(Preview) Anduril and the Lattice Partner Program, A New Direction for Defense Tech, OpenAI Introduces ChatGPT Pro
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There's a network of all this stuff on the edge. So let me ask you, in terms of the implications, like the Lattice Partner Program and Lattice SDK, they had the Reagan Defense Forum out in LA last weekend, and there's obviously sort of a bustling ecosystem of defense tech startups out in LA. Is this the sort of thing that all of those startups would then be building on in the years to come as we build out our defense capabilities? Well, it's pretty interesting because there's going to be

you know, kind of low key and ecosystem fight about this because Anderle is making a bid to be the dom, like the windows of like the middle layer that everyone uses. Yeah, that's right. Which where the most sort of profits do accrue. And so it's, it's interesting because on one hand it makes a lot of sense. It's also going to be like, you know, I think the timing is certainly good. Obviously Anderle is, is well regarded with the incoming administration for, um,

for lots of reasons, including, you know, Palmer, lucky famously being a Trump supporter previously and for it was cool. Yeah. Very, for very, uh, um, still somewhat unclear reasons losing his job at Facebook over it. Um, which by the way, uh,

How insane is that, that you would lose your job for supporting a presidential candidate or that we had people at Google protesting against them joining Project Maven? Well, Project Maven is actually an interesting angle. This is the high-level –

defense department idea of, look, we have to tie all this stuff together, right? Like, like we, we have all the defense department is a country of silos, like just on a weapon system level, on a service level, on all sorts of things. It's,

predicated on this hierarchical model where everyone's trying to protect their turf and sort of like move up on this, move up in the stack and all these sorts of things. So project Maven was this idea that we need a common sort of data layer that sort of ties all this stuff together. Google won the bid, had all these protests backed out, thought you were an American company, guess not. And so Palantir ends up winning that. A big question I had was, is there a looming conflict between,

maybe bad choice of words in this context. Is there a looming sort of a bad, bad, another bad choice of words, but between Palantir and Anduril in that both are sort of making bids to be an operating system type layer, the common software layer that sort of manages all this sort of stuff. And it is interesting that, that Anduril and Palantir did actually, I believe it was at this forum announced sort of a partnership between,

It was a consortium to accelerate AI capabilities for U.S. national security. They're also talking about partnering to deploy advanced AI systems. It's unclear what the specifics are. Actually, I do want to sort of dig into that a bit more, so stay tuned on that. But I think it's a good sign for both, and it's a good sign for the U.S. that this makes sense. Andro's focused on the edge, which is sort of like all the weapon systems that are out in the field now.

Palantir is focused on the center, like the commander who is trying to – and it makes sense if you have lots of stuff plugged into Lattice and Lattice works seamlessly with sort of Palantir that that's sort of a vertical stack that at least theoretically sort of makes sense. But it is a fundamental – what we're seeing is –

A fundamental shift in how you think about sort of weapon systems that need to be a common platform. There needs to be software at the center. The integration that matters is across weapons and not just weapons system, also sensors and data processing and all these these sorts of things.

And it is a fundamental shift. And it is notable. It certainly sounds like a healthy shift because when you were explaining it earlier, I mean, it just seems insane to have our defense capacity full of these bespoke weapon systems that all run on unique software and are really, really expensive. That are all insanely expensive and all require, like, usually a person in it. Yeah, exactly. From a just sort of a...

A war fighting capability is very expensive in ways beyond money. And so it doesn't really scale with the modern environment and the way other countries are approaching these problems.

Maybe. I mean, I don't know that other countries are this advanced on this particular point either, to be totally honest. What we do see is the explosion in drone warfare in particular. That's what I mean is people are throwing out like really cheap drones that can then take down a $500 million X, Y, or Z. And the math doesn't really check out over time. There's a real math problem facing the U.S. military in general. That is correct.

