As the world prepares for a second term under President-elect Donald Trump, Brian Schimpf, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Anduril Industries, sits down with Josh Lipton to discuss the state of the US defense industry.

"Anduril has done well in a prior Trump administration," says Schimpf. "It's done very well in a Biden administration and I think we'll continue to do well in any future administration."

When asked about how a Trump administration could make the US Defense Department more efficient, Schimpf points to two things. He notes that Trump and his allies have spoken about "really just streamlining the bureaucracy. There's just so many roles, so many things that make it hard to do what we really need to do as a country to move out, to take risks, to actually just build the military we need to have. I think it can be wildly more efficient. And that's something that I think they can take a lot of leadership on."

The second thing he says "is recognizing, how are we going to build the military of the future? We are in a particularly precarious position... We are struggling to produce at the volumes we need to. And on top of it our allies are looking at this and saying, 'Is America going to be there as sort of like the preeminent defense supplier of the world?' That's a real question now. That wasn't a question 15, 20 years ago, but now I think it is showing that we have some serious weaknesses in our ability to produce."

Defense tech startups aim to shake up the lucrative defense market led by powerhouses Northrop Grumman (NOC), Raytheon (RTX), and Lockheed Martin (LMT). Schimpf describes the advantages of being a private, defense tech startup, saying "I think that America is incredibly well positioned because you have entrepreneurs like us, you have tons of defense tech startups. They're all hungry to do this and the reality is these things can be done so much faster than anyone believes is possible."

Schimpf also describes the importance of artificial intelligence and how it's evolving military combat in places like Ukraine and the Middle East. Schimpf says that "We don't want computers making life and death decisions." He goes on to explain how and when it is most ethical and optimal to deploy AI during military conflicts.

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This post was written by Daniel A. Nelson