00:00Talk to us first, Christian, about what you want out of this year.
00:02How do you want to take this from a global perspective around AI?
00:06Well, you know, this year is our fifth year of doing the Hill and Valley Forum.
00:10It's the fifth?
00:10It's the fifth.
00:11It started as a small dinner in 2022 during the Biden administration,
00:16and it's obviously grown to become one of the largest,
00:18if not the largest, gatherings of D.C. and tech leaders.
00:21I think this year is very special because it's obviously happening
00:24during the 250th anniversary for the country.
00:27And I also think this year will be a little bit unique in that we're really focused
00:30not just on technological leadership, which is the underpinning,
00:34but industrial leadership, which has been a huge focus in this administration,
00:37and then also alliance leadership.
00:39And so you'll actually have leaders there from other countries, from within NATO,
00:43and I think that's going to be a big difference is the global scale
00:46of everyone's focus on building deeper bridges between technology and government.
00:49What's been really interesting is how the vibe has shifted
00:53when it was private dinners, then it was these now third sort of in-public events.
00:58Talion, that now the hill and the valley are so much closer.
01:02I'm interested as to how you keep that contrarian perspective,
01:05how you get different voices around the table of how this can be done
01:08from an industrial, from a tech perspective right now.
01:11Yeah, it definitely takes a lot of intentionality.
01:13I think one of the things that's been exciting to see as a shift is,
01:16rather than just having discussions, this year you're going to see us actually release
01:19a set of different policy papers across different sort of industrial areas,
01:23whether that's in rare earths, there's going to be a set around biotech versus China,
01:28and making sure that we don't lose that supply chain to them,
01:31as well as re-industrialization.
01:33And a lot of it is in the conversations ahead of the forum with both technology leaders,
01:37leaders within the government, regulators, to understand the different perspectives
01:41and come in line on something that actually is like a material product
01:44that we're trying to actually use to go shift how a particular industry works.
01:48Christian, thanks for coming on the show.
01:52You know, it's going to be interesting to hear about what your objectives are here, right?
01:56Think back to last July, winning the AI race summit.
02:00You know, the president took specific action.
02:02And what's interesting about the Hill and Valley Forum is it's industry and DC, right?
02:07That, you know, there will be politicians and policymakers there.
02:10Do you have a goal or something that you'd want to achieve?
02:13Like, what is the next action that you and your peers feel this administration needs to take?
02:18And in which domain?
02:20I think that's a great question.
02:21You know, for us, the fundamental goal is creating an environment for there to be a rebuilding of these bridges.
02:26That was kind of the goal from the beginning.
02:28And it still remains that.
02:29So I think first and foremost is gathering everyone together and having these open discussions.
02:34And most importantly, actually gathering people from different backgrounds.
02:38You'll see actually, you know, Vinod Khosla, who's spoken every single year
02:41and is attending this year, has very different views on certain regulatory opportunities
02:46or certain industrial opportunities than maybe you'll have from another partner at another firm.
02:51Maybe you'll have, obviously, every year we've had OpenAI and Anthropics speak who are competitors.
02:55But in this case, they're both aligned in the importance of technological leadership in AI.
02:59So I think first and foremost, it's gathering everyone together.
03:02We don't per se take goals or things that we think about.
03:05We really want to create the stage for there to be open debate
03:07and have a rare opportunity for there to be unity.
03:09You know, we use the term bipartisan, but I think actually this is something that's just nonpartisan.
03:14Everyone believes across the aisle in the importance of making sure that the U.S.
03:17has technological, industrial, and economic leadership.
03:20And that is important for national security as well.
03:22And that is how we can create opportunity.
03:24And then everything else is a great forum really to have discussion and debate around.
03:29Dell, you know, bipartisan initiative, right?
03:32If you're being honest and you think back five years ago, you know,
03:35you guys might have felt like you were probably outsiders in D.C.
03:39I don't know if that's fair.
03:41But present day, you know, how are things different in the way that the administration
03:46and the apparatus of D.C. works with the technology industry?
03:50And how would you reflect on progress that you think you've made?
03:55Yeah, I mean, obviously, if you look at the sort of peak divide between the two communities,
03:59that Maven program within Google, and I think it was 2016, 17,
04:03people within Silicon Valley did not want to be working at all, you know, basically with the government.
