How Anduril Is Reimagining the Defense Industry: Faster Tech, Ethical AI, and a New Kind of Deterrence | Trae Stephens (Co-Founder & Executive Chairman, Anduril)Inside Anduril’s mission to bring Silicon Valley speed, AI, and ethics to national defense.Thank you to the partners who make this possibleVanta: Automate compliance and simplify security. WorkOS: The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. Brex: The banking solution for startups. Explore the episodeWhat happens when you apply Silicon Valley’s speed and innovation to reinvent defense technology? Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril, is running that experiment in real-time. His company creates software-driven, hardware-enabled autonomous systems designed to transform national security capabilities amid growing global tensions. In today's episode, Trae and I dive deep into the ethics of warfare, technology's evolving role in national defense, the complexities of Great Power conflict with China, and how Trae’s personal faith shapes his vision for responsible innovation. We explore:
Timestamps(00:00) Intro (04:33) An overview of Anduril (05:31) The surprising way Trae got into Georgetown (11:58) Trae’s work with computational linguistics (13:37) “The four Americas” and why we need a strong military (16:05) How Trae uncovered gaps in intelligence and military that prompted Anduril’s founding (20:49) Why the incentive structure in the defense industry wasn’t working (23:08) An overview of Anduril’s leadership (25:53) The first Anduril office and how they approach hiring (31:13) The Anduril reading list (34:23) Anduril’s building philosophy, and the software behind all their products (38:45) How Anduril partners with DOD to understand what to build (41:21) Why too much innovation is not sellable (45:29) How Anduril took over the IVAS program from Microsoft (47:57) The future of weaponry (51:26) Anduril’s growth strategy: buying and building (55:02) The single domain companies Trae is excited about (58:44) How the US stacks up against China (1:05:20) Trae’s thoughts on conflict resolution and the current administration’s approach (1:08:14) How Anduril’s work in Europe may change (1:09:37) Why Trae believes his work aligns with his faith (1:12:39) An overview of “Just War Theory” (1:15:38) Lessons from Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and Palmer Luckey (1:19:05) Final meditations Follow Trae StephensLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trae-stephens-485a811/ Resources and episode mentionsBooks
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