Raj M. Shah & Christopher Kirchhoff (on the military-industrial complex)

Welcome welcome welcome to armchair experts on experts. I'm Dan Shepherd and I'm joined by Monica Padman. Hello. Hello We have a very unique topic.

We've never covered in the past it involves war in the military We have Raj M Shaw and Christopher Kirchhoff Raj is a serial technology entrepreneur venture capitalist and former director of the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit and Christopher Kirchhoff is an Expert in emerging technology and he helped create the Defense Innovation Unit, which he continues to advise for so their book Which they have out now is called unit X of the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are transforming the future of war these to lay out an Assessment of how insanely out of date most of our military stuff is yeah, it's pretty crazy Yeah, there's some shocking incidents where you're like, that's can't be true There can't be a several hundred million dollar plane with the operating system a hundred times slower than an iPhone and yet it is So this was fascinating to me. Please enjoy Raj and Christopher This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace I feel like spring always does this thing where you realize you've been thinking about something for a long time and suddenly it feels like Okay, maybe I actually do something with it totally it's less pressure but more like readiness Yeah, like you've been sitting on an idea or a project or even just a perspective you care about and now you're like Maybe this deserves to exist somewhere outside of my own head and maybe mental health awareness month There's already this broader conversation happening people are more open more curious and willing to engage which is where something like Squarespace comes in it makes that jump from idea to actual thing feel way less overwhelming You can build a site that looks good works well and actually reflects what you're trying to put out there It's not just hypothetical wavy wavy literally use where space to build our site Yeah, and wavy wavy is not trying to spend 40 hours figuring out web design It just worked which is kind of the point so if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment This might be it head to squarespace.com slash Dax for a free trial and when you're ready to launch use offer code Dax to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain We are supported by air BMB if you've ever traveled kids or with extended family You know how much difference a little extra space can make everyone's on different schedules You want room to actually relax without disrupting anyone That's where Airbnb really makes a difference giving you the space you actually need having separate bedrooms a real kitchen a common area Where everyone can spread out it just takes the pressure off We were up in Toronto and we opted for an Airbnb over a hotel what I love about is everyone can be on their own sleeping schedule That is nice. You're not required to wake up in the earliest riser gets up not for me I always start by checking out guest favorites. They're the most loved homes on the platform consistently highly rated by guests Some trips really do feel better when you have the right space Oh, this would make you happy that door is about two days old this used to have no door I fight the post yard He saw yeah, she's to hang proudly right there my wife hates it.

Monica doesn't love it Military vehicles I'm not gonna be a fighter because the F 35 is the latest in this fight fighter jet Yeah, he's an F 16 pilot sure On the cover and the publisher was trying to say you know like it's not as advanced as the other and And Roger wasn't into that answer well Raj I hope you incorporated this into your argument that I think Iconically speaking well now this doesn't work either really the F 14 Tomcat you could make a real argument for that being on the cover That was a cooler plane and it's the most iconic because our gun what would they find the new top gun F 18 Okay, also could have made an argument for the F 18. I mean that's 16 I could kick it up 18, but oh, okay, it's only Advantages it can be launched off of a carrier exactly but the F 16's fastest and most nimble and all that exactly so you guys are gonna quickly bond over being in Rural Georgia, I know I saw you back around and Duluth I grew up in one Robin's no way I still live there so my parents as well. Everyone's hanging out in Georgia. Fine.

Good food. Yeah I like that any food I guess Standard fair Applebee Suburban food I was at the Americana which is a mall here an outdoor mall this weekend It's just like suburban at its core. It made me so nostalgic. I love suburbia.

You might move back I'm not ruling it out. Yeah, something very safe about it to me But probably cuz we grew up like that what age were your parents when they came Chris? You go by only Chris Chris perfect. Okay, I'm gonna exclude you for a minute as we go through Raja story They're gonna go through your story.

They're gonna go through your combined story They're gonna defame the government It's all gonna happen here in the next 78 minutes But when did your parents come my parents came to the US in the early 70s when they changed the rules or remove the quotas and America needed doctors engineers And so there's a whole flood of Indians in the Philippines and Chinese that came in which box did your parents check? My father was a doctor. So he's a residency here in the US. Oh wonderful in Atlanta.

No actually at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit So he came from a place that's never seen snow to maybe too much. No, wow, that's a big adjustment home of the Bay Ford clinic over there, too Yeah, Henry Ford clinic is where he did his residency. How'd he end up in Georgia? We've successfully moved south to warmer climbs more appropriate I'm going to Kentucky and then we end up in Georgia set up a private practice probably delivered 10,000 babies in rural Georgia He was a P.G.

What's the G. Why yeah, when did we switch? I'm a calm I'm just we used to just say OB but now we do the whole thing doesn't really matter mom What she do she worked as a medical technician until she had me and then my sisters and helped raise us So you were growing up in Georgia in Europe says where their planes is a little boy absolutely starting from what? Top gun gun seeing air shows.

There's an air force base in my town Oh, no, so I grew up watching Jets fly around and they had an annual air show where you could go in and touch and feel and Send the cockpits and I said boy this would be cool to do one day I don't know the people realize how dangerous air shows are as far as spectator of events go They're probably at the top of the list of potentially feel gotta know what you're doing for the spectrum Oh sure. There's always the most spectacular always go viral There's always these spectacular crashes of you They're showing off a little bit and sometimes they're in older airplanes probably Yeah, and you're low to the ground margin for air is lower low to the ground as an issue Okay, so when do you decide you're gonna pursue flying when I graduated high school? I wasn't quite ready to sign up for the military So I go up to the northeast Princeton for undergrad and it was there that I actually got my policies since like 50 hours in a sass Now realize I love flying and you know I started off as a pre-med engineer right every immigrants family's dream But then freshman year I dropped out of engineering sophomore year I dropped out of medicine Oh, path and then junior I decided you know what I'm gonna join the military so totally black sheep Okay, but you finished obviously you got to be a from Princeton what happens after college when you end up flying in combat? I went to officer training school after graduation I'd signed up pre 9 11 and I end up going to flight school in December 2001 And I was actually living in Manhattan on the 11 But we knew what we were training and learning we were gonna get to use and so then I spent about five years full-time in the military And I've been a part-timer since but ended up deploying and going to the least three times three times due to rack one F Yes, what year Afghanistan?

Yes, that was my last was 2012. Okay, you also end up getting an MBA from Penn I did what age was that so that was after my full-time tour? I went back and I was a consultant for a year making PowerPoint slides at McKinsey and then the two years have been school So I was early 30s and when you quote retire as a pilot is there like a wide open door for you to enter the military industrial complex? Is there many jobs waiting for you to consult perhaps?

I didn't really pursue that but I stayed in the reserves I wanted to keep serving I wanted to keep flying and so I stayed in the reserve for many years to the state back Okay Yeah, so if they ever needed you you would be ready to go exactly and then you became a serial entrepreneurial startup Investment person and that's post MBA from Penn that's post MBA. I realized I'm just really not a good employee I wasn't gonna be hired as a CEO somewhere so I had to start my own company and you had a bunch of success in that okay No, Christopher a Buckeye you didn't go to Ohio State, but you're in Ohio in yeah, I grew up in Columbus and I'm a Wolverine So there's beef where at least I've you to part but we put our differences aside when we would meet at Cedar Point You must be very familiar with you remember writing the Magnum for the first day to 40 Yes, we just had a Michigander on earlier today Had the wooden Gemini Starship Enterprise it was the new thing right there on Lake Erie. Yeah, this is high in Kristen was first Yes, she was opening day opening day. Yeah, it's quite a bit of bragging rights here And I'm like we don't talk about six legs like they talk about No I'm going up to King's Island from where you guys really mean, but I think The beast okay, so you're in Ohio and what tickles your fancy growing up super nerd runner got into Harvard Which is kind of fun with the first kid in my high school to do so so I was gonna say no to that Can I just want mom and dad it mom was a teacher dad was conducting professor to high state?

Oh, we grew up around high state university Did he want you to go there? There was a lot of pressure and their view is the honors program at high state is fantastic My parents were each the first in their families and the only ones actually to go to college They came from a very humble place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with German and good parents And so for them the idea He just it didn't make sense for them to think of their kid going to Ivy League But luckily I a high school principal who was smart enough to push me in that direction I'm so grateful for her intervention because I've made a door open that otherwise wouldn't have and then after Harvard You go over to Cambridge and get a PhD. Yeah, it was phenomenal living in the UK as an American as the Iraq War is kicking off the second Iraq War Seeing America through other people's eyes getting to have European and international classmates going home with them eating their families doing a lot of backpacking and traveling And what do you think that experience did to your worldview? Well, it's certainly broadened it backpacking in countries that maybe don't have nearly the wealth that America does I got a chance to live in Cairo for a month during the early stages of the Iraq war when Abu Ghraib when that scandal was becoming You know, you're out at cafes with your American loving English speaking Egyptian friend and we're all looking at the same picture on television What do you say?

So that was an introduction to US power use very enough perfectly and see in first-hand repercussions about globally It's very easy when you're here in the bubble to not think of our role on the international stage But once you leave you recognize how ever present we are in every conversation because we are this 800-pongerilla And I don't think we think about it much when we're here inside of it But it doesn't take long being outside of it to recognize like we're changing the course of the river so dramatically And everyone's got to respond to it and how could anyone not be minimally a little Sruitizing of that because when we decide to do things it ripples across the world in so many ways You need to leave here to actually kind of witness that and feel it. I remember I was doing a movie in 2003 in New Zealand and we had just done some invading and there was a vi doc and someone had written USA And spray paint and the S was a swastika and I was like, oh that hurts. I don't like that That's a bummer. Yeah, it's worthwhile to just pop out and glance through the windows We were in India at the beginning of the year and we were privy to some meetings We should not have been privy to we just happened to be like a fly on the wall a little bit and they were talking about the American election coming up And it is so interesting hearing another country talk about this election and how it looks It looks one way to us obviously in a hearing the outside is like, oh boy.

