Peace Through Strength: This is Why America Will Keep Winning w/ Sen. McCormick

Summary

Ruthless Podcast – "Peace Through Strength: This is Why America Will Keep Winning" w/ Sen. Dave McCormick

Date: July 16, 2026
Hosts: Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug, Michael Duncan, John Ashbrook
Main Guests: Senator Dave McCormick, Shyam Sankar (CTO, Palantir)

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Episode Overview

This episode of the Ruthless Podcast comes live from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, during the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit. The hosts are joined by Senator Dave McCormick and Shyam Sankar (CTO, Palantir) to discuss how America is reinventing its defense industrial base, the role of innovation in reindustrializing the nation, and the real-world economic ripple effects of emerging technologies like AI. The tone is upbeat and optimistic, highlighting collaboration and private sector leadership as the engine of job creation and national security. The episode pushes back aggressively against doomerism, bureaucracy, and ideological opposition to industrial progress.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Renewal of the Defense Industrial Base

• Hosts’ Impressions of the Summit

  • Summit described as a "palate cleanser" from DC cynicism—remarkable enthusiasm, broad collaboration (AI, defense, energy, finance, labor, etc.) ([04:04]-[04:41])
  • “What we’re about to do here will reignite your passion for what you think America can accomplish.” —Josh Holmes ([02:49])
  • Notable unity across industries and political lines, with private capital playing a starring role ([04:04], [21:12], [24:48])

• America’s Deterrence and Preparedness

  • Modernization and reawakening of defense manufacturing has vast spillover benefits for the economy and job creation ([10:57], [11:51])
  • “If you let these guys do what they’re going to do, nobody’s going to screw around with America.” —Josh Holmes ([10:58], repeated theme)

• Supply Chain & Manufacturing Ecosystem

  • Focus on the overlooked network of small businesses (“the million parts of a submarine”) that underpins national security and American jobs ([11:51], [12:59])
  • Post-COVID reshoring and revitalization of American manufacturing as critical lessons ([24:48]-[24:57])

Memorable Quote:

“What this has done in some ways for me is to take it entirely out of the ideological and back into, you know, the whole American dream, like leader in the free world type category...”
—Josh Holmes ([00:35], [15:18])

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2. Real-World Impact of Innovation and AI

• AI as an Economic Multiplier

  • Massive job creation, not loss; AI turning out to be a “force multiplier” for American workers, making them more productive and opening new opportunities ([07:17], [56:57])
  • Example: Sepsis deaths cut by 68% in hospitals using Palantir’s AI-driven diagnostics ([09:56], [57:30])
  • Host debunks 1950s-style techno-pessimism and “jobs lost to AI” narratives. Empirical data now showing positive economic and labor impacts ([56:57], [59:52])

• Concrete Examples

  • Data center construction in Indiana leads to a “boom town” effect ([14:32])
  • AI accelerates manufacturing—e.g., submarine parts built faster in Pennsylvania, batteries in Nevada—allowing manufacturers to add shifts and expand their workforce ([55:40], [55:53])

Memorable Quote:

“AI is our slingshot. We’re not going to reindustrialize symmetrically. We’re going to do a leapfrog here entirely differently.”
—Shyam Sankar ([54:24])

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3. Leadership, Policy, and Ideological Divides

• Contrast in Governance Styles

  • Hosts contrast PA’s action-focused, innovation-friendly approach (led by McCormick) with policies like New York’s data center ban (Kathy Hochul), portraying the latter as anti-capitalist and anti-American ([15:18], [16:22], [17:19])
  • Collaboration across the aisle cited as critical—“winning is a team sport,” focus on national interests beyond ideology ([28:12]-[28:51])

• Private Capital vs. Big Government

  • Summit’s economic growth is not about “getting a piece of the budget,” but attracting private investment to build factories, create jobs, and drive innovation ([47:56], [48:20])
  • Government’s role best suited to supporting fundamental research and creating conditions for private-sector success ([24:48], [48:33])

Memorable Quotes:

“No great company was ever founded principally to create money ... You need a mission that’s bigger than yourself.”
—Shyam Sankar ([62:42])

“We’re a capitalist country. It has done some pretty amazing things for not only the people here but around the world ... And yet somehow this ideology persists and people continue to believe this stupid bullshit ...”
—Josh Holmes ([17:19])

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4. Senator Dave McCormick’s Perspective

• Convening Power & Results

  • McCormick describes the summit’s origin as his and his wife’s vision; private capital and bipartisan participation are key ([21:12])
  • Over $10 billion in new investments, 4,000+ jobs announced at the summit; larger vision to create hundreds of thousands of jobs in Pennsylvania ([30:10])
  • Strong focus on building/retaining defense supply chains domestically, workforce development, and trade policy shift from “free trade” to “fair trade” ([24:48], [31:53])

• On Iran and Global Affairs

  • McCormick argues for “strategic patience” but firm military deterrence: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon; America must keep the Strait of Hormuz open for commerce ([39:50])
  • “Peace through strength” doctrine referenced as necessary; recent defense actions viewed as effective ([42:51])

Memorable Quotes:

"Warfare has changed more from the Gulf War to now than had changed from World War II to the Gulf War.”
—Sen. Dave McCormick ([21:12])

“You create a path. You create prosperity. ... Winning is a team sport ...”
—Sen. Dave McCormick ([28:12])

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5. Guest Segment: Shyam Sankar (CTO, Palantir)

• On Bureaucracy vs. Innovation

  • Nearly every historic defense breakthrough was the work of “heretics and heroes” who broke rules and bypassed inertia ([51:22], [53:19])
  • Historical anecdotes (Higgins boats, Churchill’s tank, Palantir’s own hurdles) reinforce the need to work around systems ([53:19])

• On AI’s Societal Good

  • AI delivers tangible, immediate public benefits in healthcare, manufacturing, and overall workforce empowerment ([55:53], [57:30])
  • Urges industry leaders and policymakers not to rest, but to accelerate delivery of economic value ([67:30])

Memorable Quote:

“It’s how you give the American worker superpowers. It’s how you make the American worker 50 times more productive than any other worker anywhere else in the world.”
—Shyam Sankar ([54:24])

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Opening Impacts & Summit Atmosphere – [00:00]-[07:17]
• AI’s Real-World Benefits – [07:17]-[10:38], [55:40]-[57:53]
• Small Business Ecosystem & Supply Chain Strength – [11:51]-[14:01], [24:48]-[31:53]
• Critique of Ideological Opposition – [15:18]-[19:20]
• Senator McCormick Interview:
  • Summit origins, bipartisan buy-in – [21:12]-[24:48]
  • Private investment and workforce – [30:10]-[31:24]
  • Iran & Global Security – [39:32]-[42:51]
• Shyam Sankar Interview:
  • Bureaucracy & Breakthroughs – [51:22]-[54:08]
  • AI as a Force Multiplier – [54:24]-[59:52]
  • Refuting the “AI Kills Jobs” Myth – [59:52]-[60:36]
  • Call for National Will & Perseverance – [61:15]-[66:58]

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Notable/Memorable Quotes

• On National Purpose & Optimism:

  • "When you see real America day in and day out, it's uplifting." – Sen. Dave McCormick ([38:41])
  • “This is a throwback because it is the America that made America the greatest country on the face of the planet. And we’ve lost that a bit over the years.” —Josh Holmes ([19:20])

• On Collaboration & Breaking the Mold:

  • “It takes all of us working together to make this stuff happen. And not in some sort of kumbaya sort of way, but how do you line it up so the communication happens, the priorities happen. ... It feeds the optimism.” —Shyam Sankar ([65:59])

• On Mission & Resilience:

  • “You need a mission that's much bigger than yourself that motivates you through all that pain to succeed.” —Shyam Sankar ([62:42])

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Final Takeaways

• The Defense and Innovation Summit symbolizes a renewed, pragmatic American optimism grounded in real achievement and collaboration between industry, labor, and bipartisan government.
• AI and advanced manufacturing are already creating jobs, increasing productivity, and driving the next wave of American prosperity.
• Leadership matters: The episode holds up McCormick’s model of convening power and private capital attraction as a blueprint for growth.
• The real threat is a loss of national confidence or will—not competition or technology itself.
• The call to policymakers: Recognize, replicate, and accelerate this model of innovation and opportunity for the sake of national security and prosperity.

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Further Listening Recommendations

• Read Shyam Sankar’s "Mobilize": The book’s message about innovation and breaking bureaucratic inertia is referenced throughout the episode as a must-read for policymakers and innovators alike ([50:39], [68:21]).
• Replay Segment on AI’s Tangible Benefits: Especially the discussion about healthcare, submarine manufacturing, and reindustrialization ([55:53]-[57:53], [59:52]).

