The Pomp Podcast - The SpaceX IPO Will Be the Biggest Wealth Creation Event in History | Morgan Brennan

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Morgan Brennan is a CNBC anchor and host of Overtime, covering markets, defense, space, and industrial technology. In this conversation, we break down the SpaceX IPO, the rise of defense tech and America's re-industrialization movement, how the White House is allocating capital like a private equity firm, and why spectrum has become the hottest commodity in the AI arms race.========================Need liquidity without selling your crypto? Take out a Figure Crypto-Backed Loan, allowing you to borrow against your BTC, ETH, or SOL with 12-month terms, 8.91% interest rates, and no prepayment penalties. Or check out Democratized Prime (https://figuremarkets.co/pomp) and earn ~9% APY on real world assets, paid hourly. Unlock your crypto’s potential today at Figure! https://figuremarkets.co/pomp Figure Lending LLC dba Figure (NMLS 1717824). Loans subject to approval. Crypto collateral may be liquidated. Terms apply - see full disclosures at figure.com/disclosures/========================Arch Public is an agentic trading platform that automates the buying and selling of your preferred crypto strategies. Sign up today at https://www.archpublic.com and start your automated trading strategy for free. No catch. No hidden fees. Just smarter trading.========================Uphold is the easiest way to buy and sell crypto unlike any other platform allowing you to trade in just one step between any supported asset. Check them out at https://www.uphold.com/pomp/ This video includes a paid sponsorship with Uphold. I’m compensated by Uphold for promoting its products and services and may receive commissions from referrals. Terms apply. Not available in all jurisdictions. Digital assets are risky and may result in the total loss of your capital.========================0:00 - Intro0:51 - SpaceX IPO breakdown & what investors need to know7:31 - Government & private enterprise: navigating regulation10:03 - SpaceX wealth creation & the constellation of startups it spawned14:04 - Peter Thiel's outsized impact on national defense16:48 - Re-industrialization & tariffs22:09 - How America's re-industrial movement is taking root27:01 - White House asset management & allocating capital35:18 - JPMorgan, private capital & the pro-America shift38:41 - Iran, markets & the economic outlook44:08 - Defense tech: who can build it AND sell it51:38 - Spectrum: the hottest commodity in the AI arms race53:34 - Starlink, launch costs & the satellite boom56:19 - Can public markets absorb the IPO wave?

But I think space is the place, a little bit of pun intended there, because again, if you want to realize this AI revolution fully, if you want to think about next gen technologies and sort of where the next frontier is in terms of industrial production and national security and all the different things that make, you know, a country and a species great, like it's the higher ground, it's going to be space. What's going on, guys? Today, we've got a very special treat. We have Morgan Brennan. She is the anchor of CNBC's hit show, Morning Call. And in this conversation, we talk about the SpaceX IPO, what's going on in defense tech, why space has become an investable asset class, how America has taken back energy dominance, what is going on with spectrum, and why is it all of a sudden the hottest commodity in AI? And then she gives us her thoughts on the intersection of private business and the government and how they're allocating capital and what it can mean for your portfolio. Here's my latest conversation

with Morgan Brennan. Morgan, let's start with the SpaceX IPO. This is probably one of the most anticipated IPOs in history. It's definitely going to be the largest one. What are you hearing from people in terms of things investors should be paying attention to? Yeah, well, I think it's on track for June 12th IPO listing day. That's as of right now, according to what I have heard and what I have seen. And you're looking at the largest public offering in the history of the world, both on and off the planet. And it's SpaceX. It's, you know, there's something for everyone here. It is a new tech company. And if you thought Tesla was a situation where you're, you know, buying the founder and holding for the vision and the future, SpaceX is that on steroids.

Now, a lot of folks, I think they've been talking about this total addressable market slide and the space component of it's pretty small. The more you get into the enterprise AI or the orbital data centers, kind of things that are in the future, the more excited people get. Elon's not dumb. He's very good at doing this. And he is really pinning this, not don't judge us on what we've already done, judge us on my ability to execute what we're going to do in the future. Are people buying it? I mean, certainly on the secondary market, that's been the case. I mean, there's been so much excitement, exuberance for years, by the way, for SpaceX. Anytime you've had any kind of shares offered on the secondary market,

they've just been snapped up and then some. So I expect that you're going to see a similar type of exuberance when this does come to market and starts trading on the NASDAQ next month. $28.5 trillion. That's trillion with a T. That's the total addressable market according to the prospectus. I mean, it raises eyebrows. You can debate whether it's a real number or not. But to your point, I mean, the vast majority of that enterprise AI, but you need to realize the space component of this, the infrastructure component of this, those AI data centers in space, which is going to be a hard problem to fix. That's going to take, you know, Elon saying two to three years, Others are going to say it's going to take longer.

At some point, it will eventually happen, but it's probably years down the road to actually get to realize all of that. Right now, the AI business itself is still the smallest business at SpaceX. It's really Starlink and what Starlink enables, which is connectivity, which a lot of people I don't think realize you need to have full and continuous connectivity to fully realize any kind of AI era or revolution. Now, Elon obviously has other businesses, most notably Tesla. Dan Ives was in here a few weeks ago, and he says that there's-

Dan Ives. Yeah. He says there's an 80% odds that Tesla and SpaceX merge by the end of 2027. Do you think that's possible? Listen, I don't know if it's by the end of 2027. Obviously, you have this dual class structure at SpaceX. It's going to give Elon a tremendous amount of control over the state of the company. Dan is not the only person, and I hear a lot of investors, long-time investors at SpaceX,

who think this is something that will inevitably happen. And when you think about, I would say, the Musk empire overall, all of them sort of get us to the same endpoint, which is humanity as an interplanetary, multi-planetary species. Every single one of the companies has some sort of part piece aspect to it that gets us there. Now, I think that SpaceX going public, a lot of people are still going to call it a space company, even if AI is a big part of it or orbital data centers, etc. They're going to look at this as space. It seems like space as a theme is now almost becoming its own asset class. And you've been covering this for a while. I know I was having this conversation, especially just seeing like the NASDAQ and, you know,

some of the other indexes change rules around like, you know, what's going to be to add some of these companies as they do come to market, whether it's a SpaceX or an OpenAI, Anthropic, et cetera. Where is a SpaceX going to sit in the S&P 500? What sector does it fall under? I mean, these are the types of questions that we haven't had to think about before because we haven't seen a space company that's actually come to market, let alone, I mean, any company that's come to market at what could be a $2 trillion valuation, right, ultimately.