Yeah, this season of America Okay, so you end up with a PhD in political science. Yeah, how does one ply that trade once you get that PhD? Well, I got lucky in that many years earlier as an undergraduate when I started doing summer internships I realized right away that I loved working in teams rather than solely in a study care already papers I knew right away that academia wasn't gonna be for me And then I fell in love actually with science policy I got a chance to work a couple summers in the White House science office And so I set that as my north stars going into technology policy And so I studied aspects of the sociology of technology for my PhD and then had worked actually dropped out at graduate school three times to take different government jobs Oh, wow, that was fantastic way to set up your career But it's gonna be graduate you actually have a network and a sense of what you want to do in a sense more importantly where you want to go Yeah, so maybe this would be a great time to kind of lay out a historical Foundation for the military industrial complex for the government's role in both technology We have had so many technological breakthroughs that have been more derived of course the Manhattan Project Volcanization of synthetic rubber for World War II all these different crises during wartime have led to great technological advancement So let's just start with how this whole system set in motion Sure historically the ability to produce and innovate industry is what has allowed America to succeed and have this dominant military force You reference World War II we've outproduced every other country and airplanes and ships and technology Bingding ding ding Henry Ford Hospital converting some factories into airplane factories exactly Andry Nutsen and Kaiser that revolutionized industry and then it goes on from there at the end of that war we had nuclear weapons And it just continues but back then the US government was the single largest Thunder of research and development in the US and in the world technologies that were invented for the military or even NASA think Velcro Then came down to the commercial GPS GPS guidance systems computers all of these things started in the government But then there was this revolution where the consumer electronics and computers for private enterprises that R&D began to outpace Those lines crossed in the mid 80s and now there was far far more investment in the private sector But the challenges the government hadn't reformed They sort of still acted and had processes like they were the single biggest buyer in the world that works when you're buying aircraft carriers It sort of fell down when you think about the revolution of iPhone or cloud computing Yeah, would it be fair to say that what they were great at is funding enormous projects that required so much startup capital that no Privateer could have possibly done that generating the return from the marketplace the initial investment was so enormous that they were Gonna have a monopoly on that exactly and the things that they were buying aircraft carriers There's only so many of them and it wasn't a huge market even if you think about big computers mainframes the government was the biggest buyer And that's you sold to a couple libraries have them Bill Gates live next to one thing Right. No one thought you'd have more power in your iPhone than the latest fighter jet in your pocket It's a whole different world now I guess also can we say there was probably some incentive or maybe it was fear based that there should be this kind of Impermeable wall between what they're working on in the defense department and what the consumer has like it could have started with a kernel of good faith they needed to have their own technology that would be separate from individuals and citizens Yeah, we talk more about what's happening in this sort of divide between the valley the consumer world and the Pentagon It's all for good intentions the government's full of patriots that think they're doing the right thing They just couldn't fathom that small little startup companies starting in garages would ever outpace the billions of dollars They were investing in military grade type of things so it was a fundamental disconnect in frames of thinking also in the business landscape Right some of these companies doing pots right like a something 3m these humongous monolith companies IDM These were companies that were built on government contracts if you wanted a huge fortune 500 company That was a good place to look but now all these other companies start dwarfing these original previous generation monoliths Yeah, you look at Google Microsoft and Vidya each one has 3x the market cap of the entire defense industrial based combined And so they used to have all of the leverage these companies were among the biggest they had the most lobbying money I would imagine we've got to get into what kind of grift was going on because I'm sure it was plentiful as that whole landscape changes No one there is adopting to it I think a great real-life example is you flying an f16 above Iraq on the border of Iran and explain what happened in that scenario It's 2006 I'm in my first combat deployment mixture of excitement fear and duty and all of that nervous is washes away when you actually sit down in the jet and strap in for your first Mission but you go off and our mission is to support our ground troops Marines army folks on the ground and we're doing a lot of operations on the border of Arakin Iran at 16 is an amazing airplane It has GPS at the time the world's most maneuverable fighter But we are circling around those troops were helping on the border at 500 miles an hour if I looked down at my screen There's no moving map There's no easy way to know exactly where I am on the border and at 500 miles an hour You know doesn't take it too long to go for in the wrong direction and got forbid you start an international incidents or even worse The general finds out and sends you home and a ball of embarrassment I imagine some are even automated.

There's anti aircraft artillery on the border So if you skew eight miles into their airspace you might inadvertently deploy some kind of we don't know what's gonna happen It could be very bad that same year though I could rent a small assessment aircraft and have a moving map on their predecessor to the iPad This compact iPad and that whole thing costs maybe a couple hundred bucks And so it really struck me Why does my 30 million dollar jet lag behind what I'm using to play Tetris back in the barracks and we were flying single-seat aircrafts a lot of So like you know what we're gonna fly with these things strap to our leg and use them to make sure we're on the right side You're using a consumer product that was $300 in a $20 million jet exactly and that was kind of a light bulb moment for you It was there's a first realization this consumer technology world in the private sector is just different and we need to find a way to access it Okay, if we had to pinpoint when the old paradigm started breaking down or being as effective as it could be again Let's just remind people so if you have the biggest Navy in the world That's a good sign right if you have the most aircraft carriers the history of warfare heavily favored those with this enormous industrial capacity and building these huge things and expensive airplanes When does that start tipping? So it's really the advent of software and the power of software that makes an airplane or a chip all the more effective and in fact What we would say a modern fighter jet is really a flying computer with the software providing the most capability I'll serve a Christian a second bit in 2001 Secretary Ash Carter while he was teaching Harvard wrote a seminal paper saying that the future of military deterrence and power will originate from adopting commercial technology from machine learning from computers from what software can do And so that was the first time that a senior defense policy to really wrote that and advocate for that 15 years later He was in a position to implement the change he had predicted to read us in history here So the Cold War ends and this is notion that we have a peace dividend We've been spending an enormous amount of our nation's wealth protecting ourselves protecting our allies We have an enormous military that because we no longer have a societal threat we can kind of wind down So at that moment there was a lot of consolidation in the defense industry the military did get smaller military budgets got smaller But that was also the moment that historically government R&D which had been in the lead kind of flatlined right as the technology economy took off So if you're in the military or a military scientist, you're used to DARPA every five years and then into something amazing Whether it's GPS or stealth technology like a real game changer and so you just kind of assume okay Well, that's gonna keep happening But if you don't realize that the trends are now working against you that actually corporations like Microsoft Google Amazon as they grow into BMS are gonna have thousands more engineers computer scientists working on pioneer advanced technology So if your lines of vision are turned towards the military's labs and the companies that the military typically works with and not the technology Economy for consumer devices You kind of miss this revolution that a few people did spot as was starting to happen How much of the problem with relying on DARPA or government funded research and development how much of their failing is a product of no competition? Interestingly DARPA is an incredible research lab arguably one of the most successful in history alongside Bell Labs and a couple other iconic places But their track record of actually taking their leading edge innovations and getting them into the military So actually having whether it's the Air Force or the Army or the Marines with the Navy adopt some of their technology is kind of only Middle it's sort of around maybe 50% maybe even lower that speaks to the inherent conservatism of Military's and it's not just the US military's militaries everywhere who tend to want to do things kind of the same way It's for them large and significant change can be really scary. It's hard absent award to actually test New systems and know they're actually gonna perform and that's why we see in military history all these incredible transitions whether it's from Calvary to mechanized infantry whether it's from the battleship to the aircraft carrier, but every generation or so we typically get very surprised in war with a whole new paradigm of technology moving in Well, just be specific in the book is is initially the cavalry did not want tanks It's really amazing the British Navy did want steam ships There was a belief in the Army that there was no need for airplane So we actually had to start the Army Air Corps which became the Air Force once the Air Force started flying man bombers and fighters and Intercontinental ballistic missiles and long-range missiles were invented There was a belief that even we couldn't rely on those that we still needed to have man fighter aircraft in the lead And then I got to watch the Air Force go through yet another transition with the advent of drone warfare when I was a young Eight in the Pentagon so these are technology revolutions that you have to catch in time Is if you get kind of behind the power curve of them and another adversary picks them up you can be very surprised in the late 30s There were folks that said hey airplanes can drop bombs and attack ships And there was a famous general's name was Billy Mitchell that proved this and had a demonstration with a sunken navy ship with airplanes And everyone thought hey this couldn't be possible this guy's a quack and even after he demonstrated that they ended up court-marshingly him and removing his rank So it's really hard to go against these entrenched interests Have you guys spent any time in trying to figure out what motivation creates this because right on the surface?

I would say like well you want to do what worked in the past the last thing you did that you were successful at You're prone to want to repeat that secondly though I would imagine it must suffer a little bit from the actual ranking system of the military that it's so hierarchical and that the people that End up in positions of power are generally gonna be older You think that's in the recipe of why militaries are so traditionally conservative I agree that I mean there's a lack of imagination and the other one is if you are a senior general commander You've risen to that by being very successful in the system that you grew up in and so to say that well that doesn't even matter anymore It's not again that these people are bad. It's just such a different frame of reference. You can't even think of this new world Yeah, you're almost asking them to embrace something that self-preservation would prevent them from doing exactly This is very generous But could it be an ethical question of if we start adding in all of these things how intense will it get it could be I think You have to something which is think about risk because in the end of the day What's the job of a military civilian commander is to deter war and if we have one make sure it's not a fair fight for our men and women And uniform and so if you're trying something new and you're really scaling it You're taking risk is it going to work? And if it doesn't work that's bad and not only your own job is at risk But all the folks that are supposed to support so there is that conservatism But the difference now is that change is happening so fast And there's so many examples of what that change is going to bring that if we don't move and innovate We're gonna be in a really bad place and not be the preserves of peace around the world Okay, so one evolution that's happening is the tech evolution and the price of all these items They just keep falling falling falling so that's one unique trajectory We're on but then also the nature of warfare evolves from World War two to Vietnam to Afghanistan to where we're at today So walk us through how wars were fought and how they're increasingly being fought Ukraine really has become the battlefield Experimentation and you can definitely catch glimpses in Ukraine of the future of war Rajan I got a chance to visit by invitation of the general staff there last October and actually see some of the systems on the ground that We had helped develop when we were leading defense innovation unit the Pentagon Silicon Valley office And what you're seeing is incredibly inexpensive drones because micro electronics have fallen in price fighting alongside the sort of set pieces of land war So tanks artillery trenches, but interestingly those drones over time are getting more and more effective So if you go back just a couple months ago We gave the Ukrainians in the beginning of the war 31 and 1 a 1 Abrams battle tanks the most advanced battle tank in the world Not only the US arsenal and arsenal of any of our allies and the Ukrainians have had to evacuate all 31 of those tanks from the front Because a quarter of them were destroyed by Russian kamikaze drones Oh, wow, and if you think about that in historical perspective that could tell people like Raj and I that we're at one of those Transferential moments where a century of mechanized warfare there began in World War I where the tank began to replace Calvary could now be Happy again with drones and it's important to pause here and note that even Calvary was kind of expensive to maintain But the cost of a kamikaze drone is what two three four thousand dollars versus a three or four million dollar tank And so if you were a modern military and you've made all these investments and things like tanks And you have to fight a ground war and your enemy has no tanks But is ready to invest a lot in drones you're now really behind the power curve Yeah, there's probably some temptation to throw good money at bat You're already so pocket committed to all this equipment you've paid for that the move off of it is really hard emotionally It's not just a motion And there is a whole political economy and structure to the way in which the Pentagon Budgets in five-year budget cycles that commits to advanced buys and a lot of the larger defense companies You know have figured out how to maintain political support have wisely distributed the manufacturing of a lot of their large weapons programs Across the United States so many large weapons programs will be built in 40 40 45 47 US states And so of course, there's naturally a lot of resistance is people worry about job loss Congress has the power of the purse So it's not that the Department of Defense can make its own decisions on what to buy Congress has to decide how much money is gonna Get allocated to the Air Force or the Navy how many ships are we gonna actually buy and Congressional folks are in the business of being elected and having jobs in your district helps ones get elected and so there's that whole other influence side that self-feeds on this thing Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare Well before we get into how you guys end up coming to work together I would love to just touch in on some of the examples of where we're at just before you guys join forces and start Diu walk us through some of these ships in these jets one of them that I found fascinating That's in the book is that the F 35 which became operation on 2016 that all of the designs for it were frozen in 2001 This takes us back to the fact that in this country we have two completely different systems for producing technology We have one for the military and we have one for everything else and the military one is a highly regulated one And this has to do with the fact that you can't go on Amazon and price shop for fifth generation fighters, right?

