Palantir's Mike Gallagher on the nuclear OS deal, NATO strategy, and why AI energy leadership is a national security issue

to bring him and welcome him to the show. Mike, how are you? What's going on? Great to have you. What's going on, guys? I'm honored to be with you. You guys are famous. You were famous, too. Thank you for joining. I used to be, man. I used to be. Now I'm just, you know, I'm a hasbc.

You're a techn You're a technology brother. You're one of us. You're one of us. I mean, that's actually a great place to start. I I I want to talk about your career and the transition uh that you went through. Uh there's there's a you know, obviously it's very exciting what you're doing.

Now, there's also this story about like I want you in the government too and I want people like you in the government. And so is the government uh a place for high-erforming technologists to flourish? Is there something that needs to change there? I'm interested in to digging into that.

But why don't you kick it off with kind of like how you tell the story of how you got here to this moment? Yeah, I I think well obviously, you know, from northeast Wisconsin, Green Bay, and I kind of grew up always interested in the world outside of Wisconsin and the United States.

When I went to college, I studied Arabic in the Middle East. I became fascinated by what was happening. I was in undergrad when we invaded Iraq. I was a senior in high school during 9/11. And the more I dug into that intellectually, the more I became convinced that I would regret it if I didn't step up and serve.

Um, felt very strongly about service to country, but also on a practical level really wanted to apply the language and regional and cultural skills I was learning in a non-academic context and felt like there was no greater challenge than joining the United States Marine Corps.

So even though I didn't come from a military family, didn't know anything about the military, I just felt like this was the hardest crucible that I could throw myself into, I had a just really an awesome experience. Couple great deployments, learned a ton, was a counter intelligence, human intelligence officer.

And kind of similarly when when I got out of the Marine Corps and you know, I worked on a presidential campaign. I worked in the Senate as a Middle East guy. Never thought about running myself.

I'd moved back home to work for this energy and supply chain management company when a some people reached out to me about running for Congress. I was very young. I was 31. And I my initial reaction was hell no. I mean, it was just I was not I didn't know anything about raising money.

You know, I was the guy who like wrote the white paper that someone read before they went on TV. I wasn't wouldn't be on TV myself. I kind of thought of myself as like a pure national security professional, not a politician. I still don't think of myself that way.

Um, but honestly it was the fact that it scared me that like led me to do it.

I felt I felt like anything that force you outside your comfort zone is good for your your development personally and it was I felt like it would be an extension of my military service, a way to continue my work of enhancing American deterrence, albeit from a legislative perspective.

And and I'll swear I'll I'll wrap up after this. I went into it knowing it was never going to be a career for me. I was the youngest guy in Congress when I got elected. I always conceived of it as a season of service. I think the problem with Congress is that we have too many career politicians.

So I kind of always had in my head I do a decade and when I decided to leave um you know Paliner was a was just a obvious way for me to continue that mission.

I mean, Palunter was one of the rare companies that was unapologetically pro-American military, committed 100% to enhancing deterrence, you know, willing to say that like we're the good guys, you know, the commies are the bad guys.

And um I really felt like, you know, it was a continuation of that theme in my career where something really hard that scared the crap out of me, i. e.

now being surrounded by genius you like 20somes that make me feel stupid and then a continuation of of the mission and I' you know I've kind of dedicated my life to this idea of preventing World War II and I'm seeing kind of how we marry the tech community with the war fighter every day in Palunteer.

So that's the the short version and it's been really exciting. Uh is that is that a typical flow for elected politicians? Someone reaches out to them. Is there kind of like a scouting department?

uh in in our government that's looking for up and cominging talent and then put giving them the ideas because I feel like the story that most people tell is is ah this guy, you know, wants power or wants to, you know, he's on a war path, everyone tells him no and then he runs and and gets elected or kind of sheer force of will.

Um but but which direction does it go more commonly? Was your path uncommon or is it more the norm? Well, to be clear, I I don't want to pretend like this was some pure ash Mr. Smith goes to Washington thing, right?

Like clearly I was driven, ambitious, like had kind of always had a drive my whole life um and wanted to like test myself, but honestly it was not like I didn't think of like the political domain at that point in my life. I think more often than not people are drawn to politics.

It used to be the case that like you'd go to law school, you'd become a lawyer, you'd run for state or local office, and then that would be a natural kind of like farm team that would lead into Congress, and then you'd run for Senate, and then you'd try and be president one day.