So yeah, it raises a lot of questions, but I think space is the place, a little bit of pun intended there. Because again, if you want to realize this AI revolution fully, if you want to think about next-gen technologies and sort of where the next frontier is in terms of industrial production and national security and all the different things that make, you know, a country and a species great, like it's the higher ground, it's going to be space, whether it's, you know, orbit, whether it's the moon, or ultimately, perhaps potentially Mars about that feels like it's still a ways away. What's interesting to me is the narrative has constantly evolved. So if you

really go back, like maybe the first commercial use of space was GPS. And it's obviously been incredibly impactful. Then we really started thinking about like, how do we go out, right? So let's go visit the moon. Let's go settle on Mars, et cetera. Now there's a lot more conversation about like, what can we do in space to benefit back to Earth? And the first time I heard this was Varda. These guys want to do the pharmaceutical manufacturing in space. They're doing great stuff and quickly. I'm an investor. I'm very happy with what they are doing. They're doing a fantastic job. But I think that the orbital data centers, Starlink, right now you're starting to get more and more things of like, what can we put in space to bring back to earth? And so do you think that

that diminishes some of the like desire to go to Mars or the moon base or, you know, some of these things where it was like go out. And now a lot of the conversation and the investment case is really what can we do in space to bring back to earth? You know, I actually think that if you look at the history of space, whether it's government funded space programs like Apollo, or even now this commercial era of, you know, space exploration and in space manufacturing, which is one of the things you're touching on with Varda and some of the other stuff that's starting to arise here, even the idea of colonizing the moon and having a permanent lunar outpost, which NASA just this week is expected to unveil more of its plans around this $20 billion investment and how they're

going to bring in commercial entities to help build this out and realize this. All of it through the history of the U.S., we'll say, being on the forefront of all of this, of the space activity, and really I think for humans in general, has been about how you benefit humanity back on Earth. I mean, we wouldn't have iPhones. We wouldn't even have semiconductors if it wasn't for space and some of these programs that date back many decades. GPS is a great example of this. But I think at the end of the day, I mean, in space manufacturing, you think about what it's going to unlock in terms of, you know, pharmaceutical innovations and medical innovations. Just the idea of being able to 3D print organs using your own stem cells, bring them back to Earth, and you don't have to worry about whether your body is going to take the liver transplant. Like, this is on the horizon. It's coming much sooner than people realize. And there is a huge business and investor case around all of it and unlocking all of it.

And I think that's a key piece of the SpaceX story is what SpaceX has done to drive down launch costs and allow more of these companies to access space to do more of these things to benefit humanity. That is the moat at SpaceX, even if it's not a big part of the valuation today. What I find fascinating is also the government's very involved in this. So obviously the critics will yell and scream and say SpaceX was built with government funding, which put aside the kind of absurdity of that claim. But they definitely did get grants and they've won money from NASA or the government, et cetera. But more importantly is, take Varda as another example, when they were waiting to bring back

the very first capsule, they kind of got stuck out there for a little bit, right? And they were waiting for the approval to then reenter. And so it does- It's a wild story for the regulators. The FAA didn't know how to handle it because they'd never seen anything like that before. Yeah, and so to me, it's kind of this interesting thing of you have private enterprise

that is driving all of this innovation. It's obviously very helpful for the United States and for the cost of this entire industry. But at the same time, you still have the government. And there's an element of the government wants things not to collide in space. They want to make sure that you're doing things the right way.

If you're re-entering, they want to make sure you know where it's going to land and that it's safe and kind of adheres to regulation. But private enterprise and the speed of innovation with like government bureaucracy seems to kind of be a mismatch that all of these companies are trying to navigate. I think that's very true. It does seem like regulators are moving and moving more quickly. And that doesn't matter what your politics are or the administration that's in place.

We've been seeing this pick up and gain momentum in terms of how regulators are leaning into. And I would just say government in general leaning into and partnering with and working with a lot of these commercial space companies to realize this future. I mean, a great example of this is, was it Trump 1? You had Low Earth Orbit, you know, moves to commercialize Low Earth Orbit to unlock all of this investment into Low Earth Orbit and start for companies to start building out, you know, commercial space stations because we know the International Space Station is going to get retired hopefully by the end of this decade because it's aging out and create all this capacity to do things like in-space manufacturing that benefits people on Earth.

That wasn't happening 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And now it is. And now it's happening very quickly. And now you're starting to see it even now with NASA, with Jared Isaacman at the helm at NASA, who was a commercial, a private astronaut and, you know, entrepreneur himself starting to put a similar business plan. I'd say public-private partnership sort of ethos in place for this idea of lunar colonization. So I think it's coming. I think it's happening. It's gaining some momentum. And now I think you unlock Wall Street, SpaceX IPO, but even you see this re-rating happening with space companies that are already publicly traded. It does feel like people are seizing onto the moment and there's plenty of capital there. And that wasn't the case even just a couple of years ago. I have a lot of friends who have invested in SpaceX. This is going to be- Good on them.

Maybe the greatest wealth creation event in Silicon Valley history, or at least in modern history. I think so, yeah. $2 trillion that is going to either on paper or literally in cash be handed to a bunch of technology investors. What are people saying the ramifications of that is? I mean, that feels pretty powerful. Well, and I think that's interesting too, right?

Because there's a couple of things I would say there. I think first is that they've adopted this very unusual lockup period process, which is going to enable a SpaceX to, you know, enter the NASDAQ index and do some of these other things and sort of, you know, have the breadth of its valuation be realized in a much more meaningful way across the market more broadly. But it's going to also allow a lot of these early investors and employees to, if certain milestones are hit and the stock price hits certain, you know, points along the way, to be able to realize some of that wealth, not just, you know, on paper, but in reality.