Yeah So there's really only a company or two or maybe three that can produce them So you host a competition and one of them will win and then to make sure that the taxpayers interest are being protected the Pentagon has an elaborate system of auditing that actually makes companies that work with it develop like a bespoke system of accounting so that their Auders can go in and check numbers So we don't have a thousand dollar toilet seat and five hundred dollar hammer But the problem is that this system is laborious cost a lot of extra money to administer and once you want to contract There are no competitive pressures and so then we end up in this world where a jet whose design is frozen in 2001 Doesn't actually start flying until 2016 15 years later and think about how many generations of technology have come in between it And that's why on the image of our book unit X. We have that at 35 fighter alongside an iPhone the iPhone wasn't even invented In the iPhone currently processes information at a hundred x the speed that the f 35 does the original chip in the f 35 was about a penny M4 so you have to go to the computer history museum to be able to find a working Oh my god, they have upgraded it so they've upgraded three times since the third upgrade they're presently tested It's not yet operational, but I can't wait until this fall. I'm gonna go out and buy an iPhone 16 It's gonna be great This brings us back to why the mission that Secretary Carter gave us to open up shop in Silicon Valley is so important because if you're Going after critical military technology at a time of changing paradigm as a warfare You better be getting the stuff that's being upgraded yearly not the stuff that takes 15 years to go from drawing board to operational And what's the price tag on a 35? It's a two trillion dollar program over 30 years And there's that budgeting the cost of airframes and also all the maintenance that has to go on and all the personnel to support them So each aircraft is what 300 million by like a hundred million to buy one and same out to run it for 20 30 years How many drones is that someone divide?

300 million by 3000 a lot of drugs. Yeah again You're so far down the line on this thing for someone to stand up and go guys honestly We should just pull the plug on this entire thing no one could do that good That one of the things that has been a little bit frustrating to watch as there is now a very legitimate debate in Washington over Which weapon systems we should provide the Ukrainians? We were just saying them f 16 jets now many people call for f 16 to be sent earlier There was there's a concern on the one hand in the city administration that if we give the Ukrainians too many powerful weapons too soon We could provoke Putin into whitening his own war But of course the counter view is if we don't armed it Ukrainians to the teeth How are they gonna defend their own country? And so there's a super active debate going on about that where people are literally in a slugfest on television on the morning shows today on this issue None of them are asking the question Maybe we should cancel the next aircraft carrier We just bought and spend the money on experimenting with drones on experimenting with all these new experimental systems that look like they're gonna change warfare quite quickly Really quick is it fair to point out though?

I can imagine a debate happening where the last 30 years of war we've had have been smaller groups weird landscapes It hasn't been to superpowers going head-to-head on a battlefield for territory So that in some sense we do want all this shit if we have a full-blown war with a G7 country We do want the f 35 in the aircraft carriers, but then we almost need a different military That's handling all these insurrection groups and stuff. Yeah, it's a really good point. It's not an either or so if we think about f 35 And some of these other very modern systems we do need some of those things They have some really amazing capabilities like being stealthy That is what our industrial base builds really well like there's no commercial need to have a stealthy iPhone We need these technologies But there's a difference between hardware and software and the current industrial base is actually really good at building hardware You want to build an aircraft carrier and keep it for 50 years or a nuclear submarine? We actually do a pretty good job But the delays and the cost overruns are from software as the best software engineers are going to Google and Apple and other so how do we Disaggregate the software from the hardware.

That's one, but I think that's pretty obvious It's now it's really hard to actually make it happen and Chris and I were in charge of part of making that happen That's one question. I think this next question though Which is harder is if we believe that drones are going to play a decisive role in the future and smaller satellites and other commercial technology What are we gonna not do so if full aircraft carriers should we have 11 right? Right now those decisions are really hard everybody loves drones to say we're gonna have one less aircraft carrier Yeah, especially given what is our current most likely engagement really we're talking about China primarily talking about Taiwan You're talking about trying to defend Taiwan right now also in aircraft areas damn what better have them But they may not be survivable. That's the issue we're like the bad news crew here I'm trying to say that's this terrible thing about the second there's another development that is happening in advanced militaries around a new kind of Missile that's called a hypersonic weapon a hypersonic missile So this is something that goes significantly faster than anything has gone before and not only that but unlike a traditional missile Which has a ballistic arc it sort of flies in a predictable in the same way that you throw a baseball these weapons are new Right now we have no effective defenses against them right now radar picks it up They know the known arc of that size thing moving at that speed and they can kind of predict an intersection point to shoot it And our destroyers and aircraft carriers are outfitted with specific systems to defend the carrier group against ballistic And they're predicting where a ballistic missile will be traveling But hypersonic weapons simply at this point cannot be defended against because things like aircraft carriers are not stuff They have a huge rate of cross-section.

They're very easy to find so the reality is that kind of like tanks Aircraft carriers are no longer going to be effective platforms for close-in fighting against advanced adversaries They're just too vulnerable with these new supersonic missiles. Yes. Okay, so tell me how you two end up crossing paths You're doing a lot of tech stuff in Silicon Valley Raj and you are working in the Obama administration Yeah, I mean young political appointee in the Pentagon and at the National Security Council Well, it turns out Raj and I actually crossed paths in Iraq of all places because I served as a civilian there during his first combat tour Oh, okay He was actually flying some of the combat air patrols over the green zone and over convoys But I was very junior relative to the environs that Chris was advising He's just a blind pilot, but yeah, we had intersected a few times in DC This is 2015 Secretary Carter who is now Secretary of Defense runs the largest bureaucracy in the world three million people on a budget of 700 billion And says I'm now going to implement the change that I had predicted in 2001 So he comes out to Silicon Valley and is the first sitting Secretary of Defense to visit in over two decades has this big meeting in Stanford and says Hey, I understand there's a divide there's mistrust You have to understand this is right after the Snowden disclosures where a bunch of tech companies said our intelligence agencies Can't be trusted in fact They hosted the meeting when he spoke at Stanford because I think Google didn't allow him to speak on their campus Wow, and so he said but I'm gonna solve this I'm gonna put an office here and we're gonna drill holes between the divide Unfortunately what then happened was they took that office that he had envisioned defense innovation unit experimental Right, you got to have an acronym if it's the Pentagon Yeah, and it got pushed down to a couple layers into the Pentagon staff and some well-meaning people that didn't understand the valley at all Came out there and said yeah, my boss wants me to do it I'll help make it happen But didn't put a lot of energy behind it And so they had this team of 20 people in a sleepy army building in Moffat field when I visited They were working on folding card tables and internet hotspots for six months because I can figure out how to get internet in the heart of Silicon Valley Oh boy, so it wasn't off to a really good start, right But the secretary's Carter's credit. Yeah, no friends in the valley said look sort of the same working you need to figure it out So he's trying to do it from within and the people that they selected were just not of the valley They'd never been there.

They didn't have the network. They weren't set up properly So it's credit decided to reboot Chris and I got recruited to come in along with two others Michelle and Isaac to take over bring in a different view Chris was an insider he knew how the Pentagon work He knew I want you to work You know, I just sold my first company I understood a little bit of the valley work and most importantly he said I'm gonna take this unit and why you're gonna report directly to me direct reports of the secretary of defense So a Brockersies are painful But the good news about a Brockersies are one person at top and what they say jump everybody jumps And so we now had his backing which was amazing and we moved really really quickly Okay Now was the goal handed to you bring us up to speed a or bring us up to speed start leading us and also How much awareness did they have of what China was doing at the time or is that something that the unit X figured out? They had a very good view of what China was doing They knew we needed something different to counter that this traditional buying of equipment wasn't going to work We needed to get things like artificial intelligence and cyber security into the mix so our mission was How do we accelerate the delivery of commercial technology into the hands of the war fighter? And you've got to imagine go through the major military contractors because these systems will be implemented Oh, thanks.

They're making yeah So here's one of the most incredible moments that we experienced so this colossus of a contracting process that I described earlier with its rules and regulations to prevent the expensive toilet seats and hammers meant that the average contract took 18 to 24 months to negotiate under Something called the federal acquisition rules which is like a dictionary size They have rules and regulations So if you're a startup in Silicon Valley facing the pressures of being an entrepreneur and having to show your venture investors their potential return on their investment you can't wait for two years to contract and maybe or maybe not come through and then if it comes through and you're successful in the First instance you may not even get the second production contract because somebody would better lobbyists could come along So we had to figure out a way of doing business at Silicon Valley speed and there's an incredible story We tell in the book about a woman one of her colleagues named Lauren daily She was 29 when he met her her father actually was a tank commander in the army and her way of serving was to become a civilian in the army Become an acquisition specialist and because she's a total acquisition nerd She was up late at night reading the just-release National Defense Authorization Act the law that Congress passes at the government defense And she came to Raj and I our first week in the job and said hey There's a single sentence in section 815 of the act that I think could allow us to do contracting really fast So Raj asked Lauren that sounds great. Can you write this up and Lauren says well? Here's a 20 page paper how to do it. We had this incredible Oh, it was the one line it was inserted without the knowledge of a lot of other people by a renegade Senate staffer Who was fed up at the old system of contract and the key innovation was to allow something led under a different form of contract to go straight If it worked at the pilot phase into production no renegotiation So what ordinarily would have been a four-year process to first get the initial contract then recompete it for the Production contract could be telescoped down to a 30 to 60 day work it out between the two parties Wow This is like saving literally years and years by one.

Yeah, it was amazing how this wormhole was built So then Lauren and Chris get on a plane two days later. They go to Washington They meet the top Pentagon acquisition lawyer They meet the general counsel of the Pentagon and they convince them that this is a good idea and legal and then most importantly Secretary Carter signs off on it by the end of the week And so now we have this new way of doing contracting 60 days to meet an amazing startup and give them funds and a pathway to scale fast forward now 10 years after Lauren invented This thing over 70 billion dollars worth of procurement by the Department of Defense has gone through what she's put together Wow, so once you have that at your disposal Do you set up shop somewhere and start hearing pitches like in my understanding correctly? You are now in a position to basically be a venture capitalist with the government's money You can hear pitches a great tech that would benefit the military and you can deploy those people to start working Absolutely We had an office in Mountain View, California Then we opened one up in Boston Austin, Texas And of course the Pentagon because actually all of our battles were there not on the west coast and yeah We built a team about a hundred people whose job was to match Customers meaning problem set owners in the air force in the Navy and we figure out which companies could solve them And then we help put them under contract the facts bear dollars You have to be good stewards of the money We have to be efficient and make sure there's enough checks and balances But we move really quick and most importantly right you think back again to 2016 and most startups didn't want to work with the government In fact their venture investors would tell them hey, don't spend time here these contracts take two to three years You got to make this 18 month gate my first company was a cybersecurity company my engineers were all from the natural security agency The government we knew what we were building would have been valuable But even our lead investors said just don't do it and when we sold the business we had zero cents of government revenue So we begin to prove that hey, that's different and now there's a big boom in venture investing in defense technology Okay, so what was curious is it hard to raise capital for these companies when you know there's a single customer? It's like your growth potential is kind of weirdly augmented the Pentagon is really not just one customer It's 800 different customers from within different offices.