I actually think that's changing a little bit. Like one actually healthy thing I saw during my time in Congress is we started to get more young veterans, veterans of the kind of 9/11 wars running for office, which created a cool bipartisan group of legislators that were willing to work together on stuff.

I think, you know, I think we're seeing voters like like wanting to have more outsiders, whether it's, you know, business people, traditional or tech bros like, you know, uh that you guys talk to a lot. Um I think people everyone was a lawyer. It used to be everyone every single person being a lawyer. Yeah.

Being a lawyer seems miserable to me. No offense lawyers. Um but I I don't know. And I will say finally I went in with the assumption that the fundamental problem with Congress was the people, right? The people were either purely mchavelian ambitious or like horribly corrupt and just didn't attract the right people.

Now to be sure there are plenty of people that like would you know could not like they can't leave Congress because they are otherwise unemployable and like you know like they're not like the greatest in the world. But I was actually pleasantly surprised with the quality, the talent as well as the patriotism.

And I would say most people run for Congress wanting to serve the country, wanting to make a difference, wanting to do right by, you know, the part of the country that they're from.

and they get forced into a system where the incentives really don't reward hard work in the domain that Congress should be focused on, right? Like there's really no reward for doing the boring work of oversight of the executive branch of caring about the legislative process.

The modern Congress has become so structurally weak that people channel their ambition into building a media platform, social media in particular, and that almost becomes their full-time job.

And that that's really a problem because we need Congress to focus on the nuts and bolts of budgeting, of oversight, of reclaiming its authority from the executive branch.

my I came to believe that kind of the the fundamental problem with most things is that we become so unbalanced in terms of the overall power of the federal government and then within the federal government the power is purely concentrated now in the executive branch which is why our our presidential campaigns get so intense every four years because the stakes are high right everything is done via executive order and has profound consequences for every business I think a healthier balance would be if Congress article one which was envisioned by our framers to be the dominant gr br br br br br br br br br br br br br br br br br br br br branch of government.

In fact, they were concerned that Congress would grow too powerful. They never would have envisioned the current state of affairs.

Congress surrendering its power since the 70s and then in bipartisan fashion continuing that trend has had really perverse and unintended consequences for um our politics and it's why they've become so intense. Why people are turned off by it.

I think in our lifetime, do you think we will see term limits in in Congress at all? It seems like a lot of smart people, you know, seeing certain actors over the last decade would would feel that that that would be beneficial to the United States.

It's this weird distortion where it feels like people are, you know, you know, in in power for a long time, but not even necessarily thinking in decades or super long term. They're they're thinking in, you know, election cycles and and kind of creates some distortions.

But I'm curious what you think having been in there. You know, it's funny, man. By the way, can I say you have great flow? I just want to throw that out there. Both of you, in fact, as as someone who's losing his hair, I just have to admire it and um you know, cherish it, gentlemen. Should just be news anchors, I guess.

Yeah, it's destiny. Um, it's funny like when I first came in and I got elected in 2016 and we we thought like our freshman class, Democrats and Republicans, we thought we had serious momentum behind a term limits bill. We had a bipartisan term limits bill.

I remember going to the White House, so this was Trump's first year in office.

a group of six of us, three Republicans, three Democrats, went to the Oval Office to get Trump's support on our term limits bill because our basic theory was unless the president was using the bully pulpit to force congressional leaders to do it, it would never happen.

And so, if memory serves, Trump actually uh tweeted about it endorsing the bill and I remember I did some selfie video, you know, having just complained about members of Congress focusing on social media. This is probably the apex. You got to dabble. You got to dabble a little bit. Exactly.

I remember doing some like selfie video coming out of the White House and I genuinely thought in that moment that we had momentum behind a term limits bill. It's overwhelmingly popular with the American people. I've I the counterpart the counter arguments which we can discuss I don't think are persuasive.

What was unique about our bill and the reason the reason we thought it might have a chance of passing? Well, two things. One, we were in that moment the sort of drain the swamp moment. The reason Trump got elected the first time you know everyone's disgusted with the status quo business as usual.

he had made a pledge late in the campaign that he was going to support term limits. Um and then uh secondly, we kind of phased it in. So what was unique about our bill is we applied it to our class and all subsequent that's what I was going to say.

