Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
00:13:56 · Steven Simoni, Alexa von Tobel, Charlotte Ross
[00:13:56] S1: Yeah, congrats. [00:13:57] S0: We love you, Steve. Thank you. You, in so many ways, the Bullfrog and defense in general is a hit business, right? It's like you need a hit, meaning you need a product that works not just so well and slightly better than other things, but it's a breakout product that dramatically works and that everybody wants, and it works incredibly well. And as a result, you have just seen exceptional demand for this product for armies. [00:14:32] S1: Pretty rare out, I guess patting ourselves on the shoulder, it's been a lot of work, but it's pretty rare to, within three years, after three years of development, to be on the battlefield, actually on the battlefield and in the fight, with a product, with our defense product. Kind of exceptional thing, like in R and R, and we're shipping Bullfrogs onto the battlefield now, like as we speak, as record this. So that's pretty rare. You need a hit product now. I would say you didn't necessarily need it if you started in 2017. A companies lot started with just a vision and was able to raise a ton of money early, and now they're starting to build many different products. But I think if you're entering the market when we entered it or if you're entering it today as a new startup founder, you need to have something they're gonna wanna put on the battlefield within twenty four months to thirty six months. Like, you're gonna... Or the company just won't work. [00:15:24] S0: And so when you say put on [00:15:25] S2: the battlefield in twenty four thirty six months, it
00:15:25 · Charlotte Ross, Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:15:25] S2: the battlefield in twenty four thirty six months, it [00:15:27] S0: sounds like this... Obviously, drones are something people care about. This long range, [00:15:33] S2: like... [00:15:33] S1: Yeah. Like, if I were to start a company today, like, now, another defense company, I'd probably do... And even if the... Even though it's crowded... It's going to be a crowded market soon, would be, a jet powered interceptor. The Iranian... The main Iranian attack drone is called the Shahed one thirty six. There... That's a propeller guided... Or it's propeller... Propulsed drone. They're now making jet powered ones that go much faster, you know, talking like 500 kilometers an hour versus like the 200 kilometers an hour to 300 up a jet propeller version. And so these jet powered drones are coming... The next... Where the puck is moving is jet powered interceptors. So, like, you could probably, if you have a good team, make a jet powered interceptor in twenty four months, you know, twelve to twenty four months, likely twenty four months, to be real. But that's like a market that's going to be large. And, you know, ACS, obviously, as an air defense prime is looking heavily into that market. [00:16:25] S2: And how do you think about making a jet powered interceptor versus just a jet powered drop? [00:16:29] S1: It's always easier to attack. So... Yeah. So, I mean, the interceptors are harder to make or harder to be reliable. [00:16:37] S0: The skills have to be
00:16:37 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:16:37] S0: The skills have to be [00:16:38] S1: But it's a similar skill set. You still need aerospace engineers, still need computer vision engineers, still need electrical engineers. Still... Same engineers, just harder to defend this stuff. Which is why you're seeing in the Iran conflict, like, we don't... We can't really defend our bases. So we've, you know... The reports are different, but a lot of our bases are being really damaged because of this new asymmetric warfare. Like, we can only fire so many Patriot missiles at these shaheds, you know, before we just run out. And we don't really have an arsenal of jet powered interceptors and interceptors to send out there. So you're seeing a pretty large retreat from The US and these bases. [00:17:17] S0: How quickly did this shift? And obviously at Inspired, we care deeply about humanity and we would like there to be no war. It does feel precarious, as though the world is heading towards more conflict, not less right now, which I would love your thoughts on that. But in the last fifteen years, it feels like we went from physical combat of humans to more of this, to your point of technical war, really. Yeah. Is that right? Is it When it happened yeah. [00:17:46] S1: The historians would probably say 2017, the Armenia Azerbaijan war was the first drone war, first full drone war. [00:17:55] S0: '27 [00:17:56] S1: There's a book called Seven Seconds to Die that describes it. That's probably the start of modern drone warfare is what people would agree on, I think.
00:17:56 · Steven Simoni, Alexa von Tobel, Charlotte Ross
[00:17:56] S1: There's a book called Seven Seconds to Die that describes it. That's probably the start of modern drone warfare is what people would agree on, I think. [00:18:04] S0: And just say more, how has that evolved everyone's thinking? And I I get your point of it's like five miles between people, you see no eyes. But what else does... What are the other ramifications? [00:18:16] S1: Well, to be real, that was in 2017, and we saw the Azerbaijanis just completely crush the Armenians. They used drones, there's just no stopping it. No one really took a lesson from that. It's almost 2027, so it's been a decade, and our procurement apparatus is still behind. Like, they had that in the Ukraine war, and we're still buying Patriots. And we're still... You know, we just spent 68,000,000,000 on Patriots again. We just bought a bunch of... You know, we're gonna replenish our [00:18:46] S0: THAAD. What's the Patriot? [00:18:47] S1: Patriot missile's like the premier defense missile. Like, it's very expensive, but it works. Like, it works all the time. It's a very great product, but it's just not the right... [00:18:57] S2: You don't wanna He's it made by a brun? [00:18:59] S1: Yeah. Very Lockheed. Yeah. Lockheed. You don't wanna spend... Don't wanna use Patriots on a Shahed, though. Just the cost because [00:19:04] S0: it's like... Makes... Cost out. [00:19:05] S2: They're... They're neutralizing each other. [00:19:06] S1: Right? Well, Patriot costs 10 times more, though. [00:19:08] S0: Okay.
00:19:08 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:19:08] S0: Okay. [00:19:09] S1: So you just... You lose money every defense. Yeah. But we're still... We continue to still buy this expensive stuff. We're not really procuring a lot of the startups products at a rate that we should be. And it's been about ten years since the first drone war. So I would say we're really not fully learning it as a country. [00:19:30] S0: Basically, you're saying is that the technology shift is pretty significant and that The US as an incumbent has not evolved as quickly as is needed to be able to play offense [00:19:42] S1: to Yeah. We're... Yeah. Play defense. I mean, to play defense. We can't protect our bases. Like, it's obvious. And so... Yeah. I mean, we'll we'll probably... Like, I think we'll probably lose most of those bases, and we'll we'll probably retreat from the region. But, you know, we'll see how it goes. But I I think that we didn't we didn't necessarily learn any of the lessons from the Armenian War or from Ukraine Russia. [00:20:04] S0: As somebody who's watching the front lines of war, can you just give us a sense of how think about where the world is trending in terms of stability? Just clearly, as somebody who served in the Navy, you are truly a patriot and love this country. Can you just give us a sense of, as you think about the next decade in defense tech spend and everything coming, how do you process what's coming?
00:20:04 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:20:04] S0: As somebody who's watching the front lines of war, can you just give us a sense of how think about where the world is trending in terms of stability? Just clearly, as somebody who served in the Navy, you are truly a patriot and love this country. Can you just give us a sense of, as you think about the next decade in defense tech spend and everything coming, how do you process what's coming? [00:20:29] S1: I think that we're... This is my take, like, personal take, not not a take of ACS. But I think if we don't kill ourselves in the next World War three, which we're going to have, which we're in, then we're gonna have an AI utopia and be a very rich society, like, coming out of it. But I think we're headed into five of the darkest years in world history. [00:20:50] S0: Say more. Just like [00:20:51] S1: I mean, is the... Every every story needs a trilogy. [00:20:54] S0: This is the... This is World War three. This is where this is where I [00:20:57] S1: think we're headed. [00:20:57] S0: Interesting. [00:20:58] S1: Yeah. And we're in it. But it's just getting started. [00:21:00] S0: You just said we're in it. What do you mean?