It's an 800 billion dollar budget Then you've got allies and partners around the world civilian agencies and depending on what they're building right This is a valley traditionally wasn't building bombs and bullets. They're building software low-cost hardware So there's other commercial applications to what they were building as well Okay So walk me through an example of as you said there's customers and I would imagine what you're saying is there's someone in the air force And she's like here's this problem. We have we don't know what to do They start they come to you they tell you the problem and you pair them with some startup that you think might have a solution Well, we run a whole contest where we understand their problem So we were working with the special operators and at a time most of the conflicts were in the Middle East and one of their missions was to go Roll up suspected terrorists So you go to that to specter his home knock on the door go in try to identify them and take them back for questioning as you Mad imagine the first guy that busts down a door of a potential terrorist house is under high risk of getting shot And so the special operators were working on ways to solve that one of their ways of thinking about it was to build an iron man suit Oh, sure. They've just seen the film why not which is great, but just violates a couple laws of physics try to make it actually work Yeah, I spent like a billion dollars on it.

You're tracking on any star for us. Yeah, exactly So we said well we met this really interesting drone company It was a couple engineers at MIT and one of the co-founders had actually been an AV seal Their idea was to use a small drone. We'll send a drone in maybe the first one's got a little explosive breaks open the door And it'll go in self-navigate and identify what's there? Is it a family?

There's our three guys with guns and then have that information so when us or okay troops go in they have some knowledge So that's another way of here's the problem a different way of thinking about it and now Let's find the right set of companies to solve it and that device was successfully implemented that developed and works I believe it was and she'll AI is now giant. It's a unicorn That's the MIT guys drone company. We covered already how Congress is the holder of the purse imagine Rajan I like this is the appointment of our life It's right getting tapped personally by the secretary of defense for this really high profile mission That is kind of a zero-field mission for the nation We really need to help the military make this pit Secretary Carter flies out on Air Force 2 His motorcade comes to Moffat Field There's a row of television cameras He announces Raj and I and the two other members of our leadership team in front of a giant crowd of a who's who in Silicon Valley Everybody goes to the bar that night and celebrates right this is the beginning of an amazing new venture and then Raj gets a phone call Two days later from a friend of his on Capitol Hill that says I want you to know something your budget just got zeroized Yeah, zeroized. I don't know what that means.

Yeah, this doesn't sound good. No It doesn't sound good when it comes to budgets So it doesn't only mean your budget is zero which you would imagine but it's done with prejudice So the Pentagon can't move money around to support it budgets going to happen in three months And so we just took this job and we're like it's all gonna be over Yeah, so we switch into hyperdrive to try to get projects done show worth But then I fly to the hill to understand this I'm like I can reason these people Let me just explain to them what we're trying to do and why it's a good idea and what we learned is that there was a couple Senate staffers or how staffers that were unhappy with Secretary Carter because these correctional staffers and the members go on trips Around the world congressional delegations. Well the transport for those trips is provided by the Department of Defense and some air force plane And so for whatever reason either Secretary Carter someone on staff more likely had not approved a few of these well Let's be specific. They wanted a golf stream.

Oh my god. They wanted a private jet. That's right It's not like they were denied business class seats on that's all yeah They asked for a golf stream and they were told no to go on a vacation Well, sure there was some work related Legend well, even if it was dead work related the notion that they might have to fly private exactly and so the staffers were For this and I said well the secretary doesn't work for me. I work for the secretary But these were the kinds of challenges and individual things that we had to overcome so logistically how does it happen?

They set a budget for the Department of Defense and it's 800 billion dollars Right and Carter has direct say somewhere that money is meant or no This is one of the secrets of government is that even the president only has so much authority? You would think the secretary defense could just control the budget of the department I like fact the budget of the department is broken down into what about 500 individual stove pipes 20,000 line items to move money across any of Them you have to have the unanimous permission of four congressional committees So Congress effectively has a veto. This is the design of the founders that have separation of powers between the branches of government Which prevents tyranny but also makes innovation really hard and personal grievances Well, that's it I mean it's not a bad thing that Congress is stewards of taxpayer dollars and trying to protect it But you think about it $800 billion budget There's probably a hundred staffers that are in charge of this so each staffer essentially controls eight billion dollars So they have a lot of discretion and so things like this they have control over and they can influence the department And so they knew that this project Diu X was important to secretary Carter and they were gonna hold it hostage until they got a golf stream to I know it's so petty Yeah, that's one of my questions is what are some of the insane and petty personal grievances within the government? Advancement but also what happened the first time you guys go to Washington you've been issued government credit card This is another can't believe it moment So we're on the airplane flying to Washington and this is supposed to be very large This is supposed to be our grand arrival in Washington right secretary our car has just announced us We're gonna go meet with the heads of each military service All these four-star generals and admirals and figure out what's most important on their list of things They want us to work with and so in the middle of the flight we get an email from the government rate hotel We're supposed to stay at not the Ritz.

Yeah, and they say I'm sorry But your government credit card has been rejected. Can you please provide us with another form of payment? And so it dawns on us that the first set of people that originally administered this office who had been taken out of the chain of command with the announcement Out of spite rather than transferring our government cards had just turned them off So here we are landing Shoring at the Pentagon gym for eight dollars because you're allowed to check in to your hotel early and get reimbursed under the government rules And now we're having to pay for an uber Do you have a capital hill out of our personal credit card to go figure out why our budget was just turned to zero? What a great start you guys were off to waste of time Let me ask a nosy question So raj you sold the company if I volunteered to start working with the government for whatever reason They've decided I would be a good asset for them and they were like yeah You gotta fly cut to bed.

I'll pay for myself and then when I get there I'm gonna stay on ice Okay, were you allowed to do that? You probably get to figure it out, but this is week one You want to figure out the system I want to stay with my team saying I think it's interesting think of bad boys. Mike Lowry was rich the cop So we drove a Ferrari and drive a cop car another question is why would you you sold a company and now you're washing your body in the pentagon bathroom Are you like what am I doing? I can do so what is this the advantage that the pentagon the government has despite all the bureaucracy and pain Is that the mission is very noble?

Yeah, right? The mission is to prevent wars and if we have them to win and for all the mistakes that America has made It is still the beacon of democracy and self-determination It's the world oldest democracy my family immigrants from India like yours mica and the opportunities that me and my sisters got Were absolutely incredible right down from a small rural village for the electricity at 12 to his kids going to Ivy League schools Right where else are you gonna get to do that? So I think this is the advantage that the government has they're more high ground and it's like a oil tanker It's really hard to move right lots of bureaucracy But when you move you've got a lot of mass going down a different way in fact when Chris and I were approached We first said no several times. I said no three times this job seem like a lot of pain But they had this guy named Todd Park.

He was the CTO of America a very successful entrepreneur's own right before going in to government He's the most convincing man. I've ever met he literally said look This is the most important thing you can do for you the nation in the world You need to come in and do this and he was right and so we felt like we had the power in the backing from the secretary defense to go do this In the end, yes, there's all kinds of little pains that you have to go through But when we were recruiting and building the team man We were able to get some of the best executives and technologists in the country Well, this is the very beginning of the country George Washington did not want to be president He certainly didn't want to be president in a second term You get called on it's like it's you were this thing from like anytime you really get a sense that you're gonna have a true impact Yeah, almost impossible saying no So let's go through some of the successes you guys have tell me about getting called in and then telling you look We need for you guys to figure out now that North Korea can launch nukes that will reach Seattle or LA We have got to figure out how to down those or how to account for those When I was on the National Security Council We would enumerate the biggest worries that we had in North Korea was in the top five And the reason was their intercontinental ballistic missile program Which had been faltering was nevertheless progressing to a point And they developed enough nuclear warheads that they could for the first time pose a credible threat Of striking in the United States and we have a very elaborate missile defense system That is successful with high rates of accuracy down in small numbers of incoming missiles But the minute you get a certain number of incoming missiles that system will ultimately fail And this is of course a zero failed mission So that then puts incredible pressure on the military because the only other way To prevent North Korea from being able to successfully attack America is to actually strike that missile as it's being ready to launch on the ground But this is incredibly difficult North Korea is a large mountainous country And because it's been essentially at war since the Korean War in the 50s It has gotten very good at hiding its weapons and caves and moving them from location to location And then popping them out literally in a few minutes launching something and then going back into hiding Yeah, they don't have missile silos or these mobile units that can drive into position Well, this was what made their tactical position even stronger Because now all of a sudden they're not any longer at fixed locations That we know in advance that can move their mobile launchers around So this is where Silicon Valley comes in So how can you possibly successfully find needles in a haystack? There's a commercial space revolution going on Superpowers used to be the only entities that had spy satellites that could actually take high-resolution images from space and relay them back to the ground quickly But now all of a sudden you have a lot of commercial companies taking cheap hardware Literally taking iPhones and putting them on satellite buses And because the cost of launching this into space had gone so much lower with SpaceX and the arrival of competition in the space market You can now very affordably launch small satellites And so that brings us to a company that we found called Capella Capella was built by an individual named Payam He was an immigrant from Iran I think it was a JPL before And then he was a Stanford and this was his master's thesis And he decided to build a company that would build small Goop satellites that would do synthetic aperture radar On the cheap and be able to Because it was cheap instead of a multi-billion dollar Greyhound bus You can have a lot of them and have a lot of revisit rates And more importantly ultimately you could share that information because it wasn't classified like our exquisite system It took a lot of machinations and a lot more bureaucracy busting to finally get it working But if you look at some of the public images when Russia invaded Ukraine It was Capella's satellite imagery Capella's not launching did they pay to be launched by SpaceX Yep And just to put it in a perspective Elon Musk has launched 5,000 satellites Of his own 80% of all mass that went to space last year was launched by SpaceX And an individual owns 5,000 plus satellites orbiting So again when you talk about them having to integrate with the private sector It passed the point where of course you have to Just for the government to catch up with Elon Musk it would be years and years out This is all part of the shift that Secretary Carter spotted in 2001 And it's not just in Starlink and other Elon Musk's systems are access to space It's also in artificial intelligence which is predominantly driven by the private sector And which is likely to become one of the defining technologies in conflict as well And the only place we have a clear lead still Exactly we have a clear lead and large language models didn't originate in some government lab Yeah, right It's in three or four companies in a 20 mile radius of San Francisco So the solution to this North Korea issue was to be photographing with this private sector company as much of the landscape as possible At all times in analyzing that to track the movement of these Yeah, that was the Capella play And that's in action that's currently being done It is so the project has moved on to when we were involved with it But the idea is to leverage the much greater number of less expensive satellites That you can have gathering data and then also to use AI algorithms to help you find those needles in the haystack So we're dramatically improving our situational awareness of what's happening Around a key and very serious threat to the United States Yeah, I would imagine the good analogy or parallel would be the AI that reads Radiologist images and they're diagnosing cancerous tumors at like 82 versus a human I think like imagine it can view all these images much more efficiently than we can And it's not just that company There's three or four other now commercial satellite companies And again to highlight how different is from 10 years ago to now There are hundreds of space companies being funded by the private sector And the other thing that makes this different right for your billing aircraft carrier You as a taxpayer pay for all the research and development We fund that then we go buy it private sector is funding these technologies and taking that technology risk So it's actually unburdening even the US government for the cost of many of these things Stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare Okay, so some of the innovations that you to oversaw at the defense innovation unit Let's list some of them You've got the AI powered drones that can fly into buildings and map the interiors We talked about that for the special forces flying cars that can land like helicopters Tell me about this pitch was this a customer first or did you get pitched by a supplier basically? Oftentimes we'd hear both because we're constantly looking at companies and we're hearing problems And then our team says boy, there's a new way to maybe do this There was a tragic accident in Afghanistan where a chinook helicopter got shot down by terrorists And a couple dozen of our finest special forces were just died And so then the thought was accepting of all the one helicopter Can you have a bunch of smaller helicopters?