You grandfather in if you're if you're a career politician and you're like I got another 15 years that I was planning on really, you know, running it around here.

you let them phase out and then the new the new guard you put some limits on them and then it totally you grandfather in the grandfathers and they just sort of die off over time and then the new people um so and then and then we made it equal in the House and the Senate 12 years in the House so six terms and then 12 years in the Senate.

So theoretically someone could do 24 years I could do 12 in the House run for Senate and so that seemed generous to us. Um but it died it died a slow death and then a sudden death.

you know, the the problem is, you know, nobody in leadership wants to bring a a term limits bill to the floor, uh, because they fear it endangers their own power.

Um, so I really do think the paradox, it's like the things we need to do to to enhance the power, the functionality of the modern Congress actually require an overempowered president to make them happen. Like otherwise, Congress won't do it on its own. And I was never able to transcend that paradox, if it makes sense.

Yeah. Yeah. I I I want to kind of wrestle with this idea of uh of you know the the the executive branch having power. There are term limits there. We've also had a wildly back and forth executive branch with Trump for four years, then Biden, then back to Trump, kind of unprecedented.

We had previously been in, you know, eight-year stretches for a while. Um and I want to run a theory be uh by you around Iran. My my working theory is that they're not happy with how things are going right now.

Uh and part of that is because part of how Iran got into this particular situation is that they potentially saw America as not supporting Israel aggressively during the Biden administration.

And more importantly, the idea of a president who would strongly support Israel like Donald Trump would was it was unthinkable that he would get elected again because he was being indicted and he was uh seen as kind of like a joke almost and was deplatformed from social media. How is this guy have a Pinterest account?

He didn't even have a Pinterest account. And so he he so so if you're if you're Iran and you're thinking, "Well, America is backing off and doesn't seem to be coming back on the offensive anytime soon, now's the time to start ramping up spending with the Houthis and Hamas and Hezbollah.

" And and but then surprise, Trump's in. Now we have to deal with the consequences of that. And so in this weird way, America feels almost unpredictable geopolitically. And maybe that's an advantage if you take it seriously, but maybe it's a risk.

And to your point about wanting to avert avert World War II, I'm wondering about the current structure of the executive branch changing hands every four years. Is that bullish for avoiding World War II or is it a risk or do we need to just tussle with it more? Like how do you think about all those different concepts?

Yeah. Well, first of all, great question. A lot of interesting threads to pull on there. The first I would say I would go even further back than the Biden administration to when we started to negotiate in earnest with Iran over it over its nuclear program in the second half of the Obama administration.

And really it was it was it was sort of like covert negotiations that then become overt amidst the backdrop of a region that had gone from all this hope around the Arab Spring turned Arab winter, Syrian civil war, coup in Egypt, just chaos everywhere and then Obama was pursuing this nuclear deal with Iran.

Um Obama had sort of a theory about the region. He he talked about creating a new equilibrium in the Middle East whereby we would sort of distance ourselves from Israel and balance sort of a recognize Iran's enhanced power and role in the region and use Iran to balance against the Sunni Arab Gulf states and Israel.

The only problem is that that that new equilibrium created intense disequilibrium and missed the real story which was the only path to equilibrium in the region is to build off this alignment of interest between Israel and the Sunni Arab Gulf states which are on paper strange bedfellows but are united by the shared threat from Iran.

The long pole in the tent that links all of our traditional allies together is the threat from Iran. And if unless you want an enhanced American military presence in the region, the only way to forge a semblance of stability is to build off of that.

And that was kind of the genius of the Abraham Accords that Trump would later put in place. Long story short, the other missed opportunity. So there was an analytical problem with Obama's approach to Iran.

There was a constitutional problem which relates to what we were talking about before where the Iran deal sure looked a lot like an arms control agreement.

But Obama recognizing because at that time we still had sort of pro-Israel Democrats in the Senate recognizing that the deal was unlikely to get congressional support in the Senate in this case. He constructed it purely as an executive agreement, an agreement between himself and the Supreme Leader.

There was no congressional buyin. And so therefore, when Trump got elected, one of the first things he did after extended review was to throw it in the trash. Biden comes in, tries to resurrect it.

Trump comes back in in his second term and basically he gives the Iranians 60 days to negotiate and then took the action that you just saw.

So that's a long way of me saying there was a misunderstanding of the region and then a misunderstanding that as hard as it is to bring Congress into the process, it actually makes your executive achievements more durable. and I think improves your negotiating position.

