The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 476: Michael Cadenazzi—The Department of War is Hiring

Episode Date: March 24, 2026

What does it take to rebuild America's industrial backbone—and who's actually going to do the work? Mike sits down with Michael Cadenazzi, Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial Base Policy, to discuss his role at the Department of War (DOW) and his mission focused on restoring the muscle behind America's might. Cadenazzi makes the case that while the U.S. still produces world-class engineers and cutting-edge weapons designs, there's a growing gap where it matters most—the skilled workforce needed to actually build them. From welders and machinists to technicians and fabricators, he argues the country's strength depends on rebuilding the trades that turn ideas into reality. It's a candid conversation about work, purpose, and why the future of national security may hinge less on innovation—and more on the people willing to pick up the tools and get it done. Many thanks to our excellent sponsors PureTalk.com/Rowe Choose a wireless company who shares YOUR values. GoodRanchers.com Use code MIKE for $25 off your first order and FREE meat for life. MDriveForMen.com Use code ROWE for 20% off your first order. American-Giant.com/MIKE Use code MIKE to get 20% off your order.

Well, Charlie, I'm going to break some rules on this one. Oh, do tell. Our guest today is ASW Michael Kodnazi. ASW stands for it? I think assistant. Secretary of War? Yep. That's it.

Okay. That's it. It would not be charitable to simply call him a bureaucrat or a public servant. Although I suppose technically, he would answer to both, but he would also answer to a patriot, years in the Navy, years in the engineering game, years as an entrepreneur, very successful in the private sector, a family man, married man, wife's helicopter pilot,

raised three beautiful girls. And well, he got sucked in, didn't he? Mike Kahnazi works in the Pentagon, and I vowed, well, I didn't really vowed, but I've aspired over the years to avoid the swamp and the politics of it all. But I'm making an exception because I think our country is entering an extraordinary time. And Mike Kodnazi, among other things, is in charge of billions and billions of dollars. It's called the dib.

It's the domestic infrastructure base. Mike's in charge of reinvigorating the skilled trades in the military industrial complex. This is amazing, right? And this guy reached out to Microworks before he was even confirmed. He had been nominated and he had such a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish internally. And I was so flattered that he knew who I was and that he wanted to see. if perhaps microworks could work with the feds. It's really unfortunate that his email got lost in the shuffle for such a long period of time.

It didn't get lost. It got ignored because my crack team here knows that, you know, when elected officials or political figures reach out, they just don't go to the top of the stack. And we have a stack of people that I'm really keen to talk to. But he called back. And he called back again. And long story short, I went to the Pentagon. I've been there a couple of times.

I saw Mike both times, had a meeting with him on this workforce thing, had another meeting with him around rare earths and deep sea minerals. Why? Well, because I'm kind of, I'm sticking a toe in that world. I'm so interested in what I think is going to become a conversation around metal independence,

the same way, like energy independence. Right, right, right. Executive orders have been signed. There is a giant effort underway to scoop up trillions of dollars worth of cobalt and copper and manganese and nickel as they exist in these polymetallic nodules that are all over the seafloor, all over the world. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that. mostly we're going to talk about the challenges of what Mike describes as hands down the best job

in the Pentagon. He loves what he does. Yes, he does. He's good at it. He's passionate about it. And by the time this thing airs, which will be mere moments from now, for all I know, micro works and the Department of War may have a basis for working together. to accomplish the goal that our humble little foundation set out to accomplish 17 years ago,

which is to start to close our country's skills gap in a meaningful way. No guarantees. I don't have a crystal ball, but this guy and I, we're singing out of the same hymn book. I like him a lot, and you will too. It's a really interesting conversation. And full disclosure, it's happening on the 6th of March. When this airs, as anybody's guess, I'm guessing it's going to be a few weeks. Yeah.