04:07Now, obviously, you know, look at us a decade later,
04:10you have folks that actually have deep technological, you know, sort of backgrounds,
04:14both as elected officials and within, you know, appointed officials.
04:17So J.D. Vance obviously being, you know, sort of a former venture capitalist,
04:20Steven Feinberg, Emile Michael, you know, Jim O'Neill,
04:24you know, leaders basically, you know, across the entire administration
04:26that bring that technological leadership.
04:28And so, yeah, obviously, you know, at this point, when we look at the Hill and Valley Forum
04:32and some of the elected officials that are speaking,
04:35it's no longer folks with just a political background,
04:37but it's folks that have a strong technological background
04:39and obviously are now in the, you know, sort of political ecosystem.
04:42And so it is very merged, but we want to make sure that we're going to continue to keep this
04:46because, you know, the Hill and Valley Forum, it was founded under the Biden administration
04:50in 2029.
04:51We want to make sure that irrespective of who is president,
04:53it still is a place where we can continue to maintain those ties
04:56no matter which, you know, president is in office.
04:59And those ties or indeed reliance on some of the companies that you have backed
05:04have become ever more important in this geopolitical context.
05:07You think of Andrew, that both of you, and we think about SpaceX,
05:09which everyone's very excited about potential IPO of this year,
05:13will they inherently deepen, do you think, Christian, at the moment?
05:17And will they deepen with other countries as well?
05:20How much more are we seeing countries in Europe still wanting to rely on an Andrew Hill?
05:25Or are you worried about that from a geopolitical perspective?
05:28I think that, one, in the U.S., domestically, you will continue to see these relationships deepen.
05:33And really, this is not anything new.
05:35You know, the United States used to practice statecraft.
05:39The United States used to invest heavily in industry.
05:43The United States also, for example, was a key driver in the creation of the Silicon Valley industry, right?
05:48It was the Cold War era funding, whether it was grants through research in universities
05:53or whether it was government contracts in the early days,
05:55really helped build Silicon Valley in California.
05:58And then that has obviously expanded to a global tech industry.
06:01And so I think the same trend is happening abroad,
06:04where you're seeing governments want to partner deeper with their technological sector.
06:07But in regards to governments and how they partner with each other,
06:10what we've seen is actually the focus on technology has been a key factor for that.
06:14If you look at initiatives like Paxilica or various other initiatives,
06:17they're centered around industrial and technological partnership.
06:21And so I think United States companies will play a big role in how the U.S. and our allies work together.
06:25And I think the same way we want to see successful companies in Europe,
06:28in the Middle East, in Japan, and South Korea play a big role in how they also partner with the U.S. too.
06:33So I think at the forum, you'll see leaders from companies across the globe, not just U.S. companies.
06:37And that's something that we're very excited about.
06:40You know, we can discuss this March 24th.
06:42We hope to be there, guys.
06:44But the president's changed how space is funded, right?
06:47OSTP now has a role.
06:49Del, we're going to run out of time.
06:51But a big milestone day for VARDA.
06:54We're showing this image here.
06:55Just explain what we're looking at, please.
06:57Yeah, so this is VARDA's fifth vehicle that we sent up to orbit.
07:01We build these 300-kilogram satellites that basically manufacture pharmaceuticals
07:05in the microgravity environment of low-Earth orbit and then bring those back down.
07:09What you're seeing here is a vehicle that reentered at Mach 25 in South Australia
07:13and landed earlier this morning.
07:16Right now, it's actually nighttime in Australia.
07:18So we'll be, you know, sort of picking it up from the desert once, you know, daylight hits.
07:22But we're super, you know, happy this is our successful, you know, sort of fourth landing.
07:25And we've got a sixth vehicle that's going up into orbit in about a month and a half.
07:28And so, you know, taking what was an initial demonstration in 2024, doing this very regularly.
07:33And a part of it is, I think, enabled by, you know, some of the groups within OSTP
07:36that have made it so that the regulations around space are starting to become more centralized,
07:40more streamlined.
07:42We used to have to go to almost like six different agencies in order to be able to figure out basically
07:45how to operate a vehicle like this versus the administration's new space policy starting
07:49to understand, okay, space companies can't have to go after that many different agencies.
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