And you've had a lot of folks who have been along for the ride with a lot of blood, sweat in tears within SpaceX, a lot of brilliant minds. And by the way, a lot of those companies, similar story at Palantir, but a lot of those companies, a lot of those people go out and you've already seen it over the last, call it, I don't know, 10 years or so. They're going to go out and they're going to start their own companies. And I almost think about them as like constellation. It's a constellation of startups that are orbiting SpaceX by engineers who have come out of SpaceX or the likes thereof. They know what's coming in terms of the technological capability and what something like Starship is going to enable and bring online. And so they're creating that next wave

of companies and technologies and innovations that are going to be necessary to meet that moment. And so I think, I suspect you're going to see more of that wealth creation go into more of those types of entrepreneurial endeavors too. What's fascinating to me is there's like a direct impact and an indirect impact. So if you think of direct, like Tom Mueller with Pulse Space, right? If you look at indirect, Blue Origin obviously is trying to compete with SpaceX, And I think kind of drafting off of the same idea. But then you even look at things like maybe Anduril, who kind of takes a little bit of SpaceX, a little bit of Palantir and says, hey, why don't we go do hardware for defense? And it's possible now because venture capitalists will fund it, etc. Yep. Like, it is pretty profound how this one company not only is going to enrich a lot of people, but it has kicked off an entire new cycle of innovation in the United States, right?

It has kicked off an entire new cycle. If it wasn't for SpaceX, if it wasn't for Palantir, you wouldn't have Andro. And these new waves of defense tech companies and startups that are in the market and that investors are excited to participate in funding rounds for and that are coming to the public markets in their own way, in their own right as well here, either currently or in the next couple of years, depending on the company and technology you're talking about. You also wouldn't have, to go back to this idea of regulators and government, you know, partnerships, you wouldn't have governments getting involved in the midst of all the conflicts we've seen, including most recently this, you know, Iran war, and leaning in and thinking differently about their acquisition processes and how they're bringing more weapons and technologies and capabilities online. If it wasn't for those startups in the first place saying, hey, you have a problem you don't even really realize that you need to solve, but we're going to like invest our own money. We're going to present it to you and then leave it to you, the officials to, you know, the government to think differently about how you're going to acquire this and test it out on the battlefield in a quicker, more effective, more affordable way. And so that process actually like they call it the valley of death, but it was a very painful process for a couple of years. It's still kind of painful to work with the government, particularly, I think, on the DOW side. But it's not as painful as it was.

Those companies couldn't have existed 10, 20 years ago. I mean, you needed a SpaceX to come in, essentially, and sue the government, sue the Air Force to be able to compete for a contract. That's what happened with SpaceX. That's how they were able to get a toehold in and start being able to, you know, win government contracts. It's a pretty wild story. Now, what I find interesting is I would make the argument that Peter Thiel is the single

most consequential person when it comes to national defense over the last 20 years in America. I'll explain in a second. But I may even take it a step further. I think I'm picking up what you're putting down. I may even take it a step further and say he's the most consequential person in America, period. Because if you look at it, he wrote the $10 million check to SpaceX that pretty much kept them in business, if not made sure that they were successful. Palantir literally comes out of his office. He's one of the co-founders. And Darrell, also same thing. The lineage of those three companies, when you start getting into all the engineers who have

left and taking the funding and all that stuff. Then you have he was pretty much the only Silicon Valley, you know, kind of heavyweight who got behind Trump in the first term and Trump becomes president. J.D. Vance is a direct mentee of Teal. He ends up being the vice president. You sort of put all this together. Is that like a fair way to view this is that he is way more impactful and much more consequential to America than maybe people give him credit for? I think that's a very fair assessment i think it's a very fair assessment and i think when you look at where i talk about this a lot i've said this to you before um i sort of see it as a triangle right now we're in this moment as a triangle and it is you know there's the money bucket it's investment it's business

it's capital um there is the technology bucket and sort of we're all you know where all those capabilities and innovations are and are headed and then there's this policy bucket and how that interacts with the government or doesn't interact with the government and what that enables. And to me, the triangle, it's like we're somewhere in the middle. Everything's converging right now. And it's a moment where if you really want to understand the moment we're in and you really want to understand how to navigate it, how to cut through the nonsense or the noise of politics and the politicization of everything and actually just focus on what it means to invest, follow the money or sort of understand where technology is going and the path it'll take to get there. Like you

need to understand all those three things together. And so, yeah, I think that's a very fair assessment for somebody like Peter Thiel, because he's been very much on the forefront of this and has been not so different than Elon Musk, right? Like very long-term thinking in terms of, and very much on the frontier in terms of, you know, laying the groundwork for where this could go in this moment that we find ourselves in now. Talk about something like re-industrialization. Defense tech, defense in general, national security in general is ground zero for how that plays out. You wouldn't have steel tariffs and aluminum tariffs in place, for example, if those didn't directly feed into this idea of resuscitating an American metal supply chain,

which is absolutely necessary to, I don't know, build ships for the Navy, which we don't have enough of. What's fascinating about the steel tariffs, you go back to 2018, is that it wasn't so much like, hey, we can't build this here. It was just that we had less than 50% utilization of the existing capacity. And so I put in the tariffs in place, the goal was to get it over 80%. It pretty much happened almost overnight. And so it was almost this like global competition game of like, we have the capacity to do this here, but because other countries are subsidizing the steel, then that makes us uncompetitive on a global stage. And- Not other countries, mainly China.

Yes. Mainly China, whether it's direct or indirect. Well, what I find fascinating about it is if you go back to 2018, it was steel, solar panels and washing machines. I mean, those were the three things. And Trump kind of, it was almost like a test run of the tariffs. And then once he realized the impact and, you know, people always got very upset when he first came out with the tariffs in 2025, but I went back and I looked every single one of those items was cheaper in the United States within 18 months. So you had the tariffs go in place and made the United States more competitive production

domestically went up and the prices went down. And I think that he took that now, should he have taken that and said, okay, let's just do it for every single thing. And not be as much surgical. I think the jury's still out on that. But it does feel like Teal, Elon, many of the people who are coming from private industry were very much involved in that. Even if they didn't have official roles in the government, they were kind of in his ear saying, look, we can do this in America. And that feels like probably one of the biggest, you know, zero to one moments over the last, I don't know, 15 years where we just decided, hey, we don't have to constantly buy into this narrative that only China can do it. Yes. I would say yes. I would also say, you know, as somebody who's covered the industrial side of the economy and manufacturing at CNBC for 12 years now before it was like fun and exciting and cool, which I feel like it's having its moment now, it is fun and exciting and cool. So, I mean, I would sit and have with a former CEO of Harley-Davidson, I would have multiple conversations over the course of years about where they're like, we're having to open up another manufacturing site in, I can't remember where it was, Indonesia, somewhere in East Asia because of the tariffs. So we have to, you know, produce locally so we can sell into these markets, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And those markets, those countries benefited. And so it was one of these things where it was like, I'm not saying tariffs good or tariffs bad, but I'm just saying much more nuanced situation.

