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“Silicon Valley didn't just predict the importance of defense in the 2020s. It largely took the exact wrong position, the opposite position. First of all, you have obvious examples like big technology companies explicitly refusing to do work with the Department of Defense. Google is one big example, but the worst examples are really in the startups that don't exist because people didn't want to even get into such a controversial space lest it ruin their careers.”

“The vast majority of conversations that we had were about whether or not it was even ethically okay to ever build a company that would build weapons. And the people who turned us down, the ones who decided not to invest in Anduril, actually believed that we had a good team and good people and good product market fit. The issue is that they thought that it was inherently wrong to build tools capable of being used for violence because they believed that the idea of deterring violence through having a strong arsenal was fundamentally obsolete and itself wrong.”

“The United States military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial complex have none of the right tools, talent or incentives to apply autonomy to the systems they do. There's no reason to save costs because they don't get paid for making things that work. They get paid for doing work. And in a world where you get more prestige and more money by having more people working on bigger things, there's no reason to use autonomy to reduce costs and increase capability.”

“The reality is that that's not where they're going to fight us. They're going to arm proxies or if they engage directly, they're going to use technologies that give them an asymmetrical advantage in the areas where we are the least competent. These are the areas where they are putting a lot of their resources. The reason that Vladimir Putin is saying that the ruler of the world is going to be the country that masters artificial intelligence is because he thinks that that is one of the only ways that they're going to be able to get the best of us.”

“The United States has the strongest commercial artificial intelligence industry in the world, followed closely by China. But at the same time, the United States military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial complex have none of the right tools, talent or incentives to apply autonomy to the systems they do. There's more better AI in John Deere tractors than there is in any US military vehicle. There's better computer vision in the Snapchat app on your phone than any system that the US Department of Defense has deployed.”

“Silicon Valley didn't just predict the importance of defense in the 2020s. It largely took the exact wrong position, the opposite position. First of all, you have obvious examples like big technology companies explicitly refusing to do work with the Department of Defense. Google is one big example, but the worst examples are really in the startups that don't exist because people didn't want to even get into such a controversial space lest it ruin their careers.”

“The vast majority of conversations that we had were about whether or not it was even ethically okay to ever build a company that would build weapons. And the people who turned us down, the ones who decided not to invest in Anduril, actually believed that we had a good team and good people and good product market fit. The issue is that they thought that it was inherently wrong to build tools capable of being used for violence because they believed that the idea of deterring violence through having a strong arsenal was fundamentally obsolete and itself wrong.”

“The United States military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial complex have none of the right tools, talent or incentives to apply autonomy to the systems they do. There's no reason to save costs because they don't get paid for making things that work. They get paid for doing work. And in a world where you get more prestige and more money by having more people working on bigger things, there's no reason to use autonomy to reduce costs and increase capability.”

“The reality is that that's not where they're going to fight us. They're going to arm proxies or if they engage directly, they're going to use technologies that give them an asymmetrical advantage in the areas where we are the least competent. These are the areas where they are putting a lot of their resources. The reason that Vladimir Putin is saying that the ruler of the world is going to be the country that masters artificial intelligence is because he thinks that that is one of the only ways that they're going to be able to get the best of us.”

“The United States has the strongest commercial artificial intelligence industry in the world, followed closely by China. But at the same time, the United States military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial complex have none of the right tools, talent or incentives to apply autonomy to the systems they do. There's more better AI in John Deere tractors than there is in any US military vehicle. There's better computer vision in the Snapchat app on your phone than any system that the US Department of Defense has deployed.”