Could they be more quiet and that's what electric motors did And so there was a company called Joby that we had met and we connected them with the Air Force And we had you ended up buying the first vehicle and allowing the Air Force to test with it And they have them in their fleets and they work They're undergoing testing right now So there's a whole bunch of them down at some of our test ranges where Air Force pilots are flying them and testing them What do they look like? They look like a small four-person car But instead of just one big propeller like a helicopter It's got eight small little propellers Then it takes off and then they turn forward and now it flies forward and it's all electric Wow And are they doing the flying or is it all automated? It's a little bit of both Oh my god, I can't believe that I hope that's huge and then it bleeds down into the private sector I know Well, that's really what they want to go after While the government is great because they're used to them, they have testing ranges In fact, they didn't want our money, they wanted access to test ranges That's why they took the contract They really want to build flying Ubers That's the market They want to go after Oh my god, that's crazy Flying Ubers Let's talk quickly about China Because I imagine as you were engaged in this project and you were having some success There still must have been enormous frustrations around every corner And I imagine still to this day that you have great concerns about the rate At which this transformation is taking place Let's talk about how China differs from us and what kind of things they're able to do That's helping propel them very quickly in this direction First, it's important to take a step back I acknowledge that China and just a generation has taken nearly a billion people out of poverty And it's today our second largest trading partner So unlike the Soviet Union, we have a much more complex relationship with China Usually beneficial on a lot of levels But for sure, as a national security strategist, the worst fear of any national security strategist Is not actually a terrorist attack or a war in the Middle East It's a war between great powers We haven't had a great power war since the second world war Between the first and the second world war We had 130 million people killed It's hard for any of us to imagine the implications of a great power war So the question, of course, then is how can you prevent it? What are the steps you need to take to drive down the risk of great power conflict to the lowest possible amount?

And in military powerland, the steps you take are to increase deterrence In other words, each individual situation where your potential adversary might be tempted For their own reasons, for their own motives to undertake an action You want to have them outmatched and outfoxed So that they know if they try that, that they're not likely to succeed And the theory there is that if you're not likely to succeed, if nobody is likely to succeed or benefit Mutually assured annihilation Exactly And so a huge push into the commercial sector for the Department of Defense to modernize its own arsenal Was about taking our nation's military to the next level of sophistication Is the Chinese with the newfound wealth that they've generated Have purpose built their own military to be able to compete with ours And they're not as trapped in the dogma that we are It's even more interesting than that They study every US military exercise and conflict in every conflict around the world In fact, more than 120 papers have been written by Chinese academics about the conflict in Ukraine To try and pinpoint what are the weaknesses that we could capitalize on Only you're not beholden to doing things, but you can actually purpose build your military to compete They're like watching in game footage as a team preparing to play And this is the reason why we can no longer in our battle plans Anticipate bringing our aircraft carriers anywhere near the coast of China or another Advanced adversary without them getting sunk because of this evolution So that's the backdrop to this great race to try and deter a potential great power war But the systems that we each have set up to do that are very different China also recognizes that this commercial technology is really important And they do have some advantages particularly around low-cost manufacturing So 90% of the world's consumer drones are built by one company, DJI, that's based in China And so the Chinese approach or I should say the CCP, Chinese Communist Party's approach to this is something they call civil military fusion, which is CCP members sitting on the boards of these Companies basically knowing that they can in time of need tell these companies what to do Well they have an explicit directive, right? Exactly and the authority to do it because well it's an authoritarian government that can just do whatever they please So their mandate is anything that is developed by any private company that could benefit the military The CCP is ours to use exactly and we can change production and whatever we need to do in time of war We don't do that here in the US we have liberal western ideals and values We have a clear line between our private sector and our government sector And so we need to double down on what has made this country Successful and have our own version of civil and civil and civil and civil fusion that doesn't compromise that So it's through incentives and contracts and human understanding Part of the issue is that these worlds have driven apart the DOD and the civilian world Military service has almost become hereditary here in the US You're technically to serve your mother or father, serve in the military We've closed every active duty base in the San Francisco Bay Area Which is arguably a hot spot for technology People that grow up there, they don't have the kids of servicemen and women in their schools They don't run into them at church or the baseball game or whatever So their understanding of the military is through Hollywood Which may or may not be exactly right I think we have to figure out ways contractually and culturally to bring these worlds together So we will have cooperation in time of need like we did in World War II But none of it's forced But the government needs a new publicist because it does not People are I think understandably critical and they don't know a lot about this Like what we can be doing to help And they should be I mean again that's what makes this nation great is that we can criticize and we can sharpen ideas Yeah, how much of this problem do you think stems from our relative distance from all these things we see going on in the world? Do you think your average person in America? It's quite easy to tune out what's going on and war seems Although you know what's happening It's always so far from here Even the ones we've always waged The only one we've had on soil is with Mexico and ourselves So I would compare it to vaccine suffer from their own success None of us here have seen someone with polio So we're not too worried now about polio So how does that play into it?

Do you think people would have more of this on their mind if they were in closer proximity to this? This is not a new problem if we think about how we mobilize for World War II There's fewer people then that had passports and traveled the world in today So I think it's really incumbent on our political leadership To explain to the American public why is having treaty allies around the world important? Why is our relationship with Taiwan important? Why is NATO important?

Why do these things matter to the American way of life and how we've benefited from the relative peace that the world has? And so I think this is not a new problem We have to educate and we have to tell stories and tell it in a way that's not kind of attending and people can understand Yeah, there's a bit of a paradox that people don't really broach much Which is no one wants to hear this but if you want great peace Unfortunately, you probably have to have a humongous stick We have to in some ways be overly prepared in order to reach this point You're talking about where people know it would be futile to mess with us It was fascinating for me somebody who doesn't come from a military family Who never imagined I would spend a career working in a national security to show up in Silicon Valley Having been part of the national security establishment for over a decade and served at high levels And seen how decisions were made and come to an understanding of the threats that we face and why we take some of the actions And not agreeing with all of them but having a sense of things and I arrived in Silicon Valley and encountered that earlier version of me That was very alienated from the idea of the hard power of the military People who were my age or younger who grew up remembering Abu Ghraib and the botched initial invasion of Iraq And other military misadventures and a lot of people were not particularly happy at that time with our campaign of drone strikes around the world Because they read in the newspapers that there were at times a lot of civilian casualties I'll add in there, I think we've become increasingly aware of like CIA blowback We're kind of aware of how the Taliban came about. We know that's from the Russian We've learned that we've created a lot of the problems we're currently dealing with So there's just an overall skepticism of the approach which is very fair Very understandingly There's also a revulsion to actually thinking through a weapon system and what it does So you sit down with a really smart engineer who could capable make a self-driving car And you ask them well, what about a self-driving tank? So you wouldn't have to have humans in it and they don't want to have the conversation And so then you have to back up and say no, no, no I'm not like Dr.

Strangelove who's in love with the bomb Yeah, yeah, I'm in love with the idea of building a military is as sophisticated that we never have to use it Because the cost particularly of modern war would be catastrophic I mean in a way that none of us really can imagine or appreciate And so it takes a long time to walk someone through that moral chain of logic Where investing in military technology is one of the essential ways to maintain the peace And then once people begin to understand that they become a lot more open then To work in with people like Rajanai Defense Innovation Unit Yeah, and on the human level, right? If you meet a young officer and listed person, that's the tank driver And you get to know them and you get to know their families and realize they're just trying to do their job well They believe in peace and they're gonna do whatever they can to support it But they're gonna be in that tank and your technology might allow him or her to come home to their family I think just puts a different face to it. Yeah, it's all very complicated. I have my own personal experience with the witches in general I've always been very against war I've gone to Afghanistan twice on uso tours and I've met all those dudes and women over there that are on top of a mountain for 72 hours straight with no water It's a gnarly-ass job that people are doing for us And I think whatever your position on it is in theory Ideally it should be as safe as possible for those people that are doing it for you And you should be very mindful of how to make that as easy for them and as safe for them as possible Exactly unlike other countries or other authoritarian countries.

We have a say you have a vote Yeah, it's just tempting to be naive But I mean in the current day Russia has invaded another country. It's not really that theoretical You can't really sit on the sidelines and say like well no everyone's just gonna play nice in the world still nice Unfortunately, it's just still not very nice. This invasion. No what we saw in Israel on the 7th I think woken up people in places like the valley that not everybody's gonna play by the rules and be nice And so actually I'm quite heartened to see the amount of energy and interest.

You're right. It's our great challenge We do not want to dissolve the barrier between government and private sector We don't want to totalitarian so how do we out-compete the Chinese without the aid of totalitarianism? And that's on our plate to figure out and I think we double down on what has made America great free flow of capital free flow of talent Made the best idea and the best person win and we don't compromise our values Because I think this battle between democracy and autocracy is the greatest challenge of our generation And what is the thing that has you both most worried? If you're an avid consumer of the news and just keeping casual track of what's happening You can begin to start to connect the dots So you have drones in Ukraine now that have taken off the battlefield or most advanced battle tank in Israel Similarly the conflict of October 7 kicked off when Hamas defeated the Israeli border wall Sort of modern Magin Alain and they did it using this ingenious trick of using quadcopters to drop grenades on the generators powering the Israeli surveillance towers Similarly Hezbollah launching out of Lebanon has using ordinary munitions So drones that fly around to let fight a target to effectively depopulate the northern 10 miles of Israel Because the Israeli defense forces haven't figured out an effective way to defend against them and cruise missiles And so you have 85,000 Israelis that have had to flee their homes and evacuate And you move up to the Red Sea we've read about disruptions to global shipping the 12% of global shipping that passes through the Red Sea From the Hooti rebels who are using drones cruise missiles and now autonomous sea drones To not only attack oil tankers but also do attack sophisticated US destroyers So these dots are starting to connect and they're telling us we're in one of these paradigm shifting moments of military technology and the military we have today might not be the military we need urgently tomorrow Both here in the US and with our allies and so this raises this issue that again we've been able to take for granted for a long time And it should hopefully push it to the front of our minds in the front of our civic conversation And so would your wish be that we start allocating more and more to this area of spending and away from the old?

