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Shyam explains how America's defense industry went from founder-led to a consolidated and conformist system:
"In 1993, there was a very famous dinner at the Pentagon called The Last Supper. The Secretary of Defense told a subset -- 15 of the 51 primes -- the budget's getting cut, we give you permission to consolidate.
This just set off a merger frenzy that led from the consolidation from 51 down to 5. The consequence is this is the moment of profound financialization and conformity in the industrial base.
You lost the crazy people. They went to tech.
What we would recognize in the Valley today, that's where this talent was. It was in the industrial companies of America.
We think about it as Northrop Grumman. Much more accurately, it was Jack Northrop. It was Leroy Grumman. You had founder figures.
The defense industry used to not just be about dividends, buyback ratios and financial engineering. It was about real engineering.
We need a little more crazy back."
Mar 10, 20:00
My conversation with Shyam Sankar (@ssankar).
Shyam has spent nearly 20 years as the most important person at Palantir that most people have never heard of.
We spend a lot of time understanding his worldview, which helps explain why he has devoted his life to this work. At the center of it is a belief in the primacy of people -- all meaningful change comes from a small number of builders willing to be heretics first.
You will find few people who think as deeply about the relationship between technology and national power. In many ways, he is becoming the modern version of the heretics he most admires.
We discuss:
- What Alex Karp taught him about identifying superpowers and unlocking talent
- Heretics + the components of American greatness
- The origins of the FDE model
- Ontology and chips – where value will accrue in AI
- Why dual-use companies are the future of American industry
- China and what it would take for the US to reindustrialize
- His journey from Nigeria to Orlando and what his dad taught him about gratitude
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:23 Defining Heretics in US Military History
8:36 Shyam’s Personal Disagreeableness
9:49 Formative Experiences & Worldview
12:52 What Makes America Exceptional
14:48 What Does Greatness Mean?
15:33 Alex Karp
16:46 How to Unlock Talent
19:21 Identifying Superpowers and Kryptonite
22:54 The Gamma Ray Moment
25:00 Palantir's Next 10 Years
27:03 Forward Deployed Engineering
33:40 Explaining What Palantir Is
37:50 Military vs. Commercial Customers
39:00 The State of the US Military Today
47:01 How to Re-Industrialize America
51:06 Perspective on China as an Adversary
56:17 How to Get More Heretics in Government
1:03:53 Managing Rapid Pivots & Momentum
1:08:48 Where Will AI Value Accrue?
1:13:33 Reasserting the Legitimacy of Institutions
1:15:54 To Do or To Be?
1:16:31 Reflecting on Fatherhood
1:17:34 Kindest Thing
129
Shyam on AI and China:
"China's asymmetric advantage is long term planning. But AI was not part of that plan.
It wasn't in our plan either but, when it happened, we pivoted our whole economy on a dime.
It's why all of the Chinese models are a result of distillation."
Mar 10, 20:00
My conversation with Shyam Sankar (@ssankar).
Shyam has spent nearly 20 years as the most important person at Palantir that most people have never heard of.
We spend a lot of time understanding his worldview, which helps explain why he has devoted his life to this work. At the center of it is a belief in the primacy of people -- all meaningful change comes from a small number of builders willing to be heretics first.
You will find few people who think as deeply about the relationship between technology and national power. In many ways, he is becoming the modern version of the heretics he most admires.
We discuss:
- What Alex Karp taught him about identifying superpowers and unlocking talent
- Heretics + the components of American greatness
- The origins of the FDE model
- Ontology and chips – where value will accrue in AI
- Why dual-use companies are the future of American industry
- China and what it would take for the US to reindustrialize
- His journey from Nigeria to Orlando and what his dad taught him about gratitude
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:23 Defining Heretics in US Military History
8:36 Shyam’s Personal Disagreeableness
9:49 Formative Experiences & Worldview
12:52 What Makes America Exceptional
14:48 What Does Greatness Mean?
15:33 Alex Karp
16:46 How to Unlock Talent
19:21 Identifying Superpowers and Kryptonite
22:54 The Gamma Ray Moment
25:00 Palantir's Next 10 Years
27:03 Forward Deployed Engineering
33:40 Explaining What Palantir Is
37:50 Military vs. Commercial Customers
39:00 The State of the US Military Today
47:01 How to Re-Industrialize America
51:06 Perspective on China as an Adversary
56:17 How to Get More Heretics in Government
1:03:53 Managing Rapid Pivots & Momentum
1:08:48 Where Will AI Value Accrue?
1:13:33 Reasserting the Legitimacy of Institutions
1:15:54 To Do or To Be?
1:16:31 Reflecting on Fatherhood
1:17:34 Kindest Thing
156
Shyam on why the US needs to become reindustrialization maximalists:
"The biggest lie of globalization was that the US would do the innovation while China did the production.
The breakthrough behind the Attention Is All You Need paper came from Google trying to improve Translate by 3%. Innovation is a consequence of production.
WuXi went from being a cheap pair of hands for pipetting contract research to now 50% of all clinical trials are drugs that are created in China.
We ceded the innovation. It wasn't taken from us. We ceded it because we had a completely incorrect preset.
I don't think it's true that we're not great at building things in this country. Look at Elon and the progeny of Elon.
Apple has spent the equivalent on an inflation adjusted basis in the last five years of two and a half Marshall plans (~$350B+) building talent and capacity in China. How about we try to spend one Marshall plan here?"
Mar 10, 20:00
My conversation with Shyam Sankar (@ssankar).
Shyam has spent nearly 20 years as the most important person at Palantir that most people have never heard of.
We spend a lot of time understanding his worldview, which helps explain why he has devoted his life to this work. At the center of it is a belief in the primacy of people -- all meaningful change comes from a small number of builders willing to be heretics first.
You will find few people who think as deeply about the relationship between technology and national power. In many ways, he is becoming the modern version of the heretics he most admires.
We discuss:
- What Alex Karp taught him about identifying superpowers and unlocking talent
- Heretics + the components of American greatness
- The origins of the FDE model
- Ontology and chips – where value will accrue in AI
- Why dual-use companies are the future of American industry
- China and what it would take for the US to reindustrialize
- His journey from Nigeria to Orlando and what his dad taught him about gratitude
Enjoy!
Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
2:23 Defining Heretics in US Military History
8:36 Shyam’s Personal Disagreeableness
9:49 Formative Experiences & Worldview
12:52 What Makes America Exceptional
14:48 What Does Greatness Mean?
15:33 Alex Karp
16:46 How to Unlock Talent
19:21 Identifying Superpowers and Kryptonite
22:54 The Gamma Ray Moment
25:00 Palantir's Next 10 Years
27:03 Forward Deployed Engineering
33:40 Explaining What Palantir Is
37:50 Military vs. Commercial Customers
39:00 The State of the US Military Today
47:01 How to Re-Industrialize America
51:06 Perspective on China as an Adversary
56:17 How to Get More Heretics in Government
1:03:53 Managing Rapid Pivots & Momentum
1:08:48 Where Will AI Value Accrue?
1:13:33 Reasserting the Legitimacy of Institutions
1:15:54 To Do or To Be?
1:16:31 Reflecting on Fatherhood
1:17:34 Kindest Thing
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