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The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works. At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across hr, IT and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business. IBM,
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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio news.
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Let's head to the US Army War College, where defense and technology leaders are gathering this week to discuss the future of America's defense industrial base. Bloomberg Washington correspondent Tyler Kendall is there with Palantir's Chief Technology officer. Tyler. Hey, Danny. Thanks so much. As you mentioned, I'm pleased to say I'm joined now by the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir, Sham, Sankar Shyam. It's so nice to see you here on a day where we are talking about bolstering the US Defense industrial base, made perhaps even more urgent by the fact that we are seeing the conflict in Iran. The Pentagon keeps asking defense tech to move faster. Can you give us a status update on what the relationship is right now between innovative companies and the Pentagon and what hurdles still remain?
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Well, I don't want to sound too Pollyanna, but I really think this, this team at the Pentagon has dismantled almost every hurdle that exists and has sent a clear signal that they want to hear about the remaining hurdles that people do confront. They've sent a clear message that this team should meet the urgency of the moment here. And while we can look at the conflict in Iran and look at the rate at which we're expending munitions, really, this is a, this is a challenge that's grown over the last 30 or 40 years of how we've managed and thought about our defense industrial base.
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I'm not sure if everyone would agree with the fact that the Pentagon has dismissed dismantled the hurdles. What about when it comes to defense spending, for example? I'm curious how you're tracking that. The Trump administration has requested $1.5 trillion, seeming to indicate that there is a big need, from the administration's view, to help bolster our own capabilities, including when it comes to replenishing our stockpiles.
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Well, I think it's going to be very clear that we need both more of our existing exquisite weapons and we need capital to invest in a whole new class of weapons to meet the asymmetry of the moment here and the side that moves f is going to win. And our exquisite Weapons are amazing, but most of them we really built in the 80s and they've been designed in a way that meets the manufacturing of the 80s. And we're starting to see enormous success with a whole new generation of weapon systems. We look at the surroundings, kinetic strikes in Iran just a couple of days ago. We look at the success that these new platforms are happening in conflicts in Ukraine. We need to be moving capital there. If you look at the 27 budget, there's a huge amount of resource that's made available to these autonomous systems and to AI, which really, you know, I'd say the Pentagon has actually been one of the fastest places to adopt AI in the American economy. Given the stakes, they're existential. It's a binary win, lose. Nonetheless, they've done all of that by essentially cobbling together budgets from various line items. 27 with the first time they put a real stake in the ground, real capital that's committed to accelerate the pacesetting projects that will drive us to an entire revolution in how we fight.
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C
So part of this is about keeping the U.S. competitive. And we saw the other week the French government actually decided to end its relationship with Palantir in because of a need to bolster their own domestic capabilities. And we're seeing this play out among some other European allies. Talk about this concern about being too reliant on US Tech. Are you concerned at all about Palantir losing a foothold in Europe or that this could expand to other international markets
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B
that you're part of the product really stands for itself, I think serious people, you know, the Germans have looked at it, they've examined the software. They know there's no backdoors in it. There's a huge part of this that really comes down to almost an economic argument of we really want to spend our money on our own companies. And I don't begrudge them that. I think the kind of vicious, underhanded campaign of lies and rumors is probably beyond, beyond the line of what's fair there. But you know, every country should make a decision based on what's going to give them the most amount of deterrence. And clearly the US has carried the load there. We have the most experience, the most reps, the most innovation stimulus here. And I think it's going to take an entire allied Western force to really, really confront the challenges across the axis of authoritarianism that's, that's clearly present and creating chaos in the.
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C
Well, I'll keep on the international theme if you will, because we're seeing US Companies start to use Chinese open source alarms. From your view, does this pose national security risks?
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B
Well, I think it poses. My view is that national security is not an end unto itself, it's a means to an end. And the actual end is American prosperity. And so I think it poses a threat to American prosperity. These Chinese open source models are really the result of distillation attacks. Most of this is just stolen American IP from Frontier Labs. And I think the Frontier Labs should do more to protect, protect that ip. And that's in their own economic interests. But I'm less worried about in the present moment because the gravest threat to us is not homicide, it's suicide, is an inability to turn these tokens into economic value and generate American prosperity for it. You see that with the proposed moratorium in New York on data centers, turning our back on AI would be as consequential a mistake as turning our back on the atom in the 70s. And we're starting to see a burgeoning, it's just the beginning, but a burgeoning US open model ecosystem forming. Nvidia's Nevotron models are very good. I think you're going to see in the next month a slate of announcements of other American companies, non Frontier Labs, sometimes called NEO Labs, who are putting out open weight models that companies are going to be able to cheaply fine tune and capture their own alpha in weights they control.
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In the final minute that I have you, part of the US's strategy when it comes to national security has been to have the government take equity stakes in companies that are deemed critical to national security. We know the idea has been floated when it comes to some of these Frontier Labs. I'm wondering what you make of this strategy. Is this the right way for the US to go about it?
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B
Well, I think it's very case dependent. I'm glad it's an option on the table. I think for some companies where they need a huge equity injection, it could make a lot of sense. For other companies based on where they are in the mix of business they do between the commercial and government world, I'm not sure it makes as much sense, but I'm glad it's an option that's on the table. It should be a consideration.
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C
All right, Shyam Sankar, the Palantir Chief Technology Officer, thank you so much for joining us here on Bloomberg Television and Radio. This has been a conversation on the sidelines of the defense summit here in Pennsylvania.
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