And it depends on what what how you're defining success and what you want the outcome to be. And so this idea of like, oh, you know, tariffs are just blanket bad. They're the worst thing ever. No tariffs. Tariffs are bad. It's like, well, if they were so bad, then why are so many countries implementing them in certain ways to protect their own industries or foster their own manufacturing and industrial activity, et cetera? And so you can argue both sides of it, but this idea that it's black and white is nonsense. And to your point, and you're seeing this now, right, including with just the macro data, like the U.S. is handling everything we're seeing with the spike in energy prices and supply chain shocks much better and may not feel like that for consumers who are like, you know, filling up at the pump for Memorial Day weekend. But in general, the U.S. is handling it much better than most of the rest of the world. Now, some of that's oil and gas, so we can get into that.

But I think the other piece of it is what you are seeing with AI infrastructure build out. It's what you're seeing with defense spending and how that's starting to percolate. It's what you're seeing with just this renaissance, this emerging renaissance. And we're seeing in the data around manufacturing activity in general. I mean, even housing, if you look at the freight flows, is starting to show signs of a rebound, like slow, steady, but it's starting to show up there. the industrial side of the economy is what is booing the U.S. right now. And I suspect that's going to continue. And that's with things like tariffs in place, which are whether and, you know, pushing for investments in the U.S., et cetera. It is stoking this idea of supply chain resilience and reindustrialization. It's happening. All right, folks, I'm going to take a little break from this episode right here to tell you something about figure markets. Now,

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If you're talking to someone who knows nothing about the re-industrial movement, they haven't been paying attention whatsoever, what would your analysis be in terms of what is occurring and how are we doing so far against the goals that we have oh gosh that's a good question i'm not sure i have an answer to that yet um but do you think it's going well i i would say it's taking root and i i would say it's probably taking root faster than i would have anticipated and that's despite again elevated energy prices right now and elevated prices for some other things i mean memory chips are obviously getting a lot of attention you think about memory chips affects most things that are manufactured or goods that consumers are going

to be touching, but they also affect things like, I don't know, patron missile systems. And we see those types of price spikes and the inflationary impacts of that. I would not be expecting to see the data as strong as it is around some of these parts of the economy. But I think a lot of that is the groundwork that was laid in the first year of the second Trump administration. But also, So to be quite frank, a lot of this industrial policy, there are certain things, including some of these tariffs that carried over, regardless of politics, carried over from the first Trump administration into the Biden administration and now, you know, have been turbocharged in this administration. When you look at things in that reindustrialization, some of it, I think, is like, what is the end company? What is the end product? But also there's a ton.

Obviously, we're going through a commodity bull market right now. There's tons of work now being done on. And there's a guy that I know who literally looked at creatine is not made in the United States. And so we need to go and start to need to make it. Now, why is it not made in the United States? And there is some chemical compound that the United States does not manufacture anymore. And so he's focused on that. Right. Now, the reason why that's important is because it's in almost every single other product. And so the United States was basically outsourcing this thing. He literally came from kind of like the bro science world of I want to create a teammate in America and he figured this out. That to me feels very different than just like, hey, let's set up, you know, a factory and let's just start manufacturing cars or, you know, whatever the thing is. And so it does feel like we've almost gotten more intelligent and much more nuanced about what are the pain points that America is facing and how do we solve the actual, you know, kind of furthest thing that is really from a first principles thinking standpoint. More so than just like, oh, well, we can make a car in Mexico or we can make it in the United States. Let's just make it in the United States. It's almost like too elementary of an analysis. And I think a lot of that happens online. But the companies themselves are looking very surgically at what is the rare earth or what is the thing that is the smallest unit of account that we can go and bring back to America and that everything is downstream of it. Yeah, no, I think that's very true. And again, the rare earths is a good example of that. I was with the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum earlier this month, and one of the points he was making was about the rare earths. And we were in Alaska, we're traveling in Alaska, and we're focused on oil and gas production because Alaska is, for the first time in decades, starting to see this renaissance, this return to growth of oil output in real time right now.

But the other thing that Alaska offers is all of this mining capability as well. And Alaska is very big. It's very vast. You don't actually have to do very much on the surface to apparently this is what I've been told to, you know, apparently access quite a bit of, you know, the mineral deposits that are available in Alaska. But so we were there, we were traveling, we were seeing all of that. And one of the points that he was making to me was that with the rare earth export restrictions that China was threatening in the midst of the trade war stuff and, you know, post-liberation day last year, that if they had halted those exports that with the automakers alone, you would have seen a shutdown in car manufacturing in something like two weeks. and we don't use that much in terms of rare earths and you know it's rare earths are actually not that rare and elon musk likes to say that but like the refining process is you know a certain thing and then producing them into magnets and we it's it's it's an innovation a capability that the u.s spearheaded and then basically retreated from 30 years ago and then china swooped in and took over and basically now dominates that market now the u.s including with the government is trying to fund it and restart it here in the U.S., but it's a national security matter, case in point we saw

with China and continue to see with China right now. But then also what happens when you layer American ingenuity on top of that, all of a sudden you have a refining process that maybe is not so dirty and maybe is cleaner and maybe is more productive. And then what happens when you layer AI on top of that? And what does that add to the entire process and conversation right now too? So I think you're right. I think it's I think it's it's very surgical. It's very determined and it's very. It's very it's very specific to the situation and what what the market calls for and why. One of the biggest changes in investing is there's a new asset management firm. It's called White House Asset Management. They like to allocate capital. They buy stocks. They seem to go up after they buy them. And I think that it's somewhat of a meme on the Internet of just like just buy what the White House is buying. You know, the president will make it go up. But I do think that this is new, but it's not new. Right. The government has participated in private markets in the past. But this seems like it is much, much more, one, enthusiastic, much larger, but also it is very focused on less on like bailing out companies and more on like offensively saying we need this for national security or we need this to become an industry in the United States. Let's go actually use our capital and our kind of human abilities and sometimes even business development to go help this business.