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For lawmakers and listeners:
“If you got half as much out of this episode as we did being here, congratulations—it has been a truly inspiring time to listen to all these folks in one place.” —Josh Holmes ([69:15])

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End of summary.

Transcript

[Josh Holmes]

What I have seen here is an incredible awakening of this defense industrial base that has huge tangential benefits to all walks of life. In a way that I'm pretty confident if you let these guys do what they're going to do, nobody's going to screw around with America.

[Michael Duncan]

It feels good to be in an America that does that sort of thing again, where people are willing to say, yeah, I'm going to move down from Michigan to Indiana because this is such a huge opportunity for me to use my skills for something that's going to be the economy of the future.

[Josh Holmes]

What this has done in some ways for me is to take it entirely out of the ideological and back into, you know, the whole American dream, like leader in the free world type category, which, like, it just puzzles me with people who have access to any information at all, how you can be a Bernie Sanders in this environment. Like, how can you take a look at the world around, see what we have seen here over the last 48 hours and be like, yes, socialism is going to get it done.

[Michael Duncan]

It reveals that really their entire agenda is just anti capitalist.

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[Senator Dave McCormick]

Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.

[Shyam Sankar]

This program has become one of the most influential podcasts in America. I love the personality.

[John Ashbrook]

You guys are cute.

[Shyam Sankar]

Killing it. I just saw your number one. So congratulations.

[Josh Holmes]

It's an honor and a pleasure to welcome the great Sean Hannity. Guys, I love you.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Congratulations on all your success. This is why you listen to the

[Shyam Sankar]

Ruthless Podcast, because nobody else would ask that question. The only political podcast worth listening to is the Ruthless Podcast. It's time for our main event, the Ruthless Podcast.

[Josh Holmes]

Good Thursday to you. Welcome back to the Ruthless Variety Program. A little different backdrop. We're coming to you from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, the home of the Army War College for an incredible summit. I'm Josh Holmes, along with comfortably smug Michael Duncan and John Ashbrook. Left to right, across your radio dial, fellas. For the listener, I think they need to understand that what we're about to do here will reignite your passion for what you think America can accomplish. I don't think I've ever been anywhere. And we'll tell you a little bit more about this summit in a second where there is such a renewed enthusiasm and incredible important time to do so and like, eliminates all your skepticism about what this country can do and what we're doing. We were invited here by Senator Dave McCormick, who puts on these summits. I didn't know that senators could do this kind of thing, but the convening power of him and Dina, his wife, is incredible. Everybody says yes to it. And this Defense and Innovation Summit here in Pennsylvania has gathered almost a who's who of defense, AI, energy, I mean,

[John Ashbrook]

you name it, finance, labor. It's incredible. And that was a really great moment is when Senator McCormick the other day said, it's not just about getting the builders here, it's about getting like Jamie Dimon is putting in investment here to create jobs in Pennsylvania. It's about getting the capital behind it. It's about getting the energy. We heard from the largest natural gas producer here in Pennsylvania of how they're going to help power the re industrialization of America and creating all these jobs. It's incredible seeing everyone focused, working together to make America great again. That's what's happening.

[Michael Duncan]

It's a real palate cleanser for people like us who spend so much of our time in Washington, D.C. cynical nature of the daily debate in politics. You come to a place like this where you meet all these people across all of these industries and government and you can't help but have an optimism about the future of America and not just in some abstract way, but for the American worker, for business, for our leaders in both the Senate and the Trump administration, there's a unity of purpose and they're very mission oriented on what we need to accomplish as a country. And it just makes you feel really patriotic that people still believe in the idea of America and that we can do great things.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

I'll tell you what, this is also very timely with everything going on in Iran right now and the defense focus of this particular conference and the people who are around here who are developing these new technologies that are being deployed on, on the front lines right now. I know we're going to talk to Dave McCormick about it a little bit later in the show. Get his take on Iran and get his take on everything that's happening here that you guys talked about. But he was saying the other day, and I don't know if he'll mention this again, but like that the way wars have been fought from the Gulf War that he was in until today has changed so much more than the time period between World War II and, and the golf war, which I think is just a stunning data point.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it totally is. Plus, you know, like, at least for three of us, we go to like a sports thing, like a Super bowl or something, and it's like the time of our lives for this guy, for smug being with this crew, talking like dork stuff. He said like he's had priapism for the last 48 hours.

[John Ashbrook]

Let me tell you, this is an incredible group of people. I was describing to Sham, who we'll speak with. But to have one roof where it's everyone who is like a cool person on X building amazing things that you hear about in the headlines when we're setting up here. When we walk in to set up for today's episode, we literally bump into this Dino, the CEO of Saronic, and you just heard about his company because they had the autonomous boat that rescued the two Apache helicopter pilots and the strafe of Hormuz. And Saronic made the boat which went and blew up that Iranian shipyard. And he's here, everyone, all the patriots have united under one roof. And that's the thing, is it makes you so optimistic, it makes you so excited. America's winning.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, and it also feels like we're at the beginning of this technological revolution across all of these industries. I think the through line is innovation. But because we are at the beginning of that revolution, I think people's understanding of what things like AI will do is sparse. Totally. We make the joke about the old Ted Stevens. The Internet is a series of tubes. That's kind of where we are with your general population's understanding of AI, the benefits it's going to bring and everything it's going to do to transform our economy and world. And so I love this event and I love our interview with Sham because he can put a finer point on the tangible benefits that you as a listener and viewer are going to get out of this changing, life changing technology. Not just in keeping, keeping the world safe or making workers more efficient, but the way it's going to save lives. It's absolutely incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. It's also occurred to me just listening to people like Shyam. And you'll hear him later in the program that you all have been lied to.

[Commercial Announcer]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

The debate isn't even framed like, it's not, it's incorrect.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

All the skepticism on AI and what AI is and even the understanding of what the capability is, but how it intersects with defense, how like really critical job creation all across this country. I mean, the debate is, is basically like a 1950s debate about jobs, innovation, job creation. Are we going to lose jobs because of AI? Or like, what about these data centers that are doing whatever? I mean, what we've saw here has totally changed my mind in that the debate itself is just wrong. And I think for us and for you listening to this program, you're gonna come away from this show with a totally different understanding of where we are in becoming like a 10x America.

[Commercial Announcer]

Right.

[Josh Holmes]

Which is so exciting because DC has just been a cesspool of skepticism and dumb fuckery. And you know, and you get these defense debates where they're talking about, well, we've depleted stockpiles in Ukraine and it's going to take us 30 years to build the stockpile of like 1960s missiles. I sat with a guy at dinner last night who makes like 30 missiles on his phone.

[John Ashbrook]

It was incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

So the whole thing is wrong. Everything is wrong. And what we're capable of doing, medicine and energy and all of these other things is like, it's mind blowing to me.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, I mean what we talked about with Shaun when it was what the sepsis deaths were cut by 68%. That's literally life saving technology. But we're also seeing now we've had about three years into the AI buildout and the Federal Reserve's own job reports are showing actually there are no AI job losses. We were predicted that people will be losing their jobs. No, actually it's the opposite. We're seeing AI job loss creation goes to the great example of the submarine parts that are being built here in Pennsylvania. And what a great, you know, feather in the cap for Dave McCormick to bring all these people here in Pennsylvania. The President's going to touch down, he's going to have a lineup of Penn.

[Josh Holmes]

There's a lot of pageantry being planned for all of this as we're filming as the President is going to arrive here shortly. And I saw a lot of military stuff out on the lawn, a lot of toys. He's, he's in for a real show when he gets here. They're going to touch Marine One down. And all of a sudden there's like cannons and all kinds of stuff.

[John Ashbrook]

It's all made in Pennsylvania.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. Which is of course why McCormick is like a one man chamber of commerce all of a sudden. But you know, if you take a step back and you just look at like you were saying, current events, Iran threats around the world, Ukraine's not finished yet. The deterrent power of America has really always been about our ability to do the war thing better than everybody else can do it. And then you don't go to war as a result of that. And that has been gone for quite some time. And what I have seen here is an incredible awakening of this defense industrial base that has huge tangential benefits to all walks of life in a way that I'm pretty confident if you let these guys do what they're going to do, nobody's gonna screw around with America. You know what I mean?