Now, to get to the last part of your question, I do think the president's recent decision was the right one. I think really going even back before Obama's failed um and flawed agreement with Iran, the Iranians have consistently used the cover of diplomacy to covertly advance their program.

And at some point, we were either going to have to accept a nuclear Iran or take kinetic action to set back their program. And this is the first time in a long time really since our the invasion of Iraq that we've combined maximum economic pressure with a credible military deterrent.

And so I do think it gives us a chance to effectively eliminate their nuclear program.

That being said, there's a lot of work we need to do in terms of rebuilding our entire defense industrial base so that the munitions we're using in Sentcom don't completely deplete the resources we need in other theaters along the way.

And I'll stop there because I could talk about the Middle East for um 20 minutes and all of your your audience would evaporate. No, this is fascinating. I'm really enjoying this.

Do you have a follow-up there or I wanted to talk about I I wanted to get a get a a quick read on how you think China has viewed the events of the last couple months and and couple weeks specifically.

Well, I think that so the my most like bullish case for what Trump has just accomplished would be not only has he set back if not eliminated for a decade Iran's nuclear ambitions, he could have just shattered the emerging axis of chaos.

this sort of access between Iran, Russia and China because China sort of views Iran as both a a source of hydrocarbons as well as like a gateway to expand its influence in the Middle East and continually poke the Americans and our allies in the eye. Um, this is incredibly problematic for China's view of the region.

That being said, the biggest wild card that I just don't know enough about is where Trump is going to go next on China. There was some reporting yesterday that he was going to allow China access to Iranian oil. And so I think it's, you know, in Trump 1.

0, there was this tension between some more hawkish members of of the administration on China and then more dovish members at Treasury. There's a there's sort of a version of this tension going on right now. And then Trump himself at times wants to make a deal with Xiinping and thinks he's uniquely suited to do it.

At other times, he's like uniquely able and willing to impose costs on China. I think he deserves credit for actually the biggest shift in US foreign policy since the end of the Cold War in terms of the more hawkish turn on China.

And so there I guess there's there's lingering questions about how we want to approach China. But I really think this is the serious setback for this this access and chaos, this anti-American access.

Russia, of course, was um getting enormous benefits from Iran in terms of drone technology for its ongoing war uh in Eastern Europe. I can't help but think that that's going to be increasingly difficult given that Iran is is is is dealing with the aftermath of the attack as well as increasing internal pressure.

And then hats off to the Israelis. I mean, I think this shows how valuable it is to have lethal allies that not only have extraordinary capabilities of their own, but are willing to take a a a big role in the the regional security architecture and not just rely solely on the United States of America.

And in fact, what we've seen really in terms of the way they've they've gone after Hisbala, the Beeper operation, and then uh their systematic campaign against the nuclear facility is some of the most daring and imaginative intelligence and military work that I think I've ever seen in my lifetime.

And even if one isn't as pro-Israel as I am, I think you'd have to admire uh just how effective their military and intelligence community is. Yeah, that's undeniable. Uh bit of a random question, but I'm curious if you have any insight here. There was a lot of wrong.

Um there was uh some interesting price action in Bitcoin. It's hard to read too much into uh but people were alleging that the Iranian regime was mining bit, you know, a lot of Bitcoin. Fascinating.

You know, maybe maybe it didn't come up for you, but I I I saw somebody posting that he was like, "I'm not buying Bitcoin right now. It seems obvious that the regime is just like dumping in order to try and fun, you know, basically the recovery effort even. But if you don't have any insight there, we can move on.

I wanted to, you know, I I'm afraid I don't, but I I do think and I've said this to like all the smart crypto folks like Brian Armstrong and others. I I think there's um or a Wisconsin colleague of mine, Brian Style, who's one of the leaders in the House on this issue. You guys should have him on.

He's really smart, young Congressman from Wisconsin. Um yeah, Brian style. He's always in style. He's welcome. Welcome. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Uh that I think there's like a an underexplored aspect or argument about like crypto's role in national security, right?

Because the anti-crypto argu anti-crypto argument is always like this is just a way of sanctions evasion and money laundering. And I think what people don't appreciate is like how this could be a tool to advance America's and our allies national security interests.

