ends up being given Iran and to their war machine in order to keep us on our heels. Let's bring in Joe Lonsdale from Palantir here. Hey Joe. Right now you're doing great. You've got the hottest topic in the country. Whether it's the data centers or the guardrails, there should be very few people who can talk intelligently about it. They should be honest about it. Do you worry, first off, before we get into the narrow part of it, do you worry about lawmakers who try to put guardrails in judging AI by idea?
It's a little bit comical, Brian. I mean, listen, the reason America is going to win and be the strongest and wealthiest country is because government doesn't screw things up. These guys are not going to be smarter than the Chinese guys running the government. But what they can do is they can be less authoritarian and operate things. So we've got to hope the frankly dumb people on both sides don't break things.
So what is one area? See, I love the idea theoretically, and tell me if this is possible, because you know you're competing. You take the top five AI companies and you provide like an 18-month stay on a board overseeing the top AI companies. And is it possible to do that without stealing each other's technology and advances?
I would have, if you look at what the Trump administration put in place, I thought it was pretty reasonable, right? They all signed this thing and they got to do their own audits. They watch each other's audits. I knew basically the only people smart in this industry. So the whole thing is that the people accountable are the people involved, which is obviously taking a nap because you can't trust people in charge in history not to try to lock in their advantages and not to try to stop new competitors. So it's a tough thing to get right, but obviously they have to be involved. People writing and understanding what's possible here in terms of setting the framework. And by the way, we should probably be really transparent and accountable, but we should be breaking it, right? So there's new ones to this.
Why, I was reading the story today about how the Chinese and the U.S. are kind of locked because a lot of people in America like the cheaper models that China is putting out. And yet you guys are leading a sophisticated portion of this by about... And I was in a briefing with another high-level CEO the other day, off the record, that says we believe these 9 to 12 months ahead of China overall. I don't know where you would think. So yeah, can you describe how we need each other in this industry?
Yes, I think we're somewhere between 6 to 12 months ahead. It's really hard to know because they're going to keep things secret as well. But a lot of companies, such as Palantir, such as Cognition and others, benefit more from there being what we call a wide difference here. If there's just one company in the U.S. dominating, the French here, one company, and they get a lot of power. Whereas if there's multiple models competing, then it lets everyone else working on other parts of the system do better. So for example, Nvidia just selling chips, they want there to be lots of models and they can capture more than it sells. So this is a dynamic where the distillation, right, the copying of models by others, is actually very good for everyone except for the top two model companies.
Joe, where do you see your focus right now? Because you're also helping out the weapons industry, right?
Well, I run one of the top venture capital firms in defense, I guess, because one of the areas of weapons is fair. You know, the primes right now in the U.S., Brian, have fallen way behind. And they're making, for example, Raytheon make 60 Tomahawk missiles per year. We have new competitors that are testing things that are just as good, cost-effective, going to 1,000 next year. So I focus on offense area and ramping up production. Nick is delivering hundreds of these autonomous vessels that, you know, he's got in charge of guarding Texas last week that we now with the vice president and the governor visiting. So we're focused on ramping up defense, but, you know, the bigger theme even beyond offense is ramping up productivity in the U.S. right now. We're going to make us all a lot wealthier by building on top of AI. And that is what our adversaries are afraid of. You know, when you see everyone attacking AI from the far left and the far right and from this on the internet, this is the same thing. They didn't attack fracking, but in talking to clear, they are so scared the U.S. is going to pull way ahead of them, they're trying to do anything they can to slow us down. They're trying to trick everyone to be afraid to slow us down. That's the number one question, right?
You know, it's interesting, the one thing about Elon Musk has come out multiple times in the last five years, and AI will make work unnecessary, which kind of really rattles people's cages. I thought Jeff Bezos had a different take. I want to hear this. This is that we're going to a world of tremendous abundance because...
Part of it is driven by invention. And that's what these AI tools are going to allow because of the productivity in the economy. Many people are going to decide, let's see how the two-income household. One of those people is likely going to need to have a two-income household. I can support my family working three days a week. That's what turning to the economy means. So people, I think you're going to have labor shortages. It could actually be difficult to hire people because the productivity in the economy is going to make it so that if people don't want to work two jobs, they won't have to.
What do you make between Elon Musk saying no one works and Jeff Bezos?
This particular argument, listen, I'm like SpaceX and Palantir against the left on this on the business side, by the way. The problem I have, all my hard back in the day of talent here, they're all going to work for a more... that's going to be the economy. You have read is going to tear it. You can't get enough people to work.
Can you bring back to mass production of weapons? So how close are you doing this? I kept hearing about this. I know that you do have to put out your own. One of the problems is you have to have a company that's willing to maybe put out the money knowing the politics could change and you might not get paid. Is that where you're at? Are you worried about the administration changing and deciding we're not going to be investing in weapons or as much in defense and you could be left out there with this fantastic?
You know, there's always some risk there, Brian, but I think the defense of the nation and defending it effectively and not wasting money, I think it's a non-partisan issue. Both sides of the aisle, our House and Senate Armed Services Committees have a lot of people on both sides who want to have the more efficient solutions. When we're already now delivering, like I said, hundreds of these boats, hundreds of thousands of interceptors, thousands and thousands of other sorts of missiles are cheaper and better. So this is all happening right now. 2027 is the key year. Everyone's going to realize, also left or the right, are going to realize we were being ripped off by these primes. We're going to go to the better solutions. So I'm not too worried about the better solutions winning. Just so obviously the crackdowns, as you show. So when I talk to the CEOs of these executives, they will say to me the reason why they moved out so quick is because they weren't nearly as sophisticated.
That's right. You make all these tanks and all these bombers and all these jets. But there's so much complication. There's not one place where you finish off one product. They have to send it out to four different parts. That's what takes so long. Is that about the argument?
So, Brian, talking to the CEO of a prime is like talking to your accountant about technology. They have no idea what they're doing. These guys are now hiring engineers. Their systems, their primes, they're purposely cost-plus, they're purposely overly complicated. And we have new companies being run by actually top technologists to a whole level above anything the primes can do. And we're able to do just as good stuff, much cheaper, much vaster scale. The primes are dinosaurs, and they have all sorts of excuses. It's a terrible argument. We're going to question. We're already starting to see it next year, but it will be more obvious to everyone. These guys just shouldn't even be in business anymore for a lot of these areas based on what they're doing.
So do you believe that if this, are on workers on the sea, what you're making now could play a role in it than protecting?
