You started Shield AI with your brother Ryan a little over a decade ago after serving as a Navy SEAL officer. You deployed twice in Afghanistan and saw firsthand how robots could gather intel more safely. For a while, though, defense tech was kind of shunned, particularly in Silicon Valley, because of concerns about autonomous weapons. That’s changed. Shield AI is valued at almost $13 billion. Do you feel vindicated, or do you still feel underappreciated?<\/strong><\/p>\nYou know what’s funny? I would actually say defense tech, quote-unquote, didn’t exist in 2015. People couldn’t even shun it because no one was talking about it. I’ll tell you a quick story. Peter Levine from Andreessen Horowitz sits on our board. He’s an incredible investor and also a Stanford professor. He gave a guest lecture when I was at Harvard Business School. He\u2019s like, \u201cYeah, I just invest in dumb companies, and I just invested in the dumbest idea yet.\u201d And that dumbest idea was Shield AI.<\/p>\n
I called Peter up and was like, \u201cI heard you just invest in dumb ideas.\u201d He\u2019s like, \u201cYes, I did say I just invest in dumb ideas. It’s a dumb idea to get into a car with a stranger. That’s Uber. It’s a dumb idea to stay at a stranger’s house. That’s Airbnb. Everybody knows it’s a really dumb idea to work with the government to build defense. He said, Now two things are going to happen. Either one, you guys are going to fail, and it will prove to be a dumb idea, or you guys will be successful, and everybody will say, \u2018Oh, that was a really clever idea.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
So 11 years into the journey, I feel like I can breathe a little and say we were a little ahead of our time in terms of thinking about defense and the role of AI and autonomy in defense. So yeah, maybe a little vindicated. But there’s still a long way to go.<\/p>\n
Your autonomous military tech is being used in Ukraine against the Russians. It’s been used in Gaza by the Israelis. The core product is software called Hivemind that allows drones and other vehicles to operate without a human in the loop and without GPS. Was that the dumb idea? Was this the capability and impact you were aiming for?<\/strong><\/p>\nMy background is I’m an engineer who has always been fascinated by technology, and the original vision was shaped by reading a lot about AI and autonomy in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I came to the realization that the world is going to be full of autonomous systems. Self-driving cars, humanoid robots, self-driving airplanes\u2014like what Shield AI does\u2014are really just the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n
I would claim that within this century, you will see autonomous systems outnumber human beings on the planet. The impacts of that are going to be incredible. I think there’s going to be massive positive impact, and I wanted to be part of that. Then it became, okay, what problems can I solve? I kept coming back to the problems that I had faced, and decided that every single military asset by 2035 should be powered, commanded, and maneuvered by artificial intelligence. That was the original vision for the company. And look, probably not every military system by 2035. Maybe it takes until 2040 or 2045. But at this stage of the game, the momentum is unstoppable.<\/p>\n
I mentioned to a colleague that I was going to be talking to you, and they asked me whether or how much you monitor if your tech is being used for a \u201cjust mission.\u201d I suppose you experienced that as a soldier, too, in terms of how you were being deployed.<\/strong><\/p>\nThe answer is, first, we work with our partners and allies. At the end of the day, they can choose not to share data. They can choose not to share what happens on mission, if they so choose. We obviously want to work with them. We want to get the data because then it can improve the product. They have a right to sanitize that data. But again, I\u2019m going back to defense exports and why we work with these allies and partners. The State Department governs this. <\/p>\n
Not every single one of these countries has the same values, justice systems, or laws. But the reason we partner with them is because we say, hey, it\u2019s better that they align with the USA. We can influence them over a period of time, versus having them align with China and China influencing them over time, or Iran or Russia. It\u2019s much better to have them align with the United States. <\/p>\n
I have never come across a situation where I\u2019ve said, \u201cHey, I totally disagree with the State Department.\u201d If it came to a point where there was a big delta between what the State Department was trying to do and how I thought about the world, or Shield AI thought about the world, it\u2019s something we could take a look at, but I just don\u2019t see that happening.<\/p>\n
And you trust that the U.S. military\u2019s use will always be just and appropriate. Because you\u2019re in this business, it means that sometimes your services and your technology may be used in ways that maybe you personally might not have wanted, but you trust that.<\/strong><\/p>\nHaving been part of that machine, I absolutely trust it. And look, I\u2019ve had to tell a couple of people this: The care that the U.S. military takes over the utilization of such incredibly powerful technology is astounding. <\/p>\n
For every kinetic strike, for every Predator Hellfire that we shot, we turned off the mission 25 times more because we said, \u201cHey, there\u2019s a risk of collateral damage. There\u2019s a risk of civilian casualties. We don\u2019t know who\u2019s inside that building. We\u2019re not going to do this operation.\u201d Every single one of those missions, you have intelligence analysts, you have geospatial analysts. They\u2019re looking at the risk of collateral damage, the risk of civilian casualties, and the probabilities that the enemy is who we believe they are. <\/p>\n
I can\u2019t think of an organization in the world like the U.S. military, where they have the weapons to dominate the world but also have extreme care and stewardship over those weapons and that technology. And look, they\u2019re not perfect, just to be clear. The U.S. military has made mistakes. But I\u2019d call it 1,000 times more wins than mistakes.<\/p>\n
I saw somewhere that you said entrepreneurship, day in and day out, is grueling. It\u2019s awful.<\/strong><\/p>\nYeah, it is awful.<\/p>\n
So is it better or worse than being a Navy SEAL? And are there things that businesses could learn from Navy SEALs, and things the SEALs could learn from businesses?<\/strong><\/p>\nThe suffering is pretty equal. I would stress out more over losing investors\u2019 money. That\u2019s something I never wanted to do. I get more stressed out over that than the missions we would do as SEALs, and the risk to life as a Navy SEAL.<\/p>\n
Are there things that you reflect on from your Navy SEAL days that you apply to the business?<\/strong><\/p>\nOh, 100%. One is the cultural aspect. I tell people Shield AI has a warrior culture. I would define that as a highly professional, highly disciplined organization that pursues excellence, figures out how to get the mission accomplished, and doesn\u2019t give up. Taking it one step at a time is so important. These are things that you learn in the SEAL teams. When you get knocked down in entrepreneurship, you get back up and move forward. So I think there are a lot of parallels between the experiences I had as a SEAL and what it takes to do what we\u2019ve done at Shield AI.<\/p>\n
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