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Right. And it's got such a big impact all over our country. Duncan was talking about submarines and building submarines in the Philly area. Submarine is made up of, I don't know, a million parts like these. Somebody's got to make those parts. And one of the things that these guys are talking about is the importance of having supply chain inside of our own country. And just people don't really think about the types of small businesses that make a certain kind of knob that only goes into a certain kind of submarine. And man, a lot of people have fed their families on that model in the Midwest, especially over the last three, four, five decades. And it's just so encouraging to hear that there's a move back toward that where you have people in a small town who can then take, you know, take a risk and make something with their own hands and hire their friends to help them make something with their own hands that actually contributes to a higher purpose. And I mean, I just think that that really motivates people and I like super excited about this whole thing. Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, and I also, my concept of what defense manufacturing is has entirely shifted as well. You think of like the Lockheed Martins, the Raytheons, the big sort of providers that have been around forever. But what you said is exactly right. I mean there are a million small businesses that go into all of these things and the way we're doing things doesn't look like the 1980s and 1990s. I mean this is just refreshing innovation that is across the board.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Yeah. And I mean, you know, if you think about just to not to harp on the parts too much, but he loves the parts.

[Josh Holmes]

You're a parts guy.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

But if you think about it, somebody has to stamp out the sheet metal. That takes a machine. The machine is made up of a thousand parts. Somebody has to make those parts. So it is just a gigantic ecosystem for everybody to participate in. And like AI is great, but AI is not stamping out sheet metal by itself with its own parts, by that, by itself that it's making. Somebody has to do that. And you know, I just think, Johnny,

[Josh Holmes]

your Ohio is showing.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Well, can't help, can't help it. You know, I, I just think that like when you're talking about, hey, well, AI is going to replace jobs people don't really think about, well, somebody still has to make these things. And there are an awful lot of things that have to go into a process.

[Michael Duncan]

Well, even with the data center build outs, we're seeing a lot of jobs flood into these areas where there's all of this construction. I can tell you from my personal experience, my brother right now got connected with a guy who's friends with our cousins in Michigan.

[Josh Holmes]

That's a lot of connections.

[Michael Duncan]

And he moved down to Lebanon, Indiana to work on the meta build out of the data center there. He's renting a room for my brother right now at his house. And the guy wakes up at 5am, goes and he's hanging sheetrock when they're constructing this data center, comes back home at night, meal preps for the next day and he goes to bed and wakes up, does the same thing. And so like it's a boom town right now. And it feels good to be in an America that does that sort of thing again, where people are willing to say, yeah, I'm going to move down from Michigan to Indiana because this is such a huge opportunity for me to use my skills for something that's going to be the economy of the future.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. And there's a tendency to look at all these debates where you're talking about war, jobs or innovation through ideological lenses because that's how your politics is consumed mostly. And you look at these dumbass like Kathy Hochul in New York who's like, oh, we banned data centers. Everybody's like, hooray on the left, you know, great, well, all right, congratulations. You just sentenced your state for five decades of being poor as a result of that and not providing any sort of innovation. And I think like what this has done in some ways for me is to take it entirely out of the ideological and back into, you know, the whole American dream, like leader in the free world type category, which it just puzzles me with People who have access to any information at all. How you can be a Bernie Sanders in this environment? How can you take a look at the world around you or see what we have seen here over the last 48 hours and be like, yes, socialism's gonna get it done?

[John Ashbrook]

You know, I think that's a great contrast in leadership. You have a statewide elected like Kathy Hochul who's like, no, actually I'm gonna try to innovation and jobs from my

[Josh Holmes]

state of New York, narrow niche based constituency.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, well, it lay. Well, it harms the majority of the population of New York. But you contrast that with the leadership that you're seeing here with Dave McCormick who's like, I'm going to put everything I have into bringing as much innovation, as much capital, as much as many founders and builders here into Pennsylvania and create as many jobs as possible. And the results are going to speak for themselves.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah, and the left is the same as it ever was. It's not just on AI and data centers. This is the same playbook they've run, you know, on the green movement, trying to stop, you know, fracking and oil and gas production and all that sort of stuff. And I think it reveals that really their entire agenda is just anti capitalist.

[Josh Holmes]

It's, it's anti capitalist and it's anti American. It's like they forgot what country they're living in. You know, I mean, we were literally founded under the principles we're continuing to do here. We're a capitalist country. It has done some pretty amazing things for, for not only the people here, but around the world. And yet somehow this ideology persists and people continue to believe this stupid bullshit about, yeah, well, if the government just runs your life, everything's going to be great and nobody will bother us.

[Michael Duncan]

What?

[Josh Holmes]

It's insanity.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

A lot of these leftists are surrounded by people who make a killing in higher education and people who teach like liberal arts degrees. You know, like there is a whole movement of young people in our country right now who are questioning whether they need to take on $200,000 in debt to get a liberal arts degree when they can go to a trade school and they can start getting paid right away. I mean, I remember when I was graduating high school, there was so much pressure. You got to go to a four year college.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it was the only thing anybody told us.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

It was the only thing anybody talked about. But I remember a couple of my buddies that went to trade school and became electricians. Those are the guys I know beach houses now and those are the guys who are actually like cashing in on this model for our economy that in some ways is a throwback. And I just think that there's probably a lot of pressure that these ultra powerful libs are getting from their friends in higher education who are like, wait a minute, nobody's gonna take my gender studies classes anymore and pay me a million dollars for that degree.

[Josh Holmes]

Because you wonder if there isn't some motivation.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Yeah. They're like, well, why wouldn't I do this trade thing and go get a job and get paid?

[Josh Holmes]

Because you simply cannot entertain facts and come to the conclusions that they have come to.

[John Ashbrook]

And not to mention, there's nothing that China would love more. They would love the United States. We're not going to innovate. We're only going to buy Chinese solar panels from here on out. Our best days are behind us.

[Josh Holmes]

And put on a sweater. I mean, it's just so small. And this is just a grand plan. And I think what you said, Ashbrook, about sort of a throwback sort of encapsulates and I couldn't quite put it into words, but it's now my view of this whole thing, what we're doing with innovation in this country is a throwback because it is the America that made America the greatest country on the face of the planet. And we've lost that a bit over the years. I can assure you up here in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it is alive and well and we are going in a terrific direction. You're going to get a lot out of this episode. You're going to love every minute of it. When we come back, Senator Dave McCormick,

[Commercial Announcer]

who helps America go farther, fly higher, and dream even bigger.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

People do.

[Commercial Announcer]

Since 1879, our people have been more than a source of energy. They've been a source of progress. Today, that same progress is helping deliver record US Energy product production, fueling the workers, the makers, the boundary pushers and risk takers who spark the breakthroughs that move America forward. Learn more about what our people [e-mail] USA250

[Josh Holmes]

well, we got a little different venue here, fellas, than our typical Thursday program. And we're here at the belle of the ball at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit. How are you, Mr. McCormick?

[Senator Dave McCormick]

I'm great. I'm so glad. I'm so surprised they let you guys in. There's heavy security, but I'm glad you made it.

[John Ashbrook]

Thanks.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Thanks for being here.

[Josh Holmes]

This is one of the most impressive events, I think, collectively we've ever seen. It is in a who's who of defense Innovation, Huge Pennsylvania components to all of that. Bipartisan. I mean, you've brought a whole bunch of people together here.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah, no, I feel really lucky that we've been able to convene this. We did something like this last year, the Energy and AI Summit. And it was honestly Dina's idea to have an energy summit. And then I was like, you know, AI is such a big thing, and you really can't say energy and AI separately. They're the same thing. And the President had agreed to come, and we had an incredible turnout where many of the energy CEOs, the tech CEOs, the investors. The key is you got to get the people who write the checks, because that's how innovation happens. But we also had the Governor Shapiro, the Senator Fetterman, the President, his cabinet, and it was just so spectacularly successful. We announced, like, $92 billion of investment, which, by the way, I track every month. We're more than on track to deliver all those promises. But the impetus of it was, wait a second. This is an area of a huge potential opportunity for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is to reinvent itself and take advantage of these huge changes in the world. And AI and energy was one of them. But if you step back and say, what's another big change in the world? Another big change in the world is the world's getting scarier and scarier with China and Iran, our primary adversary. China is on the rise. Number two, the face of battle is changing dramatically. I mean, put it this way. Go to World War II, Saving Private Ryan, and imagine the Gulf War, which I was in. Like, that was at that time the most technologically sophisticated war. We said warfare had changed dramatically. Warfare has changed more from the Gulf War to now than had changed From World War II to the Gulf War.

