apple's the best example of this, where if you open up an iPhone, it says, designed in California. And there's this belief that you can, you can, all of the premium jobs are the design jobs. and the manufacturing jobs are the cheap jobs, and you can outsource that anywhere.

2:09:00But it's like actually linking them is the most important, you know, that is the most important thing, the design for manufacturing where you link those roles in a company is how you manufacture things that are simple good and you can do it as quickly as possible. And so that's the philosophy at Elon Musk. That's why everything he has done has been successful and a lot of other people who do manufacturing or not. But now there's thousands of founders who've come out of his ethos and his, you know, kind of the gospel of Elon, right? And they know how to build like that. And so they get on the factory floor and that's what they do.

2:09:34And the DOD can just, you know, they can just pick winners. They can say, this is what we need. This one works the best. You have 100 of them will take them. And there's something about that didn't exist even five years ago. And it's only going to grow. I mean, now Apple's a wildly successful company as well. And so it did work for them. So it And, or is it not working for? Well, I mean, it worked for them in that. It saved them a lot of money. But this is what's interesting. We were talking earlier about this Apple and China book that came out where I think it's rewriting the narrative of what Apple did.

2:10:06So it wasn't like Apple went to China, and I'm blanking on the writer's name, but he was the Financial Times reporter that covered Apple for like 20 years. And it's like, it wasn't like they went to China, and they said, oh, these guys know how to manufacture. We're going to give them, you know, like they're going to help us manufacture and achieve our goals. Apple trained all of the people in China to do manufacturing. It was something like 28 million over the course of the last, you know, 10 years that they've been there, that they've trained, which is the workforce of California. The interesting stat that this writer notes is that Apple invested, I think, something like 58 billion per year into China so that they could invest in these manufacturing hubs and invest in these factories.

2:10:50And when you compare it to the Marshall Plan, it's something like 2X, the entire Marshall Plan, that Apple has invested in China over the last 10 years. And the thing that is shocking about sort of this, like divorcing the manufacturing and moving manufacturing out of America into a country, is like, it wasn't like they had the people and the systems and the know how, where they were helping us. It was like, we made an active choice, right? So I should say Apple made an active choice to train those people and to give them the knowledge, to give them the know how, of this is how you were going to build.

2:11:21And until this book came out, I don't think people really recognize just how much capital that American companies were putting into China to train them on things we know how to do. And so I think the kind of point of the Vice President's speech was more about like we have to bring this design for manufacturing view back, where it's like you design where you manufacture. And that is Elon's view, but it's really the view of I think a lot in defense tech today. I mean, how quickly is that shift to back to the US? On the manufacturing side, I mean, when we talk about like what keeps me up at night, like it is really, really hard to build factories that compete with the manufacturing and production capabilities of China.

2:12:06And it, you know, again, the started 10, 15 years ago with Apple, but there's many good examples of, you know, companies that were invested in by American venture capital firms in China that are way ahead in terms of production. I always say like the biggest scandal, Apple is a good example of us taking our knowledge and our know how into China and teaching them something that was an American secret in many cases. But the biggest scandal of Silicon Valley is that Silicon Valley did that too. In 2008, 2009, venture capital firms that are very large and very successful went into China and they taught them how to do early stage investing.

2:12:47The overview that I, the simple overview I gave of how venture capital works, they went in there and they trained people and they trained them as though they were training their own associates in Silicon Valley and they told them how you build these companies. And so I always say that the venture capital ecosystem, it is American dynamism, it is the thing that allows America to be dominant in the global economy. It's a thing, it's how we build tech companies. And we just went over there as venture capitalists. And I shouldn't say we because it wasn't my firm, it wasn't me. But VC has went over there and shared information, shared limited partners, shared all of the aspects and the functions of how you build an incredible, you know, legacy -defined venture firm.

2:13:29And over 20 years, like, you know, Silicon Valley or China has a true ecosystem of tech companies now. And they all work with the CCP, right? Like they figured out, you know, how to build in the kind of confines of how China expects them to build. But like this is scandalous. Like I think it's, you know, it's, Apple and China is scandalous that we invested that much money into another country's manufacturing regime and not into our own. Like why don't we do that for the state of Ohio? Why don't we do that in the state of Florida? Like what was it about America that Apple didn't want to invest in our own manufacturing capabilities 15 years ago so that they can make 500 ,000 iPhones in a day.

