Relentless
01:02:31 · Sam D'Amico
[01:02:31] S0: Yeah. So, I mean, I I think we can also talk about Apple as well here, where, like, Apple did the the the trash can, Mac Pro was done in Texas. My understanding was like huge chunks of the dependencies to build that were all... Like, the the tooling was essentially built in China, and then it was designed in China, assembled in California. Which is kind of a kind of a kind of a joke statement, but like that's that's actually what really happened with, with with, with with the Mac Pro. And it was in some sense a political project to make sure that like consumer electronics tariffs didn't get raised during the first Trump administration. Going back to Google, so like I was there across the street from Aaron working on Google Glass and they did... I I think it's one of these cases of like, Sergei was right about this AI stuff. And if you go back to consumer electronics, was right about that too. It was just early. And the the story here is like, had realized that a bunch the IP was gonna be in like precision optical alignment of the the of the optical elements. And like, it was hard and kind of a first... Like, it would be like, you had to do it for the first time anyway. So like, if you were gonna invent the process that made like the the wave guide for the for the optics yourself, why not just do it yourself? Now, and they were willing, and at the time Google was flush with cash willing to, you know, willing to spend the CapEx to do it. I think what you saw... And then likewise, they bought Motorola because they're like, we need to get into the phone business with a vertically integrated phone partner, not just Android basically, Android and Google Play services and all other stuff. So they they realized that these pieces needed to exist. And I think we're directionally correct, but the problem was they didn't exist at the scale needed to kind of like, again, fully subsidize the supply chain that was... That that that like needed to also be brought along with it. So like you end up building Google Glass in San Jose, and where are the components coming from? Well, like I was flying to China, I was flying to... I was flying... I was flying... Was flying to... I was flying to Asia for a lot of the component engineering work. And if you kind of do the gradient descent of like, well, what's the best way to build this thing?
01:04:30 · Sam D'Amico
You end up back to manufacturing stuff in China basically. And, you know, organizations change over the years, different people come in. There's not like focus of vision of like, this is the directionally right thing to do and we have to just pay the tax until it works out. Like, obviously, Elon is really good at that. But you can see that Google, went through management changes, you know, different senior directors in organizations, you know, think think... These things these things are all natural evolutions of organizations over ten years, but, like, keeping that coherency of, like, this initial assumption was correct and carrying it through ten years later, you can actually objectively do this stuff. That didn't happen, in that organization. I do think that they'll probably make another shot at it though. Like, I think I think... And I think it's also worth saying, like, I think there's a similar story happened with AI, but like you can see right now, founders coming back into play. It's getting, you know, they're... They've been locked in pretty hard with Gemini and all this other stuff, and like, I think they're doing a good job. So, we'll see what hap... We'll see what happens. I'm also like, I'd be I'd be I'd be excited to see if that's something like that, you know, they they try to run it back again on that side. So...
01:05:38 · Aaron Slodov
[01:05:38] S1: There's just so many so many layers to this. Right? I mean, philosophically, if you go back to, like, Wealth of Nations, basically, this the idea of the invisible hand versus a more like Listian or Hamiltonian kind of worldview on your own sovereignty. And just like, if somebody else can make all the stuff that you want, that's not good. And ultimately, there's some kind of, like, push and pull that comes down to, like, market efficiency. Right? And I think you can probably argue that, like, you know, debasing the dollar to have capability is an actual real argument. And this this is kind of like, just look at Chinese industrial policy. It's cohesive, and it doesn't it doesn't break between a four year administration. Right? Like, they have consistent five year plans that they've been executing on for, you know, a very long time. And even since, like, I don't know, 2024, the kind of, like, priority items in their five year plan, they dumped a trillion dollars from the state into it. Like, we're just we're not at that level, you know? And so when you, like, hear these analogies, it's, you kind of want to just, like, hit your head against the wall. Like, yes, of course. They're, like, they're obviously they're great at doing all these things, but like, what are we doing? And this this is ultimately just the the kind of question it's like everybody knows this is gonna be a monumental undertaking. It's not something that happens overnight. You have to you really do have to, like, stack rank these things. And it's, yeah, I mean, ultimately, the things I've learned dealing with, OEMs at that scale now just through, like, my company, are are mind boggling because there's there's like an economic decision to make and you can't break that chain very easily. Right? So it's, yeah, that's why I think this is just ultimately, like, a matter of will, but more so, a structural problem of, like, can we have some kind of cohesive industrial policy that's durable and puts us in a position in the future that we wanna be in?
01:07:55 · Ty Morse, Aaron Slodov, Sam D'Amico
[01:07:55] S2: Elon has mentioned that he basically believes that humanoids are going to be the biggest product ever created. How do you guys think the advent of humanoids is going to shift the balance of power and our ability to be the manufacturing powerhouse of the world? [01:08:09] S1: So I'm gonna just... I'm gonna put myself in in Elon's brain for a minute here. I don't [01:08:14] S0: wanna be there. [01:08:14] S1: I I mean, it's... In in... If you just go back to the the economic decision, right, and kind of like the urgency level, it is the only place that you can do this right now. Right? We don't have the end to end supply chains to to do that here now. So the worry that I have is that if I'm in Elon's brain and I think that getting, like, v one point o of a massive, like, Optimus, right, where it's, like, a 100,000 of these things, does that actually set up this kind of training ground where they can start learning and then self perpetuate and start replicating, basically. Whoever gets to that point first, it's game over. So do we want to hand all that over to China because they can do it? Because if we do, it's probably not a good decision. [01:09:08] S2: Yeah. And I think Elon has specifically talked about basically the humanoid supply chain doesn't exist, and so they're rebuilding it from scratch. Yeah.
01:09:08 · Ty Morse, Aaron Slodov
[01:09:08] S2: Yeah. And I think Elon has specifically talked about basically the humanoid supply chain doesn't exist, and so they're rebuilding it from scratch. Yeah. [01:09:16] S1: It's... I mean, it's a it's a really challenging place to be in because if you if you take all these language models, and other foundational models that are being architected right now, they need they need better scope. Atoms in... This is me talking now out of Elon, right? But, like, yeah. The world of atoms is the last frontier of of AI. And, yeah, I mean, like, we've seen a lot of really cool robot companies with, like, folding laundry and stuff, but, I I do think that this is a really critical decision, if not even maybe more critical than drone production at mass scale too. So, I I don't think it's a good place to to be right now.
01:09:16 · Aaron Slodov, Sam D'Amico
[01:09:16] S1: It's... I mean, it's a it's a really challenging place to be in because if you if you take all these language models, and other foundational models that are being architected right now, they need they need better scope. Atoms in... This is me talking now out of Elon, right? But, like, yeah. The world of atoms is the last frontier of of AI. And, yeah, I mean, like, we've seen a lot of really cool robot companies with, like, folding laundry and stuff, but, I I do think that this is a really critical decision, if not even maybe more critical than drone production at mass scale too. So, I I don't think it's a good place to to be right now. [01:10:00] S0: And I I would also argue that, like, we are seeing with the data center build out immense opportunity to, like, onshore the electric stack, onshore advanced chips, like all this other stuff. And we've excluded these products from the tariffs because there's a cross pressure of, well, if we tariffed it, we just build the data centers in Canada and Mexico and, like, you know, or in space or whatever. And so we literally are sitting on an opportunity to like pull in a bunch of capabilities. And I think it's kind of like the the battle between the invisible hand and like the great man theory is like the way to kind of think way to kind of think about it where it's like, I'm maybe... I I I'm not... I'm less of a believer in the great man theory and more in a belief that like you can just white knuckle shit and you should just do it.