[Josh Holmes]

That's incredible.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

And the pace of change is just turn on the television, look at the drones, look at the autonomous subs, look at. Look at the AI and how it's integrated into our defense capabilities. So we need to reinvent restructure our defense industrial base to be able to meet this incredible demand. The defense budget's going up dramatically. In my opinion, it should. And so then you ask yourself the question, well, how are we going to do that? Because on one hand, we have to reconfigure our industrial base to build ships and subs, things of the past that are now much more sophisticated. But we also need excellence in these new technologies. And where can that happen? And the answer is Pennsylvania. Honestly, the answer is Pennsylvania. We got 190,000 defense workers I was out at SpaceX, I don't know, six months ago, and they brought out a chart with the hundreds of suppliers in Pennsylvania, powdered metals, precision machinings that support SpaceX and NASA. So Pennsylvania is uniquely positioned so to get back to this long answer to your question, but why Pennsylvania? Why did I do this? Because I was thinking, wow, we can help drive the nation's agenda. Peace through strength. President Trump is on the move. He wants to change all this stuff and we can be the lead in trying to help accomplish that goal and in doing so will create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

[Josh Holmes]

I also think Dave McCormick might be the only person that can get all those people to say yes.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Maybe Dave's wife Dina might have something

[Shyam Sankar]

to do with it too.

[John Ashbrook]

It was an incredible lineup just last night of the people in that room. But specifically, like he said, working in concert. You have people who are working and tapping into Pennsylvania's natural gas capability to power all of this re industrialization. You have people who are building factories here in Pennsylvania for all the jobs to be here in America. Because I think after Covid, it was very eye opening of how little manufacturing production is happening in this country. And then you started to see, you know, founders, job creators in this country wake up and spin it up. And you're bringing a lot of that here to Pennsylvania.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah, no, I agree with 100%. I think Covid was a wake up call. You know, people couldn't get the new Ford 150 because they couldn't get the semiconductors. We couldn't have pharmaceuticals because the entire supply chain was in China. So our dependence on others. And you know, I made the comment earlier, we have 9,000 defense suppliers in Pennsylvania, 465,000 parts for 2,300 weapon systems. You lose that capability for forging or precision manufacturing or powdered metals or the next generation drone, then you are behind. But the thing about this, it was about the last summit and this summit is if you just start as a business person, like, I just want to win. Like, I want Pennsylvania to win, I want America to win. So what's it take to win? It takes a team. There's no single people that are going to win this thing. It's going to take the primes, it's going to take the emergent technologies, the disruptors, who are saying no, that's stupid. That's an old way that costs way too much money. It's going to take labor. You know, as you, I think you might have met him last night. We have Sean McGarvey here, who's the president of the North American Building Trades. Those are the welders and pipefitters and steam fitters, or many of them are, that are going to build the future. It's going to require a capacity to work together. Even if we're from different political persuasions, we could have a lot of differences. We do have a lot of differences. But hopefully we can agree that America needs to be secure and safe. But the thing that's also unique about this, and maybe coming from my past world, you got to have the capital. The government's not the answer. I mean, the government needs to spend on basic research and stuff like that. And obviously our defense budget's a huge part of it, but we got to have private capital helping drive this innovation. And so last night you met a number of the biggest venture funders of defense tech, because that's what's going to create the engine for innovation.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, that's amazing. I think it was just an intellectual exercise alone, just having conversations last night because you're right, everybody came from a little different walk of life. They do a little different thing, coming together in common cause, which you would like to think everybody would agree. Securing our country is sort of top of the list.

[Michael Duncan]

What I love is when you said about everybody has to be on the same team. And you look at a room like you assembled last night and what's happening here today, and it's across industries, just defense, it's also energy, it's tech, it's AI. And we find ourselves right now in, I think like a moonshot moment. This is like the space race again when it comes to technology and all these things are interlinked. You're talking earlier about re industrializing the United States, you know, strengthening our grid, making sure we have the capacity, you know, for the data center build out and how that's linked to everything else, but you need energy for that. And so we're at a time where there needs to be national purpose across all of these industries in the private sector. And with the Trump administration obviously focused on this, we have a unique opportunity. But there's obviously, you know, there's people who don't see the world the same way. They don't recognize how mission critical this is for our country and our national security. How do you fight back against this sort of doomerism that's out there about what America is capable of doing?

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah, well, I think almost by example, honestly, it's so much easier to show than to convince. And so my spirit on this has Been there's a bunch of competing ideas, anti American ideas, the rise of the socialist, communist. I mean, I was a child of the Cold War. I fought in the Gulf War, but I grew up thinking the Soviet Union was our primary adversary. The idea that socialism and Marxism would re. Emerge inconceivable. I thought those were in the dustbin of history because they had proven themselves over and over again to be such a failure for addressing the goal. Goals those people who support those philosophies seem to be for which is helping all people. Where capitalism and our system of governance and freedom is the only path. But how do you convince people? I think you create a path. You create prosperity. You show in many ways it's not ideological. I mean, as we talked about last night and here Governor Shapiro's. Here, Governor Shapiro and I disagree on a lot of things. So I'm not focused on what I disagree on. I'm focused. Can we agree that we need jobs in Pennsylvania to support defense? Same with Senator Fetterman. So I think setting the example that winning is a team sport, that we can be ideologically opposed on lots of things and vote that way or support those policies, but in certain things, like keeping our families secure, keeping America secure, we can maybe find common ground, set that example. There's so many cynical people. You know, we talked last night, social media. I mean, if you read social media, you. You are, you know, you want to jump off the top of the building.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Yeah.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

But if you just wake up every day and say, what can I do to set the example and try to lead? I think people are going to respond. And that's what I think is happening here. That's what I think is happening across the country.

[John Ashbrook]

I think this morning, even Jamie Dimon's going to be speaking here at your event today. But this morning he made an announcement that they're making an investment here in Pennsylvania.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah, Jamie Dimon announced. We're going to announce a little bit later today, but we have 30 announcements that add up to $10 billion of investment in Pennsylvania, more than 4,000 jobs. Jamie, as you know, has been a huge voice, which I really appreciate on national defense and trying to put JP Morgan in the place where they will play a much more meaningful role. They announced a $25 million workforce program in the Philadelphia shipyard, which is going to help feed those thousands of jobs that are just. There's going to be demand for. Because Hanwha, the Korean firm, bought the Philadelphia shipyard and is going from 1,000 workers to 5,000 and 5,000 to 10,000.

[John Ashbrook]

Incredible.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

We need the welders and all the skilled trades to be able to build those ships. We're going to go from one ship a year in Philadelphia to 20 over the next five years.

[John Ashbrook]

Incredible.

[Shyam Sankar]

Incredible.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

And right next door is Rhodes, which is a major submarine component company. We're going to hopefully go from one submarine a year to three. So the idea is we have to step up our game. And you might have heard it, the guy from Hanwha was just on the stage with me, but he said, you know, it's the supply base in Pennsylvania. Those 9,000 companies we're so dependent on and we want to make sure that they continue to be healthy and able to meet the needs of the national security agenda.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

The supply base is a big part of it that a lot of people just sort of overlook. You mentioned 460,000 parts. Somebody's got to make those parts. And one of the great things about doing it in Pennsylvania is you have so many smaller manufacturers who specialize in developing one part or another. And they may not have a ton of people working at their companies, but those people have very good jobs that they rely on. And if you don't have that supply base, you cannot, you can't get ahead and you can't make the bigger stuff.

[Josh Holmes]

Totally.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

No, it's a slightly, it's a different industry. But I grew up in a town, Bloomsburg, where we had the McGee carpet mill. When I was a kid going to high school, public high school, there was 3,000 workers in the mill. And if you go back now, there's 100 workers in the mill. It was the engine for our town. Right. That's the way it is across Pennsylvania where there's these family owned businesses that are the engine for the town. And sadly, and a lot can be explained by this, this idea of globalization, this idea of unfettered free trade. It was devastating to a lot of those towns. And I was, you know, in the government, in the Bush administration, we used to talk about free trade. I don't talk about it anymore. I talk about fair trade where it's reciprocal, where it doesn't disadvantage the American worker, where we're competing on a, on a fair trade playing field. That's what's now happening. That's what's happening with the 232 tariffs. Even if you're someone who believes in reciprocity, if you're as I am, you can agree that in certain cases the dumping or the government subsidies are unfair. That tariff agenda is making a lot of those businesses more Competitive. The workforce agenda is creating the skilled workers we need. You know, when I was in high school, and this is still the case in Pennsylvania, only about 30% of the kids go to school, go to college. So you have 70% that are going into the labor force. And now all of a sudden we have a growth in these great paying jobs. So what we're doing is not only going to save those companies that you're talking about, which are so critical to our national defense, it's going to help grow them because they're going to be the suppliers of choice for our future defense capabilities.

