0:01that and it was interesting listen to the driver say this. So on my Uber way here, you know, I hit the Uber and hit button hit button and button and really pay attention and it went like a block away from me is where he went to pick me up.
0:13And he's like and he actually comes back and says, "Yeah, this happens all the time in New York because the signals and there's so much going on here that there's just no accuracy.
0:21This happens you can look this up this happens in DC all the time."
0:24>> right outside sometimes guys have to walk around the >> It's not yeah, it's not it's just not not reliable enough. There's another thing that's kind of interesting um there's some good evidence of this too.
0:3620 1990s that's about when we declassified GPS to about 2020 was a year of apparently very low activity for solar flares.
0:46So it's very calm solar epoch. So this you know solar weather is something starting to get a lot more attention. I think for good reason, right? Cuz you know the solar seasons are not like Earth seasons.
0:58There's good evidence to show that about 2020 to where now and you know potentially another 30 50 years who knows we're in a much higher active area of solar activity.
1:10That's part of why we've actually had a lot of solar flares that have disrupted satellite communications over the last uh couple years.
1:17Uh that's why the northern lights have been in the US for a couple times this winter and last winter.
1:23Areas where when I was a kid it was never northern lights never. Now you know uh my family back in Michigan they're seeing them like every every winter now like heavily seeing them uh and this is pretty common.
1:34So there's and it's because of solar activity. Solar activity is happening that disrupts the kind of you know GPS signals it's very fragile. It just wasn't designed for this kind of stuff.
1:45So that kind of sets the stage for what we're trying to do with our company is enable US both commercial and security professionals to use drones and robotics and other platforms like that to their fullest extent without having to be dependent on a really clear GPS signal.
2:06Something that an a malign actor can easily disrupt.
2:10Solar flares might disrupt it. A building might just get in the way.
2:14Because if you think about it like as we have drones just being another robot as we have robots do more like more and more advanced things for us that protect us carries the school, deliver our food, you know, deliver DoorDash or Amazon Prime, fight our wars. Like as we do that, we need them to work.
2:34Like we need them to work. We need to rely We need to be relying on them. And it's not good enough to be like, "Well, that drone was working but all of a sudden GPS kind of dropped out for whatever reason cuz that building was in the way or there was a little solar flare here or in combat somebody brought a jammer with them."
2:48>> It's useless at that >> It's useless at that point. It's a brick, right? It's a paperweight. So, this is something that we've thought about as you think of autonomy, which is another term that in some cases doesn't mean anything anymore cuz it's been used so much. But you think of just allowing these machines to work with us we start by you know, what and what we invented and kind of developed is a system to allow that device to know where it's at. Basically answer the question, "Where am I?"
3:13As we talked about like you you you hinted at it like the inner ear for a robotic system.
3:18>> Which is what you're developing.
3:19>> Which is what we're developing, yeah.
3:20And from there then you can go up kind of higher orders of intelligence to say, "Oh, if I know where I am like if I have orientation time and space, then I can start to think about where should I go, what should I do?" I can start to kind of use this. The systems we have right now, it's it you know, it's like having I use the analogy this way. It's like a blob of a million eyeballs with no brain.
3:41>> Mhm.
3:42>> So you you have all these cameras on there, servos, radars, Doppler sensors, um magnetometers, gravitr- whatever, right?
3:52You have all these sensors on there.
3:54But, there's no intelligence that uses, just like you and I do, that use our prefrontal and our limbic system together, so that if we shut our eyes and move our head, I still know my orientation. And I know that because of that inner ear gravity shift and some kind of complex things that are happening in my head.
4:14That's what we've done. We've built kind of our autonomy solution on that premise. So, that it works in the like toughest environments. Then from there, something you can scale to, you know, say, "Hey, I need to train agents to do this particular task." Where you have like a human kind of like a quarterback and I have 10 other swarms around them that are doing it. And they have a level of intelligence to understand what needs to be done and then they coordinate with them. That human can't trust that swarm, we'll just say swarm of 10 right now.
4:45You can't trust them if they don't have a good idea where they're at.
4:48Mhm. Because as soon as [clears throat] GPS goes away, it might think it's doing the right thing.
4:53It probably does think it's doing the right thing.
4:54>> Yeah, now it's flying to Saudi Arabia.
4:56>> flying all over the place, yeah. The other thing that um we're seeing a lot of evidence on this, definitely on the combat side, but even in manned aviation, uh I saw a NOTAM from Airbus the other day. Uh NOTAM is a notice to airmen, so it's like how you publish to pilots saying, "Hey, this is happening." And you publish like interesting things or cautions you need to watch for.
5:17There's one just off the coast of Virginia of like massive jamming that was happening. So, the Airbus was not able to get GPS signals.
5:23I know of uh I know of personally I've talked with um maintainers for Gulfstream that are taking off a G5 with an ultra high net worth person in the back.
5:34That person has no idea what's actually happening with this. And the pilots are having to pull the circuit breakers for GPS 1 and 2 and take off visually because they're getting spoofed and jammed so much it will corrupt the flight management system.
5:48So, there's like this level of risk being accepted.
5:51People in the back have no idea. Like, they're not going to tell them. Like, the people in the back have no idea. So, I'm like, Yeah, don't worry about it. We'll fix it. Like, hopefully, right? Hopefully.
5:59Uh that's the world we're living in right now.
6:01>> [laughter] >> Yeah.
6:02Yeah.
6:03>> Hopefully it works, right?
6:03>> Oh my god.
6:04>> Yeah.
6:05>> Hey guys, if you haven't already subscribed, please hit that subscribe button. It's a huge, huge help. Thank you.
6:11It's There is with this, again, because it's like a remote technology, there is just so much that can go wrong, and you're laying that out right now.
6:20And yet it still comes so far in the past two decades >> Right.
6:24>> and particularly that they are so ubiquitous, everywhere in private business. Like, you're even doing that as well.
6:31>> But you, in in your Air Force career, you saw these things introduced on the battlefield early on. You stayed in the Air Force for 20 years. Eight of them were in a lot of combat. Where Where were you in the back half of your Air Force career?
6:42>> Yeah. So, after you basically the first first half of it, just flying combat back, flying combat back. Went to went to Air Force Weapons School, did some other like advanced kind of weapon stuff deep in the deep in the vault. Uh so, doing doing things in precision munitions, doing things in directed energy, all kinds of stuff like that.
7:01>> Directed energy.
7:01>> Yeah, so I got like um >> That's a loaded term.
7:04>> It is a loaded term. It is a loaded term, yeah.
7:06>> You just like swipe that in.
7:08>> Yeah, we'll direct energy.
7:09>> fling that in. Um And then uh pretty kind of normal like for an Air Force officer career. Russian at, you know, called half time. At half time of the career, go uh get a get a degree at in this in my case, Air Command Staff College, like a one-year school for the Air Force. Then I did some I did a I got to do like an internship with Air Force Research Labs, kind of like an inter- more like a fellowship, where published a paper with them on software-defined manufacturing.