Right. So maybe it's like the 24th right now. We talk about Iran. We talk about the radical way the entire conversation has changed in just the last couple of days. So if you hear something that's out of step with the current headlines, apologies, we're in a fluid situation, as Mr. Kodnazi would put it. He puts a lot of things in a very, very memorable way.

And he'll prove it right after this. DUDDUDDU DUM. Hey, if you don't care about cutting your monthly wireless bill in half and saving a small fortune on the same 5G service you're currently being overcharged for by some multinational wireless behemoth, okay, maybe you care about keeping jobs in America. Pure Talk does. They run their entire operation out of this country,

including all their customer service. I appreciate that. I also appreciate the hundreds of thousands of dollars they've donated to America's warrior partnership to help prevent veteran suicide. And I really appreciate their commitment to my own foundation. Pure Talk is helping MicroWorks

train the next generation of skilled workers, and they have been very generous. Look, don't get me wrong, saving money is an excellent reason to switch to Pure Talk, and you will save a boatload when you switch,

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You switched to an American wireless company that actually stands for something. PureTalk.com slash row. Pure Talk. For the record, your business card reads exactly what? Assistant Secretary of War for Industrial-based policy. And I am also performing the duties of the Assistant Secretary of War for International Armaments Cooperation.

How big is the card? I mean, is this like a 3 by 5 or you just go with an 8 by 10? It's a standard card and fits a lot of stuff on it. Are there no acronyms on the card? This is all spelled out. It's all spelled out. ASW, IBP and ASW IAC. Pretty good.

Okay. It's great to see you again. Great to you. The listeners should understand that the first time we met was in the Hallowed Halls or the Labyrinth maze of the Pets. Pentagon a few months ago, where you had just begun to occupy your new office. It was about a month in, I think. We got a hold of you finally after trying to get a hold of you last summer. Okay. Well, I guess this is the place to start. This esteemed individual

sitting across from me wanted to reach out to Microworks because as a guy who's in charge of the Dib, which is the defense industrial base, there's a fair amount of shared real estate on the old Venn diagrams. And you wanted to talk to me about ways that the department, that the Department of War and Microworks could potentially partner around a shared objective. I didn't know any of this, of course, because being in the government, you reached out to an info account and your request was lost in the... Mary, I think it was Libby who got the first one. Is that right? It was Sherry.

Oh, Sherry. Sherry, I think it was the one who politely declined. That's info. Yeah, that's info. Sherry does info. She just literally, Sherry literally blew off the guy. And tell me if I got this wrong. I think you've got the best job in the Pentagon.

I have the best job in the Pentagon and at the best time, truly. I am honored to be doing this. I didn't know that seven months ago. And you didn't have the job yet. I didn't. I was not confirmed then. It was aspirational. So you thought you were going to be appointed.

And if such an occasion would come to pass, you wanted to be able to reach out to me to have a conversation about an objective that was not yet signed off as a prime directive but currently is. Yeah, so technically you're avoiding pinning yourself down to a guy that wasn't actually in the job. So I understand. Very definitely handled them. Thank you. Well, by the time the request made it to my partner, Mary, and she asked me, and she's like,

you know, he's going to be a bureaucrat, it's a political thing. We've worked so hard to stay out of that world. But you know what? We're in a new world now. And the stakes seem just incredibly high. And I googled you, as one does these days. days and when I saw your curriculum vitae and what you had done for the Navy, cryptography, was it?

Cryptology. What's a difference? I mean, practically, cryptography is sort of the hardcore science of actually cracking code, so that's sort of the math that goes into it and all the engineering to build the systems. Cryptology is the broader field of all the associated and ancillary systems and support that go into making that capability work for the country, along with other technical stuff as well. But what struck me is with a background, like you're basic, you probably do puzzles, right,

to pass the time, like you do the Sudoku, you do crosswear. Absolutely. Okay. Your job in the Navy was to crack codes. And now you're doing that on steroids. Anybody that's an officer would tell you, your jobs do paperwork. But yes, the guys underneath us were doing the hard stuff, yes. All right. And out of the Navy, you were in the private sector for a spell? 20 years. That's a spell. Would you do? So I did. I started a bunch of little companies with people. The first few were disasters. lost some money and learned some lessons as one does on the entrepreneurial side. And I finally figured it out and I sold a company in 2012, which is doing defense stuff. So in the Pentagon, just doing paperwork.