And certainly was a case when, you know, people were trying to get out of Ukraine and Afghanistan. Um, that crypto was enormously valuable in that regard. It might allow us to do certain things in denied areas and transfer assets that uh are uniquely valuable to our intelligence community.

So, I assume that's a that's an area where like national security nerds like me should pay increasing attention to the utility of crypto, but I hadn't heard that about. Um, switching gears to the European continent. Uh, wanted to get your reaction to the the NATO spending news and maybe kind of the backstory.

I'm sure when when you were in Congress, you probably always felt strongly about this kind of thing, but um, any any any reactions there? Well, listen, I think anytime first of all you this this idea that you know the American president would want our NATO allies to spend more on their own defense is not a new thing.

It is not sort of unique to Trump. Eisenhower uh the first supreme allied commander of NATO like actually made this argument and expressed frustration with our European allies time. And so this is like and we've we've had Democratic senators uh try to defund NATO because of their frustrations with NATO.

So this is like a an old argument that is new again. I think the fact that certain European countries are willing to spend more on their defense is a great thing for deterrence in general. I would say however I've always been of the view that this obsession with the inputs i. e.

What percent of GDP a NATO member spends on defense is not the right lens of analysis, right?

Like every NATO country could be spending 5% of their GDP on defense, but if they're all buying the wrong crap or buying stuff that isn't interoperable and doesn't actually amount to a coordinated multinational deterrence by denial effort with hard power shifted as far east as possible with the frontline states playing a unique role, then you actually have you haven't actually fighting off a common operational picture.

And shout out to NATO for acquiring Maven smart system made by Palunteer Technologies. No big deal. Um then you have actually a sports team a sports team doesn't wake up one morning and like say let's all give it 100%. And that's the only coordination.

It's like you could easily turn this into a jobs program where you say yeah we're going to spend 5% of our GDP on horseback and cavalry.

And it's like you're going to lose, but yes, you're technically going to be spending 5% and you're going to have a massive military, but you're going to get rolled if you're not investing in the right programs. So, is there any do you think that the European countries are thinking about it correctly?

Because it feels like it feels like to me getting from 2% to 5% is the bigger mental hurdle than the allocation of that 5%. And yes, we're right to move the conversation to where you're taking it right now, but that feels like uh an easier conversation. Or maybe I'm wrong there.

I think the closer you are to the threat, the more you're think your thinking is sharp. Right. So it is my experience that you know Poland, the Baltic states tend to have a clearer view of reality and are making hard decisions in order to invest in their own uh military. By the way, we've acquired two new NATO.

Acquired is the wrong term. We we've had two new countries join NATO in recent years that bring phenomenal capabilities to the table. I think you know traditionally struggled convincing the Germans who are you know the big elephant in the European room uh to make the right investments and to make more investments.

My hope is that that conversation is getting better. You know, I guess I worry sometimes that kind of to relate it to what you said earlier, they they'll be privileging certain domestic companies even if they don't actually produce capability.

I think it's fair to say obviously I'm biased because I work in an American software company, but we are the best in the world like by 10 orders of magnitude when it comes to software development in this country and that's just not something that Europe does well.

So there could be opportunity for creative collaboration between the Palenters of the world and you know European hardware defense manufacturers. I'd love to see more of that going forward. And I've always been a proponent of um you know there's we have a ton of troops uh in in countries like Germany in Western Europe.

um getting them out of garrison, shifting them further on NATO's eastern flank, taking advantage of the invitation that certain frontline states like Poland made, at least in the previous administration, to build new bases and forts that enhance our deterrence posture.

I I think there's a there's a huge opportunity here. Um and and it may just be the case that Trump's rhetoric, as unpolished as it can be at times, is the thing that's shaking shaking it loose uh right now. Uh I mean obviously it's it's a bit overdetermined.

I mean you know the other thing shaking it loose is Russia's invasion of Ukraine and it's a massive wakeup call for Europe um that they need to need to invest more and buy the right things. So, but I do think we have a moment here.

And I think what's critical to our analysis in the US, particularly my own party, the Republican party, is to do a better job, and I didn't quite do this well when I chaired the China Committee in Congress, in teasing out the connection between Russia and China.

And why what happens in one theater affects another theater and that it isn't just a choice between Europe or the Indo-Pacific. We're a global power. We're a sole superpower. We have an existential challenge in the form of communist China. We have to pay attention everywhere.

Yes, we have to make hard decisions and prioritize accordingly the Indoacific is a priority theater.