[John Ashbrook]

And like you're saying, like, showing by example. Everyone that I'm speaking to here at this summit is so excited because the narratives are being broken of like, all this innovation is going to create job loss. It's actually creating jobs. It's an explosion of people who are needed.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

It's happening. And yes, I take no credit for this. It was a guy in my team named Kevin Miller, but he said, well, we have all these people here. We have 1300 people. Why don't we have this speed dating kind of thing where the companies can put out who they'd like to meet with and vice versa. So Yesterday there were three 1300 meetings.

[John Ashbrook]

Incredible.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Of people who just sit down for 50 minutes and then they do a buzzer and then someone else. So remember, it's the capital, it's the innovators, it's the traditionals. So this is creating kind of the energy around how do we make big things happen? So no one should leave here with a sense of contentment. What they should leave here with is agitation. Like, there's so much more to do. There's so many things to follow up on. This is the beginning, not the end of what I hope to. It's going to be.

[John Ashbrook]

I don't think I've ever seen an event where people are exchanging more cards and excited things. Like, there's going to be a lot of wonderful announcements that come as a result of all these people.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's like an internship program. Everybody's like, hey, give them stuff. Give him stuff.

[Shyam Sankar]

Yeah.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

By the way, speaking of interns, this is all hands on deck. Every single person that has ever been on my team is on my team Pennsylvania here. Everybody's here. I mean, this is like, just imagine, you guys know the Senate. You are not built and equipped to do things like this.

[Shyam Sankar]

Yes.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

So when you decide you're going to do it, the President says, I'm going to be there. It's like the dog that caught the bus. Oh, my God, we got all these important people coming. You know, Jamie Dimon is going to be sitting out in traffic for two hours. Like, how do we make this thing work?

[Josh Holmes]

So a lot of thought has gone into it. That much is clear. It's an incredible event. But I think I was struck by something you said that really sort of comports with my own experience here over the last couple of days, in that you follow politics and you just get cynical about things, and there's so much negativity. And what this summit is doing, at least for me and everyone I've talked to here, is a renewed sense of optimism about what we can not only accomplish, but how we can kind of do it together. And from a bipartisan standpoint, a mission standpoint, a uniquely domestic product that I think everybody should agree the defense of our country should probably be insourced. That's not something we can rely on potential enemies or adversaries for. And so it just. It's kind of. It brings a smile to your face in a way that, you know, you hang out in the Senate or in political world.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Or read social media.

[Josh Holmes]

Or read social media, you know, brings it to me.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

No, I feel that. I feel that. And, you know, listen, I think maybe it's because I came to politics later in life, so I really chose to do this. I chose and I chose. I lost, and I chose to run again and was fortunate enough to win. So the moment I start to feel cynical about it, I want to stop. I mean, I want to just go as hard as I can and then, you know, look at it and be proud for what happened. But if you watch tv, watch the polarization, spend time in Washington, honestly, it's pretty. It's pretty debilitating, right? It's just like, ugh, I just came back from 11 days where I had finished. The counties I hadn't done in the last 18 months. So I did 26 counties, 2,000 miles. I have a van. We just get in the van and go to the next town. We did parades. We did, you know, VFWs. We met with people. And you cannot be anything but optimistic. You can't be when you're in those places. And it's not to say that they're not getting killed by gas prices or that they're not worried about their job, but there's just an inherently optimistic sense of America. They want the best thing for their kids. They're willing to tell you loud and clear where you're failing them, which is what you need to be a good. Be a good center. But I did a parade in Pottsville that was celebrating the 250th, and it's like, it's. I mean, it's like something out of a.

[John Ashbrook]

Like Norman Rockwell. This is a beautiful state, by the way, right here. The surrounding area around the Army World College is gorgeous.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah, gorgeous. People said, why the hell are you doing this in Carlisle? I said, one. Well, it's got long. It's got fences around it so we can secure the people, but it's the most beautiful part of Virginia. It's just absolutely incredible.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, McCormick's got some versatility. He's doing pots filled parades. And then all of a sudden, he's got every CEO in America sitting there. You gotta have.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Well, I'll tell you what, you know, that's the best thing about this job. And I wanna say that. So I grew up in rural Pennsylvania, went away to the army, came back and ran a business. But I feel so grounded in, like, what's happening on the ground. I feel privileged to represent. And I feel like I have the opportunity, because of the platform to be able to convene people like this on behalf of those people that I'm seeing when I go across.

[Josh Holmes]

I didn't even know it was possible. I mean, Johnny and I spent a lot of time in the Senate. What you're doing with convening power on important issues, your state in the country, I don't think anybody else has ever done. Didn't know it was possible to do it. But it just comes at a perfect time. Because in the Senate, you're also dealing with a ton of cynics, and we're dealing with whether it's defense authorization failures and all this stuff. I mean, don't you just want to grab your colleagues and drag them into that room and just say, hey, listen to these guys?

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah, well, the premium on common sense, you know, that is the thing that you get when you do the 2,000 miles and talk to people they just want. They don't even necessarily get mad if they disagree with you on things. They just want to know that you're literally out there fighting for them, that you care, you're listening, you understand, and you're fighting for something bigger than yourself. And that's why it's hard not to be hopeful and optimistic. Because when you see real America day in and day out, it's uplifting. But, you know, I agree with you when you start to get on your ex account, and by the way, I can't tell, you know, who there is from the left and the right.

[Josh Holmes]

You know, like there's a horseshoe effect where they all sound the same at some level.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

So, yeah, it's. But I'm so far, not cynical.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's good.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

I'm charging, charging ahead.

[Josh Holmes]

I want to get your thoughts on Iran. Obviously, there's a nexus to what you're talking about here and U.S. capabilities and conflicts, potential conflicts, and, you know, essentially just peace through strength. What's your sense on Iran currently?

[Senator Dave McCormick]

You know, I think strategic patience is my sense. And what I mean by that. I applaud what President Trump did. His decision to go. You know, this really wasn't decision to protect him or me or really, most of you like the idea of Iran being on a path to a nuclear weapon that would challenge America, challenge our kids. Make no mistake about it, that was their intention. Regardless of what they said, that's what they say. So in Iran, whether it was three months or six months, it was imminent that Iran was going to have a nuclear weapon. So I applaud the president's courage to go deal with that head on with Midnight Hammer, and I applauded his decision to go back when they tried to reconstitute those nuclear programs and rebuild the missile launchers and so forth. By any measure, the military operation has been very successful compared to just the Gulf War, which everybody said was a wild success. We expended a lot more and got a lot less than we have so far in Iran. It's been a very effective campaign, but it's not going to be successful unless two things happen. And that can happen over time. But number one is Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. They can't have a path to a nuclear weapon. President's committed to that. And the second thing is the Strait of Hormuz has got to be open for commerce. And we can do that the hard way or the easy way. That's sort of the way, don't you think?

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, just watching how this is all unfolded and just following Iran on for 20 years, it just. I'm very cynical about the ability to come to any sort of peaceful resolution

[Senator Dave McCormick]

with the regime that you can trust,

[Josh Holmes]

but you're just gonna sign a piece of resolution.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

And the paper says, I mean, when you have the regime and then the top three layers are gone, and then there's, you know, it's the same regime, but it's a whole different set of characters. It's not even clear.

[Josh Holmes]

They don't even know.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

It's not even Clear. Who's in charge? I was just with Jared Kushner the other day, and there's multiple back channels and all this. So who are you really talking to? So I don't. You know, I'm a deep skeptic of the Iranians as well. But I think this idea of constantly, I think the President, by saying we want a peaceful revolution, we're going to go down this path, the mou, I think it's created goodwill because people know he's trying to find a peaceful resolution among our allies and others. And if they decide not to do that, which they appear to, at least for the moment, I think you put the pressure back on. The pressure, I think, is targeted military capabilities, like Dan Kaine was talking about here yesterday. I think it's the blockade. I think we underestimate how important that blockade is that strangles them economically. And I think it's keep the pressure on. I don't think there are ground forces in our likely future, nor do I think there should be. But I do think we hold the cards in the sense that I do think we can keep a good bit of the strait open. I do think the rerouting that the Saudis and the Emiratis have done takes down the pressure and frankly, the energy dominance that we have, which we talked about last time. So keeping those gas prices down is important. It's important in Pennsylvania, it's important in Ohio. Right. A buck a gallon more kills us. So thank God those prices are coming back down. But keep the pressure on. And I think there's no day that we're going to feel safe until we're confident Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

We were talking about collaboration across industries here in Pennsylvania. The president has seen an awful lot of collaboration with a lot of these Gulf State partners who in the past just been one way or the other. But right now, it seems like they're all sort of moving in the same direction.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Yeah. No, it's amazing. And I think his desire to create a peaceful path where it showed what the Iranians are really up to, and again, they can opt back into a peaceful path. But I think that was smart, and I think it was deliberate. And, you know, I expect it's a hard problem, and he has chosen to take it on. And I think our kids should be grateful that he did, and we should be grateful that he did.

