Joe Lonsdale

I have mentors in the Reagan administration who came in looking for these things, and those people were not technical. And so when they went to the bureaucracy and they asked questions, there's so many ways of obscuring and blocking and deterring. And so what Elon did is he got root access and he went to the tech systems themselves. No one has done this ever.

I have mentors in the Reagan administration who came in looking for these things, and those people were not technical. And so when they went to the bureaucracy and they asked questions, there's so many ways of obscuring and blocking and deterring. And so what Elon did is he got root access and he went to the tech systems themselves. No one has done this ever.

No president ever has had tech people around him. And they went to the systems and they started finding things like, oh my goodness. And these people who work for the agencies try to confront them and say, no, you can't look at the systems. You're getting around all of our ability to block all this stuff. We thought you'd never actually get to see any of this.

No president ever has had tech people around him. And they went to the systems and they started finding things like, oh my goodness. And these people who work for the agencies try to confront them and say, no, you can't look at the systems. You're getting around all of our ability to block all this stuff. We thought you'd never actually get to see any of this.

No president ever has had tech people around him. And they went to the systems and they started finding things like, oh my goodness. And these people who work for the agencies try to confront them and say, no, you can't look at the systems. You're getting around all of our ability to block all this stuff. We thought you'd never actually get to see any of this.

And they're freaking out because they're looking. And so it's very transparent. They went to the systems. They actually saw the payments and the payments were going out to crazy.

And they're freaking out because they're looking. And so it's very transparent. They went to the systems. They actually saw the payments and the payments were going out to crazy.

And they're freaking out because they're looking. And so it's very transparent. They went to the systems. They actually saw the payments and the payments were going out to crazy.

We're going to be at the Army-Navy game, and so I'm bummed that I don't... I'm going to find out tomorrow probably from all these guys, because I'm sure they know. I'm sure they know, but I haven't texted them and asked, you know... If it's not ours, then it's really incompetent, right? If this is not ours, then it's also kind of weird. Why are we doing this and freaking people out?

But if it's not ours, what the heck, man?

I got a good answer on that, though. I'm sure it's public by now, but I think because of the fact that we let it stay up, we were able to hack into it, trace back where the data was going, and find out a lot about the Chinese. And so it turned out, in that case, it made sense.

And it turned out that Xi Jinping didn't even know his underlings had put this bioballoon up and were doing it, and it was actually bad for China because we used it to hack in. So I think in that case, there's a competent answer, which makes you feel good that there's not totally incompetent people. They met with Biden, they said what they're going to do, he agreed to let them do it.

And that was fine. So hopefully there's a competent answer for these drones, but it's a weird thing, man. I mean, do you think it's ours?

You know what I found out about government, man, is that there are some really great people. There are some amazing special forces guys. Every once in a while on the DOD, you'll have this genius person, the strategy group, and then the vast majority of them are incompetent.

And so it's just hard for me to say, but I'm hoping they're ours, because if they're not ours, that's actually a little bit scary, and it's really incompetent that we're not doing something.

If there was another story, then maybe, but I don't know. That's an interesting question. We're going to find out really soon. I'm curious. I don't want to make a bunch of stupid guesses and I come out to be an idiot because it's hard for me to know. I actually don't know the answer.

This is the future of warfare. It's like lots and lots of manufactured, smart, weaponized, autonomous drones, whether they're flying, whether they're on the water, whether they're under the water, whether they're on the land. That is the future of warfare as far as I'm concerned.

Epris is a really important company, and I'm proud to be a co-founder there. I can't take credit for it by myself. There's a few other people who are critical. Nathan Mintz, Bomar, other guys. Grant stepped in and played a key role. The background on that, by the way, is I'd gotten out of defense for a few years because after Palantir, it's hard.

You have to go talk to senators, you have to go to the DOD. It's stressful stuff. I built companies elsewhere, like you mentioned. But then we saw in the early 2010s, we saw a lot of our smartest friends in China were being forced to have their engineers work on military projects. And we said, wait a second, this is not good. And then we saw our defense primes

were not able to attract the best talent at all. So we had in America, these defense primes had all consolidated in the 90s, and obviously Palantir had to compete against them in software side and crushed them. But their hardware side was also going downhill. It was also getting worse. And this is a big problem that China's getting better. It's getting worse here.