7:34So, you have to go really deep on that for a year, like really study.
7:37>> Software-defined manufacturing.
7:38>> Yeah. Yeah, it was uh um it's still searchable. Like, um, but it's did some work on 4D printing, um, which is like an adaptive style technology. Uh, and now like I was a little bit ahead of my time on that. Now there's some companies like actually developing this.
7:54>> 4D?
7:54>> Um, yeah, the idea being using graphene and some other materials that can conduct really well.
8:02Um, the fourth dimension being after time where you produce something and then that time or other other, um, can be an other stimulus as well. That time or other stimulus then changes it to some other shape.
8:20This is very real. This is very, yeah, this is very real.
8:22>> Yes. So, there are if you use the right kind of systems, the right kind of systems, um, and the right kind of the right kind of materials, you can program into it behaviors that will happen at a later point.
8:40>> Oh, now I get it.
8:41>> Yeah.
8:41>> Okay.
8:42>> That behavior could be triggered by an environmental change or by a time change or by a couple of different things depending on how you design it.
8:49So, it could be water. I one of the ones that I think is really compelling, I believe there's some companies looking at this, is like self-healing pipelines for oil, gas. So, idea of like, okay, it's it has a certain coating on it.
9:04That coating probably has a substance called graphene in it.
9:07>> Which they call like the miracle material.
9:08>> the miracle material, right? But there's some derivatives of that so it wouldn't have to necessarily be graphene.
9:13That's where some of the like real research, people that are on the cutting edge of this would know that. And but the idea is like, okay, it detects a weakness and then it's able to extend its thickness in a certain area to prevent like structural damage from it.
9:28So, so did got to go really deep on that anyhow for the Air Force, um, which is a a fun little kind of side.
9:34>> And that I like, so you what was the name of that place you were for a year for the education?
9:40>> That's Air Command and Staff College.
9:41>> and Staff. Where is >> Yeah. Maxwell uh Maxwell Air Force Base, which is in Montgomery, Alabama.
9:46>> Oh, yeah.
9:46>> Yep.
9:46>> Yeah, yeah.
9:47>> Yep.
9:48>> And then you show you're doing all these other different jobs as opposed to what you did earlier on your career. Do you Did you go to MIT after you left the Air Force?
9:58>> as I retired. As soon as I retired.
9:59Yeah.
10:00>> first of all, what went into your I mean, 20 years is a long time. 20 years and 23 days.
10:04>> Yeah. 23 years and 23 >> But it's a long time to be in the Air Force. This is all you've known in your adult life. What went into you saying it's time to turn the page?
10:12>> Kind of some of the the the last couple things I did were informative of that.
10:16So, um I was over in Stuttgart um at uh it's a staff tour. Um pretty normal, like my one non-flying, non-operational tour. Uh called Special Operations Command Europe. So, I was over there from 2015 to 2018.
10:31This is also when all the stuff was happening in Crimea.
10:34>> Mhm.
10:35>> Yeah, so I was I was very focused on this, doing all kinds of kind of interesting things there.
10:39>> All right, so here's a gross fact.
10:40Traditional bed sheets can hold more bacteria than a toilet seat. It's not exactly what you want to lay your face on each night. But luckily, my friends at Miracle Made have bedding designed to fight bacteria and stay cleaner longer with silver infused fabrics that actually prevent up to 99.7% of bacterial growth. You heard that right, up to 99.7%.
11:02With Miracle Made, you can also sleep at the perfect temperature. Their sheets are crafted with NASA-inspired silver infused fabric that helps regulate your body temperature. Hot sleeper, cold sleeper, doesn't matter. These sheets help keep you in the comfort zone all night long. And obviously, they stay cleaner longer. Thanks to their antibacterial silver technology, Miracle Made sheets stay fresher and cleaner up to three times longer than regular sheets. That means fewer odors, fewer wash cycles, and way less laundry. And they're comfortable as hell. They feel just as good as the sheets you'd find at
11:33a five-star hotel. Not that I've ever stayed at one. And luckily for you, they also don't come with that five-star hotel price tag. So, upgrade your sleep today or give the gift of better rest.
11:43You can do that by going to try.miracle.com/julian.
11:47That link's in my description below to try Miracle Made sheets today. And here's the most important part. You're already going to save 40% when you go there, but you're going to get an extra 20% off plus a free three-piece towel set by using promo code Julian at checkout. And with their 30-day money-back guarantee, there's no risk.
12:05So, once again, that's try.miracle.com/julian.
12:08Link in my description below. And use code Julian at checkout for that extra 20% off your already 40% off order.
12:15Thank you to Miracle Made for sponsoring this episode.
12:18>> Um we did some early stuff in machine learning, so I got to learn some machine learning things um earlier, so I got kind of a real interest in ML, which informed like kind of what we do with Victus now.
12:29>> Yep.
12:29>> So, I just got I got capability and I got interested in it.
12:32>> Victus is your company.
12:33>> Victus is the company, yep.
12:35And it was also this is like we talked more in like the first half of this, but like it was a time where there was this kind of unique period for about of those three years as a unique period of about >> [sighs] >> 14 months maybe somewhere in there where I stood up it was kind of like the closest thing to being in the military but being an entrepreneur at same time.
12:54So, I got to stand up this brand new task group organization from nothing to like 75 people in a year, bunch of resources, big budget, and got to do like really cutting edge stuff with it.
13:07Really kind of cutting edge stuff with it.
13:09That it was so it was the closest thing like zero to one.
13:12Yeah, and not you know, it wasn't an actual business. There was no like profit to it or anything like that, but but it had the cultural fit of it. It had like all of that kind of. And as I was retiring, one of the things you'd tell and I tell people still this too is you want to you any and any veteran separating, really anybody in any like major kind of inflection point in their life, you know, reflect on one of besides some of the other things we've talked about, reflect earlier in your life and think about those things where you really enjoyed it.
13:41And try to put more of that into your future life.
13:44>> Ah, yeah.
13:44>> And then those things you don't enjoy, try to not repeat that. You know, it's kind of like a very pragmatic way of looking at it.
13:50>> And at this point you're married with kids >> Oh, yeah.
13:52>> for a while.
13:52>> Yep. Yep, married kids. Um so got married shortly shortly after I joined the Air Force.
13:57>> Oh, wow.
13:58>> Yeah, so we married for a while. Yeah, married for a while. Um my third was born over in Europe as well. So it was during that during that time. Yeah, 2015-2018.
14:07>> baby.
14:07>> Yep. Yeah, not in Crimea. Let's say yeah. Yeah, he does have the he has the coolest birth certificate because he has like US citizen born abroad and you know, the embassy and the consul do like a really good job with that. So he has a cool one. The rest of ours all look like they're on paper like napkins and his looks really cool. Um so that kind of informed it. I came back to the states, got re-qualified to fly the latest gunship again, AC-130J at that point.
14:31>> Hm.
14:32>> Didn't get to fly it a whole lot just cuz I'm more senior guy at this point.
14:35And then I commanded a squadron and the squadron I commanded had drones in it.
