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?
01:26:55 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[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? [01:27:09] S0: I think just are we going fast enough? Because I think we have a really limited time window to do this. You know, it's impossible to say, but I believe that in the next few years, if we don't have some semblance of a drone industrial base, our military is, you know, significantly weakened, and then that in a scenario where, you know, China may invite... Invade Taiwan, or you know, now have a real pure adversary, that's where things get pretty concerning. So I think it's like a... It's a pretty limited time window. I've been asked like, it seems too late. Why are we even trying? Like, that's how some people look at the problem. [01:27:58] S1: And but I imagine that that's not like a helpful frame. Because if it is over, then that's not great.
01:27:58 · Ty Morse, Soren Monroe-Anderson
[01:27:58] S1: And but I imagine that that's not like a helpful frame. Because if it is over, then that's not great. [01:28:04] S0: Yeah. I I think, you know, America's come from... Come back from positions of weakness before. It's, I think largely a mindset and people problem. Like, how many great smart people can you get motivated to come and work on this? And now I think it's really important that we are public about what the problem is. So, you know, a lot of America is going about their daily lives not thinking about this stuff, like why is it a problem that America doesn't make stuff, you know, what what would happen if China invaded Taiwan? You know, this is like all these scenarios, and I I I again, I don't think that everyone should need to be thinking about them or or like working on building weapons, but there should be broad awareness of the problem before it becomes, you know, something on the level of a world war, like, then everyone's gonna be paying attention, but it's also far later than you wanna start solving these things. [01:29:06] S1: If you start, you know, when when the conflict actually happens, then we're we're not in a good position. Yeah. We don't have that capability. Yep. Like you kinda said, not everyone needs to be working on on weapon systems. I know from your and Soren... Or your and Olaf's background, it's kind of just perfect because you guys have this trend racing background. You used to be, like, one of the best run racers in the world, may still be, I'm not totally sure. [01:29:29] S0: Not at Depending