2:14:04And so that I think is the thing that's gonna be hard to overcome. Now it's happening on the defense side because you have to manufacture in the US and there is this manufacturer where you are. But I think it's the thing that keeps me up at night is the production gap. Man, you know, we talked a little bit about Chinese espionage and Silicon Valley. It breakfast this morning. And how prevalent is that over there? It's pretty prevalent. From what I've heard from people I know, inside the DOD and various agencies, there are more spies in Washington, D .C. than any other city in America. And number two is Silicon Valley.

2:14:52Man. And of course, it's mostly Chinese spies. But there's been a lot of stories recently. There's things that happen where it's like it's clear, it's clear espionage, right? It's like it's clearly there's, you know, spies that are in big companies stealing, I mean, the last 30 years of Silicon Valley, how is China cut up so quickly? It's, of course, you know, a lot of these people are stealing the secrets out of the companies and stealing the intellectual property and taking it back. So like that's a known story. I think the areas that are even, you know, more shocking are how the universities play into this, how, you know, there's, you know, there was a story, actually in the Stanford Review, which is a student paper at Stanford that was saying, like there are known agents on, you know, like basically spies in Stanford campus that are either professors or working with professors where they are stealing AI secrets from Stanford.

2:15:44And that's happening across, like I think all of our great university systems, like anyone that has serious knowledge, like the Chinese have been very good at infiltrating those systems. I also think like the thing that sort of misunderstood about Silicon Valley is because it's such an open culture, anyone can come and anyone can sort of have a coffee and learn about things and kind of infiltrate the culture. And so there is also this cultural aspect in Silicon Valley where I was sharing, you know, in like 2015, 2016, when I was more open about that I was investing in deep tech and different things, I would always get these emails from like, you know, random Chinese venture capitalists, that happens less now, but like Chinese venture capitalists who had a small venture capital firm and, you know, They were from China and you didn't know where the money was from, but they were really interested in your companies and they wanted to learn more.

2:16:31And the DOD was very worried about that because they were worried about you know, syphias, concerns, Chinese capital getting on the cap tables of these important companies. But it was more like the bigger danger was it was more of just like completely infiltrating the culture, which is what's happened in Silicon Valley, where you can't really divorce a lot of tech culture from that sort of, that they understand tech culture. They're there. They're completely part of it. And so it's something where I think we need much, much better security around a lot of these AI projects in particular, a lot of these AI companies.

2:17:08It's clear that they're being targeted for espionage purposes. It's clear that how did the Chinese catch up so quickly? It's like this is again a whole of society sort of project for them. And Silicon Valley, let's say it's sort of a polyanna view, sort of this, well, we're sort of this open, you know, we're this open ecosystem. And, you know, anyone can come here and build. And again, it's part of the reason why it works is like you have an open society where anyone takes a phone call and you get people like me who know nothing about it and they can infiltrate it. But if you're working on behalf of a foreign government, it's not easy for nobody to infiltrate it with no resources, right?

2:17:45How easy is it for someone who's been trained to infiltrate a company or infiltrate an ecosystem to be able to capture the intelligence they need. Like it is a very easy target. Man, let's talk about the hypersonic company. Yeah. What is the name of that? So Castellan. So it's another great story company I met very early in its trajectory. But it kind of again explains like why it's so important to meet people that you were ordered, invest in people that have seen it before. So the team was working at SpaceX. So a lot of the team was on the government sales. They were part of Star Shield, which was selling to the government, working with government on classified projects and different things.

2:18:35And this team, the founder will tell the story that every time he would talk to people inside the DOD, they would say, the biggest issue for America is we have no hypersonic weapons. Our missiles will be depleted. I think Palmer talked about this if we were in a potential hot war with China. Like our missiles would be depleted within eight days or some crazy scenario in terms of the scenario running. And so this has been top of mind for DOD for a very long time. And the founder said, he consistently talked about this inside of SpaceX, but SpaceX is, you know, maniacally focused on going to Mars.

