Anduril Founder Trae Stephens on Our Modern Defense System

Summary

the goop podcast

Host: Gwyneth Paltrow
Episode: Anduril Founder Trae Stephens on Our Modern Defense System
Date: June 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Gwyneth Paltrow sits down with Trae Stephens, co-founder of Anduril (an AI-driven defense technology company) and partner at Founders Fund. Together, they explore the intersection of technology, national security, generational perspectives on safety, bureaucracy, the evolving cultural stigma around defense tech in Silicon Valley, and how Stephens reconciles his deep Christian faith with his work in a weapons-driven industry. The conversation is candid and nuanced, challenging both host and guest to move beyond binary thinking on divisive subjects.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Trae Stephens’ Background & Upbringing

• Stephens introduces himself as a Midwesterner, family man, and technologist.
  • “I work in tech...both a partner at Founders Fund...and also the co-founder of a defense technology called Anduril. But maybe more centrally than that, I'm a Midwesterner...” (03:23)
• 9/11 as a turning point: Growing up in rural Ohio, Stephens never perceived a direct existential threat until 9/11, which shaped his desire to serve and work in national security.
  • “On 9/11 there was this kind of moment where I realized all these things that we thought were guarantees in the American experiment don't feel super guaranteed anymore.” (04:51)

2. Early Career in Government & Disillusionment with Bureaucracy

• After Georgetown, Stephens worked in counterterrorism at an unnamed intelligence agency.
  • “You don’t actually get James Bond...you get Mr. Bean.” (07:06)
• He recounts the technological and cultural stagnation, referencing outdated systems and risk-averse, bureaucratic cultures.
  • “If the leadership is incredibly conservative and incentivizes risk reduction, that's what the whole organization is going to do.” (09:10)

3. On Driving Cultural Change in Institutions

• Leadership sets the tone for change; culture flows from the top.
  • “People really do look to how our leaders behave...that was really inspiring. But bureaucracy is brutal at that scale.” (09:10)
• The need for individual accountability and entrepreneurship in government compared to past eras of rapid innovation (e.g., DARPA’s invention of the Internet).
  • “History made a lot of progress in not a lot of time. And then it wasn’t our ability to build things that stagnated, it was bureaucracy.” (11:38)

4. Mandatory Civil Service as a Structural Solution

• Stephens advocates for mandatory civil service—not just military, but community-focused roles—to break cycles of bureaucracy and restore a sense of national unity and purpose.
  • “...If you can go and work at city hall for local government just for a couple years after graduation, I think it would be shaping for the lives and careers of the young people...” (12:40)

5. Division & Dialogue in a Polarized America

• Stephens and Paltrow both reflect on the difficulty, but necessity, of dialogue across ideological divides.
  • GP: “I'm trying to...weave together lots of different points of view...to get out of that place of righteousness and anger and fear.” (15:53)
  • TS: “We don't really gain anything from shutting people out and not hearing what they have to say.” (17:36)
• Technology such as AI language models can reinforce echo chambers, feeding users the validation they seek.
  • “If you think about the centralization of AI, it’s just self reaffirming...it basically is just going to tell you whatever you want to hear.” (17:36)

6. Technology, Social Disconnection & Civilizational Risk

• Trae draws a line from the current online dating landscape and technological validation (AI, social media) to loneliness, disenfranchisement, and even radicalization of young men.
  • “You get loneliness, despair, and young men unemployed or underemployed in their parents' basement...that’s the powder keg for any civilization.” (18:42)

7. National Security—From Cold War to Today

• The shift from the post-Cold-War sense of safety, through the War on Terror, to today’s return to great-power competition (with China, Russia, Iran, North Korea).
  • “What’s happening today is there’s this speed running of geopolitics...very, very different approach...to build protections from great powers rather than counterinsurgency.” (23:22)
• Reflections on how, at the founding of Anduril in 2017, defense tech was “super unpopular”—tech workers protested even tangential engagement with the Department of Defense. That cultural stigma has recently shifted.
  • “Just a few years later...everyone has sort of changed over to this idea of, wow—the threat of authoritarianism globally...is terrifying.” (25:57)

8. Anduril’s Mission: Conventional Deterrence & Lower-Cost Defense

• Anduril aims to revive “conventional deterrence”—developing advanced, low-cost, autonomous, and attritable systems to prevent the need for actual warfare.
  • “Can we create a new era of conventional deterrence...so inexpensive and so high capability that our adversaries will say, I don't want to get into this exchange.” (27:33)
• Attritability: Replace expensive and high-risk manned systems with lower-cost, unmanned, and potentially expendable assets (e.g., drones, interceptors).
  • “Attritability...if it is lost, it’s not a huge deal...what if you sent in an asset that cost 1/100th of the cost and had no human operators.” (31:38)

9. Fatherhood, Complexity, and Teaching Children About Morality in Defense

• Stephens feels a duty to ensure safety for his children without glorifying conflict.
  • “I want my kids to grow up without fearing for their personal safety...And I want to do it in the least aggressive and splashy way.” (34:58)
• Paltrow and Stephens agree on the value of teaching moral nuance, recognizing complexity rather than strictly good/bad binaries.
  • GP: “We as human beings are complicated...that kind of lack of understanding, that there's...layers to things and complications to things.” (36:02)

10. Faith, Morality, and Defense Work

• Stephens discusses balancing his Christian beliefs with the realities of national security, referencing the Pope’s Easter homily (“God does not hear the prayers of those who are waging war”) and the tension it creates.
  • “There’s a difference between peacemakers and peacekeepers...sometimes you have to create conflict to engineer a long-standing peace.” (38:18)
• On literal vs. metaphorical faith: Stephens explains that it’s his heart and how he embodies values that matter more to him than dogmatic or literal scriptural interpretation.
  • “Where is my heart? What am I learning from this? How is it shaping my character?” (43:55)
• Rising interest in faith among Silicon Valley leaders—often a search for meaning in an empty, high-achieving world.
  • “People that are brilliant and super intellectual...it’s really common...I don’t know what it is, but there’s something missing...” (45:11)

11. The Imitative Nature of Culture & Tech

• Humans imitate both virtue and vice; social media and tech culture accelerate these processes.
  • “We want what other people want...and that desire is imitated in both good ways...but there’s also a lot of negative parts...” (51:00)

12. Self-Reflection, Vulnerability, and Inspiration

• Both share personal loss (the death of their fathers at age 30) and how it impacts their worldviews.
  • “I realized for the first time, I don't have my dad anymore...it really changes your perspective on the time that you do have with your loved ones.” (58:13)
• On inspiration and desire: Stephens humorously admits his affection for Aston Martins is simply borrowed from his admiration for James Bond—a lesson in being honest about sources of desire.
  • “If I just saw a lineup of cars and the whole James Bond franchise never existed, I don't think I would have necessarily picked out an Aston Martin.” (55:08)

