How Anduril Is Reimagining the Defense Industry: Faster Tech, Ethical AI, and a New Kind of Deterrence (Trae Stephens, Co-Founder & Executive Chairman of Anduril)

Speaker A: I think most Americans have this faulty belief that we have this insurmountable advantage against any adversary and no one would ever mess with us. And the closer you get to the problem, the more you realize how not true this is. And we are incredibly vulnerable. Speaker B: When you look at US-China capabilities today, how do you think we stack up? Speaker A: There are definitely areas where they've taken a big leap in advantage. You know, as Chris Brose said in The Kill Chain, there is a commonality in all of the war games that are conducted between the US and China, and it's that China wins.

Every time. There could be thousands of things in a battlespace, and that just fundamentally demands a better command and control platform to orchestrate the movements of your allied forces inside of that environment. And that's what we're building. Speaker C: Hey, I'm Mario, and this is the Generalist Podcast. You've probably heard the saying, the future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed. Each week I sit down with the founders, investors, and thinkers who are living in the future to help you understand it sooner, see it more clearly, and find your place in it.

Today I'm speaking with Trey Stephens, a general partner at Founders Fund and co-founder and executive chairman of Anduril Industries. Since its founding in 2017, Anduril has grown into one of tech's most valuable private companies and one of the world's most important. It is at the vanguard of the new defense tech movement, bringing Silicon Valley innovation to warfare to compete head-on with incumbent primes like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. As we enter a period of even greater global uncertainty, companies like Anduril will only become more important and influential. In my conversation with Trey, we discuss building the Avengers of defense tech, how Trey assembled an extraordinary founding team, including the visionary Palmer Luckey.