14:38And drones was actually one of the primary things I did. So we had all these different SOCOM drones, we had some commercial off-the-shelf drones like civilian drones, all the above.
14:48So got to you know, really put those things together. Like, okay, I've seen some stuff in Europe. I have an idea kind of what's like to start any organization. I learned a lot of like machine learning and started getting into coding even the stuff.
15:03And had this whole background of precision munitions and guidance navigation control, had this background here anyhow.
15:10And then you know, did that command tour and decided, okay, this is you know, this go through COVID and all this too and then decided, okay, I'm going to hang it up.
15:17I'm going to hang it up right at 20.
15:19So I turned down war college which is kind of like taking the poison pill.
15:22>> War college?
15:23>> Yeah, so I got selected to go to war college. That's war college is as you progress like in a certain level.
15:30War college is like when you go from lieutenant colonel to colonel typically.
15:33Sometimes colonel right to one star general. It's that area.
15:36>> you were effectively you're doing that chain you talked about earlier and it just turned out that way that you were actually rising through that chain and you made the call to be like, "Wow, I've gotten all the way to this point, but I'm going to go off in the private sector."
15:49>> Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I mean and it it was >> You just didn't like the politics of the military kind of thing.
15:53>> a there was a I mean there was a number of things that went into that.
15:57Um there was a number of things that I probably the most elemental one my kids were at a certain age, too. You know, I'd been gone a lot when they were very young. Now they're teenagers or in high schools like now I need to be there for them.
16:09>> Oh, so you had the third one way late.
16:11>> The third third one's still younger, but the other two were the other two are you know, they're in like early high school now and forecasting where they're going to be. So it's like now I need to be there.
16:20That's part of it for sure. I also felt I just felt like I had unfinished business um in the private sector and then sometimes you just know, right? And I just I just know like I can see these things put together.
16:33>> Wait, unfinished business?
16:34>> Yeah, unfin- well the >> been in it?
16:36>> No.
16:38But to my to me it's a good point. To me but to me it was unfinished business because like I told you before I had planned on going into the business kind of private sector pretty aggressively.
16:50And I knew like okay, I'm I'm going to go back and I've got all these skill sets and all this kind of tools and tricks that I know you know, that I'm you know, 44 right now but in some ways more like 440. So I've learned a lot and I can apply this.
17:06>> Yes.
17:07>> Like I can I can apply this.
17:08>> For sure.
17:09>> And and then also that's kind of like a lower level thing. But also at a deeper level being like I you know, the future is the future is we got to figure out how to solve these technology problems.
17:20Where can I solve these technology problems? Start my own company, invent the technology, or be on the gov side and try and help somebody else do it.
17:27>> Right.
17:28>> nope, I'd rather just do it.
17:30>> We had started to talk about this in the last podcast with regard to like your concern specifically also really focusing in on China with this and we'll break that whole thing down. But would you say your exposure to that and and the growing concern was something that you figured out while you happened to be kind of more working on the European side in 2015 to 2018? If so, what was your exposure to figuring that?
17:59>> No, you're right. Like and it was that that was where it was you know, the shift was this. The shift was like, okay, you know, it's one thing to fight this kind of like attributable asymmetric, I'm throwing out words here, right? But like to fight the Taliban, Al-Qaeda.
18:16It's one thing to do that. All of a sudden it's like, okay, now we're thinking about like the Russian Federation. Like this is a very different thing.
18:22>> Very different.
18:22>> Very different. And we all really know that it's about the CCP.
18:27>> Yeah, we all really know that. And like obviously Russia's got problems, but we always said it's that they got a GDP similar to Italy.
18:33>> Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
18:34>> dealing with a different beast.
18:35>> It's different beast. It's different beast. So, you know, that's where I looked and just said, okay, we have a problem within US military. And that problem is we're kind of victims of our own success at a tactical level. At the victim of our own success at a tactical level is you got really, really good at fighting Afghanistan style wars at a tactical level. I would not say that at a strategic level, but at a tactical level we got really good at that. Really good at that.
19:02>> Yeah, on the ground. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:04>> The problem is like that doesn't necessarily apply to something in, you know, in the Pacific or something, you know, in the fact it doesn't apply at all.
19:14And you know, I just became very convinced that like, okay, what it really is about is like, we need new technology.
19:20And the primes, the traditional primes, they're just not delivering this.
19:26They're just not.
19:28>> Is it This may be way over generalizing how you may look at it, so just correct me if I'm wrong, but is it fair to say the concern with >> [sighs and gasps] >> the potential of warfare and like a quote-unquote next war that could be with China is much more concerning as a war versus an actual like commando unit kind of war?
19:54>> it's actually all of the above. It's definitely what you just said.
19:57>> Okay.
19:57>> It's I mean, it's all It's >> is the technological espionage.
20:01>> It's all of it. It's all of it. Like the tech the surveillance and and/or coercion, whether it's like I think I can't remember we're talking off camera before the but whether it's like programming somebody, programming our kids through TikTok slop.
20:15>> Yeah, we talked about that on the >> Yeah, whether it's that or whether it's, you know, building blackmail dossiers, whether it's monitoring um congressional staffers um and using their own emails against them, whether whatever it is.
20:29>> Yeah. Yeah, or that.
20:30>> that, too.
20:31>> Uh all of the above, right? You know, full intelligence operations. Whether it's that that's just that's just preparation. Like, you know, that's nothing in compared to this the shooting potential. So, it's all of it.
20:44Like, it's the full spectrum of it.
20:47And that did did become a guy like, you know, it still is very deeply concerning to me.
20:51>> Okay.
20:52>> So, and and and looking at looking at the system, the system and and I and we can go deep on this, too, if if it makes sense. But like, the system of how we acquire, develop, technology for America's national security.
21:11>> want to go deep on this cuz we got off this in the last episode because you said it and you seem to be correct about this. By the way, I've heard this from a lot of people.
21:21Obviously, we rely on places like China so much to make all the that goes into our tech and effectively we are inviting spyware right into everything we do because of that.
21:31>> but let's expand upon this.
21:32>> No, you know, so you have you have this dependency that we created both for our national security and our commercial stuff with uh you know, drones that are flying over a farm that happens to be next to a nuclear power plant that's obviously obviously collecting data and then you know, buying the farmland all the other kind of like intelligence operations to penetration of all of our top labs and universities even at the open-source level like is is kind of widely understood now.
22:00Um penetration of congressional areas and other ones like so you have you have all that kind of like problem set. You also have a like so even zoom back. How does the military get new technology? Like how do you ensure a technology edge?
22:17Goes through this procurement acquisition kind of process. That process is largely the same as when McNamara invented it.
22:26And that doesn't work anymore.
22:28So we're buying stuff. I mean and this is oversimplified but still kind of useful.
22:33Even if we do everything right and there's and I can get into how we're not doing it right, but even if you do everything right, we buy stuff off of a 3-5 year budget when technology is innovating at like a monthly if not weekly level.
22:46>> Right.
22:47>> So you're always 3-5 years behind.