What are you hearing people talk about in terms of like the White House allocating capital to these businesses? So I think from my own conversations, both on and off camera within the administration, I think there is a very clear, explicit mission to have taxpayers share on the upside. That being said, it depends on the industry. It depends on the company. It depends on the deal. It depends on what the deal requires. And so like Intel's obviously a great example and sort of the glaring example on the stocks been parabolic over the last call it month, two months. And certainly taxpayers are seeing incredible returns on paper in the midst of all of this. But Intel was also not in a good place and it received a lot of money through Chips Act as well as from the Pentagon.

And so there's a national security element to it as well. And it was and continues to be a turnaround story. So it's a very specific thing. Whereas you have other companies that have received Chipsac funding. I think about like a Micron, for example. You're not going to necessarily see that type of equity stake taken. In Rare Earths, I think it's a little bit, that feels like it's been a little bit of the Wild West. There's some companies that are very legit and doing incredible things and have the capabilities. And there's some companies that are promising a lot, but like have yet to deliver and we'll see what happens with all of that. But obviously, Rare Earths is going back to the conversation we just had is sort of like there's a times of the essence aspect to it as well. So I think it sort of depends. The other thing I would say, and I think sometimes this gets missed, and I'm sure you know this as well, if not better than I do, is how many Wall Street folks are in this administration where the purse strings are concerned. I think about like OSC at Department of War, right? Office of Strategic Capital. They're, you know, inking all kinds of deals. These are all like hedge fund guys. And like you speak to anybody, they're dealmakers and they are rigorous. They review books, they're rigorous. And by the way, they're hiring. Like last I've heard, they're hiring, they can't get enough people in there because there's so much that they're looking at and they're combing through everything. And so I've spoken to executives at companies that have done some deals with some of these types of entities. And they're like, this is the hardest deal I've ever had to do because of how thorough and rigorous they were.

And I think sometimes that's missing from the conversation in part because sometimes these are the folks, maybe because they are former hedge fund folks and they weren't like really, they were media shy when they were in those roles too. But they're not really going out and telling those stories. But they're happening behind closed doors. They absolutely are happening behind closed doors. But I think this idea of like doling out money to companies is like long existed. This idea of doing so in a way that taxpayers are going to see some sort of upside if there's upside to be realized, I think is a little bit newer and more interesting. You could certainly debate the pros and cons of it. It's definitely different. I think in a lot of ways than what we've seen, because usually typically in the past, it's been like around bailouts and things like that or wartime efforts. But it's really fascinating. It really speaks to, I think, sort of this convergence of Wall Street and Main Street as kind of, you know, the story for everybody, for the public in general right now. I know at least one person that has actually gone to OSC, and I know another person. See? Case in point.

The one person I know that went is very young, early in his career, and he basically was working at an investment bank, and he was like, this sounds awesome. Why would I not want to go and travel around the world and do, you know, it basically was the pitch of joining the military, you know, 15 years ago, is now like join OSC, get an allocate capital, build your professional resume, et cetera. That to me was like, okay, young person wants to very quickly accelerate their career, makes sense. Then I was talking to somebody who's one of the leading investment bankers at one of the, I don't know, top three investment banks, somebody that everyone would know.

And he was like, yeah, I think I want to go. And it was the quality of the person that I was just blown away. And I was like, why? And he pretty much was like, it's a combination of I'd meet a lot of great people. I'd get to do very interesting deals. I'd accelerate my career,

but also i feel a duty to the country i feel like this is a way to serve i don't want to ever be a politician but this is like an interesting way to do it and so i do think there's this weird element of as you get more private sector folks in there most people they don't want to be a politician they don't want to go and get attacked in you know some uh race or debate or whatever but they do feel like it'd be cool to go work in the government for a short period of time maybe it's a year or two years whatever and so i do think that whether it was elon or maybe it's even trump and his administration, they somehow have made it cool to go work in the government. Yeah.

And it's interesting. It's a good point. And I think you saw it last year, too. I covered this myself because I, you know, I do a lot with on the military and national security side, but like the army swore in, you know, special lieutenant colonels that were tech executives. So Greg Brockman from OpenAI and Sham Sankar from, you know, Palantir and a number of others. And they're serving in these special roles within the Army to bring their AI and their technological prowess to the Army, like serving X amount of, you know, hours per year, da-da-da-da. So there's like, I think about Josh Wolf at Lux has talked about this for many years, and at least prior to what we're seeing now.

And that was this idea that, you know, we were basically I'm going to use the word bear market. That's not the term he used. But that, you know, we were seeing a dearth, a death, a death in the willingness of talent to serve in this country that had become very uncool and that like the best and brightest were not looking to serve. And I think that the pendulum has swung on that, which is really fascinating. And I think that's also fascinating to the point that you're making. It's like maybe you don't want to be in politics. You want to be a politician, but that there are other ways to do it. And so I wonder if this is the start of something. There is something also about there's obviously a very large rise in specifically conservatism among young men in college or right out of graduation. And it's probably always been there.

I think maybe they're just like a little bit more willing to be out there. Um, but what I think is fascinating is I'm 37 years old. I was in the army. There is a very low chance that I could go back and I could probably do basic training again pretty easily. I probably could do some of the specialized training, but the like day-to-day grind of being on deployments and going out and doing all this stuff. Like my, I just know my body, my body would recover much slower at 37 than it did at 20. And so you start to look at some of these tech executives, like, you know, maybe there's a couple, but most of them are not 22 years old. They are later in their career as well. And so like, they kind of missed the window of military service, whether they served or not. And so now it is like, I have to use my brain, not my body.

Yeah. And again, if you don't want to be a politician, then this is kind of like the only path, right? And so I just think that that's where you're seeing so much interest is people, they do have this like patriotic component to them. It's just where, what is the outlet? Now it has become we'll use your professional skills in the government, still go do deals, build a Rolodex of contacts and accelerate your career. It's kind of like the perfect pitch, right? Yeah, definitely.

