How Elon Musk’s SpaceX Is Embarrassing The U.S. Government

Показать описание

In World War II, the U.S. government embraced a radical idea: putting scientists and technologists in charge of building advanced weapons. The rest, as we say, is history. What are the radical ideas we need today? And what can we learn from the history of Silicon Valley?

This week, we sit down with Steve Blank — serial entrepreneur, Stanford professor, and influential author who created concepts that define today's innovation ecosystem. After serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, Steve landed his first job at William Perry's now-famous Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory. He went on to launch several companies, from taking on Intel in microprocessor manufacturing to building early versions of CRM. His book, "Four Steps to the Epiphany," is credited as the intellectual backbone of the lean startup movement. He has also studied the Pentagon for decades, served on the Defense Business Board, and co-founded Stanford's Gordian Knot Center.

We start with Steve's entrepreneurial journey and the evolution of Silicon Valley over the past 50 years, from helping end the Cold War to pioneering the computer and internet age. We also examine the devolution of government and its decline from the engine of technology and research in the 20th century to today's slow, bloated bureaucracy. Steve outlines his bold ideas for reforming the Pentagon and outpacing China in the technology race; he also breaks down the difference between execution and innovation and how the best organizations, like SpaceX, can manage both simultaneously. Finally, we discuss why Steve had called for a pause in AI research and, given his concerns over China, if we can afford to pause.

00:00 Episode Intro
01:40 "Bill Perry was my first boss"
7:43 The Secret History of Silicon Valley
12:14 How US govt fell behind SV
17:05 SpaceX vs NASA
22:00 Radical ideas for Pentagon
26:28 Execution vs Innovation
31:13 Lean startup vs fat startup
40:11 Does industrial policy work?
43:40 Why did Steve call for AI pause?

Joe Lonsdale

Рекомендации по теме

Комментарии

Really enjoyed this podcast. Thanks Joe for putting this together and getting it out to all of us. Looking forward to more.

wipeout

Steve Blank is a real one. Back in 2013 I was working in IT security, doing incident response aka "blue team" for Secure Works. A ton of interaction with national security types. One of the things that was on my mind at the time was CPU microcode. Literally the only person I've ever seen talk about this concept outside of geeks deep inside the industry itself was an article published by Blank. I was like, who is this guy? The fact that he even had any familiarity with such obscure subject matter and had the courage to publish an article like that was fascinating and indicated that he probably knows what he's talking about.

TimJohnson-xo

Another great conversation! Thank you Joe, for taking the time to do this podcast with all the other things you have going on. I always learn something new and interesting!

dodgedogg

17:07 ‘..watching SpaceX.. versus watching SLS slowly trundle out..’ this was a great description of what is wrong with government processes weighed down by regulations that Elon’s been beating the drum loudly recently! Every free, or purportedly free, country around the world must learn from what could soon be happening in the United States under the incoming administration team.

ismailnyeyusof

Another excellent Optimist pod. Blank has long banged this drum, one of the few experts who combines SV history with contemporary pragmatism. Secretary of Defense Mattis like to borrow from Einstein, saying that given an hour, he'd spend 55 minutes defining the problem and five minutes solving it. Not here. The problem with Pentagon acquisition has been well-defined for more than a decade. To shatter the bureaucracy (1, 000 micro-laws passed since 9/11; a 950-page NDAA) requires investment + process risk that exceeds the learned tolerance of congress and the military services. As Steve indicates, a large pilot could be tested by the COCOMs using the 1962 (two page) NDAA as a (flexible), bottom-up governance template.

owenwest

What SpaceX is doing is truly impressive. But while the Starship tower catches are spectacular, the most impressive thing about SpaceX is that they are the world leader both in number of launches and tons to orbit, while managing to recover the first stages and payload fairings in over 90% of launches where recovery was planned. These days SpaceX regularly launches multiple times per week, which would have been unthinkable even as recently as 5 years ago.

I do agree though that when Starship comes fully online it will truly be a game changer for the launch industry, both in terms of cost per pound to low orbit as well as tons launched annually. Starship's payload volume alone will make some fairly wild things possible, such as launching a James Webb telescope analog fully assembled instead of it having to perform orbital origami in metal.

echomande

Excellent interview and even a little pushback. Hopefully that inspires you Joe

Luca

I saw an interview with Steve Blank so I watched after reading his first book I try to learn from him when ever possible) This is my first time watching The American Optimist, it was great. I subscribed. You have the ability with presenting the facts, good bad and ugly while maintaining ok how do we fix it optimism, thank you.

moshewilshinsky

What about Boeing and the SLS, do you call that an embarassment?

thomaskalbfus

Mr Lonsdale is a very good interviewer. Very successful in his own right, but ego-less enough to give his guests most of the airtime.

BenSmit-es

Excellent discussion. Reversing the contractor consolidation map as a starting point and add new companies. Get everybody in the room to work the framework. We have the talent, I'm certain. Cutting the Gordian knot of procurement will happen as these products and companies build on success. So much God stuff here. I'm Optimistic it can be done.

susancook

Great video Joe, thanks for sharing! Subbed.

peterdog

All my favorite college professors have held private sector jobs before teaching and all the ones I disliked were permanently academic. No surprise here, that John worked before teaching.

I beleive that this is the fundamental problem with the beaucratic state. They hire pure academics/ have never worked private sector

kawkasaurous

Informative interview, highlighting the complexity of government and the AI revolution. The dogma and the status quo needs to be replaced with visionary/proactive policies. Palantir > Foundry/AIP platforms will dovetail perfectly with the Trump administration objectives (DOGE), in addition to shifting DOD to DOO. As a stockholder and forward thinking citizen, I hope this will materialize for the betterment of the country, assist in global stability and continue expansion of Palantir. On a side note, I look forward to the release of Alex Karp’s book “The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief & the Future of the West”…

SigmaFemale

It would be nice if some politicians in Canada would watch this. It seems like maybe they might actually start to take our military defense seriously but my concern is they will just blow a lot of money on expensive stuff instead of focusing on being effective. If we are basically going to rebuild we should take advantage of that to change the way we do things so we dont just get stuck in a trap.

pin