22:50Is it comforting to think that a def- you know, the US military is 3-5 years behind?
22:56>> No.
22:56>> It's not yeah.
22:57>> It's also really concerning that like the Pentagon can't pass the basic you know, budget test.
23:04>> That's >> You know, and yet now we're going to buy fast because I agree with you, we have to.
23:09>> Right.
23:09>> But like what the >> The the bureaucracy like is so top-heavy. It's so top-heavy.
23:18Uh and that's also all part of the like problems with and it's easy to say problems with the system, but it's true.
23:24Like that's all part of the problems with the system.
23:27Uh there's also just worth like even talking about like just acquisition.
23:32There is um there's an incentive problem.
23:37So the ins- the program managers like these are the people like actually buying stuff for the US military. Like they they have like authorities and responsibilities to do this. The program managers they their incentives are every and they have every incentive to avoid risk.
23:55Every incentive to avoid risk. If they go fast, it's just risk for them.
23:59Something goes wrong, they're you know, then the other opposing one protests, there's lawsuits. Like it's just risk.
24:05And they get no professional incentives that I'm aware of at all to actually go fast and take a little bit of risk, which is what you have to do when you're like a really innovative environment. Yeah, you have to do this.
24:17They have zero incentive for that.
24:20That is, you know, so a lot of people talk about the Federal Acquisition Regulation, the FAR, if you hear this term. They'll talk about the FAR, they'll talk about oh, we need to use other transaction authority. This is too analogy by the way.
24:33Um this is this is this is the best way to describe like this is how you know a system needs like it needs to be reformed.
24:41So we've we actually have like real documents out there that say okay, the primary way we should buy stuff and develop technology, new technology, buy technology. And I'm talking everything. I'm talking like very high-tech stuff, even medium-tech, kind of low-tech, all all the above.
24:59We're saying that we have documents out there saying that because the Federal Acquisition Regulation, which if I print it out, it'd be like this.
25:06And like really.
25:09Because that's so bad, our primary way is going to be something called an OTA.
25:14>> Mhm.
25:15>> OTA stands for Other Transaction Authority.
25:19So it's like you know, zoom out and think about that where we're at for a second.
25:22>> [gasps] >> Our own rules have gotten so cumbersome that the other way is now the primary way.
25:31>> The other way is now the primary way.
25:33>> That is like actually codified.
25:36We've now gotten to the point where we write rules to not use the rules we have and use the other rules.
25:42>> It's the most government thing I've ever heard in my >> the most government thing you'll find.
25:45Like it and and it's it's it it's a symptom of just how bad that system has really become. Lack of incentives and a complexity that few can kind of really even understand.
25:59That was also part of I mean rather is I have to deal with it cuz I'm selling to the government. So I have to deal with it.
26:05But that was part of like my thinking of I'd like to get outside of that, build the technology that I know that we need, and then we'll find ways to work with them in this, you know. We'll find ways to thread the needle and work with them.
26:19>> Yeah, as a side note here cuz it's always the 500 lb elephant in the room, there has been a long-standing necessary, but also slippery slope, complicated, and even dangerous alliance, if you will, between the defense sector and the military, and we know the term military-industrial complex, to where it becomes almost it but not almost, it literally is incestuous. It creates a lot of by the way, intelligence loopholes. It creates a lot of uh taxpayer money loopholes. As an uh an example of this that I'm thinking of off the top of my head, you could have someone work at CIA for 10 years making 95 grand a year or 90
27:03grand a year. They have a desk on row three, aisle five of floor four, and they leave on a Friday after putting in their two weeks. They go to Lockheed, where now they're making $925,000 a year. They walk back through the front door on Monday. They're given the same lanyard, have the same desk, but now they technically work in the private sector. And the government gets to say it's a contract that they're contracting out to this company who handles what the salaries are. Right? So, we have all this going.
27:31On the one hand, two two really positive things that are important. Number one, I do want my American companies innovating the best defense for our military.
27:40We have to have that. People that say you don't, you're living in another reality. Number two, you do have to have an incentive to do that. So, you're not going to get the best innovators if you're paying them the same government salary of $95,000 or whatever to do the work. So, this is not like I yell I I get frustrated with with the two sides of this argument like burn it all down or keep it all because I'm focusing more on the burn it all down. I'm like, "All right, that's not the solution here." However, the burn it all down crowd has an amazing point that the amount of waste, loopholes, over
28:16you know, overspending on stuff we're never going to use >> without any transparency whatsoever is a huge problem. So, you listen, it's a big ocean. My buddy Tommy G's got an amazing quote where he says, "You know, I can't boil the ocean, but I can boil my pot." You can only focus on your pot.
28:35But like in doing what you do, it sounds like you do truly believe that the product you're making, which of course as an entrepreneur of a company, CEO, founder, like you are trying to scale it, you are trying to make sure you make a lot of money and have a successful company, as you should. But, it sounds like that is because you genuinely do believe that the technology you're creating is some of the most important investments that the US government is going to make over this next rolling 10-year period.
29:01>> Oh, dude, 100% and put put another way, um we don't want a defense industrial base that is just war profiteers.
29:13>> Mhm.
29:13>> We do not want that. We do not want that. What we want is a lean, efficient and we want more than just three or four or five primes at the top taking it all.
29:25We want a highly competitive you know, I envision like this whole idea of like, "Hey, let's have five primes and just add two more."
29:33Um that's not enough. Like, I think you need you want an environment where there's like a thousand companies.
29:39>> Yes, we have an oligarchy right now. You want a democracy.
29:42>> We need we need like a thousand companies that are all competing and teaming with each other, by the way. Like, you're going to do both. We team with all kinds of folks, right? They play nice with other companies, not block them not box them out, and then your overhead is so much lower. The overhead in these companies has mirrored the bureaucratic kind of rot within USG, like for sure.
30:06That that has to be addressed. Like, I I I can't remember if we said this on camera or not, but like, you know, the budget just got massively increased, apparently.
30:14>> Yeah, we didn't say that on camera. We didn't say it on camera. Went from like 900 to 1.5 trillion or something.
30:18>> 1.5 is what uh yeah, POTUS just tweeted out, I think. Um which is unprecedented.
30:23Like, it's never >> not a war coming.
30:25>> Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's I mean >> Definitely, that would never >> It hasn't happened since World War II.
30:30So, it is a it is a logical assumption to say that there's a war coming.
30:34>> restaurants around the around the Pentagon. That's what I'm saying.
30:38>> I think uh Secretary has Hagel said one of the things he said, "Yeah, now I just like to screw with people and order pizzas randomly." Which is funny. Um so I would do the same thing about in that position.
30:48But there's two There's a couple takeaways of this.
30:51Um at least immediately I think about for the company. And my company I'm like to your analogy, like my pot that I'm trying to boil, but I'm thinking of the broader ocean, too.
31:01>> Okay.
31:01>> Like I am thinking of the broader ocean, cuz it is about the broader ocean.
31:04>> Right.