[Josh Holmes]

I agree with that. The only downside about your summit is he missed the All Star game last night.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

I did miss the All Star game.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

And I could have had his ticket, too.

[Josh Holmes]

I can only imagine. Yeah, I could have had Home State hosted the All Star Game.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

No, I missed that. But we've had a lot of. First this year, we had the World cup game on July 4th, just as a. Just as a sort of take my. I had a couple of my kids with me. We went to Independence hall the night before and did a private tour. Oh, that's cool. And I took the British ambassador.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Oh, yeah.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

We took a picture in front of the table where the declaration was signed. And no victory lap. I posted it and say it's a victory lap. I posted.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Not to spike the ball, but I posted it and said, hey, about that 1776 thing, no hard feelings. And so it was a great, great Philadelphia day. But it was on the. At the end of that 11 days. And so I honestly, I was by myself most of the time, but the kids joined us at the end. It was like, man, this is the perfect way to celebrate. America is 250th birthday, and I was there for the 200th with my dad at the age of 10, seeing Gerald Ford speak. So it was so memorable to me that I had the 200th and the 250th. My dad, unfortunately, couldn't come with me this time, but we talked about it. And then to see Pennsylvania in all its glory leading up to July 4th, it was. I couldn't script it any better.

[Josh Holmes]

You don't sleep a lot, do you?

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Unless one might have a crazy wife. I mean, she's got a ton of energy. Oh, my God. She's dragging us all over the place. But it's good.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, you're booked all over the place, but this event in particular has been one of the most impressive things I have seen, period. And certainly that a senator has organized and convened.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Did you guys walk through the booths?

[Josh Holmes]

We did.

[John Ashbrook]

It's awesome.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

I mean, it's hard not to be excited about what's going on there.

[Shyam Sankar]

I mean, that's the thing.

[Josh Holmes]

The general optimism of everybody that wants to put shovel in and do their part.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Well, and we talked about this last night, but the fact Sean McGarvey's here is a real important statement, because he's here because what's happening in this revolution is demand for jobs. I mean, there is a. You know, for people who build things, the future is bright. And for people who want to learn a skill, the future is bright. We got to find lots of ways, like Jamie's doing Jamie dominant JP Morgan, to help fund that skilled workforce training but it's big up to. It's the American dream.

[Josh Holmes]

We have to get you out of here because you got a pretty important guest. I got you that's coming here. You got any special plans for the President when he shows up? I do, I do.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

He's gonna land. We've got set up here is a parade. He can take Marine one from the White House. He's gonna land on a parade field that's just a couple hundred meters from here. And we went out and got every major weapons system that has parts or built in Pennsylvania there. So Chinooks, Leonardo's, there's a big artillery gun, Bradley fighting vehicle, drones.

[Josh Holmes]

That's probably pretty easy. Security clearance. You get all that.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

So when he lands, the backdrop's gonna be all those weapon systems with all the Pennsylvania connections. And then the old guard has sent up an honor guard to meet him. So there'll be a cordon and he'll walk through the honor guard and then there'll be the cannons, will give a 21 gun salute.

[Josh Holmes]

All the pageantry it deserves.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

All the pageantry it deserves. It's only the fourth president in the history of the war College too to visit here. Awesome. So I want to make sure it's a good visit for him. It's his second in Pennsylvania last month. So I want to make sure when he comes, I want to make sure it's a, you know, it's a great visit for him.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, thanks for including U.S. senator Dave McCormick.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Thanks guys. Thanks for having me.

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[Unidentified Male Guest]

Fellas, that was an incredible conversation. I mean, as you expected it to be. The guy's got so much energy. He's obviously very, very well networked and he's putting all of that to work for the state of Pennsylvania, partnering with John Fetterman, by the way, we didn't get into that too, too much in the conversation. Of course we talked with him last night. That's unique. You know, the guy is doing everything he can to help this state get ahead. He's like the model senator for.

[Josh Holmes]

He's like the best senator I've ever seen. I didn't know any of this was possible.

[John Ashbrook]

And I think a really important point to make of what he's doing here is this is not him being like, I want a piece of the national budget to come here to Pennsylvania. No, he's telling all these private companies, come to Pennsylvania. Build your factory here, bring the jobs here, spend your money here. This is private capital. This is the market at work. This is not big government. And I think that's part of the

[Shyam Sankar]

reason the government hates it, because they're

[John Ashbrook]

like, we would need everyone to depend on. You have to get money from the government or else it doesn't work out. You're seeing right here, Senator McCormick being like, no, it's the private sector that's going to put the money in the state that's going to bring the jobs to the state. It's going to happen here.

[Josh Holmes]

They're sprinting to get in. There's nobody holding anybody's feet to the fire. Everybody's like, yes, we got a guy who gets it. And we want to show up and talk to everybody else who we know gets it and see if we can work together on some things. It's an incredible summit.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

You know, I love the fact that the guy does not give up. We were talking about this earlier, but if you think back two cycles ago when Dr. Oz, John Fetterman and Dave McCormick were all sort of pursuing the exact same position.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

And Dr. Oz won that primary and Federer and went on to win the race. And then Dave McCormick didn't give up. He came back and he ran again the next cycle and he won. And Dr. Oz now is the head of CMS and who knows what else. You know, his energy's boundless. But, like, you think all three of those guys involved in one race are now impacting this country in a way that nobody would have guessed. And it's really funny how life works out that way sometimes.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah. The people from Philly don't need anything to pump their tires about Pennsylvania. But I will say Pennsylvania is doing itself pretty proud, particularly with that. We got another interview coming up. This is just. These are one of the guys that you're going to want to listen to very carefully, because I don't think there's a lot of people in the AI, space, defense, manufacturing or not, who can articulate the benefits of what is coming online right now more than Sham Sangar, who is. I mean, this is an incredible interview. Let's get to it.

[John Ashbrook]

Ladies and gentlemen, I am very excited to have our next guest here on the program. The CTO of Palantir Shyam Sankar thank you so much for joining us.

[Shyam Sankar]

Well, I'm a huge fan. It's great to be here.

[Josh Holmes]

It's just awesome to have you here. What fun event to be a part of.

[Shyam Sankar]

Great energy.

[Josh Holmes]

It is, isn't it? And you get to see people in all kinds of different fields working together, common purpose.

[Shyam Sankar]

It's kind of quintessentially American, you know, bunch of cowboy innovators who are out there grinding, working hard, building, rebuilding the industrial base. It's awesome.

[Josh Holmes]

The kind of thing you hope is still possible. And then you see it and it is.

[Shyam Sankar]

Yeah, exactly.

[John Ashbrook]

And so like, this is. No one could be more on point to have this discussion than you just wrote Mobilize, which is an incredible, incredible book. I'm blessed with a wife who enjoyed me playing the audiobook on our long drives. And the message that you have in

[Shyam Sankar]

there, it's because I didn't record the voice.

[Josh Holmes]

I was just going to say, did you read it?

[John Ashbrook]

But the message in there is so critical right now, giving so many examples throughout history of how when bureaucracy gets out of the way of innovation, America succeeds. And you really hope, you know, the right people are listening to that message because right now we're in a critical race with our adversaries. Tell us a little bit about the book for those who haven't read it yet.

