President-elect Donald Trump confronts a number of geopolitical challenges as he returns to the White House, including managing the US-China relationship, a potential escalation in the Middle East, and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.

“I think the reality is we are probably in one of the biggest periods of geopolitical uncertainty and instability we have seen in our lifetimes,” Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of defense tech company Anduril Industries, said at the Yahoo Finance Invest conference.

"For a Trump administration, the most important thing is to recognize the degree to which American leadership on this still really matters," Schimpf added, "and a lot of that is going to come from the fact that we have the strongest and best military."

Defense startups angle for bigger slice of Pentagon's budget

One issue for investors to consider is how the American defense technology industry could evolve under a new administration.

There are two kinds of companies producing America's defense technology today. There are the “primes” — well-established defense giants like Boeing (BA), Lockheed Martin (LMT), General Dynamics (GD), RTX (RTX), and Northrop Grumman (NOC) — and there are the high-profile and fast-moving startups such as Anduril, which boasts 4,000 employees and a valuation of $14 billion only seven years after its founding.

Investors are enthusiastic about this sector. Between 2021 and mid-June of this year, venture capitalists invested $130 billion in defense tech startups, according to PitchBook.

How might a second Trump administration impact this industry? Schimpf said there is an opportunity for the Defense Department to reimagine how it procures military systems going forward.

“Our view of this is let’s do what literally every free-market system has done,” he said. “Let’s just have the DOD be a better buyer. Buy the best tech. Show the entrepreneurs that if you build technology that actually works, that solves a real problem, we will actually buy it. And you have a chance to actually succeed doing that at scale.”

This view echoes a post made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk (TSLA), who has closely aligned himself with Trump in recent months, on social platform X. Musk responded to Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, saying it is “Very important to open DoD/Intel to entrepreneurial companies like yours,” referencing the US Department of Defense and intelligence agencies.

Schimpf’s company is built to capitalize on a belief that the future of war will be defined by relatively low-cost autonomous systems and not by high-cost, low-quantity fighter planes and aircraft carriers. Anduril has built a portfolio of such products, including counter-drone aircraft, autonomous submarines, and an autonomous security tower deployed on US military bases.