31:05>> That is one, do the Are US taxpayers getting 900 billion, soon to be maybe 1.5 trillion a year worth of defense?
31:13Are they getting that kind of national security? Okay? If the answer is no, I would argue it's no.
31:19>> Agreed.
31:19>> How do we fix that?
31:21I think a massive way to fix that is small startups, medium-size companies that are lean, mean, bring unique capabilities to them, and better contract mechanisms.
31:35That I think is actually a very a very important one.
31:39That is something I can kind of both I can't I can influence. I can't fully solve that, but I can influence it. What I am encouraged to see is you know, what I've what I've seen is a real kind of shift away from like what we're saying right now. I think there's actually a lot of people in the Pentagon right now that would agree with what we're saying.
31:57>> Oh, I actually yeah, I I agree.
31:59>> And I think that that number's actually grown.
32:02And I think it's there there's a there's a real understanding of like just paying for stock buybacks and you know, doing this kind of work in the defense industrial base is not what we need to be doing here. It's It's not what we need to actually So, there's two things need to happen.
32:18We need to use this money much more efficiently, and we also need to be buying the and developing the kind of technology that actually matter, not just keeping programs alive because they're jobs in district X.
32:30>> Mhm.
32:31>> Yeah, that's a lot.
32:32>> Yeah.
32:33So, there's a lot of work to be done there.
32:37And can it be done without a, you know, literally an act of Congress? I don't know, to be frank. I don't know. I think it probably does take congressional action.
32:50Goldwater-Nichols style congressional action to create a USSOCOM, like that kind of action back from the '80s.
32:57So, I think like ultimately the, you know, the people's representatives have to make something like this happen. Like they have to push for that. Um So, I think that's that's important.
33:07And that's part of the kind of the overall solution. But also like success wins.
33:13Success wins. Like, you know, um >> [snorts] >> it's so like deeply within like both Americanism and also like very pragmatic people that are trying to do defense and ultimately just care about does it work?
33:24Does it have the capability? So, what we try to do is be very focused on like delivering very real capabilities, solving those nasty problems that have not been solved within drones and robotics.
33:37And then offering it to something that's and this is something that uh um my brother talks about this uh commercial software type for his whole career.
33:47And and he kind of >> He co-founded the company with you, right?
33:49>> Yeah, he did. Yeah. Uh and he's an advisor kind of now. And part of the thing he said earlier always I really took on and I like is treat the government like a commercial customer.
34:01Not treat the government like something we're fleecing to do these inflated, you know, these inflated contracts that we're never going to deliver on. Like, treat them like a commercial customer, you know? Uh whether it's a B2B or whether it's a consumer like, hey, they have pain points, they have they're price sensitive, like all all the things that you would do in commercial software to deliver real value to that customer.
34:24Um and we've and we've just lost that for all kinds of reasons, you know? And there's not not that there's not patriots and good Americans at uh you know, defense contractor or traditional primes that are. You know, I've got friends in in all of them. But but there something something's just gone awry.
34:41Something's just gone awry.
34:42>> Well, it's passing the buck, too. It's opportunism. Guys are in, you know, one big deal with the government and like, "Oh, I can make 400 million instead of 300, I'll do it. Someone else will not waste the money." And it happens extrapolated in all those situations a million times.
34:57>> Yeah. No, I agree like but it, you know, and and you can justify it, right? And there's you can >> Of course.
35:03>> you can justify it. You know, "Well, look at the uh you know, it's better than a Somali daycare."
35:09>> [laughter] >> It's like, you know, life's about perspective sometimes.
35:16>> Yeah. We're sending weapons of war.
35:18>> There's perspectives at least, you know, at least they're producing actual F-35s.
35:23>> in Minneapolis.
35:24>> Yes. Like, yeah.
35:25>> It's like it yeah, [laughter] actually.
35:27>> Yeah, actually.
35:29Um But there's a I mean, there's just a lot of work to be done there. So, but I but I uh that was that was very animated to me. That's um ultimately why I retired. So, basically I retired. I did a machine learning fellowship at MIT like as I was retiring.
35:45And then went and got a degree out of there and founded a company out of there.
35:48>> So, you got you got That's a big deal getting into MIT. I mean, insane insane human capital and talent over there. You What kind of stuff you're looking at?
35:56>> The the good like um the good thing about MIT is like nobody's arrogant there because the person sitting next to you actually is smarter than you.
36:05In almost every context.
36:07>> Among the student base or the >> I my experience was it there's a unique kind of culture there that, you know, it's very engineering focused. Um there's no law school, there's no med school, you know, there so it's very very like research focused. Um of course, there's like, you know, different hierarchies and cliques like any group of humans are.
36:28Um but it was still you know, still it was uh I enjoyed my time there for sure because it was still very much unlike performance and inquisitive minds, you know, um which I liked. So, that >> What what's the what's the number outside like the education on the material? What's the number one skill set you develop there added to the repertoire?
36:48>> The um and I got to test this too was and um working, collaborating, and leading like very diverse engineer skill sets.
37:00>> Mhm.
37:00>> You know, so like you take a PhD from robotics versus a AI one versus somebody who's doing like mapping human genome.
37:10And these are all like PhDs.
37:11>> Oh, yeah.
37:11>> Right? And then putting them together and trying to extract something meaningful.
37:15This is you know, this is ultimately what a tech startup has to do. You put some kind of variables like this together and then you have to extract something meaningful that's so compelling that it will separate a customer from their money.
37:26>> Right.
37:28>> Uh you know, so it can't be like a lab project. It can't be a pet project. It has to be extremely low ego, collaborative.
37:34Um but that skill set I got to like do reps on this, you know, multiple times when I was there.
37:39>> too, cuz you know, engineers are very especially the highest level ones very wired in on what they do. Yeah. And then when you're bringing across them to entirely different engineers like you said, it's like >> Yeah.
37:51>> These language is Japanese, English >> Yeah, it's no, it's very different.
37:56>> Very different.
37:56>> I developed some of that like um in those uh those early days like as a right before I went to Air Command Staff. So, like at you know, as like a kind of like you're at like the pinnacle of your flying career is like they call it like a mid-level captain. I've been in that for about 8 years. I'm I'm an instructor. Like that's when you got your best in some cases um depending on how much you get to fly, but that's usually kind of like a key key part of your uh you know, overall like flying career.
38:24And I started to do that with like some of the weapon stuff and all I ever did and worked with like very different engineers. And I just found I really enjoyed it. So, even then, so that was something I kind of doubled down on and carried into. And ultimately, what it comes to it comes to just being a leader with very low ego, um staying humble, but confident at the same time.
38:46And the you know, the ability to drill in to an engineer to extract something that you might need for someone someone else in the team. And then kind of the ability to be like, all right, the best thing now is for me to just maybe remove myself from this part and just make sure the blocking and tackling is done.
39:04>> Right.
39:05>> And it's kind of like, you know, it's very it's very fluctuating kind of back and forth.
39:09>> Confident in your vision by hiring people to actually tell you what to do within their specific skill >> Exactly. Exactly. Yeah.