And I think you also need private sector to participate too, right? So you need to know that you're going to go in, you're going to take a pay cut, but that maybe you're going to come out and there's going to be some sort of incentive or your job's still going to be there for you or whatever, whatever too. So I think that piece has to be there as well. And I think some companies have been better at doing that than others. But that also seems like it's starting to click into place, too. Also, it's kind of interesting to see how many of these going back to OSC as an example, like how many of these deals that are getting struck with the government. And I don't know that this is getting talked about enough either for the government to do the deal. They want to see the private capitals got skin in the game, too. And I think, you know, enter J.P. Morgan. Right. With their security and resiliency, you know, initiative that is like taken off gangbusters since it was launched, I think, officially at the end of last year. And they're not the only ones. What are they saying they're going to do? They're investing in companies, startups, deals, you know, anything that sort of falls into that category of national security or resiliency or sort of making America great again. I mean, they're not using that phrase.

That phrase got its own political connotation, but just this idea of, you know, strengthening and making competitive the U.S. It's a pro-America approach. And extending beyond that too, right? So I think there's like, depending on the company and depending on the project, like, you know, what it means for allies, et cetera. And it's not just JPM. I think, you know, others are another, you know, methods of private capitalism, the venture side, banking side are also like looking to do this and do more of this, but they've obviously

been very out front and sort of, you know, stepped into it in a very big way. I'll actually be with Jamie Dimon and we'll be interviewing him later this week at the Reagan National Economic Forum. And this is going to be one of the things that we talk about, because he was hinting at the possibility of this a year ago when he and I met at the same conference. And he was saying, you know, don't stockpile Bitcoin, stockpile bullets and made a lot of news talking about all of that. But what's interesting to me is a lot of these big banks, they have veteran programs where they're hiring veterans coming out of the military. They've been doing that for years. And so they talked about a little bit, but it maybe wasn't like the first thing on the front door that they would they would lead with. But one of the actual most telling things, I think, in the shift on Wall Street culturally in J.P. Morgan's new building, there is a massive American flag in the building. And I don't think anyone was ever not patriotic. I just think that the flag in particular for a period of time over the last maybe decade started to be very polarizing.

And it kind of feels like a bunch of these banks just said, we're just going to do the thing we think is right. Not everyone's going to agree with us, but like, we think that it's important to be pro-America. We think it's important to allocate capital to these things. We're going to put a flag in our headquarters. And when I say flag, it's not like a little thing on the wall. It is a massive flag and a flagpole in the building. And so when you look at that, you start to say like, well, maybe that's actually what

America needs. Forget politics, forget anything else. We need public and private enterprises working together to accelerate this stuff. And it finally seems like maybe that's happening. Yeah, it does seem like that's happening. And we'll see what it means in terms of knock on effects for the economy. Right. And again, it sort of goes back to what I was just, you know, what I was saying earlier, which is like, if you look at some of this macro data, this macroeconomic data, and you peel away the layers of uncertainty around, you know, consumers and high gas prices, and yes, and, you know, inflation starting to ripple through and being sticky at this three to 4% rate, potentially, but I mean, even if you look on like beyond that, the like economic growth itself seems to be pretty strong, it's pretty solid. The question, of course, is at what point do you start to see demand destruction from higher energy prices, etc.? But I don't think we're there yet. And certainly if we get a resolution, which perhaps it seems like it's happening, some form or fashion here, or at least not escalating, then I don't see how that doesn't continue to be the story.

Somebody recently said to me, we keep calling it a war, but we're not dropping missiles and they're not shooting out drones anymore. It's kind of like a stalemate in the street. Yeah, it's a ceasefire. It's kind of weird, right? But still, we call it a war. Now, given that the strait has become headline news every single day and people are pontificating on our ships going, are they not? We've seen people send their analysts to literally smuggle themselves on a boat and see what's going on. And Saronic is another business that I think is pretty interesting where it's got the defense angle, but it's also this like AI autonomous ship. And so it feels like, again, if you go back, I went, I looked this morning, a couple of years ago, I tweeted and I said, well, China's building all these ships here in America or not. I would love to find someone who wants to build ships and I'll fund it. The number one thing in the comments, Jones Act.

We cannot do it in America. We cannot do it in America, whatever. And I went and I found a bunch of people and they were looking at electric. That was like the big thing. Can we make electric ships or electric things? And the most interesting company that came out of the whole exercise was an electric barge, and they wanted to basically put it down in Mississippi. Okay, fine. Maybe that's valuable.

Maybe it's not. I have no clue. Have they been successful? Have they not? I haven't tracked the company. Saronic sounds way cooler, way more important, right? And obviously, a much bigger leap from an innovation standpoint to you actually have autonomous ships that now we can essentially do what Palantir and Andrew have been doing in the land and in the air, but now doing the ocean. And so I know you spent a lot of time with that company.

What are people saying about that? I mean, they're moving so quickly. They're moving so quickly. And they've raised a boatload of capital. But they're moving incredibly quickly. And they're not the only ones either. There's sort of a whole flurry of startups that are focused on, you know, sea-based autonomy and sort of this next generation, next, next generation of, you know, shipbuilding and military vessels. And so they're sort of on the forefront of it.

But there is a broader ecosystem here that is building out within defense tech. And when you think about something like, you know, hunting for mines in the Strait of Hormuz, like, why are you going to put, you know, servicemen and women in harm's way when you can have an autonomous ship or vessel or submarine or something like that, you know, go and do it. So I think we're seeing in real time, whether it is this conflict, ceasefire, whatever you want to call it in the Middle East, or even what continues to go on in Russia and Ukraine, you're seeing in real time how autonomy and AI are changing and affecting the battlefield and how they're also simultaneously taking people out of harm's way and giving the U.S. an upper hand and allies an upper hand in a way that I think is very, very meaningful for the future and sort of gives you a better, stronger sense of why AI as dual use technology

