Palantir CTO: military innovation and reforming the Pentagon
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- Опубликовано: 15 июн 2024
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That's where we drop weekly knowledge bombs to help you make sense of defense!
Mike and Jake host Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar to talk about software-defined warfare, defense modernization, and all the things we’d change to drive innovation to help the warfighter.
Shyam started as employee #13 at 23 and slowly climbed the ranks of the largest and fastest-growing US defense software company.
No topic is off limits-including how and why Palantir sued the Army…and won.
For a conversation with a software tech executive, we spent most of the time talking about culture, leadership mentalities, history, and structure changes that are as relevant in the Pentagon as they are in any other industry. Of course, no episode would be complete without some lively banter and spicy takes!
For those interested in #military #nationaldefense #warfare #nationalsecurity #defense #nationaldefense #tech #technology #defensetech #army #navy #airforce #sofware #startup #leadership #innovation #palantir
Links
• Sign up for our amazing newsletter! www.themerge.co
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• Mike Benitez (LinkedIn) / mike-benitez
• Jake Chapman X (@vc) x.com/vc
• Shyam Sankar (LinkedIn) / shyamsankar
• Shyam Sankar (X) x.com/ssankar
• Palantir www.palantir.com
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Show Notes
(00:58) intro
(2:07) Shyam early years
(02:59) Palantir early days
(04:56) security clearance moat
(06:43) Palantir's software thesis
(07:51) outspoken CTO
(09:12) urgency without panic
(10:16) WWII ramp to production
(11:06) best at software
(12:24) suing the Army
(18:14) focus on winning
(19:14) hard-headed leadership
(20:16) the real tragedy of the last supper
(21:36) consolidation of opportunities
(23:55) F-35 Joint Program Office
(24:25) flourishing ideas to deal with uncertainty
(25:04) process creates mediocracy
(25:24) the power of options
(27:01) software-defined warfare
(27:16) deductive vs inductive reasoning
(27:48) hardware vs software company structures
(28:53) The Army’s TITAN program
(30:28) when govt left the engineering to industry
(33:33) business idea - help 0 to 1
(34:11) multi-vendor ecosystems
(36:19) government-provided tools for success
(38:10) commercial R&D explosion
(38:21) conviction with commercial tech
(38:53) military labs
(39:34) DJI vs General Atomics
(40:07) wild idea - make the primes more valuable
(41:47) value vs cost
(44:16) the next few years
(45:23) kill chains and value chains
(46:03) car sensors to tank sensors
(46:57) sustainment incentive mismatch
(47:58) attacking the sustainment tail
(49:04) spicy take
(49:15) creating multiple buyers
(49:39) multiple program offices competing
(49:58) make programs compete with each other
(52:12) undeclared state of emergency
(52:39) save the shire
(53:26) more LOTR geekery
(53:51) outro 
Развлечения
![Megan Thee Stallion - Rattle [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/qY6qwqVCsww/mqdefault.jpg)
This is hands down one of the best discussions I’ve ever watched.
Much appreciated ❤
Brilliant interview. Thank you! And out out to Mr. Shankar for being so to the point.
Thank you!
20:00 Henry John Kaiser was an American industrialist who became known for his shipbuilding and construction projects, then later for his involvement in fostering modern American health care. Prior to World War II, Kaiser was involved in the construction industry; his company was one of those that built the Hoover Dam
At first I thought Mr. Sankar was saying MilSpec laptops are paperwieghts, and I was thinking "WTF MilSpec laptops rock!" but I rewound it realised that the entire DCGS-A system was the paperweight! Great show Mike cheers.
Thanks!
Power over the spicy take is power over all
Sounds like another great company to work for. I hope anyone watching this listens to some of the ideas on much needed reforms. I find Palantir and Andruil are just disrupting the market in a good way. We have to change how we do business or China will destroy us. I will never underestimate China despite the obvious.
Thanks, Pako for another informative discussion and peak into the world of defense contracting. Excellent.
🎉
21:53 'The last supper': How a 1993 Pentagon dinner reshaped the defense industry
the Defense Department was saying there are way too many companies in the defense industrial base. That we can't afford them. And that we couldn't have a bunch of companies with half full factories and not enough money to invest in research and development, huge overhead, high costs. And we need to consolidate the industry.
And just to give you an example, the chart had a column on it that showed how many companies in various categories of military equipment, like fighter airplanes, tanks or what have you, how many companies the Defense Department was going to be able to afford to keep in business. And as an example, there were 16 categories of equipment and there were three. The government said it could keep three companies in business in one of the categories. In another of the categories it could afford to keep, let's see, it was six categories, it could afford to keep two companies in business. And there were seven categories where it considered it could only keep one company in business.
The west reindustrializes by leaning into extreme decentralization. using advanced manufacturing techniques, 3d printing, advanced robotics, instead of 300 new factories that produce 300 product lines, we need 3000 new factories that can produce 5000 product lines that are semi uniform in their design but flexible enough to produce multiple product lines as needed and flexible enough to shift their focuses as needed.
I'm looking forward to reading Shyam Sankar's book.
Really interesting stuff. 👍
We can’t put those kinds of sensors in a military acquisition simply because of the security issue that comes along with. I don’t want to even imagine the nightmare of doing IATTs and cyber certs on those sensors
It’s something to behold watching O6’s chuck spears at one another…
I want to work for Palintir so bad
I keep saying it, but I keep saying it because I believe it to be true. Our future fights will be a competition of who can field bespoke solutions to battlefield problems the fastest. Who can create battlefield dilemmas the fastest and the speed will be on the scale and speed of creating FPV drones in a basement, exquisite systems will be few and far between.
Shack!
I kind of think "bespoke" is one of the problems with current procurement practices...
@@vmpgsc bespoke and exquisite are not synonymous in this sense, bespoke refers to solving a limited problem set instead of trying to create panaceas and do all equipment. Short duration and sustainment means the problemset can be limited down and thus the cost and development cycle also limited down.
@@mkperez7465 OK I see how you're using bespoke now. I've always used bespoke to mean customized or tailored, which presupposes new development vs adaptation or adoption of something existing.
My guy taking shots at Boeing, aka the CEO making 30 million dollars a year in bonus to make a shit product. Lol I love it!
meh. I feel like he memorized all the buzz words and we got a presentation where he gets to regurgitate the terminology of his field. There is no real insight.
Look man, I wasn't going to reply to your negative comment, (I'm the one who gave you the thumbs down) but the YT algorithm fed me this related video from Ward Carroll "The All-Time Most Bizarre Squadron Callsigns". I can't paste the link so just search for that title and If you don't want to watch it all go to the 9:35 min mark and watch for 2 mins. Ward mentions when the USN had to start using Air Tasking Orders (ATO) from joint command, which they never had to do until the Gulf War and I quote - ""We didn't have the software or hardware to get the ATO sent to our carrier so we had to send S-3's to Manama Bahrain to get a hardcopy" - This is exactly the problems Palantir is solving that Mr. Sankar spoke about. It wasn't just all "buzzwords" and nonsense as you seemed to think. 😐