39:16>> That's a tough Listen, it sounds simple, but >> No, it's tough.
39:20>> do that. That's a That's separates leaders.
39:23>> It does, but the there are a couple of things that are very awesome about it. And one is that hand selecting a team is awesome.
39:31>> Yeah.
39:31>> When you get to like hand build a small team, and then and you get to you know, we have very high standards. Um we don't advertise jobs or anything like that because I got a list of all kinds of people that want to get in.
39:41>> I make people wear a shirt here.
39:43>> That You make them wear a shirt, yeah.
39:44>> Sometimes.
39:45>> Okay, sometimes. All right, good. You got to have standards, man. You got to have standards.
39:48>> That's our standards.
39:50>> Everyone we have is on the spectrum in some capacity, so >> That You know, >> [laughter] >> you got to have the people staring at fractals to make the good there.
39:59>> Everyone is on some level.
40:01>> It's like, if you're an autist, you're in. If not, get the out.
40:04>> My wife hates it when I say that, but like it's >> Listen, it is what it is. Geniuses.
40:08That's where the capital is, bro.
40:10>> Everybody in our Everybody in our our company is like everyone.
40:13>> [laughter] >> It's it's and it's awesome. And it's awesome. Like I don't know, it's so boring in other places. Like, I was just at uh Where was that? I did this pitch at Amazon headquarters. They call it HQ2 in DC.
40:26>> Ah, it's so good.
40:26>> And it was >> [laughter] >> it was uh Yeah. But, it was like I mean, I just describing it, right? It was like nothing about these like sleep pods and people walking like three different dogs at a time and having their fourth matcha for the morning.
40:41>> And I'm like >> a bullet in my head.
40:44>> you know, what I go to these I got go to them.
40:47But, I love Amazon. But, you go to I go to these ones and it's like you know, the question you know, the question comes up for any like startup founders. Like, well, why can't X do what you're doing?
40:58You know? Why doesn't Lockheed just make this technology? Or or if you're building a new software, why doesn't Facebook just do it? Or why doesn't Microsoft just do it? It's like, have you been in their headquarters?
41:08Like, have you seen how little work happens in some of these places?
41:11>> I have I've been I've been in some of those. You got a fair point.
41:14>> don't have to run that fast in some of these ones. You just It's amazing what happens when you get too many people together in one area.
41:20>> Yep. You get too big, you lose the magic of what you >> the magic. Um there's just there and you stay lean, small, and agile.
41:29And I hate meetings. I tell my I tell my staff I hate meetings. I hate meetings.
41:36>> I've actually ended meetings cuz I'm just like, no, I'm done. Like, we're in mid-sentence, but no.
41:40>> Right. I got a hard stop at >> I got a hard stop at >> Yeah.
41:44>> went This meeting went for 6 minutes and it was only scheduled for 3 minutes.
41:48>> So, we just want to review what was on the table.
41:50>> Yes.
41:51>> oh god.
41:52>> I just Yeah.
41:54>> Yeah.
41:54>> So, we've like that's what's been that's what's part of all part of my motivation, too, for Victus was I did the interviews as I as I retired.
42:04Like, I interviewed at one of the big defense primes.
42:06Um like every every >> Raytheon or Lockheed Martin.
42:09>> does, right? Like, you know. And I like one of them I went through I won't through a spiel in here but one of them so I went through and did like three four rounds.
42:19At the end there's so it's me and two other guys interviewing me, okay. One of them is like a old you know retired aviator from the Navy and there was like a much younger engineer pure engineer.
42:31As [snorts] we're interviewing this is like primary data rate. As we're interviewing they start arguing with each other in front of me like as we're interviewing.
42:38And then I have I was like okay noted.
42:41So I'm just kind of taking notes right like what do you do? Like I'm in the I'm in a job interview and they're arguing like there's overt hostility between these two. This is like a corporate argument or like a go yourself New York argument like what's going on?
42:52Corporate corporate it's very passive-aggressive very passive-aggressive but yeah but the the older grizzled mill guy you know he's just like he starts red here and it's just like it's working it up it's working it up like it's work it's working up man it's working. So I'm just watching it like only I I didn't draw it in but I could have like drawn a face and then like scribbling up like oh the red's [snorts] gotten higher the red's gotten higher.
43:13>> [laughter] >> So then I and I have my little set of questions and you know you have these questions right like you go to interview you have these questions. So I so then I go to the younger guy and you know pure engineer and [snorts] I ask a question something to the effect of hey tell me a time where you like really empowered your team.
43:32Which is obvious.
43:33>> him that?
43:34>> Yeah which is obviously a set of question right? What what I'm really doing is being like okay are you a micromanager or not? That's what I want to know.
43:41So I so I ask him this question he comes back he says this.
43:45He comes back and goes and sometimes you just got to micromanage your guys.
43:51So then I flipped the page and I wrote like in the year of our Lord 2023 I just had someone say micromanagement is a is something that they should do and within this so this just went on like this was my experience with one of these interviews.
44:04Um so then I then I I you know everybody that has these anybody veteran watching this will know like the little green books. I was still rocking the green book at this point. Um, it's like standard army issue green books, right?
44:15So I would write that in there. So then we go we leave.
44:18Um, I go out with this guy afterwards. I don't drink, but I'm just like he can have as many whiskeys as he wants. Then he tells me all kinds of stuff about >> Oh, that's the best.
44:29>> the best. He tells me all like and he's just like this place like that you know, and it's just like >> [laughter] >> dear god. So so then he the the day after the day that was like summer. I had already gotten into MIT, but I wasn't sure like what I was going to do.
44:41Maybe I'd take a job, maybe I don't. As I was retiring they call it on terminal leave like at the very end where I'm basically done, but I'm still technically in the Air Force.
44:50And that's where I was like, okay, I actually thought about this corporate lifestyle like for now this is not happening.
44:58And the job that I want apparently doesn't exist, so I'm going to create it.
45:02>> Love that.
45:03>> And that's then that with that I that point it was like, so I showed up at MIT I was like, I know where I'm going. I have some of the invention already like this is what we're doing.
45:11>> What year is that MIT? 2022?
45:13>> That's 23.
45:14>> 23.
45:14>> So I retire my effective retirement date is 1 September 23.
45:19>> Okay.
45:19>> And then I start at MIT a couple weeks later like 19 September.
45:23>> All right, so you come out of MIT. Did you immediately have Vic this as like the idea ready to roll?
45:28>> Well, I had a daring there. So good thing about like and a lot of schools have this, right? Like good tech schools, but they have you know, MIT is one of these kind of like napkin level hackathons where you can kind of get something together and it's super fun, right? So I did one of these as part of my program in spring of 24.
45:44Week long one had all kinds of folks helping.
45:47Did a little pitch, you know, I had some risk capital like VC types come in kind of at the end. And we did well. It was the only like defense thing even close even close. Uh, we got like number two out of 68.
45:58>> Mhm.
45:59>> So I had been consulting for like, you know, Intel community SOCOM based and like some other kind of facing companies.
