Co-Founder, Palantir Technologies
Palantir Founder: Why AI is the End of Woke Bureaucracy | Dave Rubin & Joe Lonsdale
Dave Rubin and Joe Lonsdale discuss how AI is accelerating American technology, exploring how innovations in flight and education are breaking through decades of stagnation.
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Joe Lonsdale is an American entrepreneur, investor & philanthropist. He has been a part of founding more than a dozen mission-driven companies, including Palantir, Addepar, OpenGov, Affinity, Epirus, Resilience Bio, and 8VC.
Timestamps
00:00 Visions Of A Better Society
00:28 The Future Of Aviation
01:43 Breaking Out Of Stagnation
02:44 The University Of A...
About Joseph Lonsdale
Joseph Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir and managing partner at 8VC, has been active in media discussing AI, defense technology, and government reform. He described AI as compressing decades of progress into a few years, citing advances in aviation and hydrogen fuel cells as examples. Lonsdale expressed optimism about the U.S. leading in AI and cyber capabilities relative to China, and argued that the current technological wave could help dismantle bureaucratic inefficiencies. He also commented on the SpaceX IPO, calling it a "critical company in the middle of the biggest industrial revolution ever" and supporting retail investor access. Lonsdale has also focused on defense and fraud detection. He discussed 8VC's investment in Terra Industries, a defense startup in Nigeria, and argued that affordable autonomous drones and directed-energy weapons represent the future of warfare. He stated that Palantir's technology is being used to identify government fraud, particularly in healthcare entitlements, and praised efforts by officials like Kelly Loeffler at the SBA. Lonsdale criticized what he described as a "massive grift machine" on the far left and called for more competent leadership in federal agencies.
Transcript (26 segments)
I
Interviewer0:00
So, let's say we get a more peaceful world and we get some of the fraud out and via AI, the mundane tasks that people don't want to do so often are taken care of and they can still find some dignity in work. There's still something they're doing. But we've taken care of most of those things and we're basically feeling safe and we have a more functional government. What do you think that actually looks like as a society? It's almost hard to envision if things really were better.
J
Joseph Lonsdale0:26
We just build so many cool things. And by the way, most of Palantir's revenue is commercial now. It's helping companies build things, helping the supply chains. I'll give you an example. I love separately and Palantir. So, Joby Aviation, you're probably following a little bit. It's the electric vertical takeoff and landing.
I
Interviewer0:39
Yeah, it's great.
J
Joseph Lonsdale0:40
The Trump administration approved flight tests for this year. We're going to be flying people around testing it, so it's real. It's happening. It's great. It's going forward. These are some of the best airplane designers in the world because this company is so exciting and you know, Joby Ben Air runs it, just is a wiz. So, people there used to do things in aerospace that took three months to redo an airplane design. Now with AI, you're doing it in an afternoon.
I
Interviewer0:59
So,
J
Joseph Lonsdale1:00
I think what a lot of people don't realize, so this company for example already has flown and tested hydrogen fuel cell powered flight, which is six times more efficient per weight overall if you look at the conversion and the lightness. And it's perfectly safe. And so, this is just a much better version of fuel we're going to use for airplanes. And then they've already started testing a way more efficient planes. So, stepping back, all this stuff that would have been like the 2030s, 2040s, 2050s, it's all being accelerated into the next few years.
I
Interviewer1:30
So, what do you think that does to us as humans? Like if on top of longevity stuff and the AI and the medical reasons that we're going to live longer and all of that.
J
Joseph Lonsdale1:38
Things are just going to start growing again. Like since the 1970s, our planes haven't gotten that much better. It's been annoying. We've kind of been stuck in this lawyer-dominated, sclerotic civilization that's slowly crumbling and we can't build things. We're going to start building things again. It's going to be great. I think it just breaks the woke right. It breaks a lot of the left because people are just going to be part of a civilization that's working and they're going to be positive because they're just going to be growing.
I
Interviewer2:04
Do you think that cyclical thing is just baked into human society — that it gets good and it gets bad? Do you think there's any way around that? Can you really run one that goes for a longer period of time?
J
Joseph Lonsdale2:19
There's going to be some cycles. I think we had a lot of self-owns. I think the fiat currency thing in the early '70s is bad. Something about how we empowered lawyers is not necessarily great. There's all this stuff that seemed to happen in the early '70s that really made the returns go to capital instead of to labor, which is not what you want. I have a lot of capital. I like capital that gets returns, but I think it screws up our culture and our society when labor is like when you print too much money, it's not fair to labor. So, I think there's all these things we did that were just kind of broke and made it more bureaucratic starting in the '70s, and I think this new AI wave should allow us to break out of that if we fight really hard and don't let the left take over.
I
Interviewer2:55
How is this also going to affect education? I know you care an awful lot about education. You're doing something with your wife, but also you've been integrally involved in University of Austin.
J
Joseph Lonsdale3:05
I'm the founding chairman there. Yeah.
I
Interviewer3:06
I spoke there and it was only a few months after speaking at Oxford doing an Oxford debate, which is thought of as the world's best debate. I'm not blowing smoke up your butt, I was so much more impressed with the students that you guys had there. It was completely night and day. I mean, 180 opposite. Those kids were so impressive. The questions during the Q&A, you remember, they asked some really hard questions and they were poking and prying. Sitting with them after was very different than what I experienced at Oxford.
J
Joseph Lonsdale3:36
I appreciate that. We have amazing students at University of Austin. The thing about it, you have to have really high scores to go there and you have to be the sort of person that's opting in to go to a new university. Most people are too afraid to do that. So, by default you're surrounded by awesome entrepreneurs who have the courage to go to something new. Now, whenever there's something new, there's going to be a few weird people. There's going to be a few things that are wrong. There's a bunch of geniuses there, though. It's about half STEM, half philosophically minded, classic literature-minded people. We're actually just finishing the STEM building next to The Boring Company in Austin.
I
Interviewer4:10
Oh, is that right?
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:11
I built this thing out for robotics and mechanical engineering. The SpaceX and The Boring Company guys are helping us. It's really cool.
I
Interviewer4:17
So you're doing something underground, I assume.
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:19
They have tunnels that come from next door on our premises. They have tunnels, so yeah.
I
Interviewer4:22
They're way cooler than you. Wait, what's going on with the tunnels? I mean, people...
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:25
It's opening up. It's already open, but a bunch more is opening the next month or two. You're going to be able to go from the airport to all your favorite hotels. Yeah. They're crushing it.
I
Interviewer4:33
Is it weird that we thought the future was going to be all flying? Peter always says they promised us flying cars, we got widgets on the phone or something. But we thought it was all going to be up there, and actually so much of it is happening underground.
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:44
Let's just say Elon's right. At scale, tunnels are just much more efficient for everyone. It gets rid of traffic. I'll still be flying.
I
Interviewer4:50
The Jobys, we'll do both. We'll do both in Austin.
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:52
Yeah, you're going to have a couple of those. You're going to fly that thing to your basketball court.
I
Interviewer4:57
It's like an Uber, though. You just press the button and it'll come. You can have it, too.
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:59
In a red state. If you're in a blue state, that's going to take longer, I think. We'll see. Although then New York did just test one.