[Shyam Sankar]

Yeah, I really wrote it at this moment in time because I just saw. I kind of felt like we were just not ready to fix the problem. And huge credit to the current team in the Department of War that is no longer the case. You know, all gloves are off here. We're going after it. We had lost deterrence, you know, we had the militarization of the Spratly Islands, we had Iran with breakout capability. We've had a pogrom in Israel, we've had the invasion of Ukraine. So the whole point of the Department of War, the whole point of our national security apparatus is to deter our enemies. And empirically we were losing that. I also think there was this fundamental calculus that we got wrong at the end of the Cold War, thinking that our stockpile was going to be the deterrent as opposed to our ability to produce the stockpile. We went through 10 years of munitions and 10 weeks of fighting in Ukraine. And I thought that was like a Sputnik moment, a five alarm fire, that the arsenal of democracy is going to get fired up again. And basically nothing really happened. We committed to a process to think about a process to maybe restart the arsenal. And I started looking back at history here and I've always enjoyed these stories, but if you really look at the history of defense innovation, absolutely nothing ever succeeded because of the system. Every single innovation happened because some sort of rogue, as I like to call them, the heretics and heroes, went around the system. They bucked the machine and they succeeded. And usually they were actually kind of destroyed. They destroyed themselves before we recognized later on, retrospectively, holy crap, that guy saved us. You know, you look at the Higgins boat, I called it the boat that won the war. 92% of all boats in World War II are Higgins boats. The boys landed at Normandy on Higgins boats. You know, before the war, the Navy refused to let Higgins compete. That's finally a young first Lieutenant Krollock actually got them, and he became a very famous marine general. Later got them to compete. They competed and they won. And then what did the Navy do? They stole the design, tried to copy it. Couldn't even successfully do that. That shit didn't work. In the end, having exhausted all the options, they were like, fine, we'll buy the boat.

[John Ashbrook]

And it won the war.

[Shyam Sankar]

You know, And I think even the tank, we go back to British history. The tank was not built by the British Army. It was built by Winston Churchill as the head of the Royal Navy, because the British army was not smart enough to realize that cavalry was not going to win the next war. He had to call it a landship because, of course, he could only build

[Josh Holmes]

ships as the head of the Royal

[Shyam Sankar]

Navy, you know, and so, okay, we should take a lot of comfort from these stories that the people who are in the department, in government serving the crazy innovators on the outside, you're not doing anything wrong. This is the system. It wasn't easy for the guys who came before us. Why would it be easy for us now? That your heresy is exactly what the nation needs to succeed and win now. And it came at an opportune time because those people were latent in the department. And you have hundreds of founders out there now who are building in the national interest. And I think this is a sort of galvanizing message for us to go and get after it.

[Josh Holmes]

I mean, it's really well said.

[John Ashbrook]

And one of the more important lessons from the book is the importance of harnessing AI and what a force multiplier that can be. This administration really gets that. We've seen a result. The efficacy has gone off the charts.

[Shyam Sankar]

I mean, the scale of what was done in epic fury. It's only possible because of AI And I think it'll really go down as the first war that was truly planned and fought in a completely different sort of way. I think though, even zooming out from national security, my view is national security is a means to an end. The actual end that we care about is American prosperity. That AI is a magical opportunity for the American people. That it is how we give the American worker superpowers. It's how you make the American worker 50 times more productive than any other worker anywhere else in the world. And that is the basis of underwriting the economic logic of reindustrialization. In World War II, we were the best at mass production. Wilk Knudsen as the head of number two at Ford and then the head of gm, he really perfected mass production. And then we made him a three star general in charge of war mobilization. That's how we got it done. Well today, unfortunately, our adversary is the best at mass production. And so in this David and Goliath battle, AI is our slingshot. We're not going to re industrialize symmetrically. We're going to do a leapfrog here and do this entirely different way. And if I look at my commercial experience, you know, 60% of our business is commercial. You have Panasonic Energy, they make every battery in the Tesla Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada. Well, this is very high end Japanese battery technology. These machines make a battery cell every 200 milliseconds.

[John Ashbrook]

Wow.

[Shyam Sankar]

It used to be a three year apprenticeship journey to learn how to take care of this equipment. And of course that area, the labor pool is coming from casinos. That's their prior work experience with AI they were able to get down to three months.

[John Ashbrook]

Wow.

[Shyam Sankar]

So this is expanding the labor population, our ability to mobilize the American work. Right here in Pennsylvania we actually have a submarine parts manufacturer that was able to add a third shift. So labor planning used to take. Production planning, sorry, used to take two weeks. And during that time mostly the line was down with AI they were able to get that to happen in effectively 2/10 of a second, which meant they had more parts to make, which meant they needed more workers. So you know, this is a sort of narrative violation that traditional media doesn't like or doesn't get reported. But actually we're deleting the deadweight loss in our economy. All the places we're actually supply constrained. One of the more interesting statistics is that if you measure, you take, take a stopwatch out and you measure. Okay. How long does it take the Chinese to build chips versus the Americans? You would see the Chinese seem to build chips much faster. Than we do. But then if you actually just measure the time we're turning wrenches and welding things, and you compare it to the time it takes, it's the same. So we're not actually worse at building these things. We're worse at the coordination, the bureaucracy, the process approvals, all the shit you should delete with AI.

[Michael Duncan]

Too often I find that these conversations around innovation, whether that's defense tech or AI, is so abstract. And what I love about the stories you tell is that you make it tangible in people's lives. And all of this innovation that's happening not only can help keep us safe abroad, but it can, like, save lives. I read that story about what Palantir did with utilizing AI to track the diagnostics and blood panels of people in the Tampa General Hospital to help them identify sepsis cases, you know?

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Michael Duncan]

24, 48 hours sooner. And when that happens in a hospital setting where the human error comes in, where it's a stressful environment, okay, maybe your heart rate's a little elevated. I don't think that's a signal or an indicator or any number of things in a chaotic environment. Now, by utilizing technology, you're also able to save lives.

[Shyam Sankar]

Absolutely. I mean, having every patient have their own sepsis agent that's monitoring them, that is not ever taking their eye off of them, that there is no shift handoff, there's no, you know, balls drop, there's no dots to connect. It's all, you know, the leading cause of death in the ICU is sepsis.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Right.

[Shyam Sankar]

So it's a massive thing to be able to reduce death by sepsis by half by doing this. And actually, if you talk to nurses, my mom was a nurse. If you talk to the nurses who are using this technology, they love their jobs where they have more time to spend with the patients by the bedside, they're spending less time entering information into computer systems. Right. So it is. It is a wild benefit to society here. I think the most important question that I ask all of these frontline workers, whether it's a blue collar foreman on the factory floor or the ICU nurses, okay, your job's gotten better. That's awesome. I get it that you're pumped. How excited are you about your children's future in an America powered by AI? And that's where they're really excited. And I think that is the qualitative measure of our middle class. A thriving middle class means that you believe your children's future will be better than yours. And so I think what we have in this moment. You know, all these technology revolutions, it's tempting to think of them as a concept driven revolution, but they're actually tools driven revolutions. You know, I'm pretty sure the inventor of the telescope had nothing interesting to say about the impact of telescope on humanity. It was Galileo, whose name we know, but he was the user of the telescope to discover planetary motion. The personal computer, the microscope, the power loom, all these technology revolutions. The ultimate impact is determined by the user users in the present moment.

[Josh Holmes]

It's a good way of thinking about it.

[Shyam Sankar]

To the inventors, because the inventors are geniuses, they're very smart and to some people they're charismatic. To other people they're anti charismatic. But either way you can't take your eye off them. And they have a certain view that's kind of built out of, you know, there's a view towards doomerism. This is, this is such a profoundly powerful technology, it's going to lead to mass. I'm not sure they know what they're talking about, to be honest. I would rather spend my time with the people who don't get asked to write op EDS who aren't on TV being interviewed, but the people who are actually using this technology. They're going to tell us where this stuff is going.

[John Ashbrook]

So I just saw a new report from Build American AI on how radiology jobs which are predicted to disappear have actually exploded, which is the end result is helping more people who need their care. And that just shows exactly the thing is the narrative that we were fed and told by these doomers, they continue

[Josh Holmes]

to do it creates.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah, that it's going to jobs. It's actually exploding job growth. The example you gave with the submarines and then and all the discussions that are happening here at the summit is just people excited to harness AI to be able to empower individuals to create more jobs, to get more done, to re industrialize America. What are the most, I'd say optimistic or hopeful scenarios that you've heard since you've arrived here?

[Shyam Sankar]

Well, I've been shocked at. Blackstone was just talking about how last year they came here and they committed to building $25 billion of infrastructure over a decade. And they've already done. Now they're on track to do $40 billion over five years.

[Josh Holmes]

Amazing.

[Shyam Sankar]

Greater than 50% increase in half the time. That's incredible. So it shows you the degree to which we're all even underestimating how fast it's going to go, the scale it's going to be going at Now I think the caveat to this, what should we be concerned about? You know, I think the greatest threat to America is not homicide. It's suicide. You know, it's the moratorium in New York. It is us losing our national will, losing the belief in ourselves, and just deciding we're not going to compete.