46:08Um I was like, okay, we have that validated my hypothesis that we're on to something here. Like we're on to something there's you know, we've identified the mountain. That's that's what we did. We got to climb the mountain still, but we've at least identified there's an actual mountain here to climb.
46:22So, I was like, all right, I'm going to power down all my clients.
46:25I'm going all in on this. So, then I was like, all right, let's build in stealth.
46:29We didn't really tell anybody what we're doing to start building in stealth.
46:32>> And your brother came in at this point.
46:33>> came in right at that point and we started just kind of building in that summer of what's that? Summer of 24.
46:39>> Yeah. He has the he has an engineering background, right?
46:41>> Yeah, like a like a AI engineer. He'd done stuff with Microsoft. He was a striker for years. You know, the strike >> Air Force Commando AI engineer.
46:50>> Yep, do it. Exactly. And then started, you know, I had some other folks helping, too, like advisors. They're basically working for free. But they're helping out in that area to be like, okay, we think there's something here, so you know, we want to start getting involved.
47:03>> All right, real quick, I got to pee one more time and then we're going to now we're going to go through the whole product and how it works and then go into like the counter intel stuff and I want to talk underwater.
47:12>> Oh, yeah, sweet.
47:13>> well. For sure.
47:13>> Yes. Yes.
47:14>> be right back.
47:14>> Excellent.
47:16>> All right, so we've hinted at it throughout the day. You were again, I think this is the third time we've at least mentioned you're effectively trying to build the inner ear >> Right.
47:25>> for drones. But I guess like technologically and scientifically can you break down how this works and what that looks like on maybe, you know, field of battle or a surveillance situation?
47:37>> Yeah. Yeah, so first like a minute or two on how GPS works cuz then that understands like, okay, how do we fix all of it? So, the way like basic GPS works, you have an algorithm on it's on everything. It's even actually part of GPS itself. It's called a common filter.
47:55This is a math problem. Uh not problem, algorithm that basically does state estimation.
48:02So, if you think about it, it's kind of like if you took a if you took a bunch of points, it resolves it into one thing. Like I get a fix here, here, here, here, I'm going to call it here.
48:12Like it's kind of like a simple version of how that works.
48:15Kalman filters were invented back in the '60s by a guy named Dr. Kalman.
48:19And they worked for navigation for years. So, they took something that was some kind of an accel- accelerometer.
48:26Accelerometer just measures the shift in gravity. This is in your phone, that's how step counting works. It's in a drone, it's in every aircraft, in every satellites, and every submarine.
48:36It's in almost everything. Um they just kind of measure the shift, the feel this way.
48:40So, the Kalman filter helps integrate that into a GPS signal as well. So, when you get GPS signals, you're getting them from different satellites, different satellites around, and you're getting kind of like different cuts.
48:53And it resolves that into one position that you call like the position where you're at.
48:57So, the way Kalman filters were designed, they're back in the '60s, we use them to pilots would have like overfly a mountain, and they'd be like, "Hey, my inertial system say I'm here, but then I'm going to click update when I'm over the mountain, and that will kind of tighten my solution" is what you'd call it. So, you used to have an error, you'd measure your error, meaning I know I'm somewhere within this circle, but then if I once I go over that mountain, I know where that is, and I can kind of resolve that, and then it starts drifting again.
49:27And then I'd go over another mountain, I'd resolve that.
49:28>> So, you need base points, basically.
49:30>> Kind of like a base point, yeah. And it's like a visual reference. So, Kalman filters work really well with whether it's a human or a computer, computer vision, getting those references. It works well when those things are available.
49:42In late '80s, early '90s, we said, "Well, we don't actually need visual reference anymore. All I need is a signal up to medium Earth orbit."
49:50And it works really well as well.
49:52Therefore, when you get, you know, your phone has when it has a good GPS fix, it has a location error of something like 1 m around there.
50:01That means that that blue dot that shows up on your maps, it's accurate to about 1 m. So, it's like I know there's a >> If it's if you have really good GPS signals. If you have This is so it's assuming you have really good GPS signals. That has to do with the strength of the signal, clarity of the atmosphere, how many satellites, there's a couple of things that go into that. How good your processor are on board, like it's all that.
50:25Uh if you like there's a there's a GPS technology called real-time kinematic GPS, RTK GPS. That's what the drone shows use. So, if you're watching a light show that's like and that's where it's very precise, right? A drone has to fly here, the other one has to be here, the other one has to be here or it doesn't look like the shape >> Right.
50:43>> from you looking at it. They can get down to sometimes like centimeter accuracy. So, you can be very, very accurate.
50:48>> Didn't we see one of those in Paris?
50:50So, we were looking at a drone show.
50:52>> Oh, yeah. That was That was Paris or Italy, yeah.
50:56But, yeah.
50:57>> Oh, it was Italy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We were on the roof, right? Rome.
50:59>> They're pretty cool. Like they're and they're still using GPS.
51:02So, the problem with all of that, like we talked about, is that GPS itself as a signal is very easily disrupted through stuff we said, solar flares, jammers, building in the way, atmospheric disturbances, all the above.
51:16And that has nothing to do with like in a wartime, can you do something up in orbit to the satellites that are actually there? Right. Absolutely, you can.
51:24Like absolute They're just flying around. Like they're just They're just waiting to be shot at, quite frankly. Uh or jammed or tampered with in some capacity.
51:34So, that's how all robotic systems have worked and if you think about it, what that really means is any robotic system or drone, something to know where it's at in time and space, it's reliant on getting that signal, either seeing the ground or getting that signal from up in GPS.
51:49When we started using GPS in the '80s and '90s, we just basically converted everything. It really started with aviation, but it went to the robotic system and drones kind of were born out of that. And said, "Okay, that we're going to use that for how we understand the world." Basically, how we know where we're at.
52:06The problem is like we talked about that's very easily disrupted. And that's what's been proven in Ukraine. It's been proven in all kinds of other areas. It's a It's kind of a It's a massive like Achilles' heel.
52:15So, we say and invented something, and this is what our provisional patent's over and what's kind of the foundation of the company is about, is that instead of doing it that way, what we do is say, "All right, let me take this edge device." By edge, I mean like a drone, robotic system, whatever it is.
52:32Let me build a model, which kind of looks like an agent, but it's a a model around how that works, which is done pretty fast. Let me also model how the inertial sensors work inside of it.
52:42They're in everything.
52:43And that is like how they shift in the XYZ axis, how they shift in these different axes. So, it's gravity shifting, much like your head, you feel the gravity shift as you move your neck around, right? So, we model that, we put that in synthetic environment, and then we train with unique data sets, and then in you know, to use the term ontology, a unique ontology, as well as a unique machine learning model, we train something that we call a synthetic GPS.
53:09That's a machine learning model.
53:11So, it's like a no kidding, you know, computer Python script. That's then deployed to an edge device, humanoid, satellite, submarine, drone, aircraft, ship, lower earth orbit satellite, like it doesn't matter, right? Phone, anything. It's deployed there.