But I'd also started a little business doing SaaS like software as a service for defense market and budget analysis, which is kind of an esoteric spot in like the 2010 timeframe. And then I converted that into another company, which ended up selling to a large, well-known consulting firm. And it was a great opportunity for me to go ahead and take what I was doing locally and sort of have a chance to apply it sort of nationwide and even internationally. Had you ever aspired prior to that to government service? I mean, were you even thinking about that? No, I think, honestly, my pursuit of this job came out of a desire to help, honestly. So I have a lot of friends. All my besties are in the Navy or in the Marine Corps or in the service of some kind.

My wife's in the Navy. I've spent a lot of time working on my dad's in the Navy as well, for that matter. And for me, it's incredibly important that the country do what we can to go ahead and make sure we're focused on national security. And in consulting, you have an opportunity to help, but you can't really drive the change. You're outside. You're offering advice. At the end of the day, you have to be in the system to help. And I was lucky enough to go ahead and throw my resume into the Trump administration, have a bunch of people look at it and say, I think this guy has what it takes. More importantly, they brought me in and they let me talk about the way I wanted to tackle the problem. And it really resonated with them. I don't know why.

I was very lucky. They had a lot of choices for a lot of talent. people, but ended up getting the nomination from President Trump and the team, and it's been a ride since. Well, I'm going to talk more about that, obviously. But back to the Navy days, which ship were you assigned? So I was, first of all, my first tour was in Guam. So I was stationed at a base in Guam, which was a Cold War naval communication station. And then I went to Monterey, California, to go ahead and get a master's degree in electrical

engineering. So I went back to school immediately. And the reason why is because, although I was an engineer, my bachelor's was in civil engineering. So all this magical math that they were doing, I really wanted to go ahead and learn about it. And so I had to go ahead and understand exactly what was happening with the black boxes. After that, I went to the USS LaSalle at Sixth Fleet, which was in Gaeta, Italy at the time. And I was there during 9-11. And so that was a very exciting time for the country and for me. And I remember being there on the ship that day, watching CNN and the first plane hit the first tower.

And then the second plane hit the second tower. And somebody said, holy shit, we're going to war. and I remember quite clearly being stunned by the situation. And I think world changing in my life, not having been through something like that as an adult. I had a little girl at the time. My first baby was about a year old. And everything changed after that. My last tour was at Naval European Forces Command up in what was then the base in London, which was right by the U.S. Embassy.

And they've now since moved that down to Naples, Italy. I forget what Malcolm Gladwell called those moments that galvanize countries and world. really, you know. Most big moments you don't know we're big until you look back at him and go, oh boy, you know, I was there for that. But to your point, that certainly in our lifetime, that was in an instant, most people who were paying attention, I think, realized on a visceral level, it's all going to be different. Chuck, do you remember? I called you. Oh, yeah, of course I remember. And I said, you said, turn on the TV and I said, why? You said, just turn it on. I'm like, it was like, I don't know, six or seven in the morning or something.

You said, which channel? Yeah, and you said every channel. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So tipping points is what Malcolm Gladwell calls those. That's the book, yeah. But those moments where, like, he just remembered with such specificity where he was. And that's the point of it.

