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  • 7 hours ago
With the defense tech market running so hot, the inevitable question that emerges: Are we in a bubble?
Transcript
00:00I do think a lot of venture capitalists are going to lose a lot of money in the defense
00:03tech boom. I think that's maybe inevitable. Procurement 101 is that everyone says the
00:07army buys technology too slowly and develops it too slowly. And that the defense primes are
00:12also in on that and everyone is incentivized to build as slowly as possible. And I think in
00:16certain ways that criticism is a touch unfair because a lot of the time the technology they
00:20build is extraordinary. That being said, there are also many, many cases where something built
00:26is extraordinary one out of four times. Like the F-35, for example, it's a stealth fighter jet that
00:31is a source of much controversy. A lot of money was spent to develop it and they don't always
00:35work. If you talk to a lot of folks in defense, they're very excited because they're like, oh my
00:39God, we can build all these incredible things. We have venture backing now. Even though the defense
00:43budget is huge, more than a trillion dollars, a very, very, very, very small percentage goes to
00:48startups right now. So it is very competitive and also most of it is still going to the primes.
00:53I think it's important to say too, lobbying matters a lot in defense. And a lot of,
00:58if you're talking about inexperience, one of the areas of inexperience is a lot of these
01:01startups do not have the lobbying capacities or anything even remotely close to the capacities
01:05of something like say Lockheed Martin. I do think a lot of venture capitalists are going to lose a lot
01:09of money in the defense tech boom.
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