2:19:07So, you know, the sorts of projects that could done at SpaceX, they have many projects and many types of things that they're building, but hypersonics was not on the menu. And so he and his in a number of his colleagues, they left in 2023 to start this company, really focused and, I mean, just from day one focused on hypersonic missiles, long range hypersonic strike missiles. And the thing that I found so interesting about this is, again, like going back to 2019 where, you know, Palmer said the M word, he said missiles and a pitch, you know, and And they freaked out, right? Like missiles? You're gonna invest in missiles and hypersonic weapons and things that are kinetic.

2:19:49Like, no, no, no. Like that was crossing the line. And so this was 2023. And I brought them in to the entire firm and Andreessen Horowitz sat down for this pitch. And I just remember, saying in my partner, David, I was like, you know, I didn't ask, but like, you think anyone's gonna care that we're investing in missiles? Like really, the first slide is deterrence matters. This is such a serious team. This is a team that knows what they're doing. Like they built things before. You know, they've studied under Elon. But I'm like, do you think anyone's going to worry about the M word? And he's like, I don't know.

2:20:19We'll see. And, you know, a pitch, I mean, beautiful pitch, at ends or whatever. And, you know, there's people on the consumer team, the games team, all the teams, like not everyone is American dynamism. And, you know, afterwards, it was sort of like silence. And, you know, I was like, is anyone want to say everyone think this is cool? And literally everyone was like, yeah, It's great. And it was like, it shocked me. Because I'm like, there, yeah, I've been so used to like, okay, there's always one person who's like, who I'm like kind of uncomfortable, you know? Or like, I don't know that I, how am I gonna tell my friends at a cocktail party that we're investing in missiles?

2:20:57But there was something about like this team, like one, their pros, you know, they clearly care about the mission. They talked about it from a deterrence perspective, right? Like this is the only way we're gonna deter wars. You have to build up your defense industrial base. You have to build up your missile capabilities to stock wars, not start them. And I think it was such a compelling pitch and just an honest pitch about like, this is the state of play. Like, we are not prepared. And if we don't do it, no one's going to do it, but I mean, the thing that was amazing for me was like, gosh, like, how far we've come.

2:21:28Like, in just five years to go from, you know, headline risk, like, we can't touch that. Okay, we're all in on this. Wow. And they've just been, they've been moving very fast. Wow. And you're a big part of that, I mean, what is that? How do you feel about that? Just being such a big part of that shift? You know, I know you've talked about like signs and callings and I think you believe deeply in that ID2 where I'm like, I look at my uncle who, you know, everyone made fun of and kicked out of the Jesuits and it's like, if not me and who. And I do think that like there's something about God gives you your calling and your mission.

2:22:10And it doesn't make sense, right? Like you say like it makes absolutely no sense that like someone who is just good with words, right? Like I'm a good writer. I know what I'm good at. But I'm not a technologist. I'm not going to explain to you how Castellan's missiles work. Like I'm not going to sit here and like be able to answer any of those questions. But I do think that I have been given a mission. And why me? I don't know, but I'm not going to question it. And that is, that is, it's someone else's will and not mine. So it makes me, you know, when Tibo was on, like I think Tibo had the greatest, your interview with him was incredible, but where he had the 316 moment, where he was just so happy for like, I can't believe I've been able to do what I've done and then he just remembers, oh, it's like not about me.

2:22:52Like what a beautiful reminder, yeah, it's like it's really, it's really not about any of us. Yeah. Yeah. With VC firm, I mean, Would you guys invest in competitors? Would you invest in Anderl and Anderl's competitor? Or do you put your bet all on one? So, yeah, it's a good question because one thing is, you know, sometimes you invest in a company and, you know, they have no plans to build something and then they end up competing with various companies or whatever. We kind of have a strong rule about it. It actually comes from my partner, Kristix and who leads our crypto practice where he basically says like, you know, every company gets to tell you who their one competitor is.

2:23:29But at a certain point, there are some companies that get so large where they're going to do everything, or they think they're going to do everything. And so you can't say, oh, a company, you can't honestly make the argument that say SpaceX is somehow competitive with a small company that's building satellite buses, or a company that's building ground stations, because they have a ground station product that works with Starlink. So we try to make it like, you know, it's like we would never, we would never invest in companies that are competing directly head on, you know, that are doing the same product.

2:24:03Like we don't do that. But it's, it's more like sometimes you invest in a company that starts out as one thing and again it pivots into something else and then they're competing against each other. And whenever that happens, we always try to make sure that we sort of, you know, silo the information that different partners are working on different things. And it does happen. There's definitely examples of two companies just getting so big and so great. And it's always good when you see two companies winning, but it's like then they realize, oh, we can each acquire the same company and do something new.

2:24:32And so they compete on acquisitions. It's normal in business that companies will compete. But if we know, if we knowingly knew that companies were competing against each other, we would pick the winner. We put our eggs in one basket. What gaps in the defense tech sector do you see that you think innovators should be looking at? Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I'm spending a lot of time on future of space and space warfare. Like, I think there needs to be a lot more built for the next war being in space. So that means like building things on the software side for tracking. Like, there needs to be, you know, a lot more on the production side, on the propulsion side, to make sure that things can be kinetic in space.

2:25:13So there's a lot, I think, happening in sort of what is the future of space warfare look like. But everything for me comes back to this production issue. Like I recently was with some operators on the ground on the border of Ukraine. And the sort of it went with a group to kind of learn about how and where investors should be investing, where are sort of the major gaps in that war. And this kind of take away that I took from it that I don't think I really fully kind of understood until I was there was Russia has built up their defense industrial base over three years in an extraordinary way, right?

2:25:49Like they were kind of weak when they first started. Now they've built up their production capacity to really greatly be able to, you know, be able to have this war against the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians, to their credit, have built just in time manufacturing facilities where they can build drones very, very quickly. You know, they get the information off the battlefield that allows them to innovate on how the drones work. They're doing that on the ground. They They have distributed manufacturing capabilities that are tailor made for this war. So in some ways, they've built up a defense industrial base as well.

2:26:18So it's Ukraine and Russia have done a great job of building that capacity up in that production capacity. The other player in this is China who is supplying both sides of the war. So they're greatly supplying the Russians with the dumb parts and the things that they need to build the drones or withdraw themselves. And they're also supplying the Ukrainians because the Ukrainians are a desperate situation. They're building things in the trenches. They'll take whatever they can get and they'll take Chinese infrastructure as well. So the only group of people, and the only country that really hasn't benefited from the war, and I say benefit loosely, but really hasn't been able to build up the industrial capacity in the same way that those three countries have is America.

2:26:54And so the thing that keeps me up at night, the place for we invest is how do we increase the speed of production? And it can be on satellite buses, ground stations, modular things, modular forms of energy, SMR, small modular reactors for nuclear, how do we build those as quickly as possible? But it's just the modularization and the production thing that you know, I'm less interested in software or design and much more interested in like how do we just rebuild the manufacturing powerhouse that America once was and I think we can do it But there's there's a lot of gaps in there. Where would that fit in?

2:27:28Where would that fit in? Would that be would that be a manufacturing company that attaches itself to an andirl or a seronic? Because what I talked to Dino, it sounds like all of Seronic is, it sounds like they're from conception of the idea to the end product. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, they vertically integrate to where they're building everything, like they have an in -house machine shop. We have another company that I work very closely with called Hadrian that's building these automated machine shops where they build parts for every company you've ever heard of and defense and aerospace. Critical parts that have to be built in the US.

2:28:07And it used to be that if you needed a critical part, you'd go to one of these massive machine shops. The machine shops are run by someone who's older usually in their 60s, 50s, 60s. They have apprentices who study them. It can take two to three years to learn how to manufacture these critical parts. If you bring software into the factory as Hadrian has done, they can teach a former bus driver, a high school drop about someone, their goal is they want to take baristas and train them to make these critical parts in 30 days. And it's because you automate 80, 90 % of the process, the quality control, the design aspects, you automate it with software, and then the last 10 % you could teach a human to do.

2:28:47But that leads to just extraordinary output. So the more factories we can have that are software defined factories, where the software is actually making it easier for humans to produce more in the factory, whether it's critical machine parts, whether it's casting, whether it's sort of the, you know, the tear, kind of two to three suppliers, where it's, you know, the kind of, you know, the joysticks or the things that are inside, you know, it's like there's so many critical parts that are actually inside of planes, of anything defense related, where you just need to be able to produce 10x more of all of those things.

2:29:22Unitions, I mean, there's a lot of talk now about how do we, how do we just turbocharge how quickly we can build munitions because we don't have enough. But it really is, like, all of, I think all of the fears that I have about defense come down to production. It's all how quickly can you build? And yes, Sauronik is vertically integrated, but there's a lot of companies that would attach one of those software defined factories to them and say, hey, just build us as many as you can if this one part. What are you excited about in space? So I mean, in space, it really is anything to do with offensive space.

2:29:57I think we, you know, SpaceX, SpaceX is the most incredible company in the world. They've done extraordinary work. You know, they do extraordinary work with government. They now have a direct to sell, you know, platform. They have Starlink, which I think is completely revolutionized, you know, is revolutionizing internet. But there's still more things that need to be done. You know, I'm invested in a company that's focused on ground stations, Northwood space. They're building modular ground stations for every other company that needs to to get data back to the ground, our ground station infrastructure, extremely old, it takes forever to send, like the comms take forever.

2:30:32And so if you can just have more modular ground stations across the world to get that data back from lower orbit, that's game changing. So they're working with USG, but I think there's, again, it all comes back to just more. It's like these things are in some ways, I don't wanna say simple, But it's, you know, a lot of the things that I'm investing in are not science fair experiments. They're not things that are kind of going to get you riled up about, wow, like that sounds like the future. But it's just, okay, we're just going to produce more of the things that we need because the infrastructure is just so lagging or so old.

2:31:08I'm just curious. If you looked at Steve Quas' company space -built. No, no. He's, they're basically doing logistics to where they just you build these things in space. That way it's not such a heavy payload. The satellite parts don't need to be protected with Kevlar and, you know, bulletproof us or whatever the hell. Yeah. He's talking about bringing things up in sections and actually assembling in space so they so that the payloads a lot less coming up, leaving Earth. Yeah. I'd love to chat with them. I'll connect you. Thanks. But, um, but, uh, yeah, a fascinating guy. We're going to do a shift here and talk about the attack on the American family.

2:31:53So your mother or two sons. Third on the way. Third on the way. I didn't know if I was supposed to say that. I think it's obvious that this pointed rather people know. But, um, but, uh, but yeah, what do you mean by that? The attack on the American family? Yeah. No, it's a, I wrote a speech that I gave a couple months ago where I really started talking about how I see kind of all of history as a war between the family and the state, these two big institutions. One is, you know, and it goes back to Plato. It goes back to like the Republic, the Greeks, right? Where the entire, you know, philosophy of the Republic is that perhaps the state can take better care of a society than these institutional families.

2:32:35And so when you look at sort of, You go back through history and you see that, especially authoritarian regimes. The first thing that an authoritarian regime does when it wants to take over society is it ruthlessly destroys the family. So you mentioned the one child policy in China. That was an attack, a deliberate attack on the family from an authoritarian regime. And the purpose of it was, you know, it was for national interest. They talk about, oh, we couldn't, you know, we wouldn't be able to supply enough people with food. But what it really was was to weaken the only institution that can ever combat the state, which is the family.

2:33:06And so I'm a pretty conspiratorial person. I think there's been a concerted attack on the family to strengthen the state, particularly for the last 50 years. But it's been done in very specific ways, and legal ways through the education system, through the medical system, and it is deliberately destroyed. And you see it through the birth rate, like we talked about in the beginning. Fewer and fewer people want to have families, and it's because of this deliberate attack on the family. And I wrote this piece called The War on Suffering, where I've been very vocal about the fact that I think everything in America changed in 1973.

2:33:42Everyone always pointed out there's this website called WTF happened in 1971. And it points to, that's when we came off the gold standard, that's when regulations started exploding in America. What happened in this year where everything bad in America started like from this moment where you just see just complete change in a lot of things around America. And I've always said that that might have been the economic change that happened in America where financialization started and where housing became so expensive where it became ridiculously expensive to afford health care or education. But in 1973, there were two things that radically changed how Americans view themselves, how many women view themselves.

2:34:22And ultimately what I think is sort of the impetus and start of this sort of unraveling of the family. And I've said this a lot publicly on what I think changed for men, which was in 1973 in January, Nixon did the most profound and most popular thing that he ever did during his presidency, which was that he ended the draft. It was unanimous. It was coming off of Vietnam. It was like a unanimous thing that everyone loved. Everyone knew what needed to happen. We said, we're going to be an all -volunteer force, and we're going to allow people to choose to serve their country. And of course, this is something that even today, people, our military, celebrates the fact that we don't have a draft, that this is part of American culture.

2:35:00But I think what it fundamentally said to young people is that it is a choice to serve. It is a choice. Not everyone does it. Only the people who want to. They might want to do it for economic reasons. They want money to do it for love of country. But it is not something that everyone has to do to serve and defend their country. And if you think about it, throughout human history, that is the first time that a country has said to young men, your purpose on this earth is not to defend where you live. And it was codified. It was like, that is not the purpose of manhood. And then 10 days later, it was only in 2023 when I was writing this piece that I actually even realized this.

2:35:3910 days later, the female equivalent happened, where Roe v. Wade passed from the Supreme Court. And that had a similar impact on women, where it used to be for all of human history, your purpose on this earth is to have children, is to have a family. And this was the first time in Western society, too, a lot of nations copied us after it, but this was the moment that really changed. Where 10 days after men were told your purpose is not to serve, women were told your purpose is not to have a family, it's your choice. And so it completely changes the view of how men view themselves and how women view themselves all in 1973, January, 10 days.

2:36:16And it's like, I would say there's a lot of people who would say, well, these are all good things. It's really good that there's choice in America, not everyone should have to serve their country. Like not everyone, men and women shouldn't have to go to war, or women shouldn't have to become mothers. But what we didn't do in that moment is we didn't provide anyone an alternative purpose. We didn't provide men and women anything that says actually the purpose of manhood is this. Or actually the purpose of womanhood is this. We just said, go figure it out yourself. Actually, maybe there is no purpose.

2:36:45And the 70s, like there was this very clear, you know, kind of, I would say almost like, neilistic culture of, well, nothing really matters anymore. Like you can do whatever you want. And that, I think, is permeated so much of society where we don't even believe suffering should exist anymore. It's like the suffering for your country is why would anyone do that? Suffering for your family, why would you do that? But I think the minute that we destroyed the unique purpose of women, which, for, you can't debate that for millennial, that was the purpose of women was to bear children to have family.

2:37:18And then the unique purpose of man, which is to fight. the minute that we destroyed those purposes, men and women stopped relating to each other. They didn't know who they were. They didn't know what their purpose was. They didn't know how they could relate. And when you look at it from that framework, the family was destined to fail from that moment.

2:37:40Damn, you think every man should have to serve the country? No. So that I think is the... I don't know that every man needs to go to war, right? But I think there is something that happens when you say, we once were a country where everyone was treated this way. Everyone knew their purpose. Everyone woke up in the morning and knew at 18, I am going to, there is a chance I will have to serve my country. And that, just understanding that that is your purpose, changes the way you walk. It changes the way that you think about your life. And the same thing for, I don't think every woman should have to be a mother.

2:38:15Like, you know, it's almost, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, if I talked to, you know, nine people or ten people, nine out of ten people would say, of course, like, these are good things, right? These are popular things. But at the same time, when we didn't replace that purpose with something else, when we didn't have a way of saying, this is how society should be organized. You're saying that it changed the consciousness of the country? Yes. And the only, the thing that we did instead was, instead of, you know, serving your country is an outward -focused thing. It's focused on other people.

2:38:46It's focused on someone other than you. The same thing with being a mother. The minute you become a mother, you stop worrying about yourself, right? Like you don't have time to make yourself the most important thing. Like you have to worry about your children. So in both of those cases, those purposes, they were outwardly focused. They were things where... This is how we organize society and you care about the institution of family, and the men care about the institution of their country. And then it... But what we did instead was we turned inward. We started focusing on our own mind. And this is like the moment that we really start thinking about, you know, psychology, like, who am I?

2:39:20What is my purpose on this earth? There's a great book by Philip Reath that was written in the 60s, actually, called The Triumph of the Therapeutic, which is that, you know, man really started turning inward in the 60s and early 70s and really thinking about, like, do I have purpose on this earth and what is this? And the minute that you stop focusing outward and you become very contemplative, which is really what American culture has become, you become very individualistic, I can very obsessed with yourself. Our generation is the trophy generation, the me generation of everything, everything about me is interesting and I'm an individual and I can achieve anything I want.

2:39:54There's no barriers, there's no limitations. But it completely rips out all of the sort of underpinnings of what makes a society function. And I think in some ways that those were sort of the moments where it's like then you saw the unraveling of, well, there shouldn't be any kind of suffering. Like, you know, it's around the same time that no fault divorce happened around the same time that you shouldn't be told who you are, you shouldn't be judged. Similarly in the medical arena, this is around the time where ADHD sort of beat, the late 80s SSRI started really coming about where it's like we have to start medicating us because we're thinking too much about ourselves and we have too much depression and of course depression.

2:40:35SSRI I think we're seen as kind of a niche thing and now they're, you know, what is the number of Americans that are on them? You know, the sort of focus on the move to focus on the self was a very deliberate action. And I think that the crisis of the family comes from the fact that if you're focused on yourself, you really can't be focused on a family. And you hear this all the time from young people. It's like, I haven't achieved what I wanted. I can barely take care of myself at mid -20s. You know, I don't know who I am. How am I going to be able to take care of a kid? and we've forgotten that like previous generations, they didn't have that luxury.

2:41:12They didn't have the extended adolescence where they could say, oh, well, I don't know myself. How am I gonna go to war if I don't know myself? The greatest generation wasn't able to say that. They just had to do it. And in some ways, it's like, we can definitely make the argument that things are better now. And in many ways, people are living longer. You can definitely make the argument that these things were not necessarily good for society, but at least there was a societal purpose and organization. And I think the thing that has really been corrupted over the last 50 years is that we do not know what our American purpose is.

2:41:47We just win, and particularly as it comes to the family, its family has become an option. It's no longer the default institution that you build your life in. Yeah. And without that default institution, you build your life in, people just they flail. You have the loneliness, epidemic. You know, you have young women and men who... The question. To press exactly. If there are any men out there that are wondering what your purpose is, is to provide for your fucking family and protect them. That's it. But I didn't realize there was that much confusion out there about it. But, I mean, but then, you know, you live around and we're all the men.

2:42:22Yeah. Where did they go? They're both the New York Times. Yeah. Right, right. So I mean, I wish I would have known you were a conspiratorial person. Otherwise, we'd be talking about aliens and the pyramids and Montepetue and all kinds of other shit. But I mean, so the question, as you'd mentioned, those were draft -ended pro -choice or a rovy -weight, 10 days apart. I mean, so is this just the result of shitty decision -making? you know, the list goes, I'm not weighing in on those subjects, but what I'm saying is, you know, it sounds like you think that's where it started. Then we see, you know, all the stuff with the gender stuff nowadays and Washington State, the state will come and take your kid if you don't do the gender affirming care and there's just a whole number of things.

2:43:17And so is this, is it stemming from somewhere or is this just a result of decisions? I think it's a result of both legal and medical decisions, because I think the medical community has a huge part of this as well. But I think it comes down to the war on suffering has been won. We've defeated suffering, and life is not about suffering. That is what I think our legal system thinks. That's what our medical system thinks. And when you think of the opioid epidemic, what started the opioid epidemic in the 90s? It was the belief in the medical community that suffering from back pain is one of the worst things that can happen.

2:43:51and that there's a magical pill that you can take that's gonna get you off of back pain. And then there were pill mills across America, handy -not opioids, because people couldn't deal with suffering. And that was seen as a good thing, like don't you wanna eradicate suffering? Same thing with ADHD. Young boys, you know what's it, they can't focus in school, here's a magical pill, and you're not gonna suffer anymore. Your family's not gonna suffer, your teacher's not gonna suffer, you're gonna feel great. And now 23 % of boys at 17 years old are on ADHD medication in America. And it's because we just do not believe that anyone should have to suffer.

2:44:22We don't believe in resilience. We don't believe that anyone should have to make a choice that has something to do with society or something that is duty versus what they want to do. It's all individualistic. And I think, you know, the best example of the war on suffering is what hasn't happened fully in US, but it's happening in the UK, it already happened in Canada, which is if you are now self of suffer from mental illness, you can, you have the right to die. If you're over 18, you are welcome to go to a doctor who will sign off of it and you can end your life. And like - Suicide machines. That, yeah.

2:44:54And that was not the America we lived in before. Yeah. So the question is, why are we so opposed to suffering? And I get a lot of pushback from people on this, well, why are you, why are you pro -suffering? And I'm practicing Catholic. The entire story of Catholicism is about Jesus' suffering. For something noble, for something good, for us, right? but it is a story of suffering. And the movement to try to pull the story of suffering out of human life, that's removing human nature. That's removing the entire Christian story out of how we live and saying, you are not expected to suffer, which what happens then?

2:45:34You have an entire generation of young people who are no longer resilient. So I think one of the biggest lies is... I think it takes driveway to... Oh, 100%. It takes personal driveway. Yeah. which creates lesser innovators. Totally. Which is why I do think like a lot of these young people, the reason they go to Silicon Valley and they sleep on the factory floor and they work hard and they're building hard things is because they know that suffering is inherently. Like there is something good about suffering for a purpose greater than yourself. But I do think that people are confused about how to find that.

2:46:07Like how do you find that outside of a society that tells you you don't need to get married, You don't need to have kids. You don't need to serve your country. You don't need to do something greater than yourself for your community. You don't need to be a pillar of the community anymore. You can move wherever you want. Just total freedom. And I think without those guardrails or those guides or people who can help you navigate life, like people just get lost.

2:46:32Man, we covered a lot of ground there. Yeah, we did. We covered a lot of ground. I wish we had more time, but I know you had a flight to catch. But last question. Three people you want to see on the show. Oh my goodness. Well, I, you know, I won't volunteer or are mutual friend, but I'd like to see them on the show as we talked about in the car. But Elon, I think I'd love to see you chat with, with Elon. I think he's, you know, his, we didn't get a chance to talk about Doge, but I think he's learned a lot about government. And I haven't heard him do a long form interview of kind of what it's like to try to reform government.

2:47:09I think that'd be really an interesting story. Do you think, sorry, I lied, not last question. Do you think doge worked? I do, but for different reasons than most people. I think it worked as a cultural, as I think it changed the culture in Washington, but also across the country, where Twitter was sort of the early experiment in dogeying. And he proved you can cut 75 % of people. And then he went to government and he dozed different departments. And there was a lot of, I think, backlash, but I think it made people realize we don't need as many people, we can work harder, we need to be more fiscally responsible, we need to be able to understand where the money is going.

2:47:50I think a lot of people woke up and realized we're spending ridiculous amounts of money on things we don't need. And I do think that that sort of cultural change is going to permeate all industries, all places. I mean, it's happening in the Army now. Like the Army Doge itself, with the Army transformation initiatives. So General George and Secretary Driscoll came out and they said, like, we're not going to wait for Doge to come to us. We want to cut our budget by 8%. We want to get all of these old, you know, old products. We don't need any more. All these defense things that we don't need. They call it the Humvee.

2:48:21They say, why do we have Humvees in production that were built for, you know, pre -desert storm that we haven't used in 20 years? Like, why do we need that? Like, there's, there's another vehicle that we could actually use that's, that's built for modern warfare. And so they've been very forthright about like, we want to doze ourselves. Wow. I think it's caused this sort of cultural change. I mean, are you upset that it didn't stick? It's not going to stick, correct? My understanding is that this is for one year. Yeah. The house never got on with it. And yeah, well, I think that... Now I was right back to the same old shit.

2:48:53Yeah, I would have liked to see the doze cuts codified. It still could happen, right? Like, it could happen a separate bill, but then there's still tremendous young people. We know a lot of them who are working in doge and doing important work and modernizing the systems. So I'm hopeful that at least that entity will stay, but I think it's a cultural movement. I mean, it's certainly changed how companies think about how many people they need. I also think AI is going to change how many people think they need, right? Like there's other factors that are going to impact that, but I think it will prove to have been successful.

2:49:29I hope so, man. Think, I don't know. I feel like our institutions are in shambles, and it's going to take this younger generation to really step it up and fix that. So, all right, last one more. One more person.

2:49:51I'm trying to think which founder you should have on. You should definitely have on Elon. The hypersonic stuff. Yeah, I think Brian Hargis at Castellan and would be a good interview. They be a great, I can definitely connect you. Perfect. Yeah. Well, Katherine, what a awesome conversation. I'd love to chat with you again sometime if you'd come back. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great. It's my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you so much.

2:50:22Thank you. Thank you so much. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan Show from if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.

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