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And I think that's a very valiant, you know, argument. And I think people kind of, it resonates with them. But also the technology is more accurate than the human eye. Like I remember we used to do night route clearance in Iraq in 2008, 2009, and our ability to determine whether it was an IED or a pile of trash was not very good. And so what you did is you just drove over it and you hoped it didn't explode. And that was the vehicles were built to sustain the blow. And that was kind of the, you know, on the ground truth is that's not what they trained

you to do. But in reality, that was the solution is we cannot stop every piece of trash on this road or we will never complete the mission. So just drive over it. Wow. Now I think back, like, wait a minute. With the technology today, you could tell the heat signature. You could easily use AI to identify this stuff. You probably could even use some sort of time lapse from drones overhead. You know, all of these technologies forget keeping the human safe. It's actually like you would just become more accurate in identifying it. Self-driving cars, same thing. Like the best argument for self-driving cars has nothing to do with drivers, has to do with the safety of the passenger. And if it's safer for people, well, guess what? People will put their

kids in those cars. People will get in those cars themselves. And so it does feel like the old argument is almost this like we're protecting, you know, service members, et cetera. Now the defense companies are really making like an offensive argument. Like, no, we're just more lethal. We're more effective. We are cheaper. You know, everything is about the value that is provided, not here's the thing that we're saving. Do you see that when you're talking to these executives? Yeah. And I think, you know, and I think there's like a flip side to it. Like there's always an argument and counter argument to everything so like on the flip side saving lives um becoming on the other side of it lethal more targeted more effective um the other piece of that

argument then becomes okay if we're if we're moving towards robot you know robot armies and you know an automated battlefield's future what does that mean for the sanctity of human life overall so like i've heard those debates too and i can see how you can go there or you know folks can go there um but i don't know i i mean iran is probably the first war in human history where humans did not go on the battlefield right and again like what is your definition we were boots on the grounds in iran if you want to call it that this is the thing it's like what is your definition of on the battlefield right if we went and we saved the pilot that was down right okay fine some people say that that disqualifies but like in the actual combat of the battlefield

drone the drones the autonomy everything that's been orchestrated off of aircraft carriers like yes and i would argue that the other side as well right it's not like they have you know they don't have guys with ak-47s lined up in the desert trying to shoot stuff right i mean they they have even now look what's going on even you know with um critical infrastructure in the region and like the threat that drones pose from Iran. So yes, a hundred percent. I would say, I would say the Ukraine war is where we really saw, saw, you know, drone warfare blossom, but much more of a ground-based sort of traditional war where you're seeing that type of autonomy and that type of technology deployed to your point in Iran, it's, it's a different situation. Um, and so, yeah,

is it triggering more spending, more fielding of more technologies for the future? Yes. Does all of this sort of put us in a race for better or worse? And it's really a race to ensure deterrence against China, which is obviously also working on its own dual use capability, AI and drones, etc. Yes. So it's, it's, it's, that's where that's where we're headed, for sure. And a company like Saronic and some of these other defense tech companies become, you know, and that's the reason why the ones that are going public right now, even the smaller companies or less known companies are seeing just like huge debuts. Well, they're good, right? They can build the technology and they can do the business. I think that's one of the things that as I've learned more and more about these industries over the years that people don't really appreciate is that usually the teams that are really good at building the technology are not really good at scaling the business and doing the BD and selling to the government and doing all that kind of stuff. That's a good point. And so we're investors in a company called on this and like their whole thing is just outsource all the R&D to let these other startups create the technology. Once it works, we know that they're not gonna be able to solve the government. We'll just buy the company and then we're really good at doing all the commercial, you know, business development, government contracting, etc.

It's working so far. Let's see if they continue. But like, it's almost like private enterprise realized you need a translation layer. The best technologists are not the best salespeople to the government and vice versa. But to me, like an Anduril, they're great at both. Palantir is great at both, right? And so you sort of see the Saronic is great at both. And so like, it's almost like they're more special because they're good at both the technology

and the business side. There's just not that many of those. Well, and I think it also gets at the heart of sort of what you're seeing in general when it comes to where the future of warfare is concerned but also just this convergence going back to my triangle just the convergence of like you know capital technology and policy and that is just how many companies and startups are now dual use companies even if they're working in autonomous driving like they're working or you think about like evitals right um they're also working with the government because they can sort of you know fast track testing the technology and

sort of get that stamp of approval that you know you know gold star stamp of approval by working with the military um with all this autonomous technology um and all these different types of vehicles and basically get it ready for prime time for consumer use in a mainstream way as well um and so i think this idea of fielding commercial technologies which the pentagon has really leaned leaned into an aggressive way and drones are another good example of this this idea of like how do you mass manufacture something and do it at affordable rates and do it in a way that You can sell products commercially, but also be able to sell to the government to then drive down costs, create more competition, and ensure that there's supply chain resilience. That is very much the focus and the name of the game. So whether it's on the self-driving side. By the way, shipbuilding, I didn't even touch on this with you. Shipbuilding, I mean, this is huge, this idea of bringing commercial shipbuilding back to the U.S. Huge, huge, huge initiative. Passion project, even, within this administration. And it starts with military shipbuilding. It starts with a company like Saronic, you know, building and sort of using AI in the factories to create ships more quickly.

and then being able to repurpose that for commercial use as well. And if that happens, when that happens, everybody wins, right? Because you now have more jobs, you have more manufacturing capability, more economic output, but you also have this resilient supply chain because you're going to be selling into a commercial marketplace as well as selling into the government. And this idea of being able to have overlaps, almost like planes, right? Like you see this with certain types, you know, models of planes that Boeing makes, for example.

And that's what they're trying to do with shipbuilding. So it makes sense when you think about it that way, because ultimately you're going to drive down costs, you're going to boost competition, and you're going to create a base, an industrial base that is not so fragile, which is what we've seen and which has been such a big problem on the military side. And arguably just when you think about what's happened to manufacturing in America in general in the last couple of decades. You've mentioned that Spectrum. That makes sense, right? Makes complete sense. Makes complete sense. spectrum is the hottest commodity in the ai arms race what does that mean spectrum the thing you

can't touch or see or taste um and that is actually owner controlled by the government um and is you know sold out to companies in some cases with a lot of involvement from lawmakers because their national security implications to that too but spectrum is basically what enables connectivity right and spectrum i think is its own sort of commodity race right now i mean case in point you talk about star we're bringing this full circle you talk about starlink and um you talk about the connectivity there i mean spacex did their deals to buy spectrum from the company formerly known as dish now known as echo star uh in part to be able to enable more connectivity for people using starlink and companies using starlink and the military using starlink um you

look at global star which has you know big has had a big partnership with apple over the last couple of years getting purchased by amazon as they're let you know rolling out their starling competitor leo as well um you can't have you can't have full autonomy you can't have full ai capability unless you have the connections as well it's not just about the energy to run the compute. It's also about the connection to be able to do this continuously. And spectrum is what enables that. But as you see more things like more drone warfare, more autonomous warfare, you've also seen some of these fights brewing in Washington around what spectrum is going to be put up for auction to the private sector and what spectrum is going to be held onto

by the government right now as well. Because all of that connectivity that's enabled by spectrum is in higher and higher demand right now. And by the way, that's just from a U.S. standpoint. It's a totally different thing when you go out into like international realm. What I always find interesting about Starlink is I worked at Facebook and at the time we had internet.org

and they were competing with Google who was trying to do the hot air balloons and float them across whatever. And little did we all know, everyone was operating within the constraint of like you have to do something within the atmosphere. And then Elon was just like, well, why don't I just put a satellite?

It's exact same idea, just different approach to it. and gangbusters. And so on one hand, Facebook, Google, et cetera, they were all correct in trying to beam the internet down to people. It's just that the tools they were using were not the right tools or the right approach. And then here comes Elon, not a new idea. He's got this competitive advantage of the launch cost. Next thing you know, he's got a significant business in Starlight. It's pretty interesting. Yeah. I want to be clear. There's been communications, satellites, constellations operating for a very long time. But most of them, if not all of them have been geosynchronous orbit and at the time i think when they started

building out starlink there was sort of the sense of you know it's very hard to do this from low earth orbit there's all these challenges there's all these you know headaches associated with it and in typical spacex fashion they said okay we're going to design an engineer we're going to think about this differently we're going to bring down the cost of launch to be able to put thousands and tens of thousands of satellites in low earth orbit to give everybody continuous connectivity um and all of these things that couldn't exist and didn't exist before and they kind of cracked the code on that and now you're seeing this huge proliferation and it's interesting because rocket companies look at rocket lab i think oh gosh i wish i had my phone on me i was looking

at the market cap earlier today and my head almost exploded i was like i mean the stock's up thousands of percents in the last two years i mean you want to talk about a re-rating in the space sector uh but it's because the cost of launch has come down but the demand for the companies that can launch has just gone through the roof and like they just can't keep pace with everybody that wants to put something in orbit right now um there just aren't enough rockets there isn't enough capability and capacity to do it and um i mean i think the fcc is mulling through something like i think it's like hundreds of thousands of you know applications for what could be hundreds of thousands of satellites over the coming years.

I mean, it's the numbers are nuts in terms of how much how many different companies and governments are trying to put up in orbit right now. That wasn't possible when launch costs were double, triple, quadruple where they are now. I think the space industry is a great example of what's going on just across American technology sectors, right? Whether you see it in DNA sequencing, self-driving, humanoid robots, space, you know. They're all interconnected. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. But also, I think that the rise of private market returns has really sucked in a lot of capital. Once you get that capital, you get the entrepreneurs. Obviously, here you go. Now, I think the big question is, can the public market stomach all of this coming public? Because everyone's talking about SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. But what about Stripe? What about some of these others? Now, they're not trillion dollar IPOs, but they may be a couple hundred billion. And so when Anduril decides to go, when Stripe, you know, I mean, there's a lot of private market, large company supply that if an IPO window really does open, that's a lot for the public market to swallow, right? It is. I guess I could ask you your thoughts on that. It does feel like everybody I speak to has a different opinion about this right now. It certainly seems like there's a sense out there that the markets are easily going to absorb a SpaceX IPO and maybe even an OpenAI IPO or Anthropic behind it because there's just so much demand and there's also just so much capital sitting on the sidelines right now still. Um, but I don't know about that because you do see this race with a lot of smaller companies trying to file and trying to get out before that, you know, before all of that really hits the market, or at least that's what I've heard from a number of investment bankers. Um, I don't know. What do you think? I'm watching. I'm just going to watch. Look, it could-

At least two of us, I guess. I see both sides to it. My guess is that people drastically underestimate the retail demand for those three names in particular, but also I think people underestimate just, if you've been a SpaceX investor, you may have been locked up now, in some cases, 25 years, 20 years, 18 years, 15 years. I don't care how much you are up or how much you think the future of that company is going to continue to appreciate. There are very few both individuals and also asset managers who are going to be able to resist the temptation to sell. And so, you know, it's like, yeah, there's a lot of retail demand, but this is a lot of liquidity. You're going to hit $2 trillion to people and you're going to tell them don't touch it? no i look i think it's fair um and it's fair i think you're also gonna have a lot of forced buying with some of the changes you know with in you know index additions and things like that um

we'll see we'll see what i'll see what happens um but i do think to your point i'm so happy we've gotten past the stupid phrases like dumb money and smart money i feel like the panda you know it's like sometimes the greatest gifts come from the most poorly income the most poorly wrapped packages and i think one of the gifts of the pandemic was really the fact that like you had you've had this retail investor evolution and i think especially when you talk about some of these new tech companies and defense tech or commercial space or like i mean if you say quantum or nuclear like you just go down the list um we'll say like new tech frontier tech whatever um the retail investors have been much faster to educate themselves and to to make it a

understand the theses around these companies and sort of what's coming with them. And same with crypto. They're smart. Yeah, no, they're smart and they're rich. That's what people, I was having a conversation literally this morning with somebody who's very intelligent. He's an asset manager. And he was telling me that, you know, retail investors don't have a lot of money. And I was telling them, look, we have a product, CFO Sylvia, that we have people come in and they actually are verifying their assets. I can't tell who it is, but we can see the portfolios. So when you anonymize and aggregate it across space you can see the average net worth of the people is two and a half million dollars average so you say okay well some of them people are below but there's

people who are joining a fintech product that have you know 100 plus million dollar net worth again that doesn't mean that they're controlling all of it themselves maybe they give some to a financial advisor maybe some of it's in real estate you know whatever the thing is but these people are not dumb and they are not not rich and so you look at it from that perspective you say Yeah, no wonder there is so much activity in public markets. It's like these people need a place to put their capital. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. All right.

Where can we send people to find you on the internet? Oh, X, Morgan L. You're not used to being on the other side of the microphone. No, I'm not. I'm really not. You can tell. I'm on LinkedIn. I'm on X.

I'm on Instagram. All right. Well, you did a great job. We need to get to Alaska, by the way, and oil and energy. What I will say is you go to places in Alaska where there's no infrastructure and there's no roads, there's Starlink. Interesting. So it all is interconnected.

It is. It really is. Did a great job. Thank you so much. We'll do it again in the future. Thanks.