The Shawn Ryan Show
#247 Brandon Tseng – Shield AI’s X-BAT: The First AI Fighter Jet to Outsmart Top Gun
23 Oct 2025
Full Episode
Brandon Sang, welcome to the show. Thanks, Sean. I'm really excited to be here. Yeah, me too. We've been really looking forward to this for a long time. And now I have a model UAP sitting in my front yard here. So it's going to be super interesting. I know all the locals are like, what the fuck is that thing doing here? What is that? I'm excited to show you it.
It'll, uh, and yeah, it's, it's pretty cool. I can't wait, man. And, and, you know, like I was saying at breakfast before we started the interview, I mean, it's just, I just love seeing not just veterans, but especially team guys, SEALs, you know, get out and do something totally different. And, um, it's just, it's just, it's cool, man. It's, it's, it's a huge inspiration for a
broken into a whole new thing that is just unimaginable for a lot of people, other than maybe Dino Mavrukas. But congratulations. Thank you.
No, I appreciate that. It's painful. But we're excited about what we're doing and hope to make a big impact on the world. And similarly, I'm super inspired being in this room. Everything you've built is very cool as well.
Thank you, man. Thank you. But everybody starts off with an introduction here. So here we go.
brandon sang co-founder and president of shield ai a defense technology company you co-founded in 2015 to build ai pilots for military assets helped raise over 1 billion in funding for shield ai growing the company to over a thousand employees you're a former navy seal who served two deployments staff to afghanistan and one to the pacific theater a graduated
a graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and you later earned an MBA from Harvard Business School, advocate for advancing U.S. national security through AI and autonomy, testified before Congress on topics like technology innovation, acquisition reform, and the role of AI in warfare. You're a husband and a father.
Yes, sir. Thank you.
So, Brandon, I'd like to do a life story on you. And I know we got limited time today, but I'd like to go from childhood all the way up into what you're doing right now and talk a little bit about your time in the SEAL teams, how you got into the AI business world. And it's going to be a fascinating interview. Cool. But a couple things to crank out here before we get started.
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