Inspired with Alexa von Tobel
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?
00:21:00 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni
[00:21:00] S0: You just said we're in it. What do you mean? [00:21:02] S1: You know, like the opening gambit. Like, you know, now, know, that at the start of... You know, in World War two, you started seeing, like, you know, The US before Pearl Harbor. We started, like, freezing the assets of the Germans. So, you know, freezing, like, feeling like, okay, we're gonna we're gonna economically crush you. We're gonna, like, possess your homes and do all this stuff. You're seeing that now with, like, secretary Bessent, like, we're, like, we're, like, we're gonna hunt you down economically. We're gonna seize your home in The Caymans. Like, these aren't some... This isn't, like... That's not some victory. Those are just the opening stages of more conflict. And you're seeing of the same similarities there. You have nations with huge amounts of debt that can't be reconciled. Best way to reset... If you read the Dalio book, like... What's the the... Principles? No. The other one about the cycles. I kind of follow... I subscribe to his theory there. Like, it's it's kind of independent of administration or anything. It's just like the natural ebb and flow of humanity. Like, when you... That, you know, wars follow the big cycle. So, like, we're we're in huge debt. Debts all get reset after a war, because, like, the... You know, to the victor, there's the spoils. So we're just in a natural part of human cycle where indicators would say I think we're headed to full scale conflict.
00:22:14 · Alexa von Tobel, Charlotte Ross, Steven Simoni
[00:22:14] S0: I remember when we spoke again at the beginning of all of this, of all of ACS, and this was 2020 right as Ukraine and that conflict was starting, you were talking about China and how if The US were to enter war with China tomorrow [00:22:29] S2: we would lose. Talk more about where is China [00:22:31] S0: going. [00:22:31] S1: China's in the war. Yeah yeah. They're supplying satellite information. They're supplying targeting information. We're blowing up their satellites. [00:22:40] S0: Yeah. [00:22:40] S1: It's China. They're not gonna fight a hot war head on. Gonna They're fight it through their proxies. North Korea, Iran, Russia. [00:22:48] S2: But how does China compare to us from a tech perspective? And obviously they control the drone economy, but same where like ACS. [00:22:58] S1: I think that we have, like, a better software apparatus here. Like, I would say our software engineering, and I would say, like, our exquisite weapon manufacturing is better. So, like, our Patriot missile, they don't really have an equivalent to, like, the Tomahawks and Patriots like we do. So we have a lot of advantages there. I think their shipbuilding capacity is very good compared to ours. Like, you've... I mean, have you seen the Saronic talking points on that? [00:23:20] S0: They're seeing big ships.
00:23:20 · Alexa von Tobel, Steven Simoni, Charlotte Ross
[00:23:20] S0: They're seeing big ships. [00:23:21] S1: Yeah. They're just making ships. Like, this is why I think Saronic as a company is so important. Yeah. I know in my podcast, I make fun of, like, the... What what is called unmanned surface vehicle industry a lot. I'm not really making fun of it. It's super important. There's just, like, 50 companies in it. It's, a very crowded space, but it appears like Saronic has kind of taken the mantle there, and that's... This is a very important company. It's in Austin. It's our neighbor in Austin. [00:23:44] S0: It's Yep. [00:23:45] S1: I think they're gonna be critical in World War three because it's gonna heavily be who controls the seas, and we're gonna not really do that with traditional navy as much. We're gonna need unmanned vessels because it's really hard with the age of drones to defend a carrier strike group. [00:24:02] S2: Will Bullfrog be on boats? [00:24:04] S1: Yeah, Bullfrog will be on these unmanned vessels. [00:24:06] S2: So Bullfrog sitting on top of Saronic? [00:24:08] S1: I would say on top of, in general, USBs. Yeah. I can't talk about any partnerships right here. Yeah yeah. So... But yeah. So like, for example, another Bullfrog variant we're coming out with is an anti USB Bullfrog. So instead of shooting drones, it shoots unmanned boats and blows them up. Because it's gonna to be like an unmanned boat battle the war. And this is all happening now. [00:24:30] S0: Can I ask a question? You said seas will be more important in future wars. Why?