[Josh Holmes]

No, I mean, that's why summits like this are so important. It is an unmistakable and refreshing change of optimism and innovation and what America can actually accomplish. I mean, we spend all of our time in D.C. talking to politicians, and you can get pretty skeptical pretty quick. But you show up at a place like this, I wish every senator and congressperson could be here to see it, because you would have such a more hopeful, optimistic view of what America can accomplish when you get a chance to sit down with this guy or colleagues that are around this building. Because this future is here, and it can be done in half the time, twice the resources. I mean, it's amazing.

[Shyam Sankar]

As corny as it sounds, the F15 folks like to say. A lot of folks like to say Americain not American.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

I want to go back to something from your book because I find this just fascinating because I know some guys in the defense sector who years ago tried, and they just ran up against that brick wall of the bureaucracy where you succeeded. And I just want to ask you a couple things. One is, how in the world did you tear down the bureaucracy? I know that, you know, Secretary of War and the President of the United States had a lot to do with that part of it. But then also, it seems like you're moving a pace and reindustrialization in a way, you know, we've talked about here, but you said that we're still behind China. I wonder if we continue the pace, how long until it takes us to catch up?

[Shyam Sankar]

Yeah, well, I think the important part. So you could even go back and you could ask this counterfactual question, why did you guys start in Intelligence? You know, in 2004, the literally the only front door. There was zero front doors in the Department of War. The only front door was the Inchdale. It's the only path, you know, now, you know, particularly since the advent of Diu, let's call it 2015, that sort of era. There are front doors, there are side doors, there are cracked windows. You know, the department could not be more receptive to innovation coming from the outside. So the kind of. It was a long journey of just beating your head against the wall. And kudos to them. They weakened the wall. For the rest of us, you know, it Took a lot of bashing to get there, but this is the moment to kind of seize on. And I think a big part of this is fighting with facts. You know, you have to go where the problems are. You have to. You know, this is why the Heretic appeals to me. So much of what we had to do was just work around the system constantly. And, you know, it's maybe a form of self therapy, I was just gonna say, but hopefully it's the lesson that I need. I think we should all be passing on to the next generation of innovators, that it's not gonna be easy for you two. There are gonna be entrenched interests. But if you're right, if you're Andrew Higgins and you're gonna go through three competitions where you're getting screwed over in ways that are probably illegal, frankly. But at the end of the day, you're going to save those boys. You're going to build the boat that actually matters and saves the nation, you know, And I think you have to believe in yourself. You know, no great company was ever founded principally to create money. It's just not motivating enough. And I think the companies that just want to make money, they hit the brick wall and they're like, forget this. I'm going to go sell to the commercial sector. Like, those people are at least rational. Right? You need a mission that's much bigger than yourself that motivates you through all that pain to succeed. Succeed. Our entire space industry is because Elon was obsessed with getting to Mars. There's no commercial vision there. It's just greatness. And I think that a willingness to believe in greatness is a quintessential American trait. The cynicism of Europe is this realistic view that there is no sort of greatness. And don't think so highly of yourself and why should you aspire to do anything? You know, we see what trap that is. You know, we should be inspiring our kids towards greatness.

[Josh Holmes]

It's a great message. Shyam, how do you avoid the frustration, though? I mean, you reference this in your book and again, keep going back to all the optimism that we've encountered here. What strikes me as so amazing about that is that you stay mission focused and you're just waiting for the opportunity to break through the door. There's a million geniuses out there who've been like, the hell with it. I'm certainly not going to do this a day longer because I'm just running into whether it's a political reality that just sucks or what have you? But you guys never did. I mean, you just kept rolling.

[Shyam Sankar]

We just believed in it so much. I mean, you know, it's like, especially if you spend time with these uniformed service members going to harm's way, like you just have to do the work for them.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it gives you a different perspective,

[Shyam Sankar]

you know, SHIELD AI Brandon Tsang will tell you, when he was in the Navy seals, like he thinks Palantir saved him and his squad's life.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, it's amazing.

[Shyam Sankar]

Just that sort of work that sort of keeps you going. Yeah, keeps you going for a long time.

[Josh Holmes]

It's just an amazing thing. So look, there's deals being done out there. People are talking to each other, working together. Finance side, the production side, the labor

[John Ashbrook]

side, energy side, all energy side under the same roof.

[Josh Holmes]

It's incredible when you get it all in one spot. It's just sort of breathtaking.

[John Ashbrook]

That's right.

[Shyam Sankar]

It's really, you know, you need the capital class, you need our legislature and executive branch folks. You need the innovators, the founders. It takes all of us working together to make this stuff happen. And not in some sort of kumbaya sort of way, but how do you line it up so the communication happens, the priorities happen. There's clarity. You believe, you believe everyone else is doing their part. That actually motivates you to do your part harder and faster. It feeds the optimism.

[Josh Holmes]

It must, because there's a hell of

[Senator Dave McCormick]

a lot of it.

[Josh Holmes]

And you know, again, listen, it's got to be frustrating at some level when you hear the political debate on a day to day basis. And like you referenced New York and what Governor Hochul did up there, it's like, how are we not explaining. Yeah, how are we not explaining this? Because if you knew what I knew,

[Michael Duncan]

you got Bernie Sanders being like, this is the right. Call this AI moratorium in New York, because AI must benefit humanity. And it's like, I don't know, man, pick up a newspaper.

[Shyam Sankar]

Well, I think in business it's usually helpful to think about everything as being your fault, even though it's not true. You know, the useful frame is to internalize responsibility. So what could the self critique of the industry be right now? Well, we're not. We could be more focused on turning these tokens into economic value. We should have a huge amount of anxiety about how much prosperity are we delivering to the American people. And right now there's a bit of, yeah, there are results. We've talked about some of them. But to the vast majority of America, it's like, take it on faith.

[Josh Holmes]

It's not here yet.

[Shyam Sankar]

It's coming. Yeah, yeah. Don't stop it. It's coming. Well, yes, it is coming, but we should have anxiety. We should wake up every day saying, how do we get it to come faster? Because this is going to be an empirical argument. When people start realizing their pocketbooks are better, their children's future is better, the world is improving. No amount of rhetoric is going to dissuade them of their conviction in American prosperity.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah, listen, you've signed the ruthless Variety program up to be evangelists for this. This has been an incredible experience. I can't thank you enough for spending a little bit of time with us.

[Shyam Sankar]

Pumped to be here with you guys. Thank you for having me.

[Senator Dave McCormick]

Thank you.

[Unidentified Male Guest]

Man, that guy is so smart. And I've got his book Mobilize in my Amazon checkout bin right now. I didn't think Smug was gonna lend me his copy, so I had to buy my own.

[John Ashbrook]

So it's a tremendous book. I write it. I got him to sign my copy from my son. And I told him it's because this message is so critical. It's for the future of this country. It's a wonderful, optimistic, patriotic message. This is the greatest country on earth and we have to keep it that way. When the message of the book Mobilize, it shows that technology harnessed by America always leads to greatness. And we can't let bureaucracy stand in the way. We can't let doomerism stand in the way. And after you read it, you get a greater appreciation for this country, our military, what we're capable of. And I think he did an incredible job articulating that.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah. And most importantly, now it won't just be smug with all their merch. We were promised some merch.

[Josh Holmes]

We were promised it.

[Michael Duncan]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

I'm going to demand it.

[Michael Duncan]

Yes.

[Josh Holmes]

Because it's good looking merch. Hopefully our guy doesn't look like a NASCAR on every show, but, you know, it's gotten a little out of hand. If you got half as much out of this episode as we did being here, congratulations because it has been a truly inspiring time to listen to all these folks in one place. And we know Republican congressmen, senators, who, you know, they listen. I'm just telling you, go back and listen again. You need to know this stuff. And to the extent that you're encountering Democrats who can't see reality, you need to shake them up because this stuff is so important.

[John Ashbrook]

All the Republican or even Democrat lawmakers who are listening, number one, you should ping. Dave McCormick. Figure out the miracle that he's pulling off here. Number two, get yourself a copy of Mobilize and get involved and help make this country as powerful as possible. Now's the time to do it.

[Josh Holmes]

Yeah.

[John Ashbrook]

Yeah.

[Josh Holmes]

Well, from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in the Army War College. I think we did it, fellas.

[John Ashbrook]

I think so. Absolute banger of an episode. Gentlemen, thank you so much to Senator McCormick. Thank you so much, Shyama Sankar. And thank you to listener. Remember, if you have not yet, go to the YouTube and hit that subscribe because it's more fun in video. So until next time, minions, keep the faith, hold the line, and own the libs. We'll see you on Friday. Stay ruthless,

[Josh Holmes]

Sam.