My worry and my optimism is around the same issue Which is through the efforts of DIU other organizations other entrepreneurs We're really at this tipping point of being able to scale this relationship between the commercial technology world And so what I worry is are we going to take these lessons and implement them scale them help the American public understand why it's important And help preserve the peace or are we going to allow it to stall because now we have to start making harder decisions Well and you're at the mercy of an ever-changing administration because even in the life of the DIU You guys had a lot of support and then you had less support and then you had less support under Biden for two years And then increase support so it's like you're also at the mercy of this ever-changing administration right? But historically our domestic conflict stopped at the nation's edge and we had a sort of a more unified front from foreign policy So I don't view this as my part as an issue But I think whoever the next president is he or she's going to have to make some really hard decisions and bring our citizens along to make Not only just allocation decisions right like what should we buy and build but also knowing that the foreign policy decisions We make in Ukraine and Taiwan others that authoritarian are watching and they're taking lessons And as Chris said you can draw a line from drawing Afghanistan to Ukraine to maybe what a dictator may or may not do Oh boy, well fascinating endeavor you guys went on the book is called Unit X how the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are transforming the future of war I just fingers crossed that's a very speedy process that continues to accelerate and that the American citizens participate I mean, that's what this takes me the good news is I've never seen more amazing engineers and young Scientists and smart people interested in this problem both from a technology and a policy standpoint They're starting to get involved and I think there's a famous Churchill quote They can always trust America to do the right thing after they've tried everything else Yeah, you two must have watched Oppenheimer with a particularly familiar feeling I mean to see Einstein say I'm not gonna participate and then this person say I am and the conflict inherent in all this understandably So that's what I was referencing with the ethics that didn't pop off a new age that is ethically ambiguous Yeah, well when you're reverse engineering it gets to me very clear But I understand but yeah when you're reverse engineering the fact that one of us is gonna get this bomb Who do you want to be or that we're gonna restrict AI here? And it's like well, do you think the other people are gonna restrict it the decisions often made for you? Unfortunately, it's not I agree with a certain reality Yeah, the thought experiment I say is do you want America to continue to be the world cop and setting standards Or do you want an unelected member of the communist party?

Oh boy? Okay? Well Raj Christopher this was fascinating again I hope everyone checks out unit X how the Pentagon and Silicon Valley are transforming the future of war good luck to you gentlemen And thanks so much for spearheading this I'm very grateful to you both Truly and we're gonna fly in cars for everybody in LA so the traffic is so great 4,000 We can't even drive down the road to Here Miss Monica correct all the facts that were wrong. That's okay though.

We all make mistake Can I ask my daughter spring me an ice-cold that coke if you'd like to you're supposed to be able to use them in this capacity at some point, right? What if they overheat on the walkover like erin boys? How would you know girls? Yeah?

I think they'll be okay. Can I go? Yeah, if they're gonna wow that's exciting. I'm gonna try it Let us see here.

We'll start with a call to Carly. Oh, I got a real sweat. Don't you know? I'm sweaty Would you are either of my daughters in there Link would you run up a couple of ice cold dicokes for me?

Oh my god, you're the greatest Because really all my updates involve Lincoln as a worker. Oh, okay. Yeah, but I can I can you want me to start there? Yeah, because I could start Friday with Bob's big boy my entire weekend your weekend was your parents Visitors yes in Neil and Neil Friday night in mind you I have been trying to get them to do this I bet this was my fourth attempt it always unravels my guys.

Let's go Friday night up to Bob's big boys in Burbank It's old car night. Yeah, I don't know why they couldn't get them interested. Yeah, I understand why Okay, but I'm explaining to them how good Bob's is well. Yeah, did you tell them about milkshakes?

Well, I told them about the hot fudge ice cream cake, okay, which again I don't think their imagination ran wild enough with them because they were very Oh, I'm about it. I'll even say not even trusting me. So after a couple different meltdowns finally they agree yours No, no, no the girls take turns it's like one of them's always in the mood to give a shot and the other one decides they're not And then a power struggling sues sure the four alphas under one roof. It's a you know power struggles are a dime That's okay.

So we go we take the roadmaster and you're getting a call is it spam? No, it was just it I sounded like a mom so we're wondering I know who you somebody's phone Oh my gosh, thank you here she is Oh Believe it or not that one's for Monica. Thank you. That's very nice Why don't you join me for two seconds because I'm actually telling stories that involve you Yeah, I'm starting with bobs Oh Bob's big Bob's big biz biz.

Yes Bob's big biz biz biz biz biz biz Yes I was first trying to set a little context some history that I've tried to get us to go many times right Yes, that's true And then I'm trying to be generous about my explanation of why it's been impossible What would be your explanation? What do you mean like how can we couldn't get it going? The whole time that we tried to go me and else we're both upset The first time I was freaking out and in Delta also she was in a she's in a girl's birth So she's yeah, she had a little thing. She's burnt the fuse, but you know what that's not even important Just it is important only in that it finally happened It happened I'm so happy you was like getting in the car and he just had this big smile on space I can tell you're really happy well and we took the roadmaster So all three of you know the roadmaster Monica has a 60 40 split seat So it can either be two individuals seats or it can be a bench seat Yeah, so it was dad me and Delta all sitting in the front mom opted out She was performing She was rehearsing to perform the following I see the fuck yeah So the three of us are sitting in the front bench seat of the roadmaster And we high-tailed it over there, right?

Oh, yeah, lots of smoking tires burnouts. Yep, you know setting the right vibe to go to car Nice exactly yes, so that part was already fun. Then we get there and Monica the funniest thing was Bob there I have to ask there's no such thing as Bob. Yeah, he's a fictitious guy.

You know I that's Bob That's Bob. Yeah, of course loud and remember he was stolen last time I was there. Hey, what I was the oh you witnessed it I thought you're I thought a caller told us they were going no no no I went and Bob was gone Are you serious? Yeah, and it was a horrible horrible I want to go.

I'm sorry. Thank you. We had a much better time. Oh, yeah He was front and center when we pulled in and we pulled in and we start going through the lot in the roadmaster and The first thing we will before that we got to talk about how about hell bent oh Delta was so she wanted to write her She was so mad at dad that he was not parking in the parking lot and not circling around for parking spots because she wanted our car to be praised She wanted to stand and then we saw a spot that was for you later in the night Um Delta was like can you please pull the roadmaster up and then we were like, okay We'll just sit in the parking spot.

So we don't just sat down the parking spot Well, I grabbed the car because I had a park on the street There was no spots and then we walked in Delta was just really crestfallen that no one's gonna be able to appreciate the roadmaster He's a good couple um craned necks as we were driving through the lot So then we park it and then Delta's like pop your hood and I'm like Delta the engine's so filthy a shameful and you have a nice hot rod like mine You should keep the engine bay clean and I just have it and Delta was so hell then on doing it She was so determined so she she convinced me one I pop the hood and then she monitored how many people were gathered around at the whole night Okay, now cut to we get out of the car. We start walking through the lot and the very first thing we stumble upon Let me just describe the dude. He looked like Mark Borchard from American movie He's six two skinny as hell long black hair and Lincoln what he's talking to a guy about his 68 Camaro, what does he say to the guy and he says this thing eats for just and shit stages So proud of it Fords and shit stages It's not there's no way it's eating for us people who have to shit talk. Yeah, they can't back it up That's why they have to say it.

Yeah real good speak for themselves like the roadmaster might have been the fastest car in the whole parking lot But I was sitting around there telling people that Too many people now. Yeah, the right was at the coolest one. We saw on one. We're like, um, yes to be honest I know I appreciate your honest.

I know I had to be honest Yes, this is live radio. It requires honesty. Exactly. We saw it's not like bouncing and stuff Oh, there's a lowrider came in and was bouncing in the parking lot.

I told the girls I almost bought a lowrider like seven or eight times and then they begged me not to I'm like what are you talking about? I didn't I was fully supportive. I just didn't want to say a challenge delta. That's true delta was against it.

I'm against it It'll ruin your reputation. Yeah Well, we like mixed messages, but it's a little like I think you think it's cultural appropriation is that where you're fearing? No, it's like oh You can be honest remember we're on it. I feel like it's age.

Okay, I continue he's saying he's too old to you I think he's aged out got a lowrider. No, no, no, you got to check out the lowrider community It's mostly like 50 year old Hispanic dudes primarily Yeah, he's driving it was was older. Yeah, he did. He has like a few son whatever Okay, so maybe it's a mix of culture and age well, it's it's huge in the Latino East LA community It's also huge in the black community on crunshaw.

Yes, I mean if you're already Latino and black I think I can hop in the mix, you know, it's not it's already a wide mat Moving on from the culture appropriation. Um, we also cars we like to we got to pick our favorites Yeah, I just want to point out is Lincoln before we even got into Bob's. Yeah, she goes This is so fun. I was so happy my little girls my beautiful little blonde girls who was holding their hands walking through the parking lot of the car show We look so girly and then we're gonna have the cars and everybody's like what yes Again, the messages like exactly yeah, I got my little girls were into the hot rods and scoping out every little aspect of it What a moment for me.

You were so proud I was cut to us in Bob's big boy. Yeah, and we let's go through to order Delta grilled cheese fries chicken tenders I was I was spaghetti and what was it? Yes, I got another side item me couple burgers I got a burger. I know you are burger and spaghetti.

Yeah, I love that you get a milkshake Oh, I did me and don't got no chicks because dad said that like the best is right there was hot fried chicken cake The hot fried chicken cake and then we asked the server for it and she was like, I'm sorry. We just ran out of I was I was upset as So sad, but so then in place of that we order two kids milkshakes. I love their milkshakes I'm not very thick and then the server comes over again at like I think it was 15 minutes And she's like well, we're cutting up more cake if you guys want some they just drop the milkshakes They take three steps she comes back with an update. We now have more double food cake to make off ice cream cake We get one of those and You're puking so many no-nos for dad.

No sugar. No, no, no. No gluten. No, no So we after he had eaten most of it we like went out he puked in it He puked in the um, Bob Bob big boob Twister in the toilet and then he got out and like on the way He was spitting out the window because he was puking and then he got over and hunched over in the bushes when we got home Just our puking and then he went to the middle of the bedroom and said I need privacy I I'm leaving the restaurant and I burp and I realized oh my god.