13. Reconciling the Teachings of Jesus with National Security & Political Climate

• Addressing progressive Christian critiques, Stephens distinguishes between personal morality and societal governance:
  • “On a personal level, the Gospels are checking the condition of our heart...Societally, I think we have to respond to things differently...there are bad actors and we have to do what we can to keep those bad actors from taking whatever they want. And that's really where defense comes in.” (62:36, 63:42)
• He insists ethics must guide the work (“We don't need the accelerated, intense rhetoric that does not jive with me personally. But we do need to actually have laws and boundaries.” 66:13)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• On Bureaucracy in National Security:
  • Stephens: “You don’t actually get James Bond...you get Mr. Bean.” (07:06)
• On the Power—and Risk—of Dialogue:
  • Paltrow: “I'm trying to...weave together lots of different points of view...to get out of that place of righteousness and anger and fear.” (15:53)
  • Stephens: “We don't really gain anything from shutting people out and not hearing what they have to say.” (17:36)
• On Civil Service:
  • Stephens: “Some sort of mandatory civil service would be incredible for the American people...if you can go and work at city hall...it would also be revolutionary for the government.” (12:40)
• On Peace, War & Faith:
  • Stephens: “There’s a difference between peacemakers and peacekeepers...sometimes you have to create conflict to engineer a long-standing peace.” (38:18)
• On Seeking Meaning:
  • Stephens: “I've made it. I have all this monetary success. I have fame, I have influence and power, but something's missing.” (45:39)
• On Cultural Change in Tech:
  • Stephens: “In Silicon Valley, you can do anything...the only thing you can't do is be a Christian. That was ten years ago.” (48:59)
• Personal Reflection, Loss, and Perspective:
  • Stephens: “[After my father died] I just remember...laying on the floor and weeping, being like, man, I don't think I really appreciated him enough when he was around.” (58:13)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Stephens’ background & 9/11’s impact: 03:22 – 06:08
• Working in intelligence, bureaucracy: 06:18 – 11:11
• Mandatory civil service & government reform: 12:30 – 15:53
• Dialogue, division in America, AI echo chambers: 15:53 – 18:42
• Current national security threats, Anduril’s founding: 23:22 – 27:33
• Conventional deterrence, attritability, Anduril’s tech: 27:33 – 34:45
• Faith, Christianity, and reconciling with defense work: 36:38 – 43:55
• Search for meaning in Silicon Valley: 45:39 – 50:37
• Fatherhood, loss, inspiration: 58:13 – 61:06
• Reconciling Jesus’ teachings, defense, political divides: 61:44 – 66:42

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Tone & Style

• The conversation is warm, thoughtful, and respectful—marked by Paltrow’s characteristic curiosity and openness, and Stephens’ willingness to engage complex moral questions without easy answers.
• Both avoid reductive answers, emphasizing nuance, lived experience, and self-inquiry.

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Overall, this episode is a deep dive into the intersection of tech, faith, security, and national culture—a rare, honest dialogue that both challenges and humanizes its guests and its listeners.

Transcript

[A]

When you are pioneering anything or introducing

[B]

new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that?

[A]

I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one.

[B]

In the sort of longing kind of view of love. People understand each other as if by magic.

[A]

Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive. If there is, there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life.

[B]

I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast, bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers here to start conversations. Because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Hello and welcome to the Goop Podcast. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. My guest today is someone you almost certainly wouldn't expect to find on this show, and that's exactly why I invited him. Trey Stevens is the co founder of Anduril, one of Silicon Valley's most provocative AI defense companies and, and a partner at the Founders Fund. He operates in a world that feels pretty far from the conversations we usually have here on the Goop Podcast. But this year I'm really making a conscious effort to seek out people whose perspectives genuinely challenge my own. I wanted to have Trey on because I really admire Trey for his brilliance. He's known as one of the best investors on the planet, but and also for his values. He's a very faith based man and I learned so much from talking to him. I think I almost envy people who have faith of that depth. Trey and I cover a range of topics today, including the core mission of Anduril, national security, the formative experiences that shape U.S. and America's relationship with defense today, Silicon Valley's evolving relationship to religion, which is super interesting. And on how Trey reconciles his Christian faith with an industry built around weapons and warfare, which is super interesting and provocative. Let's get into my conversation with Trey. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you so much for joining me.

[A]

Oh, so fun.

[B]

I've been trying to get you on this pod for a while now, I think, because, well, when I, when we met, I was really impressed with who you are and when I learned about you and that we seemingly have different points of views on things. And I really have made a commitment this year to kind of index into Other points of view, I mean, I think we're probably aligned on a lot of things. But I have a lot of questions for you and you know, I guess I'll start with like I, I'll go out on a limb and say maybe my, some of my GOOP listeners haven't heard of you. So will you just kind of start with that? Who are you? Trey Stevens?

[A]

Yeah, I work in tech. I'm both a partner at Founders Fund, which is a venture capital firm as well as the best one. Right, you said that it's the best one. It is a very, very good venture capital firm and also the co founder of a defense technology called Anduril. But maybe more centrally than that, I'm a Midwesterner who I've been married for 18 years, I have two small kids, grew up in a lower middle class household and have kind of been on a ride for the last now 42 years of my life. Could never have anticipated that I would have ended up where I've ended up today.

[B]

Amazing. So on your way to getting on this path, so you will you tell me a little bit about when you were in High School? 911 happened and from what I gather that fundamentally opened something in you. Can you talk a little bit about what that was? I was in New York that day and I actually, I walked out and at the end of the day and saw Building 7 come to the ground. And I think it fundamentally changed me as well. But I was already an adult with a job, so it didn't shift my path in terms of my profession. But as I understand that was indelible for you.

[A]

Yeah. Growing up in rural Ohio, obviously I knew a lot of people that served in the military. It's kind of core to the culture of the town that I grew up in. My uncle was in the Air Force, some of my cousins had gone out of high school and gone into the Marine Corps. But there was really no point in my 18 years of life up until that day that I ever felt like there was anything resembling an existential threat to me or my safety or the safety of my family, safety of my loved ones. There was obviously the first Gulf War, but it never felt close to home. These things are happening so far away. And I think on 911 there was this kind of moment where I realized all these things that we thought were guarantees in the American experiment don't feel super guaranteed anymore. And I decided at that time that I wanted to serve the country and go into national security. I wasn't sure if that meant going into a military role or going into a political role. But I ended up deciding that I wanted to go the intelligence community route, and that's kind of what set me on my path to Washington, D.C. and

[B]

how did you choose Georgetown, coming from Ohio? Like, was it because of the proximity to D.C. and you knew you wanted to somehow interact with government or be involved in government?

[A]

Well, I was mostly interested in finding, like, a university. That was a good path to get into the intelligence community. Georgetown is the best of the schools for that specific thing.

[B]

So you go from Georgetown into the. Into intelligence. Are you in the CIA?

[A]

I am not in the CIA. Yeah. I went into a counterterrorism office at one of the intelligence agencies.

[B]

It sounds cool.

[A]

It sounds much cooler than it actually is.

[B]

I was afraid you might say that.

[A]

Yeah. I mean,

[B]

is it cumbersome? Is it inefficient? What is about working in the government that makes it not exciting?

[A]

It's not what I expected. And it's highly bureaucratic, so. I grew up watching James Bond, watching the Bourne Identity, and you don't actually get James Bond when you show up. You get, like, Mr. Bean. Right. I had Windows 98 and a CRT monitor in 2006. I mean, no one threw me the keys to an Aston Martin. I didn't have Jarvis from Ironman to talk to. I was just running what I called coffee break searches, where you open up a bunch of tabs in a very outdated version of Internet Explorer and you run searches and then you walk away and you go get coffee, and then when you come back 15 minutes later, hopefully you have little downloaded CSV files, like Excel spreadsheets, essentially. So I think I had expected that it was going to be a lot more advanced than it was. And the people are highly patriotic. They care about the mission, and that was really inspiring. But bureaucracy is brutal at that scale.

[B]

Is it still that way? Do you find that now the bureaucracy

[A]

is every bit the same as it used to be? People matter a lot. Like individuals. Individual people matter. They set culture. And I think there are ebbs and flows of how this goes. I'm hopeful that the people that are working in our national security apparatus feel supported by their leadership to take risks and do things that I certainly didn't feel empowered to do.

[B]

How does one do that? I mean, how do you bring. I asked this for myself, too. Like, how do you. How do you bring an intellectual cultural shift to an organization? Like, whether it's the government or, you know, I assume, or if it's, like, more of an incumbent company like how. How does one make that shift Culturally?

[A]

I think there's all sorts of micro things that you can do, but at the end of the day, culture is set at the top. And as someone who's now in a leadership position in multiple different places, I don't want to believe that's true because I want to believe that it's diffused throughout the organization. But people really do look to how do our leaders behave? What characteristics are they bringing to bear? If the leadership is incredibly conservative and incentivized, advises risk reduction. Yeah. Risk averse behaviors. That's what the whole organization is going to do. I think what I would have liked to have seen when I worked in the intelligence community was empowerment and promoting people on merit rather than tenure. I would have liked to have seen them say, I don't know if this is going to work, but I believe that we need to try.

[B]

Right. These things need to be like entrepreneurial spirit. Yeah.

[A]

If you think about the biggest moments of growth and change in the government over the course of our 250 year history as a nation, all of these moments had founders. We had the founding Fathers, obviously, who drafted the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence. But even more recently, you look at getting through the Cold War without firing a shot with the Russians building platforms that change the course of humanity, like technologies. The Internet was invented in darpa, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. All of these things had individual people that were entrepreneurial, that were taking risky steps to do something that hadn't been done before. And the difference with that today is any major program, is there a single person that's responsible for it? Can you really shake a stick at an individual? Not really. We've kind of stripped the individual out

[B]

of accountability, distributed the responsibility across many, many people.

[A]

That's right, yeah. One interesting way to think about this that's just aircraft specific is that more time has passed between when the SR71, the fastest airplane to ever fly the SR71, was initially flown to today, then from the right flyer to the SR71.

[B]

Oh my gosh.

[A]

So we have this tendency to think of history as this. Like it's been so long. It's actually like we made a lot of progress and not a lot of time. And then it wasn't our ability to build things that stagnated. It was bureaucracy that created that stagnation. And one of the former undersecretaries of the army, this guy named Norm Augustine, who later was the CEO of Lockheed Martin, he said in 2054, the entire United States defense budget will buy one airplane. Obviously that's an extreme thing to say, but I think directionally what he was saying is, look what we're doing. We've created this tremendous bureaucratic bloat that makes it really hard to get anything done. And we're not going to make that right. Fire to SR71 trajectory as quickly as we did. If we continue down this path.

[B]

Yeah. Do you have hope that that is fundamentally fungible the way that we have set these things up?

[A]

I think it's possible. It requires heroic leadership, I think a will to shake things up. And no matter how aggressive and entrepreneurial it seems like people are, large bureaucracies have a way of breaking the spirit. And so it will require kind of an all of culture effort. And something that I've actually heard you talk about before that I agree with completely is I think some sort of mandatory civil service would be incredible for the American people. And by that I don't mean military service. I'm not saying everyone should go and serve in the army or the Marine Corps or the Navy. What I'm saying is if you can go and work at city hall for local government just for a couple years after graduation, I think it would be shaping for the lives and careers of the young people that are going into those roles. But it would also be revolutionary for the government because you would break these systems of entrenched bureaucracy and put young people in them that say, guys, this is crazy. Why are we doing things this way? This doesn't make any sense. I think that's politically very, very difficult to pull off in 2026.

[B]

Yeah. I do think that some kind of civil service where you're banding together, you're thinking about the country as a whole, especially because things are so divisive. I think if people could engage in that way and contribute while also understanding that they're part of a greater thing, I think it would be great. I mean, I was an exchange student in Spain, and at the time military service was required. And, you know, I thought that was insane. Like, you know, I was 15 and I was like, what do you mean? You have to, like, my Spanish brother had to go to the army, my sisters had to go to the army. And they said that it was such an important part of their formation. Right. Like, and that it gave them such a deep relationship with their country. I mean, I don't necessarily. I mean, having sons, like, I would worry about like, mandatory if we're going to be involved in wars and things like that.

[A]

But would you be Concerned if your son was going and working at City hall in la.

[B]

No.

[A]

And I think that's, like, ultimately, that's what you're trying to do, is you're trying to give that exposure to. Look, we're all getting so tribal and so charged. If people had exposure to the way things worked, I think they would be able to take a step back and say, this isn't really about politics. It's about how ineffective our bureaucracies are, and we should be building these things to serve the American people and not to serve our own tribal political interests, because that actually doesn't solve any of the problems. It just makes it worse. I think this is the way you open this conversation by saying, this is your year of trying to engage in more dialogue. And without that sort of open, respectful dialogue, I'm not sure we can fix any of these problems that we're seeing in the country. And that feels really important to me.

[B]

Yeah, I mean, I couldn't agree with you more. It's like the. You know, I notice with my own husband, too, who's the best person ever in the world, and he is. He's so progressive. Like, he has such a sweet heart, and he wants to, like, make sure everybody's looked after. And I think in this climate, you know, sometimes I'm like, can you. I'm like, can you just listen to this? Like, can you. You know. You know, it is very triggering for people. Like, they've become. It's become so binary, I think. And. And. And I. I am trying to, in my journey through being an American right now, trying to, I don't know, I guess, sort of weave together lots of different points of view, and also to get out of that place of righteousness and anger and fear. I mean, I'm pretty centrist, and my husband thinks I'm a Republican, but I think it's. Which. I'm not a Republican. I don't feel anything right now, to be totally honest with you. I feel like I'm completely an independent. But I do think that, you know, we were just in Nashville over the weekend, and we went to see bluegrass, and there was this amazing girl playing on stage, young woman. And, you know, she was talking about. She obviously had, like, completely different points of view than my husband, you know, so I'm sitting there like, okay, is he gonna. And I just thought, no, but this is so beautiful to see somebody who clearly is such a good person coming from such a different place. Isn't that more valuable to understand ultimately?

[A]

Yeah, we don't really gain anything from shutting people out and not hearing what they have to say. I think this is the greatest risk to a lot of what's happening in technology today. If you think about the centralization of AI is it's just self reaffirming. It's like when you go and you ask questions to a large language model like ChatGPT or Claude or whatever, it basically is just going to tell you whatever you want to hear. I switch between them based on strengths of what I'm specifically trying to do. But fundamentally they're all just going to basically tell you what you want to hear.

[B]

But can't you say don't challenge me at every point, don't tell me what I want to hear?

[A]

Who does that?

[B]

My husband actually did that.

[A]

Oh well that's impressive with his claw. That's impressive for your husband to be do that. I think most people are just pretty happy with being told, you know what, you're right, that seems great

[B]

and there goes the friction. And friction is where I think character is built 100%.

[A]

And I think that goes especially for things like relationships where for millennia people were paired off intimately with others in local communities. It's like people would meet at school or at church or at the Elks club or whatever it is and they would be matched based on we have a long standing friend relationship or I think they're funny, I think they're charming. We have mutual friends today. That's not really how it works. The online dating scene has created this sort of paralyzation around optionality. It's like they're meant to date in really high volumes but not to actually connect in any way. And so if you look at the filters, I think it's like 10% of men get 90% of the right swipes, the positive matches and the bottom 50% of men get no matches at all. Well what does that do for society where you've created this, this kind of environment that's super self selected in a mass optionality framework. You get loneliness, despair, and young men unemployed or underemployed in their parents basement, never matching romantically with another person, going to LLMs, getting self validation, having them tell them all the things they want to hear, becoming addicted to porn, gambling. And you can see these literal tech companies that are emerging around these exact ideas. And that's the powder keg for any civilization. I mean assassination attempts against presidents. Who are these people? They're young men under 40 that are unmarried, that don't have kids. I mean we've created this As a society.

[B]

So what do we do about that, in your view?

[A]

Well, I think this mandatory civil service is actually kind of a good idea. It's like you guarantee employment, which is really important in this era of a reformation of what jobs look like with AI. I think being able to guarantee that. I think getting people back into local communities as a focus is really important. Re. Skilling, retraining people, the trades, I think will be a big part of reskilling over the next 20 years. We need people to be electricians, to be plumbers, plumbers, to be all of those things. Welders. This is the funniest thing to me about recent government policy is that under the Obama administration, they had this huge push around reskilling the workforce. And what did they do? Code academies. It's literally the first thing that gets replaced by.

[B]

What a bummer. Unbelievable. It was a good idea.

[A]

It was a good idea at the time, but, man, they couldn't have chosen a worse profession to reskill people into.

[B]

Oh, man. You said something earlier, you mentioned about the Cold War, and I was thinking about, you know, I was in seventh grade. I'll never forget moving to New York City to start seventh grade, like in the height of the Cold War, and being petrified at night that the Russians were gonna bomb us. So I grew up with a slightly different idea of safety, I think because of that and because I think it was also specific to being a New York City kid. And we are this huge country. We're protected by two oceans. So I understand. You know, and then I was there again, of course, as I said before, during 9, 11. So I think I did always have a slightly. I wouldn't say I didn't have that idea of American safety that a lot of people did just because of my specific New York City upbringing. But I think a lot of people still have that sense, right, that we're safe because we're this big country between two oceans and wars historically haven't happened on this soil for a long time. Is that an erroneous. Like, how do you feel about. I mean, especially because you're somebody who's helping to keep us safe. Like, what, What. What are the things that keep us safe? And do we have the wrong idea or are we lulled into a false sense of security here?

[A]

Yeah, these things end up being super idiosyncratic based on what's happening at a time of maturity. Even just the few years difference in age for us is like, you lived through the heart of Reagan rearmament, the very tail end of The Cold War. I was six when the Berlin Wall fell. And so by the time I have active memories, we're in George H.W. bush era. The globalization push from H.W. into Clinton. Very, very different time, but not actually separated by very many years. I think what's happening today is there's this speed running of geopolitics that has been happening over the last, call it six or seven years, where you had this transition out of counterinsurgency, non state actor conflict. This is the war on terror essentially where we're not fighting governments really, we're really fighting terrorist organizations that are decentralized. It's highly fragmented, they're doing insurgencies inside of urban environments and transitioning from that into great power conflict. Where we're thinking about how do we deal with the threat from China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. Very, very different approach you have to take to build protections from great powers rather than counterinsurgency. And then along those lines, we had Ukraine, we had October 7th, we have the conflict with Iran and the threat to Taiwan, Xi Jinping saying we want to retake Taiwan, reunify by the end of 2027. So it's a very different geopolitical environment than the one that I was working in in the early 2000s in counterterrorism era. When we started Anuril, the defense tech company I started in 2017, it was super unpopular. I think people were roughly just like, I don't know, we're sort of coming out of this whole like war in the Middle east thing. It seems like everything is basically fine. There were employees at Google who were protesting Google working on a Department of Defense contract and they ended up pulling out of that. So it was really an unpopular moment to be thinking about this just a few years later. It's like Ukraine flag and bio. Everyone has sort of changed over to this idea of, wow, the threat of authoritarianism globally and what that does to free democratic peoples is terrifying. And the whole momentum shifted almost overnight into a posture of we have to be prepared to draw hard lines around what we're willing to allow to happen.

[B]

Will you tell me a little bit about the founding story around Anduril in 2017?

[A]

Yeah. I have been thinking about this space obviously my whole career. And one of the realizations that I was coming to was we've relied on nuclear deterrence. And I'll explain what all this means against great powers for almost A century now, 75 years, where you basically say, we don't believe that you're going to attack us because we have nuclear weapons and we will retaliate. And then you get into this idea of mutually assured destruction, that if we fire a nuclear weapon at a nuclear power, they're going to fire nuclear weapons at US War games. Yeah. And before you know it, everything is kind of toast. And that basically worked. But you see a lot of this sort of fringe conflict where the belief is as long as it stays below a certain threshold, no one's going to launch a nuclear attack. And that's kind of the line that we're drawing. But we don't want any of these conflicts to happen. I mean, look at how many lives have been lost in Ukraine. I think it's like over a million casualties now.

[B]

On the Russian side alone, I think.

[A]

Yeah, on the Russian side alone, I think it's really important to figure out how to use conventional deterrence rather than just nuclear deterrence. And what I mean by conventional deterrence is, can you convince your adversary that the cost, both monetarily and in human lives, will be too high to even think about going into conflict? And this is what Reagan did in the closing years of the Cold War. As he said, I'm going to build up, and we're going to get to the point where the Russians are going to have to. The Soviets are going to have to look across the ocean and say, do we want to continue down this path? Are we going to win? And ultimately, they decided, no, we're not going to win. We can't keep up. And this sounds sort of uncomfortable. It's like if you think about the spectrum of possibilities on a quad chart where it's like, feels good, is good, feels bad, is good, feels good, is bad, feels bad, is bad. This definitely is in the feels bad is good quadrant. It's like, I would prefer to not have to do this. It would be great if we could just say, diplomacy works every time. We can convince people without any projection of power that they should do things the way we want them to do it, but it's just not how the world works. We found this in the early days of World War II, where Chamberlain in the United Kingdom was all about appeasement. Appeasement is not deterrence. You can't prevent people from doing bad things by really believing deep down inside that they shouldn't do bad things. And so the idea behind it's optimistic. It's very optimistic. It's just not realistic. And so the Android story from the beginning was, can we create a new era of conventional deterrence where we can build capabilities that are so inexpensive and so high capability that our adversaries will say, I don't want to get into this exchange. We don't have any advantages anymore.

[B]

Even though theoretically you profit from a conflict,

[A]

sort of. Although by the time you're in a conflict, all of the things that are going to be used in that conflict are in inventory. The way that Anduril is approaching this is we're not trying to build technology to solve problems today. We're trying to build inventories of capabilities that prevent the problems of tomorrow. And so I don't view, first off, I don't think wartime profiteering is ethical really in any way, regardless. But I think the important thing is we need to build up a capability advantage over the next hundred years, regardless of what's happening right now. How are we going to prevent these things?

[B]

Because you think deterrence is really the key?

[A]

Yeah, it's super important. We don't want conflict to happen. I have spent my entire career working in defense. I've never once met a general or an admiral that says, you know what I want to do today? I want to write letters to the parents of children who died in combat. Nobody wants to do that. This belief that we're hard charging, throwing people as meatbags into combat zones is just not true. Nobody wants to do that. And I think this is really kind of the motivation for building Anduril is let's make it really improbable that will do that.

[B]

And is Anduril. Will you explain, like, are you making kind of next generation things that are. When you say they're less expensive, they're more efficient, like hopefully they're never used and they stay in warehouses and nobody dies. But like what do they do that's different than existing or earlier defense technology and weapons?

[A]

Yeah, there are probably like two different categories that you can put them in. Oftentimes these things overlap. On the one hand, it's low cost and this is what we would call attritable, which means if it is lost, it's not a huge deal.

[B]

I've never heard that word before.

[A]

It is a very defense specific word. So imagine if you have an F22 or an F35, a multi hundred million dollar fighter plane with human beings flying them. Are you going to send them into combat knowing that there's a high probability that they will be shot down? That's horrible from a loss of life perspective. It's also a tremendous financial burden that you're carrying by the loss of that asset. What if you sent in an asset that costs 1,100th of the cost and had no human operators. I'm not as concerned about what happens to that. That's what attritability is.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And that's really what Anduril is focused on, is building low cost systems that are a replacement for very high cost human systems and things that are autonomous, that are more accurate and are able to execute their mission with a lot more precision than what would be an example of that.

[B]

Like drone.

[A]

Yeah, drones. Most people think of drones as aircraft, like small quadcopters or whatever. Drones are a lot of things. They're airplanes, they're ground vehicles, they're submarines. They're basically anything that is a autonomously operated or remotely operated by a human system robot. So yes, it includes that, but it also includes things like interceptors. For example, just in the Iran conflict alone, we fired thousands of interceptor missiles. The most common high end interceptor is a Patriot missile, which was originally developed in the 1960s. These missiles cost millions of dollars, like variance between, call it two and a quarter million dollars, up to about $8 million every time we fire one in a conflict in which you're fighting Mig 29s, like a Russian fighter plane shooting a couple.

[B]

You saw Top Gun?

[A]

Yeah, you saw Top Gun. You know what this is shooting a $3 million missile. That's okay. Yeah. That's what's required for that mission, a million dollar missile. But right now what we're dealing with, with the conflict with Iran are small drones that cost tens of thousands of dollars, not tens of millions of dollars. So every time one of those comes in, we're shooting at it with a multimillion dollar missile.

[B]

Currently.

[A]

Currently. Okay, this is completely impractical.

[B]

Are they efficacious though?

[A]

They're amazing, truly amazing interceptor systems. Highly accurate, but very expensive. And so part of the mission here is can you build robots that use computer vision, machine intelligence to dramatically lower the cost of that intercept? So could you build an interceptor that could take out that category of threat for hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than.

[B]

And that's what you're building?

[A]

That's like one of the kind of areas that we're building. Yeah.

[B]

Does being a father, does this kind of like. I don't know, I think when we have children, we're so fundamentally changed. And how do you think about national security through that lens?

[A]

Well, I mean, going back to my own personal story, like I want my kids to grow up without fearing for their personal safety. If you think about Maslow's triangle, let's take care of that basic human need And I want to do it in the least aggressive and splashy way. My kids are 10 and 12. They're in fourth and sixth grade, and they're just getting to the age where their teachers and their peers are sort of familiar with what it is that I'm doing. And the way that we present what we're doing is important to me because I want them to be able to be proud of what it is that we're doing without feeling like they're in this really weird kind of twilight zone where they're constantly having to defend with their peers what it is that their dad does for a living. Of course, which is complicated, and I recognize that. Yes, of course, it's very complicated.

[B]

But I think we need to bring. That's the nature of everything. I mean, we as human beings are complicated. We have all kinds of gradations of light and dark, and we're always sort of fighting with the good wolf and the bad wolf within us to a certain degree. And I think, again, that's this reductiveness in the culture around this is good, this is bad, I think is ultimately so not only harmful, but also, I think, against, like, intelligence, you know, that kind of lack of understanding, that there's, like. There are layers to things and complications to things.

[A]

But, yeah, and the tension is important. You know, just a few weeks ago, the Pope was kind of pushing back against what was going on in Iran. And I think it was during his Easter homily, where he said, God does not hear the prayers of those who are waging war. And as a Christian myself, I think hearing that, there's a number of ways that you could respond. You could respond by saying, wow, this guy is a kook. He's rejecting millennia of just war theory, which is the Augustinian tradition around engaging in war. You could look at it and say, wow, what am I doing? The Pope himself is telling me that the thing that I'm doing is bad.

[B]

Or.

[A]

Or you can approach it from a perspective of tension. It's like, what is the truth that the Pope is trying to get across?

[B]

Or you could approach it from a more mystical aspect of Christianity, like, as opposed to taking it literally. And this is just a random hypothesis that's occurring to me. You could think like that, you know, if you were using it as a metaphor of, like, you know, somebody who is, like, engaged in againstness all the time, you know, as opposed to, like. But maybe he was referring to actual war, but it could have been something more mystical or metaphorical.

[A]

Totally. And I actually really like that framing. It's like if your approach is an approach of waging war, where your heart is in a place where you're, I want to go and conquer or destroy, there's probably not a great way to justify that morally.

[B]

Right.

[A]

If your heart is a heart at peace, there's a difference between peacemakers and peacekeepers. Peacekeepers are saying, I'm just going to passively not create conflict. Whereas peacemakers are saying, sometimes you have to create conflict to bring it to engineer a long standing peace. And so if you're approaching it with a heart of peace, I think it's very different at that mystical level than approaching it with a heart of war. But even the wisest beings in the universe, like Yoda himself, said wars not make one great. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And I think some of that is kind of what's coming out in the Pope's statements around saying, look, if you're measuring your greatness in the size of your conquest, you're not going to be in a good place. But if you're measuring your success and the peace that you create in the long term, God is not sanctioning that conflict. It's not like he's saying go and rip. I don't think that's what that's saying. I think what it is, is like, are we creating the just conditions through which we are doing this in the most ethical way possible in order to create a long standing peace?

[B]

Yeah. Can I ask you about your faith? Because I was reading about it and I feel sort of, I don't know if envious is the right word, but I, and I feel like a spiritual person, but I don't have like necessarily a framework. I wasn't really raised with one. My dad is Jewish, my mom very, you know, Episcopalian. And so there was a little. And they got married in the 60s and it was a little bit of a. It was very abnormal culturally for a marriage like that to exist. And I felt like when I was growing up, everybody was sort of tiptoeing around the subject, if that makes sense. And so we were raised kind of with traditions, but not like a, a framework of religion. And my friends who have faith have this thing that I don't have that I'm sort of like, I don't know. Again, I don't think jealous is the right word, but I want to understand it more. Is your faith, Were you raised in that? Did you find it? I would just love to hear more about it and what it does for you?

[A]

Yeah, I was raised in it. So my grandfather was actually the pastor of my church growing up. So as he often joked, his family had a drug problem, which is that they were drugged to church every Sunday, regardless of whether or not they wanted to be there. But, yeah, I kind of grew up going to church. My mom and my dad are incredible, beautiful believers, really, I think, taught me to challenge and to press on areas where I had questions. So it didn't feel super simplistic. It felt a bit more robust, probably, given that. But then I went to Georgetown and Jesuit. You would think that the Jesuit Catholic thing would have been kind of an identifying characteristic of the academic experience, and it really wasn't. I think for the first time in my life, I was presented with a world that really said, you have to be able to explain why it is you believe what you believe. It's not enough to just say, like, well, this is. I'm a Christian. That's just. There's nothing else to do.

[B]

Kind of a get out of jail free card in a way.

[A]

Totally. Yeah. And so, really, in college, I had to go through what's called apologetics, which is like, defense of faith. Like, why is it that I believe this? Does it stand up to scrutiny, reason? And am I comfortable with the things that I thought that I believed my entire life? And there were some areas where I think I came through that experience and said, I. I don't know, maybe I would frame it differently than maybe the way that Sunday school would have framed it growing up.

[B]

What would be an example?

[A]

I think I'm a lot less convinced of literal interpretations of parts of the Scripture. That's not to say that I don't believe in them or I don't believe in the narrative that created the theological traditions and practices that we hold today. But it's not super important to me. Whether or not the Earth was created 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago, I just don't care. No part of that makes me feel more true to my faith. It just doesn't matter. So I think that was part of it.

[B]

And also the metaphor, right? Doesn't the metaphor play into some of that? I mean, I would imagine when you read the Bible, there are parts that are inhumane and brutal and things that Jesus didn't say. And sometimes I think, like, even the Old Testament, when I studied that through a mystical lens, so much of that is about. Is metaphor. And it's meant to be taken as, like, about ego or ego diminishment or, like, ways to Become who you truly are, as opposed to, like, what's literally in there, or.

[A]

Well, I think that there are some parts that were kind of ambiguously metaphorical, and then there are other parts that were explicitly metaphorical. I don't think it's random that Jesus approached almost all of his teachings in parable. He wasn't telling historical stories. He was just saying, let me tell you a story about a man with two sons and a man that was sowing seed on pebbled ground. These are all metaphors. They're all parables. And I think that the human brain learns in this way from experience and story. So I think just holding on to the need almost to be intellectually right about something and just saying, look, the idea is my heart. That's the part that matters is like, where is my heart? What am I learning from this? How is it shaping my character? And I think that became really important to me and my experience of that, entering into the marketplace, going into government work, being in tech, working in venture capital. It's like there are so many people that are brilliant and super intellectual. Maybe they're trying desperately to get in touch emotionally with what's missing in their life. And it's really common, actually, to find people that are like, I don't know what it is, but there's something missing. I've made it. I have all this monetary success. I have fame, I have influence and power, but something's missing. And there are all of these philosophers that have been talking about this for thousands of years. Pascal C.S. lewis said, if we find that there's something missing, wouldn't that suggest that there's something more, there's something higher? But then you have pop culture icons, mo money, mo problems. Kanye talks about this over and over. Eminem talks about this. It's like, I think as a rural kid from Ohio, I grew up looking to these exemplars in our society of what success looked like and thinking, wow, they have their stuff together. They've really figured it out. And then you get to that level, and it's like, man, there's so much emptiness. People that are just searching for meaning.

