What America Is Missing Between Sanctions and Nuclear War (Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder & CEO of Castelion)

“Warfare is always just adapting to whatever the other side is doing. And the person that wins is whoever adapts faster. And at this point in time, American aerospace is uniquely poorly suited to do that.” —Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder & CEO of Castelion

Bryon Hargis is the co-founder and CEO of Castelion, a defense startup building low-cost hypersonic missiles designed to be manufactured at scale. Before founding Castelion, Bryon spent more than a decade at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and nearly six years at SpaceX, where he worked on national security space programs and saw firsthand how iterative engineering and manufacturing speed could reshape aerospace. Castelion’s first missile, Blackbeard, is slated for integration on the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet in roughly a year.

In our conversation, we explore:

• Why Bryon believes building missiles is paradoxically essential to maintaining peace

• The game theory behind warfare and why tit-for-tat strategies require credible middle-ground responses

• How China’s 2021 hypersonic test revealed not just a capability gap but a manufacturing and cost advantage

• Why traditional aerospace processes—optimized for low risk and high cost—can’t compete with rapid iteration

• What Bryon learned in his first week at SpaceX (after 12 years in traditional aerospace)

• Why building a carrier-based, air-launched hypersonic missile as a first product was the hard but right choice

• How focusing on manufacturability and cost over maximum capability can produce more effective deterrence

• Why the person who adapts faster in warfare always wins, and how that shapes Castelion’s philosophy

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Explore the episode

Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(04:01) Why America needs hypersonic missiles

(07:13) China’s edge in hypersonics

(12:05) The missing middle ground in deterrence

(18:05) Preventing warhead ambiguity

(19:40) How hypersonics differ from ballistic missiles

(25:05) The economics of defensive vs. offensive systems

(28:21) How SpaceX differs from traditional aerospace

(37:40) Why Bryon chose to build in defense over space

(42:42) Key factors that drove Castelion’s success

(48:28) Designing Blackbeard, Castelion’s first hypersonic missile

(1:01:06) The importance of lower costs and quicker manufacturing

(1:10:04) Book recommendations

Follow Bryon Hargis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hargsb

X: https://x.com/hargsb

Resources and episode mentions

Books

• Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys: https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Michael-Collins/dp/0374531943

• Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed: https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers―Straight Talk on the Challenges of Entrepreneurship: https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Thing-About-Things-Building/dp/0062273205

• Gravitation: https://www.amazon.com/Gravitation-Charles-W-Misner/dp/0691177791

• “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character: https://www.amazon.com/Surely-Youre-Joking-Mr-Feynman/dp/0393355624

• Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: https://www.amazon.com/Perfectly-Reasonable-Deviations-Beaten-Track/dp/0465023711

People

• Kip Thorne: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kip_Thorne

• Richard Feynman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman

Other resources

• Castelion: https://www.castelion.com

• Chinese hypersonic weapon fired a missile over South China Sea: https://www.ft.com/content/a127f6de-f7b1-459e-b7ae-c14ed6a9198c?syn-25a6b1a6=1

• Prisoner’s dilemma: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma

• APL: https://www.jhuapl.edu

• Planet Labs: https://www.planet.com

• Falcon 9: https://www.spacex.com/vehicles/falcon-9

• Veritasium: https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium

• 3Blue1Brown: https://www.youtube.com/@3blue1brown

• Making Mistakes with Greg: https://www.youtube.com/@makingmistakeswithgreg

• Super Fast Matt: https://www.youtube.com/@SuperfastMatt

• This game theory problem will change the way you see the world: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mScpHTIi-kM

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