But one of the best ways we can invest more of our own exquisite resources into the Indoacific is to get on the same page with our allies in Europe and ensure that they're buying the right things and that the way we fight together is actually leveraging cutting edge commercial technology, software or hardware. Great.

Great. Should we talk about the the news today? The announcement, the nuclear the nuclear uh deal that you'd be great. Can you break down for us? Uh everything is nuclear. Everything's nuclear. We're going nuclear. Yeah, I mean I want to know the shape of the partnership. Anything you can share there.

Uh but then I'd love to go into kind of um what you're particularly excited about in nuclear or or even just energy broadly. Uh we've seen that the United States energy production per capita has kind of flatlined for a while. China's increasing energy production very aggressively.

It feels top of mind especially in the backdrop of the foundation model AI race um that we need to be building more energy infrastructure and there's different resources coming online.

Nuclear is probably the most fascinating one that has the ability to scale because we've we've we've we've we've tamed the atom and yet and we can't just seem to copy paste uh you know Diablo Canyon 50 times to to actually get a massive increase in energy production. There's also stuff happening on the smaller scale.

Uh I want your take on nuclear as a whole in addition to the deal. Yeah. By the way, I may get pulled to do a TV interview about this the nuclear stuff by it's your fault though because my understanding is I'm just um batting cleanup for Elelliana point and he talked too much but I'm happy to come back at any point.

Um listen I mean we can't obviously we can't uh dominate the like the commanding heights of critical technology and AI if we don't improve our our sort of all the above energy policy. Um there is no workable energy strategy without a nuclear renaissance in this country.

The Trump administration has put out some really productive EOS. But now it's incumbent upon the private sector to step up and the nuclear company is that I mean they they're going to leverage our software to build reactors which right now take over a decade to build uh and collapse that timeline down.

And I think we're at the forefront of something really interesting. Um, China is investing billions of dollars in this space, putting their best and brightest on the problem, and we can't fall further behind.

And oh, by the way, it affects our military deterrence as well because our diplomacy is enhanced with foreign countries when we're able to come to them and say you can, we are a reliable partner for civilian nuclear technology and we help you build and access that technology safely.

when what I don't want to see is a replay of what we saw with China and 5G and Huawei where China was going all over the world saying you can have 5G internet cheaply we'll just control the infrastructure um it'll be in a box you know you won't even have to worry about you don't have to worry about anything you don't have to worry about anything and like in America like whoa don't do that time out but if you're a country that doesn't have resources in Africa or in the global south like you're probably not paying as much attention to the CI concerns and so there's something similar are playing out uh in the nuclear space right now.

So, I'm very bullish about this partnership.

Um you know, I I think this is the cusp of something big both for the nuclear company and for Palanteer and we're going to be able to leverage all the lessons we have from working with and old seronic and nontraditional partners with our warp speed manufacturing uh product and apply it in in to the nuclear space.

That's fantastic. I'm getting pulled. I'm getting you on another We'll see. We have to have you back on soon. Come back on soon. We'll talk to you soon. Come back for Packers commentary. Great. Cheers. Yeah.

The uh the the nuclear like like like a lot of people still don't understand fully what Palanteer does, but you you have to pull the example from uh Airbus manufacturing. So Palunteer is that's one of their partners.

If you're making a plane, you need to know how many screws you have, how many wings you have, how many engines you have, and the lead times on all of those, how much they cost, when they depreciate, what the testing regimen is as you integrate them into the plane.

exact same process for building something like a 747 as building a new nuclear power plant. So, uh, very exciting deal and, uh, I'm excited to see it play out. But, uh, that was fantastic. Let's run through a a couple timeline posts and then get out of here.

Uh, we got two ads left and that's why we're leaving early today because we're going to go film some ads for Wander. Find your happy place. Find your happy place. Book a wander with inspiring views, hotel grade amenities, dreamy beds, top tier cleaning, and 24/7 concier service. It's a vacation home, but better.

We're heading to a wander in just a few minutes to film an advertising city of Malibu, the great town of Malibu, California that will be airing on TBNN and then go out on the on the internet. Uh, and we're also filming an ad for Eight Sleep. How'd you sleep last night? I got wrecked again. You got wrecked. Wrecked.