And so when you back up, and the thing that's interesting about this is Palantir and Andro, which I think are sort of on the vanguard of this,

The reason they are on the Vanguard and could do this is because they did it outside of the DOD. They did it with a venture capital. They did like, they built it themselves. They're like, this is the way it should be done. We can't wait for the U S to tell us to do this. We're going to build it. And then they will hopefully wake up at some point and realize this is sort of the way, the way it should be done. And it is reminiscent of,

sort of Bob Noyce saying, I'm not going to take defense contracts because it's too limiting. We're going to build chips and that is the way to make chips faster and more capable. And then it worked out then. It was also easier then because there was a consumer market

to be built. I was going to say, there's not really a consumer market for Andoril as they, yeah. Like for Andoril in particular, it's tough because it's not clear what you like. I mean, I guess theoretically you could see the, the consumer application of like drone swarms and things like that. Um, but yeah,

Palantir obviously has a very thriving commercial business, an exceptionally thriving stock, that's for sure. But I do think their overall approach makes a lot of sense. And I don't know. I just think it's cool. It's exciting. These two pieces that...

They're taking the next step. An operating system is nice when it's all your stuff. It's a different thing when you're creating a platform for other companies. We talk about, you know, it's time to build. Like, what is there to build? Well, what about building weapon systems? And now suddenly you have the hardware or the software capability to know exactly what to build for.

Again, this is sort of setting up Andrew very, very well to have like real meaningful long term lock in for, you know, for for sort of better or worse. But, you know, it's obviously pushing us in the right direction that we need to go from a national security perspective.

Yeah, I mean, it seems to be superior to what we were working with in the past. How much resistance was there within the defense industry to something like this? I mean, like Raytheon, for instance, or Northrop Grumman, like, has that been part of the Anduril story is running into... Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, Anduril, like they... So Gregory Allen noted this on an interview we did a couple months ago that there was a new defense...

that Andrew just won, which was sort of meaningful that they're sort of very much, you know, it was the first meaningful contract. We're still talking on the order of a few billion dollars. It's not like massive, but, you know, it's been, I think, a long haul to get there and there's still a long ways to go. There's,

a bit of a revolving door between the defense department and these sort of defense contractors. It's sort of its own Galapagos islands sort of bit where they're off doing their own thing in part, because that's what they were told to do in the late nineties, like consolidate or die. And we ended up with all these monopolies that, that, that are, that are incompetent atrophying. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I mean, we see what's happened with Boeing and, and, and, and things along those lines. So I,

I think the, the answer frankly is probably going to be, you know, they're going to have to be drag kicking and screaming sort of into this. One thing that, um, I can't, I did interview, uh, uh,

the Palantir CTO, I can't remember if this came up in the interview, but it's come up in conversation where one thing they've realized is Palantir really got its start with the military in Iraq. Not like in the later years when they were trying to clean up the mess.

and was very effective in sort of on the ground sort of managing data, figuring out where things were. And what sort of happened for them is that was a junior level of officer that was sort of on the ground and was finding real utility from this software that they were using. And as that sort of level of officer has moved up and has become more and more senior, suddenly their advocates at sort of the high levels have increased. That makes sense.

You know, this is – it's funny. This is like a career thing, right? You realize this. Everyone – young people are like, oh, I need a good network. I need a good network. I have one of the most incredible networks in the world not because I went to network events but because I did good work and that as you – like you have two parts. Number one, people want to know you so you reach out. But number two, there's a lot of people I knew as a young person that suddenly are like – They're powerful now. Yeah. It's like, hey –

It takes time. I don't even mean this person. It does take time. And I think there's a bit about, you know, there's certainly a generational shift that is sort of necessary. But, I mean, I just, I appreciate these companies doing this. I appreciate Andrel starting in the late 2000s.

you know, the late 2010s when you were vilified for doing a defense contracture. And the reality is we have this capability now and we have this SDK announcement that is downstream of doing the work for years to sort of get to this position. And it's certainly a direction that we need to go.

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