I was in bed and I had been on Wall Street the day before. I'd been downtown and I'd flown home to L.A. and just remember thinking it's such a sliding doors moment. Absolutely. Everything different after that. The way we view the world, the way the military operated, the pivot into the global war on terrorism, and sort of that's kind of what leads us to where we are now, which is the coming out of the Cold War, the shift from our Cold War industrial apparatus into fighting what was essentially a low-end, asymmetric counterterrorism operation at scale, really shifted the way we think about buying gear, the kind of gear that we buy,

the companies that we buy from and the scale that we bought it from, the thinking was really is the end of history. We weren't going to need big ships, planes, tanks, and bombs anymore. What we needed was little light agile tools, and we needed counter ID capabilities and small vehicles and troops. And it turns out we hollow themselves out in the process, which is not great. Okay. So the other thing that's happened, like in real time, it seems,

I'm reflecting on our first meeting, all the things we're going to talk about regarding workforce and minerals and so forth, and now we're in Iran. And now we're tearing through stockpiles of weapons. And I would imagine a big part of your job, vis-a-vis keeping the industrial base reinvigorated and frosty, is to make sure we have the capacity and the redundancy to keep the arsenal filled.

Is there just a whole new tenor and tone right now in your office, in those halls of the Pentagon? It's got to be. And I think the administration started off strong in this regard, which is talking about moving to a wartime footing for production as a way of driving up urgency into an industry that's pretty complacent. They're there every day. They're working with us. They're working with the war fighters about how we're going to go ahead and affect change. But at the same time, the way we've been buying our capabilities has been pretty lack of days ago because there hasn't been the same urgency. And so the Trump administration, Secretary Heggseth, Deputy Secretary Feinberg, all the down to my boss, Honorable Mike Duffy, have spent a lot of time to sort of drive up the level of urgency going forward. We really cap that off with a series of changes

to the way or aspirationally changes to the way we acquire systems in November with a new strategy put out by our team and I was honored to be a part of the thinking that went into that. And that's led into where we are, which is the beginning part of this year, a whole series of new agreements with companies

about changing the way we buy and the scale at which we buy to make sure that we are, thinking through structurally how we unlock demand to go ahead and create capacity and do that in partnership with the Congress who has to pay the bills and give us the authorities to do this and the way that ties it into the supply chain, but really gets at the heart of what our gap has been is we just simply don't buy enough over long enough periods of time for anyone to feel comfortable that we can produce enough munitions to meet the needs in a fight. And you're seeing that and hearing about that

today. I think for a lot of outside observers, we kind of look at this whole thing and say, who took their eye off the ball? How do we fall so far behind China, for instance? How did our shipbuilding become so degraded? Was it a moment in time in your estimation, or was it just a frog in a boiling water and a little bit here and a little bit there? So I'll go back to something that happened in my confirmation process, which is you get the chance to speak to a lot of senators and a lot of people on Capitol Hill. And there's two sentiments that came out very strong. One was incredible bipartisan support for the defense industrial base production for the warfighter, which is really incredible in this time when you sort of think about how tense things can be. You watch the news. You think about the

public statements really is bipartisan behind the scenes. And that's gratifying for me to have walked in and had so much support. Secondarily, the other question was, why are things so messed up? And I just don't understand. We'll give you a trillion dollars, all these authorities you spend time. And the Congress isn't perfect by any means. They know that. We know that. But they're trying. I think their heart's in the right place. And so I think it's a fair question, which is why are things different? Why are things not working out the way that they want? And I'll go back to the post-Cold War period of the end of history and sort of the books that frame that up, which is we made a lot of seriously rosy assumptions about how globalism would unfold. They've been well studied in books. We thought that

working with China would allow them to go ahead and democratize. There would be a place where we could go ahead and buy what we needed and we would shift to a lovely, polite service economy and war would be over. Instead, what we did is the opposite. We actually empowered our number one adversary, our strategic competitor, to go ahead and actually take over huge chunks of our industrial base. Good Ranchers is not the only company that promises to deliver high quality. American raised me to your front door at a fair price, but they're the ones I use, and I'll tell you why. I saw the owner, Ben Spell interviewed on a podcast last year. I loved this story. Ben wasn't a rancher at all. He was a musician. He'd never even grilled a steak before he said. But he was upset that so much meat imported into this country was being deceptively marketed as domestic. And he just decided to start a completely honest, totally transparent meat company that dealt directly with small farms and ranches. And then he promised to deliver high quality American-made meat for a fair price. That was seven years ago. Today, that promise, and Ben's absolute determination to keep it,