[B]

I mean, I imagine you must kind of rub shoulders with a lot of these guys in your position who feel kind of, I don't know, like there's a vacancy or a lostness or, like, do you. When you are with some of these guys who are super powerful and wealthy, do you feel like, you know, I don't know, imparting wisdom to them? Do you. Is it difficult to be in Circles with people who, I don't know if I would, you know, are morally, I would say maybe not aligned.

[A]

Well, I actually don't think there's that much moral misalignment. We can come back to that. But I think that coming into really, like, founders fund in 2013, 2014, I had no expectation that I was going to show up, and suddenly I'd be like the Christian guy in tech. I think ultimately what happened is that people would ask questions and I would just actually answer them. I wasn't afraid to say, yeah, I'm a Christian, and I actually believe this stuff. And I've thought a lot about it, and here's why I think that this is true. And over time, it just kind of snowballed where I would do a whole pitch meeting with a founder telling me about their company, and then afterwards, they'd say, can we talk privately? And then they would say, I'm really struggling with this part of my life. I heard that you're a Christian. Can you pray for me? Can you suggest what I might be able to read that could help with this? And ultimately, God is going to decide what he wants. And when the doors of the windows open, I'm just trying to walk through them. And I've been really surprised at the response to that. The people that have reached out to ask for. I wouldn't say wisdom. I'm not sharing anything that's new. I'm just sharing my experience and the things that I've read or I've learned that I think might resonate with them. And so it's been really cool to see. And I do think that there's, like, sort of a new openness that didn't exist even 10 years ago. I don't know if you've watched the HBO show Silicon Valley, which is.

[B]

I haven't, actually.

[A]

Should I. I mean, it's so cringy because it's so true. It's actually sort of painful to realize that the parody is just more or less reality. But there's an episode where they say in Silicon Valley, you can do anything. You can microdose, you can be in a polycule. The only thing you can't do is be a Christian. That was 10 years ago. And I feel like today this experience of Eastern mysticism and all these things that the tech founders of the early 2000s went through, there's this really interesting resurgence in interest for the classics people exploring traditional religion.

[B]

Right. Is that because it marries well with more. Right. Ideology, do you think? And that's kind of the prevailing ideology, or do you think that it's like this? I don't know. I think that when I hear you talk about it, I feel like there's this very fundamental thing in being a human being that we don't have answers, that things can feel incredibly lonely, and that there are existential questions all the time. And I think that's why people used to love their kings and queens, because if there's hierarchy or there's order that's endemic, we feel safe. So, I mean, do you think that from a Christianity perspective, the reason that it's sort of more on the rise is because the whole country seems to be going more conservative?

[A]

I don't think it's political. I would say that it's probably a couple of things. The first is that I think people that have been seeking didn't find what they were looking for and whatever the prior paradigm was. And so I think that they're increasingly open to trying to explore things that maybe they hadn't considered. And I think that's aided in many ways by how imitative humans are. We have a tendency to sort of parrot what people around us are doing. And once it became acceptable where there were enough people that were exploring it, it was now culturally okay to be out talking about it. And to your point about kings and queens, this is actually a great example from the Old Testament. I think it was the book of Judges. There was a situation where the Jewish people did not have a king, but all of the neighboring kingdoms did. And they actually came back to the prophet and they said, give us a king. And he was like, why? Why do you want a king? And they said, well, all of the other civilizations around us, they all have kings. And he said, but this is what happens when you get a king. You get all these bad things. And they said, we don't care. We want a king. And so he gave them a king. And then all of those bad things happened. And I think ultimately that's like the mimetic nature of our humanity is like, we want what other people want. And that desire is imitated in both good ways. That's how we learn by imitating our parents, by imitating our older siblings, our peers. But there's also a lot of negative parts to that as well, where we're imitating ego, we're imitating greed, we're imitating loneliness. And social media, for example, is. It's like the mass accelerator. Accelerator of imitation at societal scale. And we've seen the deleterious outcome of that sort of Investment, for sure.

[B]

I think it's really important too to always question as you go. Right. Like when you're. If you're engaging in a belief system, I mean, maybe this is like the person that I am. I've always pushed back and questioned things like. I think that's a really important part as well. Do you agree?

[A]

100%. Yeah. I think there's this kind of genius interview question that I always ask that's what is something you believe to be true that you believe most of your peers disagree with you about?

[B]

That's a good dinner party question.

[A]

It is. And it's actually really hard for most people to answer the question because if they really think about it. Do you actually believe anything that you think would be upsetting to your peers?

[B]

Yeah, that is a really good question. I would have to think about that. What's your answer to that question?

[A]

I have so many. But this is what I do for a living. This is what I think about all the time. Yeah. I think we want to constantly be fighting against this impulse to just be chasing whatever it is that's happening. Silicon Valley has people think of them as like, them the tech industry. They think of the tech industry as this like incredibly opinionated, sort of free thinking group of people. It's really not. I mean, it's highly mimetic. It's like they were super progressive and now there's like this turn to traditional religion. And they went from being very against things like defense tech to being hyper for defense tech.

[B]

If they were early investors in Andoril.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. And so you get these wild swings

[B]

and it's just like, what does that mean to you as somebody, like a man of real faith when you see that pendulum swing around you?

[A]

I just want to be true to my convictions. And that means that I'm constantly wanting to ask myself, why is it that I believe this? Do I believe it because it's comfortable to believe it? Because the people that I care about, their opinion of me believe that thing? Do I believe it because it's a desire for something that I want that's purely imitative of someone else's desire? I'll give you a great example. I'm going to criticize myself, but sort of in a way that I'm open to accepting that this is a valid criticism of myself. I love Aston Martins. Love them.

[B]

Why is that a criticism?

[A]

Why do I love Aston Martins?

[B]

Why?

[A]

I want to be James Bond. If I just saw a lineup of cars and the whole James Bond franchise never existed, I don't think I would have necessarily picked out and Aston Martin

[B]

as my favorite film. It's only criticism depending on which James Bond you're talking about.

[A]

That's true. That's true. Some are better than others, and I'm very curious to see who the next one is going to be. But I think being able to be honest with yourself, to say I want that thing because someone that I admire, some model that I have, also wanted that thing, like in the Aston Martin example, I'm comfortable with admitting that that's the case, even though it's sort of, like, devalues my interest in some way, because it's like I'm just borrowing someone else's desire.

[B]

I don't think it devalues that. I mean, I think inspiration is such a beautiful quality. Like, if you see somebody and they inspire you, and if there's a way to personify that or make it tangible, I don't know. I do that all the time.