53:28It then sits on a little a very lightweight compute, so we got it down to like we talked about Raspberry Pi earlier, but like it sits on a pretty lightweight compute, so it doesn't require this big like data center GPU cluster or anything like that.
53:41And then it's it's what it's doing, it's passively receiving all of those accelerometer um streams of information in real time.
53:50So, if I took like the drone and moved it and had it hooked up to a screen, you would see those shifts in XYZ axis, like actual numbers say, "Hey, I just moved at this rate at this distance. I just moved all this."
54:01So, we trained it on that. At the same time, it's then monitoring the GPS signal.
54:07There's a couple ways we do that.
54:09If GPS is good, we just operate in the background. So, it's silently operating in the background and it's doing state estimation.
54:17It's answering the question, "Where am I?"
54:18>> Mhm.
54:19>> That's all it's doing, like "Where am I?"
54:21When we detect GPS gets jammed or spoofed, and we can actually detect both of these things, spoof being it's a fake GPS, or I've done Yeah, this is a very real thing. Do fake GPSs, I can do cyber attacks to a device through its GPS antenna.
54:36>> And make it think it's somewhere else.
54:38>> You can make it think somewhere else.
54:39You can actually even disrupt the message traffic at the API level from the GPS antenna.
54:46This is a problem. This is a problem that you're experiencing in Ukraine quite frequently, actually. Cuz it's very fragile. That whole system is very, very fragile. You can think of the GPS antenna as like a screen door saying, "Any cyber attack, here's how you come in."
55:02Like that's really what it is in a lot of ways.
55:04So, we monitor if something happens with it. If that happens, then we then transmit from our state estimator that's been calculating where I am in time and space independently, we transmit that to the in a drone, it's a system called the flight controller, but it's basically the autopilot, like the brain that's controlling, "Hey, this is where I'm going. This is what I'm doing." We transmit it that so that it has an answer to the question, "Where am I?"
55:30And then it answers the question, "Where am I going? What am I doing?" in the same way that it's that's been doing that. So, it's seamless, so it doesn't know it.
55:37So, part of the key of what we wanted to really both invent and bring to market for national security and our commercial like customers is something where they don't have to change the hardware or the software of what they're using.
55:48They have a drone or a platform or a weapon or an aircraft or a ship or a satellite that works in this environment, and you know, works how they want. But the problem is they need it to work when GPS doesn't.
56:00And they can't just rely on a computer vision technique that looks at the ground >> Right.
56:05>> or hoping for a magnetometer to work correctly with magnetic lines of the earth.
56:09>> So, they can seamlessly insert your product.
56:11>> Insert your product in. Yep. Seamlessly insert that product into that. That's That's what we've built with um That's what we built is basically like a workflow for our end users. Whether that's a drone, whether it's a The Navy uses the term USV or UUV or AUV for um autonomous undersea vehicle, unmanned surface vessel. These are like drone boats, drone submarines, all the same thing.
56:33>> Oh.
56:34All right, keep going.
56:35>> Yeah.
56:35>> We'll come back to that.
56:36Questions on >> they from a technology perspective, they basically work the same way. Um so, our software applies to those devices as well. So, it sits on that device and then it's there when you need it. If that means you have no good GPS for the entire time, >> You know where you are.
56:51>> That's fine. You have You know where you're at. We can keep kind of a very good location for it.
56:55>> And there was nothing like this in existence?
56:57>> Nothing. Nothing. What people have tried to do, I mean, so that you know, this problem set's been understood like, "Hey, it's probably a bad idea to be dependent on GPS." But we're What most have tried to do is some kind of a goofy bolt-on.
57:11So, like, "Hey, put this quantum sensor that might work on here. Put this magnetometer and then we'll map out full magnetic lines of the earth. Maybe that'll work. Hey, put computer computer vision on there and say that we have GPS denied. Just don't tell them if a cloud is out it doesn't work.
57:27Just Let's just not talk about that. Um Put an atomic clock on there. That'll do it. And and then it'll figure out the timing without it. These are all terrible ideas, which is why we gained traction so fast. They don't work. We were working with a client, so you know, we work with all kinds of different companies, drone manufacturing companies, direct for government. We worked with like the chip manufacturers that produce things for the drones.
57:51>> Mhm.
57:51>> There's one >> At the base level.
57:53>> Base level, yeah, like fully throughout the supply chain. So, there's one company that is trying to get and this is for all the reasons we talked about earlier about massive drones. They're trying to get the price point for their drones down. They're trying to keep making them cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, which is a righteous mission for all kinds of reasons.
58:10They're also being told, "Hey, this thing's got to be able to operate in a contested environment." Meaning it's got to be able to operate with GPS jamming or denied GPS.
58:19So, they do what any drone OEM does, as in, you know, a manufacturer of them.
58:24They don't make that kind of stuff. So, they go to the market and they do, you'd probably call it like an analysis of alternatives to say, "Okay, what capabilities can I buy off the shelf to try and solve this requirement that my end user customer has?" And they go to try and find this and this one This is a real um company that we're working with.
58:41This company comes back and says, "Yeah, for this $2,000 drone, one of the quantum computing sensor companies said, well, we can solve this for you with an $80,000 add-on."
58:53So, we're going to take a $2,000 drone that's designed >> low price of $80,000.
58:58>> this thing onto it.
59:00And you know, the whole purpose of this drone is like one-way missions.
59:03>> Uh-huh.
59:03>> And we're going to put this really expensive thing on it that destroys the battery. It's you know, it just turned into an $82,000 drone.
59:09Um it's a terrible situation. Like it just it's not workable. So, that's kind of the key part of what we're solving.
59:17>> That's amazing.
59:18And you're so like you said, you can integrate at the base level, you can integrate with the existing technology, you can exist integrate with the existing physical infrastructure of any of these types of drones and you're working on both a government contract side and a private company side as well. You were saying like >> Yeah, the in the the commercial space I mean the commercial space is using drones for all kind of stuff, right? We got drones that are doing power line inspections. I like a very much I like drones as first responders.
59:46Um some kind of powerful anecdotes on from 2024 and I should really 25.
59:52>> Mhm.
59:52>> Um wildfires out in California in LA County and hurricanes both of them hit around the Tampa area in Florida back in 24 just last year. They're both of them those hurricanes are pretty nasty and the wildfires are nasty, too.
60:04>> Yes.
60:05>> Both states ostensibly had all kinds of drones that were dedicated for first response.
60:13>> Mhm.
60:13>> None of them worked in either situation.
60:16>> That's good.
60:16>> Why? They're dependent on good GPS, good 5G, good LTE. What's the first thing that goes that goes away after a big hurricane comes in and knocks out everything?
60:25So none of them worked. So they all just paperweights everywhere.
60:28>> Thank you guys for checking out this clip. If you haven't already subscribed, please subscribe and hit the like button on this video. It is a huge huge help.
60:34And if you'd like to check out this clip's full podcast episode, that link is in the description below or right here. And finally, you can follow me on Instagram and X by using the links in my description below.
Read the essay version →