Co-Founder, Palantir Technologies
The Only Industry Growing Faster Than AI | Dave Rubin & Joe Lonsdale
Dave Rubin and Joe Lonsdale discuss the future of defense technology, exploring how AI and peptides could revolutionize ...
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 (28 segments)
I
Interviewer0:00
Okay, so let's say we get some politicians in and they're working and the AI is working and we're feeling good about the future. So then the next horizon is what Elon's talking about all the time, like the next thing that you'd be excited for is now. So is he jumping 10 battles before?
J
Joseph Lonsdale0:16
Yeah, so you're not going into planetary next week. You're doing some other things first. So the most important battle for there's a lot of battles that I go out to and all of which is a problem of course. The big battle I fought previously in the last 10 years especially was fixing our defense industrial complex. It's not fixed by any means but it's a hell of a lot better. A ton of people who dealt with me a lot of other guys from Palantir built Anduril. Saronic's building things better and cheaper, going to build thousands of these autonomous warships. Chaos is doing $5,000 interceptors versus millions of dollars per drone. So we've made that cheaper and better and functional and there's so many things happening with Secretary of Defense going to the army even today announcing basically we're going to let people integrate with everything and get rid of all these interests. So we fought this defense battle. It's going right. It's going to work really well. The other really broken cost-plus area of our society other than defense I'd say is health care. And health care is probably in some ways at least as important as defense is important. You don't get conquered but health care's going to make us socialist if we don't fix it.
I
Interviewer1:13
Sure.
J
Joseph Lonsdale1:13
And it's a really cool time right now because it's obvious thanks to what's happening in AI both on the new therapies to cure diseases and on how you run health care administration and services. We can make health care so much better and so much cheaper, like less than half cost where everyone does better. And this is great because this is our main debt in our country, right? The reason we're bankrupt, we have a hundred trillion dollars if you actually measure correctly of entitlement debt is health care. So this one to me is like the final frontier special interest that we just have to have those fights.
I
Interviewer1:40
Right, and it also seems to be the one that is the lowest hanging fruit to defang some of the left, right? Because Bernie constantly helps Medicare for everyone but they have no idea how to pay for it or how to do it.
J
Joseph Lonsdale1:51
That would destroy innovation in that area by being a socialist which we do not want. America's now, it's probably unfair that we're paying the highest drug prices and that we're innovating for who we are. We are innovating for the world. We cannot break America's for-profit healthcare. The way we have to do it though is you have to make it truly a market-based system which is not. It's crony. It's broken.
I
Interviewer2:09
So you envision a medical future where it's like Elysium meets Alien and there's going to be a pod with robots and you're going to say what's wrong with me and it's just going to fix it right there, right? Like that. Have you seen kind of what gets us there? Have you seen this new peptide stuff? Have you followed that?
J
Joseph Lonsdale2:22
Ah, there are the peptides. My whole Instagram's there. Not on the peptide.
I
Interviewer2:26
I did when I tore my knee heli-skiing and it was awesome. But
J
Joseph Lonsdale2:30
Stem cells, man. We're about the same age. Then you got to, I will tell you it's the one area of the country where something is growing faster revenue-wise than AI. Is all the peptides. Not just GLP-1 by the
I
Interviewer2:42
What? So peptides as an industry is growing faster than AI?
J
Joseph Lonsdale2:46
AI revenue-wise. It's actually the only thing growing faster. And so used to just be like GLP-1 and then things related things. But if you look at all the other ones, add it up, it's actually now bigger interest than the GLP-1s even. So this is a big thing in our country.
I
Interviewer3:00
So we're going to change all the tech. We're going to fundamentally change our bodies.
J
Joseph Lonsdale3:05
There's going to be all sorts of new therapies that are even more advanced than peptides coming. But I think peptides is like the big thing the next 5 years in healthcare on that side of it. And yeah, I think people are going to be a lot healthier in their 80s, 90s, 100s. I don't know, maybe you live to 120, but you live healthily. There's these new treatments for rats that they're doing because they test the testings out on animals. And we figured out how everything like aging works and it makes the rat live like 30% longer, but it looks like it's young until it dies, which is pretty good.
I
Interviewer3:31
Whoa. Yeah. That's freaky.
J
Joseph Lonsdale3:38
You know how you tell that an old rat has gotten young again? Starts having lots of sex right away. So somewhere in a lab somewhere there's a lot of old rats having sex. That should be freaking you out.
I
Interviewer3:43
You should have one more. This is like what Jordan Peterson used to talk about, the rats doing cocaine and everybody would be freaking out. Okay, interesting. So somewhere. Are you involved in that in any way or
J
Joseph Lonsdale3:54
Not the sex stuff.
I
Interviewer3:55
No. Should we end the show there? Do you have anything else you want to add? I think I feel like that seems like the proper
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:01
No, actually so Altos Labs is Rick Klausner who's been like
I
Interviewer4:07
Good. That was a heck of a laugh. I'll get to something serious.
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:08
No, it's good. Rick Klausner has started five or six multi-billion dollar bio companies and he started that. He's working on a bunch of cool things. But I think Altos started with a few billion dollars and it's them and then Blake Byers who is also very famous investor in Silicon Valley has his own company with some of our friends as well. They're doing great things. There's a couple groups that are actually advancing this. It's really cool.
I
Interviewer4:28
You know what? I will ask you one final bonus question because I've mentioned before you've invested in a couple things that I've done. I think I've done all right by you. And I've said this every time you've been on the show, but the best part is not the money that you've invested, but that you always pick up the phone and you've given us great advice on certain things over the years.
J
Joseph Lonsdale4:42
Appreciate it.
I
Interviewer4:43
So let me ask you this. Just for anyone that's watching this that just wants to get involved a little bit more, they want to invest a little bit more, they want to do some things with their money that's a little bit different. They get at least some level of what we've talked about here in terms of where the future is going and everything else. How would you say to somebody who's like, maybe in their 20s, has a little money, just wants to start doing more interesting things with their money. What would you say to that person?
J
Joseph Lonsdale5:09
Yeah, that's interesting. I think I'd say mostly to that person, my first thing I'd tell you is your time's worth a hell of a lot more than your money. And so, using the money that you have to be safe with the money to then free up more of your time to learn AI, to try to practice building something, to try to take risks. Like that's the most important thing first of all: learning, taking risks. Now, if you do really want to invest your money in some ways, first of all, you have to be an accredited investor to invest in funds. So you got to be really careful about that. But assuming you're allowed to invest
I
Interviewer5:35
Not going to get there overnight. That's
J
Joseph Lonsdale5:38
going to get there overnight. So it's a public stuff. So I actually think if you're only if you're not accredited, you should be investing to make sure you free up your time. And like leave your money in an ETF. Like it's fine. But if you do have extra money beyond that, I think you should be very careful at first. You shouldn't put too much illiquid, but there are platforms like Zanbato, Z-A-N-B-A-T-O, something I helped friends start over a decade ago and there's billions of dollars that go through that to access kind of interesting tech companies. But I think you have to be really careful about these things if you're an outsider. Like start with a much smaller amount and learn from your mistakes is what I would tell people because this is dangerous if you're just starting to get involved.