[A]

Yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. As long as you're choosing good models.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

You don't want to be inspired by bad models, but. Yeah, no, I think. I think that's right. What inspires you?

[B]

You know, learning, curiosity. I'm so. I'm such a fundamentally curious person. I can go down rabbit holes for hours. I love. I love understanding other people and other points of view. I love. And helping people inspires me a lot. Like, I spend a lot of my time trying to understand what somebody needs, and I think it comes from a place of my own pain, too, you know, like, trying to. I think I'm very good at feeling people and seeing people and kind of helping. My inclination is always to, like, pour into that, and it makes me feel very inspired and like, that there are endless possibilities.

[A]

What is the source of that, would you say? For you? It's like, where does that interest in pouring into people come from?

[B]

I think it's a very fundamental part of me. And again, I think a lot of it comes from pain. Certain things that I went through in my life. And I think being there are sort of negative parts of that, too. Like, there's a hypervigilance that I have, you know, that comes from a life of a lot coming at me and certain traumas and things like that. And I think the bad side of that hypervigilance is that my nervous system is fucked off a lot of the time. And I think the upside is that I. I can feel people, and I sort of love people, you know? What about you? Besides an Aston Martin, of course.

[A]

I think you and I actually have this in common. I lost my dad when I was 30. Wow. He was 58.

[B]

Oh, my gosh.

[A]

Which I think is the same as when you lost your dad.

[B]

I was 30 as well.

[A]

Yeah, I'm sorry. I lost him to Alzheimer's, which was pretty crazy to see someone you love kind of deteriorate and not become themselves.

[B]

And also someone you presumably had on a pedestal.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. And there are all these things that I feel like I would sort of make fun of him for playfully, not, like, behind his back and characteristics of him that I was like, man, I'm never going to do that. I remember in high school, he would always make me change the oil in my car. And he was like, trey, it's a life lesson. You have to learn how to do this because how else are you going to do it when you're an adult? And I was like, dad, I'm going to go to Jiffy Lube and pay someone else to change my oil. But then, you know, the first year after he passed, I guess months after he passed, my wife was pregnant with our first son, and I was getting the nursery ready and I was trying to hang a chandelier in the nursery, and I just couldn't do it. I couldn't figure out how to do it. I didn't know what I was doing. And I just remember laying on the floor and weeping, being like, man, I don't think I really appreciated him enough when he was around. Because right now, this is the time that I would call my dad and say, dad, help me do this thing. And I just didn't. I realized for the first time, I don't have my dad anymore. That's. I mean, it's crazy. As like a 30 year old, I was supposed to have, like decades more with him to have grandchildren that I could bring to him. And I think it just, like, it really changes your perspective on the time that you do have with your loved ones. In particular. I want to be around for my kids, for their kids, and I want to appreciate the moments that come without just getting caught up in. I'm on a wave and the wave is just full speed ahead all the time.

[B]

What do you think he would say now if he could see what you're up to?

[A]

Oh, he would just be all. He would be making fun of me constantly. He could not like making bomb jokes, you know, he could not suffer a single moment of being happy for me in the most playful way. He'd be like, oh, wow. Great job. You got straight A's. Get back to work, you loser. Yeah, I think he would have. He would have privately been very proud of me, and publicly, he would have been very jokey about everything that's happened.

[B]

Wow. Okay. You made me cry.

[A]

Yeah, me too.

[B]

I want to ask you one last question. This is a question that my husband asks a lot because, as I said, he's very progressive. And if you read the Gospels, it's very. I mean, Jesus is very unambiguous around, like, you know, all the things. The meek shall inherit the earth and love thy neighbor as thyself. And in our climate right now, some of the rhetoric is not that. Right. How do you hold those things at the same time, genuinely like, as somebody who worked in a Trump administration, how does that work?

[A]

Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. You read the Sermon on the Mount. It's very clear about where we should be spending our time and effort. Mindshare. And again, I kind of think about this on that quad chart that I was describing. It's like there are a lot of things that feel good and are good that you think about. Things like health care or nonprofit work or working with at risk communities, whatever. There are a lot of things that we can all agree are in the is bad, feels bad category. You know, child sex trafficking, murder, theft. And then you have these complicated. The complicated diagonal. The like. Is bad, feels good. And these things are like, sort of culturally, in a moment where, you know, it could be things like gambling, Like, I would argue that gambling is really. There are probably some demographics where it's not a huge issue, but really, it's like robbing from the poor in many cases.

[B]

Pornography is also reinforcing what you were talking about earlier, this sort of culture of basement culture.

[A]

Right, exactly. Pornography is another one of these where you could frame it as some sort of female empowerment thing, but the damage that it's doing to society is probably not even worth it. If that were the argument you were making, legalization of drugs, you could probably put in that category. Obviously, you can make arguments around the edges of these things. I'm painting an overly broad picture intentionally. And then you have this other quadrant of is good feels bad, and I am not in any way going to defend that. National security. Working in national security feels good. It doesn't. It doesn't feel good. Law enforcement doesn't feel good. I would call this quadrant duty and responsibility. On a personal level, the Gospels are checking the condition of our heart. Turn the other cheek. Absolutely. We should do those things, how we respond to giving with our personal finances. There are three different stories in the New Testament in the Gospels of Jesus telling people to give away some portion of their wealth. But he told all three of them. But he told all three of them different amounts. He told one give away half. He told one give away, I think a third. He told another to give away all of their wealth. He was speaking to the condition of their heart. Where's your idol? And he was saying, look, your idol is your wealth. You need to turn from your idol. So I think these things are speaking to the condition of our hearts on a personal level. Societally, I think we have to respond to things differently. And I think those frameworks are governance. It's what is good governance. How do you care for society? How do you provide the conditions through which people have the freedom and the expression for those character their heart condition? And unfortunately, due to the nature of the real world, there are bad actors and we have to do what we can to keep those bad actors from taking whatever they want. And that's really where defense comes in. That's where law enforcement comes in. And there's an ethical way to do that. We don't need the accelerated, intense rhetoric that does not jive with me personally. But we do need to actually have laws and boundaries. And as a resident of San Francisco, I can tell you the difference. In a city that doesn't prosecute crime, in a city that does prosecute crime. And people are going to reach a better place personally. Fulfillment with abundance in a society that respects law. And I'm simultaneously admitting that that doesn't always feel good.

[B]

Well, I'm afraid I've gone a bit over my time, so thank you so much. This has been such an interesting conversation, very edifying, and I really appreciate you coming on.

[A]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Thank you. Thanks for tuning in. This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey or wherever you get your podcasts.