Erik Prince

three or five designs of autonomous underwater vessels or very low profile, stealthy, unmanned vessels so that instead of

What, 100 Burke-class destroyers?

100 Burke-class destroyers could have 1,000 or 5,000 autonomous unmanned other weapons platforms that you have a massive swarm.

P for plenty.

America's main contribution in World War II was our industrial base, was innovation pivoting from making cars and refrigerators to making...

weapons, making a major combat aircraft every six minutes, making a Liberty ship in a week was the record for assembly.

That is what the Pentagon should pivot to now.

And to do anything through the existing Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, Raytheon, General Dynamics cartel is a massive mistake.

They're incentivized to raise cost every year.

Right.

And I'm sorry, I don't hold them blameless at all because they employ effectively a brigade, thousands of lawyers and lobbyists in Washington, D.C.,

They do.

To change the law to their benefit.

Yeah, yeah, they do.

To get Congress to appropriate way too much money to the Pentagon that spends it on that cartel.

who then takes some of that money and pays the politicians to rinse and repeat.

They are a huge part of the problem.

I think it's wonderful in theory, but the fact is there's 800,000 pentagons in the civilian.

And as much as Pete Hegseth and team wants to change the culture, you still have a horrifically awful procurement culture.

And so there's a lot of great defense tech that's starting and innovating and have a great product, getting them to production, getting them to a DoD sale.