I'm throwing up I got hit a bush and I got hit some stoplights. It was a mess. I cannot eat that I know better But once you get a deal like hold on You mean like two bites and we thought it was really good, but I was I was I was very full So I didn't mean any and then you were like, oh, well, it's just sitting there I know you can't just fucking disrespect up. Yeah, but you did agree right.

It was delicious. It was amazing So they said what a night what a night what a team is amazing Next morning Lincoln come out to the garage. It's time to load all the cabinets with all the tools now talking I had two humongous on wheels toolboxes from the old house and a cabinet full of products Whatever Lincoln helped me all day long organize and put everything in the cabinet You're such a hard worker seriously, I like volunteer. I'm like hey, do you need any help?

I would love to do something Wow, I'm impressed. It was a great weekend That was one and did you have that sense of satisfaction? I had when you've worked hard and you look at it. It's all done and then I'm just in a great mood.

Yeah Yeah, I'm working towards that because I'm doing a school work right now with TD I know all right. Well, thanks for coming in and dropping the Diet Coke sent it be a part of the real time update Yeah, thank you for one of the best weekends. I've had this year's of course of course my dad I love you so much you're my best buddy and what a partner on the work scene Yeah, all right my book your parents. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they've been driving to does anyone know what level it was or point four Oh, I called it.

I don't know if you heard me in the garage. I said four smells off a little bit But it's close there's a big earthquakes at about 30 minutes ago. Yeah, Robin. I were standing under the attic in the garage And it was a big it's like someone shoved the world It's great and I was in the car driving and I didn't feel anything no clue no idea pools rippling.

That's nuts Yeah, it's good though. We want fors we do we want for us. Yes We want fors pretty often that makes sense and then you don't get the seven the big one the big boy Keep calling it the big one they call it the daddy long boy. Oh big boys.

They call Bob's big boy All right Well, I thought about hanging a daily affirmation above my I'm here because I've had a a week of a lot of physical labor And I'm so happy at the end of it. Yeah, I know it's a very Buddhist thing But I need an affirmation that's like work is fun like work is good in my mind I'll make work something I don't want to do but then when I do it especially if it's physical I feel the best I can feel I need to look forward to work. That's what I want to do I'm gonna reframe it where it's like I'm so excited to do the work. So what would you great?

Yeah, I've been kind of work shopping some things. Okay now. I'm nervous to say them cuz they're not on the top of my mind Yeah, I had a couple of contenders that felt good. I mean, I'm gonna close my eyes.

No well that always does help But like do you think of one well no, but the other day was the lion's portal. That's a huge day lion's portal Yeah, it's a huge day for manifesting. It's over but oh everyone has their own affirmation on the lion's portal Okay, well each sign has its own affirmation based on the lion's portal. So hold on let me find it Do you think mine could have said like work in the garage will equal Nirvana?

I do think that okay? I would start believing in astrology at that point. I have no choice. I can't find it But damn it mine was like I say I'm a magnifer abundance and I welcome prosperity into my life Oh, wow, I think I found it.

What is there something mine's Virgo. His is cancer. No, I'm a cat report easy confusion That's Aaron's Virgo. I'm worthy of all success love and abundance that I desire that must be a different site But if at least comforting is the same message exactly that's true.

So what's Capricorn? I set powerful intentions and focused on turning them into reality That's kind of like work. It is. What is yours Rob?

I'm aligned with the energy of Lionsgate portal. That seems really good. I might be the best one I don't know. It feels like maybe all of them.

Yeah. Oh wow. I'm aligned with the Lionsgate portal What I don't like about that is the lion is in it both. Yeah, I don't love that a lion is too close to lion Oh bad, right?

I wish they had picked a different word for choice, but I do think it's the best one I think you're on yeah Speaking of Lionsgate portal. This is for Raj and Christopher Unit ex you feel like that's why is that related because of Raj? I'm just gonna start saying that now Okay, like speaking of and then it's not speaking up, but anything can be speaking up. Okay.

It just sounded mildly It's fine for you because you're Indian, but if I was saying speak I go astrology lion's gate speaking of Raj and blah blah blah It might sound like I'm suggesting Raj has some relationship with astrology, but I don't think Indians have a relationship to astrology I don't think what is it originally? I don't know. That's a good question. It feels very Indian to me Feels very into swally you think well, but you think it's hooey messa patania.

Oh, okay, not for and spread to India Indian ex Certainly in India before it was in the us of a well It probably also is in China because that's what we have like we have like Chinese Years and stuff year of the dragon cat Chinese New Year rabbit. Yeah, I think those are two separate things, but that's okay Just like Yeah, all calendar systems. Yeah, the abacus, but the Chinese calendar they're on year like 4850 or something Right there are thousands of years ahead of us. They didn't reset when Christ was around.

Anyway. Oh, yeah, Raj. Okay, Raj and Christopher were cool They are one more thing. Okay.

I mean kind of ruminating on this. I used a bad example You called me while I was working out while you were recording an episode of sync Yeah, which is which will be out on Wednesday Okay, and you asked me if I thought the tradition of asking your father-in-law for your daughter's hand in marriage was dumb, right? Well, can I give a little more context? Yeah, absolutely Okay, so someone wrote in and just was pondering that question And Liz and I obviously have opinions on it and and I actually said whatever the person wants is gonna obviously who cares, right?

But but I said but the permission piece I do find very antiquated And then Liz she was like, I don't even really like the like father daughter dance. I was like well, that depends on again the family Like it depends on the song. The dynamic song. I wanna sex you up Oh no No, don't even don't that even come out of your mouth This is a hypothetical gross father.

Oh, I see I thought you were saying you would like that. No, okay There's also a mother-son dance. I know I know we were saying in general She didn't love that and I was saying I didn't really love that either because that will have been the first time my dad and I've ever danced And that why like you're in front of all these people whatever I agree I'm just getting you all wrong because I said well I imagine Dax is really really really looking forward to dancing with the girls at their wedding They love the dance and they have that type of relationship But I don't think there's any chance he expects The love has been to come to him. Yeah, and then so why don't we call an ask and then Spoiler, but please still listen to sing to but spoiler You did expect that I it's not that I expect it.

It's that I would like it. Okay. Yeah, I would like it To me it would say a lot about the young man and as we explored like what it is now again I completely agree the origin of the dad giving the daughter as a piece of property to a new man is is rough And not great and just not current it's not current But I was saying that I think what it has evolved and morphed into is this act of humility that the young man entering the family can show to the Patriarch to be respectful and I had given an example that I later thought of a better example It's been driving me nuts. I said when we talked.

Okay, but you're saying that's good. Yeah, my direct analogy is Christmas Uh-huh love Christmas. I love Christmas. I love celebrating Christmas the origin for me is not I'm not into it.

Sure, right? I mean, I'm not religious. Although I believe Jesus was a man on planet earth I don't think there's ever been a god on planet earth Chinese calendar Raj I was just like to me that would be the perfect complex I don't sit around and get hung up at all on the notion that it is quite obviously a religious holiday But I'm celebrating it and getting my own meaning out of it and it's totally fine. Sure.

I think if you forget their own meaning It's great. I don't personally love the meaning that you like humility of humility towards the patriarch Yeah, because I made clear if this potential husband of mine is like dying to do this Yeah, I would make clear it needs to be both of my parents I am not interested in it just being like my dad and they can hang out I'm not saying they can't be friends But like I don't like that piece of like the men have a say I just don't I don't like it But in my counter that was I will slide in and take over the role that her dad had in the family I'm not gonna slide in and take over the role that the mom had I know that's all there That's so like the roles now are all like there isn't that is when at a time when there was a very specific thing men did and a very specific Women did now it's not I can only speak for my family My family's still very mom dad and it's very specific and when mom broke her tire on Friday dad gets a call and I figure out How to get it up to the tire shop and I get that fixed and then there's still very mom dad roles in my family And there's very much mom dad roles in Kristen's parents family And I'm not against mom dad roles. It's fine to me that people would like to mix it up I have no issue because I know just said you love it I also love my system and I don't think it's in it's inherently wrong for two people to enjoy those conventional roles Yeah, but as we literally just said an hour ago You love that your daughters walk through the the cars and know stuff about the cars and they they might marry someone and they might be Especially Lincoln. She's the one putting your garage together Doing a lot of that stuff.

Yeah Breakdown I just don't mind that there's a matriarch role in a patriarch role in a family I like that I like it a lot I like living in it and so knowing that that's the role I have and I'm taking over in this man Tom is passing the baton to me in that role makes a lot of sense that I go to him and say that as it makes a lot of sense for Kristen and my mom To bake together on Christmas. That's a thing for them that they both enjoy that this roles that they have in love in the family And that they do together. I don't think it's wrong that they like that No one's no one's saying that's wrong But if the dad loved to bake and Kristen if your dad was alive and he loved to bake Yeah, she and she loves to bake. She should bake with your dad like it's not that would be fine Yeah, I guess that's my whole like whatever you yes, you did say all this on Wednesday's episode Yeah, and I just find it interesting everyone has a different take on it I of course asked my dad they're in town And I brought this up to him and I said would you expect that or want that and he was like what like he could not wrap his head around this Okay, he really was like that's not my job to say I would say go ask her Oh, well clear like if it's a permission, it's not either or though But he does not want that he doesn't want that and he thinks And I believe that but also I don't think your dad wants your boyfriend to come talk to him at all Is that also fair?

Like call him on a one-on-one and want to get into some conversation about Um mary news that sound like oh mary. I think I just at all No, that's my point. He's like that's not my business I mean he wants to know if I'm in a relationship He wants to meet those people and have them be a part of his life too But he said what would upset him is if I didn't call Sure I didn't call and tell them I got that would be disrespectful Yes, but for it to be not his kid. He didn't care but I knew that about him Yeah, he feels zero.

I'm the patriarch of this but he doesn't have that. Well, he does dad like things I'm not saying that like he forever was helping you with your finances And so he's gonna die and oh my god Well, he's gonna And I better be comforting to him that you had a husband that could take over that role for him The thing that he thinks you need him for it'd be very comforting to know you found someone that can provide that need to you So that's whatever my knee, you know, whatever needs I end up being fulfilled by me to my girls and you're right I don't know maybe they'll be better mechanics me But whatever the thing is that I'm doing as the dad That helps them feel safe and makes me feel like they're safe It would be very comforting to me that the man they're marrying or the woman they're marrying is going to take that on I would die much more at peace knowing oh, that's great. She found someone that's gonna do the thing I did Well, that is the difference once I moved out here They relinquished that like they don't do your finances until two years ago He has helped but he doesn't feel like that's my job here If I ask him for help he'll help me, but that's not a role he takes on as his to me at this point He's like you're a complete you're on your own and not forcing me to be on my own I've just done that I have figured out a way to have all those things that I can't do on my own met Not by him and not by a husband by like people I pay sure or friends people in my life even recently when he was here We were talking about some financial stuff and he was like well He said send it to me and mom he definitely thinks of them I think as like one monolith yeah, and it was interesting though And this did make me sad he was like your mom and I are the only like really the only people and they're right the only people on earth Who have my best interests at heart. Uh-huh.