I I have a systematic issue with uh the three-year-old. Yeah, it's rough. Have you Have you Have you tried telling a man up? No. I mean, I I would be down for my sleep to be disrupted for a decade if it means he sleeps just a little bit better. But it's certainly the the thing that really hurts is uh losing to you.

I got a 78. I got an 86, baby. Hit me with the Ashen Hall. Moged again. It's my This is my favorite soundtrack on the whole We're going to need a new sound effect. I love this soundtrack. No, this is this is the sound of me winning. It's now. It's now. When there is a John win, I get the Ashton Hall sound effect.

That's right. Anyway, go to eight. com/tbpn. And if you're building, if you're building a company like head over to finn. ai, AI the number one agent AI agent for customer service.

It is number one in performance benchmarks, number one in competitive bakeoffs and number one ranking on G2 used by KOD, Consensus, Aspire, Lovable, all of your favorite uh software companies and more. So check it out. Um we got to have on on again. Yeah. Yeah. Once a day, once or twice a day. Be great. you can coexute.

I think he's a little busy for that. Um and uh yeah, if you're uh if you're selling to customers, if you're a businessman or woman, you're going to benefit a lot from Finn. Um well, that is uh pretty much everything. There's one more piece of news I want to cover.

Uh Baiju over at Aether Flux has a new board member, Dan Gallagher. He's worked with him for years. Dan is in a league of his own. He is a man of integrity and has become a close friend over the years. He'll help us engage in uh Washington DC and support Aether Flux and America to lead in space solar power.

If you're not familiar with Aether Flux, they are putting solar panels in space and then beaming down the energy that's captured in space via lasers. Very cool. They're beamaxing. Also, Baiju absolute hitter on his wrist every time he's spotted. Absolutely criminal because this photo here in the slide deck cuts it out.

Cuts it out. We can't see what he's doing. Photographer. What was the photographer doing?

What was the this is a this is opportunity journalistic misinformation post here from Scott Bski observed among the most successful people I admire who really worked for it they don't want to network they want to learn they are mining you for information constantly. Yep.

Uh sometimes it looks like networking but they're mining. Yeah. Zack Weinberg says in fact the networking part is really just a tax you get comfortable paying in order to do the learning. I like that. It's a good point. uh we haven't posted. But this is the same thing.

It's like don't don't ask for money, ask for advice. Like if you're genuinely interested in something, you wind up meeting interesting people because that's the only way to get the real answers that aren't baked into the LLM yet. You got to go to the source.

You got to meet people and you got to ask them for the answers to the pressing questions of the day. Yep. Anyway, uh we have a post here from Woodrow Oats Montigue. Uh so done I can't take this anymore. And there's a Bloomberg hit.

A footwear startup is teaming up with two space companies to design a shoe in orbit as part of a mission to make artificial intelligence and blockchain less expensive and more eco-friendly than it is on Earth. Orbit's Edge, a company that supports AI and blockchain applications.

and Copernic Space, which offers digital marketplaces for space assets, plan to send a solar and battery powered satellite to space, equipped with a computer that will use AI automation to produce a shoe design for the Cintlay brand. The mission is expected to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in early 2026.

Um, we should call Delian and do a wellness check. Yeah. See how he's doing. He's been like, I'm the guy who's manufacturing. I'm the space manufacturing man. So much for your monopoly thesis, Delion. There's another space manufacturing company in they're designing they're using AI and blockchain technology.

I haven't heard I haven't heard talk about AI or blockchain yet at all. That's just missing from their thesis entirely. Wow, what a blind spot for Delhi. It's so funny to feel like you need to send something to space to produce AI slop footwear designs. Um anyways, uh good luck to them.

Let's end on a let's end on a positive note. Brad Gersonner, I don't think this was a response to um our the socialist. No, but he said the answer to socialism is more capitalism and the Invest America Act is more capitalism, Mr. President. It makes every child a capitalist from birth, sharing in the upside of America.

Worried about what what just happened in NYC? Help is on the way. I love this. Let's ring the gong for Brad Gerson. Fantastic. Well, this is the shortest show we've done in a very long time, but fortunately, I'm sure we'll be back with But we're still recording. We're going to be recording over the next few hours.

Putting up minutes and then that will hit the timeline later. Anyways, so thank you for tuning in to the show. As always, leave us a fivestar review on Spotify or leave us a written review on Apple Podcast and we will read that on the show. So, have a fantastic afternoon. We'll see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow.