--:-- Matt Shortal: Frankly, in the beginning, they didn't work at all. That's when the DOD first started to realize that it was a totally new threat. You can learn them the hard way by just starting a company and going out there. Or maybe you can have some training wheels. But ultimately, there's no way to learn how to do this job other than to just do it. As taxpayers, as veterans, and as founders, we should want that level of competition and that cutthroat competition to onboard things quickly and offboard things quickly. You can't have a company where people are split on what they care about and what those foundational values are. You have to be all on board. Do you want to do something meaningful? Do you want to do meaningful work? It's very clear what the stakes are and it's very clear why it's important.
--:-- [Stage Direction: The episode begins with Matt Shortal introducing the topic.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: In 2025, the battlefield is not just overseas. It's in the tech stacks, the logistics networks, and airspace security systems that power our national defense. And who better to design solutions than those who have faced these problems firsthand, those who have served. In this episode recorded live at our third annual American Dynamism Summit in the heart of Washington, D.C., A16Z's Matt Shortal, operating partner and chief of staff, plus a veteran himself, sits down with three veterans who have turned to the private sector to build technology companies tackling secure communications, military logistics, and drone defense. Joining this conversation is John Doyle, founder and CEO of Cape, David Tuttle, co-founder and CEO of Rune, and Grant Jordan, founder and CEO of SkySafe. Today, you'll get to hear on-the-ground stories from these veterans, like how their time in uniform has shaped the scope of problems that they see, and ultimately what they've chosen to build. They also discuss whether a jump directly from military to entrepreneurship is possible, or whether a stint in the private sector is needed, like the time that David spent at Anderil, or that John spent at Palantir. And finally, how does this unique group of individuals who have spent time on the battlefield and in the boardroom think our collective culture is changing around the national project? Listen in to find out.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt introduces the guests and sets the stage for the discussion.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: I'd like to start with just hearing your initial story, what you did in the service, and then also what inspired you to join initially.
--:-- John Doyle: What inspired me to join initially was what I think inspires plenty of people, which is paying for school. So the Air Force was good enough to pay for me to go to MIT. And for that, when I commissioned as an officer, I went and worked in AFRL for four years, working in the Air Force Research Lab and focusing on how do we actually innovate in the Air Force? How do we bring new systems out to the warfighter? And how do we rapidly get those systems out there?
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle begins his story.]
--:-- David Tuttle: I mean, similar family history of service to the nation. I just service to our people, went to Cornell, did ROTC there, commissioned into the Army. I left active service for a period of time, went to the private sector, and then actually went back into active service. Ended up down at the Joint Special Operations Camp for a number of years and ended up in some technology orgs at the end of my time there and then came back out and said, hey, I think we can do some great work from the private sector technology side going into the defense world. I should say I'm still serving, still serving Army National Guard officer up in New York. So I do the one weekend a month driving back there and that's been a number of years now at this point. That's great.
--:-- [Stage Direction: David Tuttle shares his story.]
--:-- John Doyle: So I almost joined like a lot of folks of my vintage. I almost joined on 9-11 or on 9-12. Obviously heavily affected by that. By that day, I was a senior in college, and I ultimately made the decision to finish my computer science degree. But then when we invaded Iraq in 2003, I felt that same call to service, decided it wasn't just a whim and something I shouldn't and couldn't ignore. And so the day after the invasion, I went to the recruiter and signed up. I think I'm unique on the panel in that I enlisted. I was on a program called 18 X-ray, which I think still exists. You can join the Army as an enlisted soldier and commit to five years up front. And in exchange, the Army will give you a shot to try out to be a Green Beret, to be Army Special Forces, after doing basic training at airborne school. And so I signed that contract the day after the invasion and I was successful. And so I spent two years doing really amazing training in the Special Forces training pipeline and three years on an SF team at the Special Forces Group.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle continues his story.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: Was entrepreneurship something you envisioned while you were serving? Did that come after? Tell me how all that works, because you're all three founders now.
--:-- John Doyle: I don't think it was something I thought about at the time in service, but I think part of my frustration in the Air Force was seeing how some of the acquisitions programs were broken or were outdated for what the pace of current technology was. And I think I saw a lot of opportunities to try to change that from the outside and to try to innovate and bring those technologies in from the outside.
--:-- David Tuttle: To be honest, it was not something that was on my radar. When I left the active service for the first time, I went to about the biggest companies you could imagine. I ended up as an investment banker on Wall Street and did that. Obviously, massive international bank presence. I think that was great for me. I don't think I had at the time, at my stage in career at that point, I don't think I had what I thought I needed to go out and start my own company or do the thing that we're all doing now. So I think for me, it was like, how do I build that toolkit of knowledge and how do I do those sorts of things in a large organization? And then now that the time was right later on, opportunity presented to us hopefully give back to the mission and help the mission that we can from a startup standpoint.
--:-- John Doyle: I think for me, I've always been a builder. The thing I loved about computer science in college was building things. I'm very proud of my service. In some ways, that was a little bit of a detour on my inevitable path to starting a company. In fact, when I left the service, I went to law school. And the reason I never really practiced law was because I figured out pretty quickly that that was not a path to, or it's really not a direct path to entrepreneurship or the kind of work I wanted to be doing. So I wound up at Palantir instead in 2013 and spent nine years at that company. It was not among the first hundred employees, but it felt very early stage. And I got a lot of exposure that I think helped me on the eventual journey to founding Cape three years ago.
--:-- [Stage Direction: The discussion continues with each guest sharing their journey.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: As you look at when you're in the service and your problems, you work in aerospace management, logistics, and then privacy first, mobile care. Were those problems you saw while serving, or did that help influence what you founded later?
--:-- David Tuttle: Absolutely. So we at RUN are focused on how do we enable military logistics, cross-services, but really on the Army and the Marine Corps side right now, how do we do field logistics? How do we enable that? And I think from my career side, we saw that not to say that military logistics can get the job done in the GWAT era, in our era of serving, But, you know, I saw very quickly that the same things we had in GWAR from a military logistics standpoint were not necessarily to enable the force to be successful in a peer adversary, a near peer adversary, whether that's in competition phase or conflict phase. When Peter was my co-founder at RUN, we were still at Anderil before we left and founded RUN. We're thinking about this problem setting, saying, like, yeah, this is something that actually needs help and needs attention. No great technology companies necessarily were really focused on it. And I said, hey, this is a need that I felt still serving when I was serving the military. and then this is a need that we think we can help advance now from the private sector.
--:-- [Stage Direction: David Tuttle explains the inspiration behind his company.]
--:-- John Doyle: When I was in AFRL, it was very, very early in the era of DOD thinking about drones on the battlefield and thinking about especially small, inexpensive drones, which at that time, we're talking like 07, 08 kind of era. Inexpensive drones on the battlefield were like, oh wow, a $100,000 drone, that's so inexpensive, or $50,000. Whereas now, what anybody can buy off the shelf for $1,000 or $500 is greater than any capabilities we had at that time. But at that point, the DoD was first starting to think about what does it really mean when adversaries can bring low-cost capabilities to the battlefield, adversaries who may not have a traditional Air Force. And what I saw early on in those initial tests and those initial developments was kind of a disconnect of the old-school, big, heavy military systems trying to be thrown at these small, light, fast threats that were kind of a totally new challenge. and I saw how difficult it was for this traditional structure and the traditional defense contractors to actually do that. We saw a lot of big systems, missiles and lasers and all of these things, which were big, expensive, bespoke systems built for a prior era of warfare, trying to be thrown at this small problem. And frankly, in the beginning, they just didn't work at all. And I think that's when the DOD first started to realize that it was a totally new threat, it was a totally new thing, and it's something we've seen borne out since then, in pretty much every conflict since then, you know, certainly in Ukraine, where we've got tens of thousands of drones flying around all the time. And so I think that's what really inspired me and a lot of the folks on our team to do something about that and to try to think about it in a new way.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle shares his insights on drone technology and its impact.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: As you brought up Ukraine, I think, obviously, that's changed the whole paradigm in your space. And then also you. I think, frankly, I would say. All three, actually. I don't want to speak for John, but I think all of us, right, as we look at what has happened in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, right, the new technologies that have been effectively used or ineffectively used by both sides and how that changes things, right? From a logistics standpoint, certainly from a UAS standpoint from a communications standpoint I think it changed like that laboratory for better or worse has really certainly impacted the way I think about things and we think about things at Rune and I sure it has for both of you I left Palantir in February 2022 to start Cape Left Palantir on a Friday, checked into that we work on a Monday morning, and the invasion was happening. The very first question that we asked ourselves at Cape was, if you recall, commercial cellular was a huge factor, continues to be a huge factor in Ukraine, but was enormous in the initial days as a force multiplier, but also as a risk. Both sides were using commercial cellular heavily and enjoying benefits of that, but also literally targeting missile strikes against each other based on that signature. And so the first question we asked ourselves as a company was, what tech do we wish the Ukrainians were using right now? And how do we get that tech into Taiwan ahead of an eventual Chinese invasion that hopefully never happens, but we certainly need to prepare for? And that's really been a motivating question for the company from the beginning.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt discusses the impact of the Ukraine conflict on their work.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: I think if you look at logistics, obviously they stopped outside of Kiev. So the Russians had a few issues there. As we look at going from veteran to founder, can you jump straight from veteran and found a company, or do you need to stop somewhere in between an and or all, a Palantir, and know what right looks like, know what culture you need to set? I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
--:-- John Doyle: I think you can become a founder at any point in your career. If it's something you're going to do and it's something that's sort of in your blood, I think that it's inevitable. I will say personally, my stint, which turned out to be almost a decade, at Palantir in between service and starting a company. I learned a ton. The culture at Palantir, I think, is borderline legendary at this point and the reputation is warranted. But also the mechanics of how to operate in a company, what does an innovative company look like, fostering innovation and allowing a little bit of chaos and a little bit of things to bubble up within the stew, but without the wheels coming off. Those are important lessons for a founder to learn. You can learn them the hard way by just starting a company and going out there. Or maybe you can have some training wheels for a few years at a Palantir and Andrew. I would say my experience at Palantir certainly was helpful and I think has helped set us up for success in some ways. But ultimately, there's no way to learn how to do this job other than to just do it.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John shares his thoughts on the transition from military to entrepreneurship.]
--:-- David Tuttle: Yeah, I would say I think it's a very individual and a very personal question. Like, what are your life experiences? Right. I think we all come out of the military with a great set of leadership skills, a great set of communication skills. We understand we have some domain expertise, right, in what we're doing. But I think it's really boils down to, again, to use the toolkit analogy of like, how strong do you as a veteran feel coming out of this and committed to it? And do you think you have the skills to be able to do it? To John's point, I think for me personally, I wanted to get out in the time that I had in finance and then the time that I had at Andrel, very similar to like the Palantir ethos there. How do you move fast and break things? But that's okay to get towards a mission and do those things. To me, that is super valuable experience as I now lead a team and lead the company. But that's not to say that we have different paths to get here. I mean, all three of us have different paths. That doesn't mean you might not have had different experiences prior to service, right, before serving or coming out. And I think that's a very individual. I hate to be a cop out on it, but I think it's a very individual choice to make.
--:-- [Stage Direction: David Tuttle shares his perspective on the transition.]
--:-- Grant Jordan: I would agree with that. I would say, for me, when I left the Air Force, I went to grad school after that. And I think having some distance from it is helpful. Whatever that distance is, whether that's a big corporation or doing something entirely different or grad school, I think having a little bit of distance, seeing a little bit of a different set of culture, a different set of problem sets. Also, you know, it helps you maybe in some ways distance yourself from some of the frustrations of the government bureaucracy and the military and all of that to then kind of refresh yourself to go face those challenges and jump back into it. But I think also just trying to figure out how you should do things differently out in the private sector, out in the commercial sector, how you can take the good parts of the military, of government service, and apply them. Take the good parts, ignore the bad, drop the bureaucracy bits that are not helpful to anybody, and figure out how you can benefit from it. But I think there's a lot of good things to take from it, especially a lot of the kind of mission-driven focus. We've had lots of folks on our team over the years who have been prior military or prior intelligence, and there's no replacement for that mission-driven focus. There's no replacement for that actual commitment to making a difference.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Grant Jordan shares his thoughts on the transition.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: Matt, where do you come down on that question? So that's a good question, and we debate that internally. Personally, I transitioned out, and I was part of Lehman Brothers' 08 MBA class, which went really well. I was there 22 days. Probably not technically your fault, though. That's not your fault. No, it wasn't my fault. Me and Dick Fould were really tight. But I think it helps to go to somewhere and see what right looks like. For me personally, especially Andoral, Palantir, SpaceX, and then Tesla, just some companies that are producing these founders. I think it really helps. But there's obviously folks that can make that jump. So I think the answer is either. But for me personally, I would want to stop along the way. You made a great point as well that I think is important. I think you always have to be careful that you don't want to just create the thing that you thought you needed when you were in the military, right? And I think that is sometimes a trap, right? We all need to use our experience to do that. But when I talk to folks about that, if you try to build the thing that you thought you needed every month that goes by, every year that goes by, what you thought you needed then is now out of date and it's stale, right? So especially as you lead a company, and I'm sure Sean can talk about it too, is like you need to be constantly thinking forward, not just creating the thing that you thought you needed in the Argandab River Valley in 2011 or 12 or in Herat or wherever it happened to be.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt shares his thoughts on the transition and the importance of forward thinking.]
--:-- John Doyle: Yeah, I agree. And we went 4G to 5G. Let's go to 10G. why stop at four? Or we built the Hornet, which is a category four fighter. And we built a super Hornet with category four plus. Skip that like the Marine Corps did. We went straight to F-35. I think that's the essential skill for a founder is that mindset. In my opinion, you have that or you don't. That's part of who you are. It's not. There are other skills that support that overall mindset, that insistence on way forward thinking, ambitious goal setting. And you can learn those skills, certainly in the military. You can learn those skills at great companies like the ones you mentioned. So they're supporting skills you can learn, but the core, that core mindset, I think is just innate. I don't know your founding stories necessarily, specifically, but finding the right co-founder was important for me, right? So finding the right software engineer, technical co-founder, right? So Peter is my co-founder and CTO. Like, I don't know how I would have done that straight coming out of service, right? So I needed to go to a place, thankfully a great place like Andrel, where we're surrounded by those types of people to be able to find that partner. And now he and I, our Venn diagrams don't overlap that much, which is great in a co-founding pair.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle discusses the importance of co-founders and mindset.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: Let's pull in a thread that Grant brought up, and let's go culture. You might have some good responses here. Culture in the military, culture in startup land. And then you could even add finance city, which is very different. So that's a third. But let's focus on military and then startup land differences and similarities. I think I probably have a unique perspective from the military side by virtue of being an 18x-ray and only ever experiencing the special operations community in my military service. that is a naturally more meritocratic, flatter organization, I think, than the rest of the DoD. Having said that, there's still a rank structure. There's still centralized planning. There's still a very clear hierarchy and a very clear set of doctrine and a book that literally tells you how to do your job. Even in the context of special operations where you're granted a lot more creativity and a lot more autonomy, that structure still exists. What is amazing about a startup is none of that exists. You know, Monday morning, you check into a WeWork and now you've just got a company and a couple bucks in the bank, hopefully, and there's literally nothing else. You don't have an email address necessarily. And so you get to write the entire thing yourself. That can be really disorienting, especially in my experience. We have a ton of veterans at the company and they're all amazing. And I love to hire veterans, but that can be disorienting coming out of service. And so you have to create, in my opinion, a culture around, I think it's a little bit trite to say celebrating failure, but at least openly accepting failure when it happens. if people are working hard and people are taking risks and pushing the envelope and their efforts fail, at CAPE anyway, the only thing you need to do is be transparent about that and call it out when we fail and adjust and maybe name a couple of lessons learned for next time and it doesn't do any damage to your reputation at the company or your ability to operate. I think that's the most important cultural aspect at a startup because it encourages risk-taking. It encourages people to lean forward and push hard.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt discusses the cultural differences and similarities.]
--:-- John Doyle: I find that there's like common threads across all of them. So when I think of like out of broad buckets, military service, my finance experience, and now startup experience, there are like broad threads that make somebody or make something successful there, which is initiative, drive, taking chances and doing those things, right? Whether that is part of a deal team in investment banking, whether that was part of a team within the JSOC enterprise or the military writ large, or now it's part of a startup, right? So it's, yeah, how do you celebrate success? How do you encourage risk-taking? I think also I view it as like, how do you hire talent? But you understand that when that talent comes in, You've got to train, you've got to mentor, you've got to develop, right? And it's not necessarily always at a startup, at least from my standpoint, at Rune. It's not been hiring just because somebody has a skill. It's hiring somebody that I think can grow into a position or do these things or with the right coaching and development can take chances and maybe fail, as John says. But like you move on from that. So I think there are like commonalities across all of these. Obviously, the startup, you don't have the structure in place and the support structure that's in place. It's certainly at a large company, but also somewhat in the military side. So there's some differences there. But I think from a human standpoint and a culture standpoint, you can have some threads of success that are common across those.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle discusses cultural aspects and their impact on success.]
--:-- Grant Jordan: Probably for most of our companies, it's not just about government or military. Everything is dual use. Technology crosses a lot of different industries. For us it not just the kind of like military and federal market It also critical infrastructure oil and gas power companies All of these large organizations that face a lot of the same challenges that military or federal government face. I think for us, it's about balancing that culture and trying to figure out how to take the really mission-driven and what that really translates to is customer-driven, user-driven. I think there's commonality there, not an over-obsession with the kind of military portion of it, but taking the part about it about what are we trying to accomplish and how are we trying to help these people, these organizations? Yeah, you mentioned dual use. And first of all, I'd love you to define, are you dual use? Would you consider all three of you dual use or not? And then any cultural issues with that, bringing folks on board on the national defense side? Number one, I would say we're definitely dual use because kind of threats and concerns about drones in the national airspace, in critical areas, absolutely cut across all sorts of different areas. Whether it's an Air Force base or a power plant or border security, everyone is concerned. And not just because they're concerned about just malicious drones, it's about being able to use drones for good things and use drones for inspecting infrastructure and doing logistics and all of these things. But I think in that, you do need to make sure that you're building a culture that understands why you're there and what your values are and what you care about. In our world, right, we're going to end up dealing with serious stuff. And you can't have a company where people are split on what they care about and what those foundational values are. You have to be all on board.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Grant Jordan discusses dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- John Doyle: Yeah, there's some great quotes out there by Palmer Luckey talking about taking technology talent from the commercial sector and how do you convince them to come into the defense world. And I will say that, frankly, it's not that hard. Do you want to do something meaningful? Do you want to do meaningful work. And I think that's the genius behind a lot of the American dynamism companies to include, I would say all three of ours is like, how do you bring that amazing technical talent and those amazing software engineers or hardware engineers, the case may be, and bring them to something like, hey, do you want to do something meaningful for the nation, for the people and do those types of things? And how do you fuse that together with those of us who have come out of the military and do those sorts of things? I don't want to say it's easy, but it's not as hard as people would think to get them motivated about doing what's right for the country, doing what's right for our people and to do those sorts of things. And I'll also add, I think what really sorts people out on whether or not they want to join a company that does these sorts of work and these sorts of missions is you show them what you're doing, right? Nothing sorts that out faster than real world examples. When we show drones in places that are being run by prison gangs to smuggle fentanyl into prisons or in military environments, whatever, it's very clear what the stakes are and it's very clear why it's important.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle discusses the importance of meaningful work and dual-use technology.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: You mentioned dual use. And first of all, I'd love you to define, are you dual use? Would you consider all three of you dual use or not? And then any cultural issues with that, bringing folks on board on the national defense side? Number one, I would say we're definitely dual use because kind of threats and concerns about drones in the national airspace, in critical areas, absolutely cut across all sorts of different areas. Whether it's an Air Force base or a power plant or border security, everyone is concerned. And not just because they're concerned about just malicious drones, it's about being able to use drones for good things and use drones for inspecting infrastructure and doing logistics and all of these things. But I think in that, you do need to make sure that you're building a culture that understands why you're there and what your values are and what you care about. In our world, right, we're going to end up dealing with serious stuff. And you can't have a company where people are split on what they care about and what those foundational values are. You have to be all on board.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt discusses dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- John Doyle: Yeah, there's some great quotes out there by Palmer Luckey talking about taking technology talent from the commercial sector and how do you convince them to come into the defense world. And I will say that, frankly, it's not that hard. Do you want to do something meaningful? Do you want to do meaningful work. And I think that's the genius behind a lot of the American dynamism companies to include, I would say all three of ours is like, how do you bring that amazing technical talent and those amazing software engineers or hardware engineers, the case may be, and bring them to something like, hey, do you want to do something meaningful for the nation, for the people and do those types of things? And how do you fuse that together with those of us who have come out of the military and do those sorts of things? I don't want to say it's easy, but it's not as hard as people would think to get them motivated about doing what's right for the country, doing what's right for our people and to do those sorts of things. And I'll also add, I think what really sorts people out on whether or not they want to join a company that does these sorts of work and these sorts of missions is you show them what you're doing, right? Nothing sorts that out faster than real world examples. When we show drones in places that are being run by prison gangs to smuggle fentanyl into prisons or in military environments, whatever, it's very clear what the stakes are and it's very clear why it's important.