They're the only two people. Yeah, well, Neil He does and he doesn't he's still his own. It's different when it's your parents. Well, yes The level of yes the level of they're the only people whose my Happiness success anything is the only thing that really matters to their number one priority Yeah, and even if I got married that's not the same thing.

Yeah, it's not you get if you're lucky two people on earth who well It's scary kind of because you're right they'll die. They'll die. I'll tell you that come with oh, yeah I'll tell you something that is insanely important to me about the most important thing in the world Which is when I'm with my girls if a lion came down the street I'm running at the lion they're gonna get away if a car comes creaming towards us I'm throwing them out of the way and I'm dying if some guy with a gun come I am At any moment going to lay down my life for these girls to protect them And that's probably the most important thing to me And I want the boy who marries either of those girls or the woman I want to look at them and know that they're gonna do that too That's very important to me when I want the young man or woman to come to me and say I'm dedicating my life to this person and I would stand in front of a train for them If I can't be there, I would really like to know someone else has taken on that responsibility Yeah, tell me make me feel like I mean, I think that's the hope for whoever you marry that they would do something like that for you Yeah, that's like the point of it. I guess yeah, but the reality and the truth is you're all still individual people I'm not diminishing the importance of love and marriage because I think it does have a um There's pros and cons and one of the pros is the safety.

There's a huge level of safety. Yes And that's for that safety, but yeah, that's the big upside It's it is the thing that I feel is missing. Yeah, but I mean 50% of our country gets divorced, right? So it's just enough stats that show like that safety is a little bit of an illusion Or at least the timeline of it for sure.

Yeah, I don't know when he said that my dad when he said it kind of just so obviously right like it was It actually made me it made me feel very grateful for them obviously, but it made me feel very lonely I was like, oh my god, that's true. There's two people only yeah on earth who really have my best interest at heart It's a little it's a little daunting sure when did he say that on this trip? Yeah, okay. All right.

Yeah, okay thank you We could look at it as lazy or very playful wings. That's true You can choose how to look at it. I am gonna I'm gonna go with playful wings I was listening to this meditation yesterday and she was reiterating very Buddhist teachings and she's a psychologist and she was reiterating that your thoughts are real, but they're not true. And all your thoughts are an interpretation.

Every single thought is an interpretation. And so you can you do have the power to say I choose not to think this way or I can choose not to think of it this way because this is one interpretation and I can choose a different interpretation. I can choose a different interpretation. Work.

Dinging, ding, ding. My daily affirmation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So that was cool. That was Raj. What if we use Raj as like cool? That would be cool.

Very Raj. I don't think we can. Okay. Now that we tested it.

Okay. I don't think it works. Did you see my Oh, wow. Did you see my garage?

Oh, very Raj. I'll just say it's Raj garage. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I guess it's a positive. We're saying cool. Remember, what was his dojo?

Casa? Ken's Ken's dojo karate cost or something in in Barbie? Mine will be Raj garage is my equivalent. That's cool.

Well, that's Raj. Yeah. Sorry. It's Mojo dojo.

Yes. Is Mojo dojo Casa house. Oh my God. So anyway, that was cool.

That was cool. That was cool. Sim 78 minutes. The OB versus OBGYN, which is not come up a couple times.

OB stands for obstetrician obstetrician. OBGYN stands for obstetrician gynecologist. OBGYN's are medical doctors who specialize in both abstract. Why the wise, it looks so weird.

Obstructics. Nope. Obstruct. Oh, I'm striking reset.

We're still rolling back to one obstetrics and gynecology, while obstetricians and gynecologists specialize in one area each. Okay. Would it be your preference to always be with someone that did it all? Huh.

Why does why you have to go to a second person and form a new relationship? You've got that trust, that foundation. It's true. I guess so.

And you don't want to like, how many people you want in your vagina? A lot. It depends. You want to pass it.

I suppose. But in a medical capacity, I would think you want to limit it. Yeah. I don't, I think mine's an OB.

I don't think it's so. Wait, you're going to just a baby deliverer? No, no. Oh, I'm sorry.

You're right. I think mine's just like a college. Yeah. I don't even really have one.

Okay. Also, your practitioner can just keep you. Do you want to start going to a Robstitution? Raj, I mean Robstitution?

No. That would be Rob would be your job situation. But Rob and off was right there. Oh, I see.

Robstitution. I see. I see. I see.

I see. That's where the pap smear is cool. Smear. Smear.

Smear. Smear. No. Ew.

Pep smear. No, stop. That's a cream cheese. Ew.

What is it? Pep smear? Yeah. I like your sputter.

That's disgusting. Because I feel like you're spreading out things to get in there. But Schmir is like when you're cream cheese. Like a skunkie substance.

Yes, gunky. But spread. You spread a Schmir. No.

Okay. Let's go on. Sorry, Raj. Sorry, Chris.

Sorry, Rob. Flying car. Okay. Great.

That was a cool fact. Any, any others? I wrote it down because we had someone on earlier that day who referred to flying cars. It was so random.

Yeah. And then we had them on and we were talking about flying cars and that again. Okay. The war is on US soil.

You said there were two. There are. Can I try them? Yeah.

I under hit it. We got to go with the Revolutionary War. Number one. American Revolutionary War.

The war of 1812. Yep. The Mexican American War. Spanish American War.

Spanish American War. Yeah. Spanish American War. Civil War.

And we out. King George's War. And French and Indian War. Oh, those are past the Civil War.

Before. Before. Okay. Miss those.

Okay. So was that six? One, two, three, four, five, six. Well, I was way under.

I can't remember what I said, but I said two. Okay. So 300% off. The Churchill quote is.

He was a quote machine, wasn't he? They pop up all the time. There are so many credible quotes. I heard.

Oh, did I say the one about America? Is that one you're going to reference? Well, the one Raj said is Americans will always do the right thing only after they've tried everything else. Yes.

Which is great. Yes. There's a looks like there's a. It's really on.

Yeah. There's an NPR on this. On that quote. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Flying cars.

Frisbee's next. This week, Congress dedicates a new bust of Winston Churchill in the Capitol's Statuary Hall. The sculpture is meant to honor the British states since like a sea of determination result. This is 2013.

Okay. So it was an episode about him. Oh, he's become very unpopular to celebrate. I know.

Yeah. I don't know enough. Well, I think he had some of the fiercest colonial policies. Still great quotes though.

You know, it's like Mike Jackson. Still really good songs. Really great station. Hey, y'all.

Really great station. I should ask your parents if they ever hear that on the radio. That's where it's from. Yeah.

I've never heard it. Yeah. I never heard it. Yeah.

I never heard it. Yeah. You weren't in a country though. Yeah.

Well, sometimes you were. Yeah. I like country. Oh, really?

Sometimes. Okay. Yeah. This is about his quotes.

People can listen if they want. Okay. A riddle wrapped in a make an enigma wrapped in a paradox. What's that one?

He's got another great one. I want to look that up. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

America is, he said? What is what was he wrapped in? Describe a situation that was difficult to comprehend. Okay.

Time he was analyzing the early events of the Second World and all wars. You see it one more time. It's so good. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

A riddle wrapped. I love it. Interesting. A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma.

To me, it's a little bit like a line with the lion's portal. Okay. It's not for you. Okay.

I like this other one though. You think a reeks of colonialism that one? What? A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of it.

I think it is. You just think you put three words. Yeah. I don't think it's that clever.

Okay. That was it. Yep. That was it for Raj and Christopher.

I like what they're doing. I like they're doing it. Has it at all up to your interest in war development? Like it's very I think it's very disturbing to learn that the F 16's nav system was way worse than a $300.

They're Nintendo. Yeah. Right. So that's that's concerning.

Yeah. And then, you know, a call to update for sure. I'm in. But then I have this, you know, it's like get rid of aircraft carriers, get rid of these jets, get a bubble.

But then these things kind of they bubble up in the news and you see like, Oh shit, that stuff was pretty darn effective in this moment. I just wonder like, I think the future is so hard to predict. Well, it is. But it's about allocate.

Like, I don't think it doesn't have to be a move exactly. It's just adding more. I mean, we are going to be so behind if we don't. Oh, yeah.

I'm just like thinking of like the more big mechanistic version of war versus tiny drones and this and that. Yeah. And yet, like the Ukrainians just punched through two Russian lines and they're using all this heavy equipment we gave. And so I read that headline.

I'm like, well, shit, it's still kind of working there. I know there's supposedly drones that are knocking out tanks and all the boy that seemed to use both right now. But I bet in the future, we'll need less and less of these older school things. Maybe I don't know.

I don't know anything about war. Yeah, I hate war. Yeah. I do too.

And yet it's a reality that it's still maddening. It's truly maddening that we're at the level we're at technologically communication shared culture. And it's not gone. I know globalization and yet there's many active wars right now.

Yeah, is so disheartening that we can't and there was the reigning theory in the 50s is that we would become so economically intertwined that that would basically neutralize everything. Yeah. And that just didn't happen. We just can't get away from it.

Absolute power corrupts. Absolutely. The church will say that that's Lincoln. I think that's Lincoln Shepherd.

I think Lincoln Shepherd said that absolute power corrupts absolutely Lord Acton. Oh, right. Acton's an act. Right in the Bishop Creighton.

Oh my God. You know, a lot of these things existed and then one really famous person says it in the public record and then all I know you know my favorite one that's I've seen attributed to like 10 different athletes, which you miss 100% of the shots. Yeah, we're going to be Wayne Gretzky. I saw it written as LeBron James.

I've seen it. It wasn't an athlete who even it. They're set in the first place. It's probably Lord James talking to Bill by my guy and maybe it was about guns.

Oh, yeah, cannon fodder. Yeah, cannons. My favorite quote ever is an okay, but there is some it's that maybe he said it after somebody else said it's contested. What's that?

Forget. Oh, your favorite quote. Do you remember the essence of it? I know.

I know. The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice. Yeah, that's a goody. I love that one.

That's a really good Obama would quote that quite often. Yeah, he had it right on the rug of his own. Oh, yeah. My favorite is No Man's Memory is so great that he can afford to lie.

You do say that. That's Lincoln. Oh, that's a good one. That's good.

Although. It's so true. When you tell a lie and once I heard it articulated that way, I realized it's so true. You can't remember lies.

You can remember the truth. Yeah. But when you tell a lie a month later, when you try to tell the same person the same thing, there's something very fascinating that lies don't imprint the way that reality does. That's definitely true.

That's why like bullshit testimony as they get interviewed time and time again. No one can keep nobody can keep their stories. Right. Those they were wrote it down and they read it every time before they go in there.

Yeah. So yeah, No Man's Memory is so great that he can afford to lie. It's so good. And it almost convinces you there's no point in just no lie because you'll never remember.

Yeah. Honesty. Ding, ding, ding. That's your favorite quote.

Honesty. Ding, ding, ding. All right. All right.

Love you.