01:19:40 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[01:19:40] S1: How fast do you think you're gonna be able to scale that up? [01:19:43] S0: 2026 is when we start actually doing component manufacturing. So that's the the clearest thing in my mind is that we will be producing components in 2026. I'm not sure if we'll really start providing them to other people in 2026, because we we need to start filling our own demand first, but beyond the immediate year, I think it's it's very reasonable that we'll be doing that. And, you know, we're also we're trying to do this in a way that's very collaborative with the rest of the industry. It is not our intention to come in and try to do everything ourself and, know, including all the other efforts that are... Like, there's a lot of companies working on drone components in America now, and, you know, more and more every day as as the trend continues. There's gonna be a lot of opportunity for us to partner with those people to build out, you know, this factory behind me and to either license their technology or they're licensing our technology. Just overall very big believer in collaboration in the ecosystem. So it shouldn't be seen like we're we're going out to try to take over the entire market, like that would that would not be a successful [01:20:56] S1: path. Neros makes a 100,000,000 drones a year. [01:20:59] S0: Yeah. But first and foremost, we have to unblock our own production. We have to be in control of our own destiny and build the strategic deterrence. So that means, you know, unblocking the things that we can't get right now.
01:20:59 · Soren Monroe-Anderson, Ty Morse
[01:20:59] S0: Yeah. But first and foremost, we have to unblock our own production. We have to be in control of our own destiny and build the strategic deterrence. So that means, you know, unblocking the things that we can't get right now. [01:21:13] S1: And while you're both trying to scale up this factory here, you also want to be building drones in other places around the world. What's kind of the logic behind that and how are you going to kind of both focus on this mainly while also doing that in parallel?
01:21:28 · Soren Monroe-Anderson
[01:21:28] S0: Yeah. Good question. That is gonna be leveraging partners very heavily because we will not be able to, you know, focus on building out this factory and and, you know, deploy like Neros teams to also build out factories other places. It's not realistic, but or not realistic in the short term. It's it's definitely doable in the longer term. But what what we wanna do essentially is take our knowledge on how to make a really effective drone system and partner with folks in other regions to to bring that technology there, and also build out more regional, like region specific supply chains. So, you know, area of interest is into into paycom. It's pretty obvious if you look at the problem set that you need to have domestic production and, like, capability that will be sustained if logistics is cut off from Continental US. So I see that, like, this facility being the sort of backbone of the American supply chain and the countries that are within logistical reach. Eventually, we'll have multiple of these factories in America, but then we'll also have them across the world. Sort of along my mindset that this whole thing is a is a collaborate... Like collaborative effort, you know, we should be getting all of the best people and partners aligned in the same direction. We should be thinking about the manufacturing problem as a, you know, as an allied joint effort, because no one country alone in, you know, the next three years is gonna have full domestic ground up everything drone. It's just an impossible task. It's just an impossible task. And, you know, strong strong allies are strength in America, and so we should be we should be working with them and and trying to give... You know, going back to the idea of credible deterrence, if building a factory in America is what brings it to America, it's probably, you know, very similar, like, production matters in other places too.
01:23:49 · Ty Morse
[01:23:49] S1: I know you're very focused on trying to kinda help America win, on the global stage. What are the required inputs to make sure that we, like, remain competitive consistently over the next decades?
01:24:01 · Soren Monroe-Anderson, Ty Morse
[01:24:01] S0: I believe it's solving the core production problems across all of our critical industries. Yeah. Basically building companies, you know, like Tesla, like SpaceX, you know, like what Neros is is going to be, building that across everything that is essential for our, you know, our mode of operations, our daily lives and critical infrastructure. So the like the the weakest point in our current position is the fact that, like, fundamentally, it's really hard to make things in America now, and there's not that many people who do it at scale, and there's just these massive gaps, obviously drones being one of them that we need to fill. It's not just in drones, you know, for example, in in energy production, especially for AI data centers, there's a there's a huge gap right now in industrial gas turbines, you know, if we if we had a bunch of like nuclear reactors that would probably help, and if we had a bunch of industrial gas turbines and and, you know, plentiful investment castings and things of that nature, then that problem would be largely solved or just a ton of solar. Like, there's there's many approaches to to this power problem, but like in all of those things I just talked about, we are struggling on production. So we can't really think about, like, we got ourselves in this position by optimizing for stock price. It it was like, you can make a cheaper thing, a cheaper widget by doing it, you know, overseas. [01:25:48] S1: At least short term.
01:25:48 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[01:25:48] S1: At least short term. [01:25:49] S0: Short term. Right. Yep. So is it like the short term optimization of stock price? American corporations teach China how to build everything. China then accelerates on top of that, and also, you know, just goes out and copies and steals as much as they possibly can, and then now the industrial industrial powerhouse of the world, and you realize like if you take away the fundamental ability to make things, it's very hard to support a military, it's very hard to support anything in the country. So it's it's... Yeah, I think I think, you know, manufacturing is one of the most important things that people can go and work on right now. I'm just figuring out how to make stuff, and and it's like all across the spectrum. It's not and it's not just defense, right, like not everyone needs to build weapons. Like most of the problems are not in defense, think, but it's it's actually like a strong industrial base is something that can feed consumer and enterprise and defense. That's what we need to be building over the next decades. [01:26:55] S1: A huge part of a founder's job is to basically focus on their problem and be ruthless about cutting away distraction on things that you can't control. But what what is the biggest thing that keeps you up at night and worries you?