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle continues discussing dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: You mentioned dual use. And first of all, I'd love you to define, are you dual use? Would you consider all three of you dual use or not? And then any cultural issues with that, bringing folks on board on the national defense side? Number one, I would say we're definitely dual use because kind of threats and concerns about drones in the national airspace, in critical areas, absolutely cut across all sorts of different areas. Whether it's an Air Force base or a power plant or border security, everyone is concerned. And not just because they're concerned about just malicious drones, it's about being able to use drones for good things and use drones for inspecting infrastructure and doing logistics and all of these things. But I think in that, you do need to make sure that you're building a culture that understands why you're there and what your values are and what you care about. In our world, right, we're going to end up dealing with serious stuff. And you can't have a company where people are split on what they care about and what those foundational values are. You have to be all on board.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt discusses dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- John Doyle: Yeah, there's some great quotes out there by Palmer Luckey talking about taking technology talent from the commercial sector and how do you convince them to come into the defense world. And I will say that, frankly, it's not that hard. Do you want to do something meaningful? Do you want to do meaningful work. And I think that's the genius behind a lot of the American dynamism companies to include, I would say all three of ours is like, how do you bring that amazing technical talent and those amazing software engineers or hardware engineers, the case may be, and bring them to something like, hey, do you want to do something meaningful for the nation, for the people and do those types of things? And how do you fuse that together with those of us who have come out of the military and do those sorts of things? I don't want to say it's easy, but it's not as hard as people would think to get them motivated about doing what's right for the country, doing what's right for our people and to do those sorts of things. And I'll also add, I think what really sorts people out on whether or not they want to join a company that does these sorts of work and these sorts of missions is you show them what you're doing, right? Nothing sorts that out faster than real world examples. When we show drones in places that are being run by prison gangs to smuggle fentanyl into prisons or in military environments, whatever, it's very clear what the stakes are and it's very clear why it's important.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle continues discussing dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: You mentioned dual use. And first of all, I'd love you to define, are you dual use? Would you consider all three of you dual use or not? And then any cultural issues with that, bringing folks on board on the national defense side? Number one, I would say we're definitely dual use because kind of threats and concerns about drones in the national airspace, in critical areas, absolutely cut across all sorts of different areas. Whether it's an Air Force base or a power plant or border security, everyone is concerned. And not just because they're concerned about just malicious drones, it's about being able to use drones for good things and use drones for inspecting infrastructure and doing logistics and all of these things. But I think in that, you do need to make sure that you're building a culture that understands why you're there and what your values are and what you care about. In our world, right, we're going to end up dealing with serious stuff. And you can't have a company where people are split on what they care about and what those foundational values are. You have to be all on board.
--:-- [Stage Direction: Matt discusses dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- John Doyle: Yeah, there's some great quotes out there by Palmer Luckey talking about taking technology talent from the commercial sector and how do you convince them to come into the defense world. And I will say that, frankly, it's not that hard. Do you want to do something meaningful? Do you want to do meaningful work. And I think that's the genius behind a lot of the American dynamism companies to include, I would say all three of ours is like, how do you bring that amazing technical talent and those amazing software engineers or hardware engineers, the case may be, and bring them to something like, hey, do you want to do something meaningful for the nation, for the people and do those types of things? And how do you fuse that together with those of us who have come out of the military and do those sorts of things? I don't want to say it's easy, but it's not as hard as people would think to get them motivated about doing what's right for the country, doing what's right for our people and to do those sorts of things. And I'll also add, I think what really sorts people out on whether or not they want to join a company that does these sorts of work and these sorts of missions is you show them what you're doing, right? Nothing sorts that out faster than real world examples. When we show drones in places that are being run by prison gangs to smuggle fentanyl into prisons or in military environments, whatever, it's very clear what the stakes are and it's very clear why it's important.
--:-- [Stage Direction: John Doyle continues discussing dual-use technology and cultural aspects.]
--:-- Matt Shortal: You mentioned dual use. And first of all, I'd love you to define, are you dual use? Would you consider all three of you dual use or not? And then any cultural issues with that, bringing folks on board on the national defense side? Number one, I would say we're definitely dual use because kind of threats and concerns about drones in the national airspace, in critical areas, absolutely cut across all sorts of different areas. Whether it's an Air Force base or a power plant or border security, everyone is concerned. And not just because they're concerned about just malicious drones, it's about being able to use drones for good things and use drones for inspecting infrastructure and doing logistics and all of these things. But I think in that, you do need to make sure that you're building a culture that understands why you're