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on a foreign ranch. Get good ranchers now. So we've talked about this on the minerals front. China makes 95% of the world's rare earths, we're completely dependent upon them for rare earth metals. That's not a place you want to be in where your adversary is. We made an assumption that was going to be okay for us structurally in a world that has historically been wrought with geopolitical trauma. We never would have taken those risks during the first Cold War.

And now in whatever way you frame the current competition with China, I think you see a recognition that we can no longer allow those assumptions about markets to go ahead and dominate the conversation. Because unfortunately, left to its own devices, markets will go ahead and take our 95% dependence and make it 96% tomorrow and 97% the day after that. That's what I was getting at. It's drip, drip, drip, drip. All for reasonable incentives along the way, efficiency, global supply chains, cost. And, you know, there's an element of people want to make money.

I could make more money by taking my factory and closing it down in the States or my supply chain and moving it from Europe and moving it to China. We're seeing that up and down the way and we're seeing that people have made those choices, companies have made those choices, even when they know that their IPs at risk, they're threatened, it's stolen, they're developing a workforce which is going to work at the competitive Chinese factory for the future. The recognition in the near term that this can no longer go on and that we have to go ahead and fundamentally bend the curve on what it means to go ahead and manufacture in America. This is a great part of what I'm seeing today, not just from the Department of War, which is fantastic, but you see the whole

re-industrialized movement, all the companies and investment that's going into bringing manufacturing back here is truly exciting. How many jobs are currently open in the industrial base that you oversee? So we think there's about 400,000 or so in this current year at this kind of environment. The challenge is that, you know, it's hard to go ahead and gauge that because so much of the defense industry is dependent upon multi-industrial firms in the supply chains. As you go further and further down, there are fewer companies that make things specifically for the department and more companies that make like ball bearings or gaskets or some piece of material. Tactical to practical. Yes. And they do things for aerospace companies that they do things for cars and auto manufacturing. And so it's kind of hard

to gauge. Our number is around 400,000. We see that as defense demand continues to grow, given the number of retirements, which has got an aging workforce, a workforce that came in in the fifth and 60s in many cases now and then to the 80s, that they're really struggling to go ahead and backfill that, that over the next 10 years we're likely to have as many as 4 million jobs are needed to go ahead and fill the skilled trades within the defense industrial base. It's a big gap.

I mean, that's a lot. That's why I wrote you last summer, Mike. No pressure, Mr. Roe, but regarding our national security, we sure would appreciate a moment of your time. Look, I was flattered that you reached out, but it is daunting. I mean, to think about that gap and how to close it. Like, from my perspective, the conversation changed overnight from, hey, these opportunities

are unloved. They're better than you think. And so your kid would behoove him or herself to explore these jobs. And it'd be wise for you, mom, dad, to maybe let go with some of the stigmas and stereotypes that surround this work. because this employer over here is going to roll out the red carpet, and these two will live happily ever after. That's kind of been the paradigm.

That's not what this is. This is now our submarines. I talk all the time on this podcast and out in the world about the call I got from Blue Forge Alliance and these 16,000 individual companies who are collectively charged with delivering three nuclear subs a year to the Navy, and they're freaked out, man. Absolutely.

I mean, I don't know if I told you at the Pentagon, but they literally called me to say, we're having a hell of a time. Did you answer, Mike? No, it went to info, and it's still there. We're still getting back. No, I answered them, and I'll never forget the exchange. It started with, we're having a hell of a time finding welders, electricians, CNC operators, you know, do you think you can help? I said, how many do you need? I said, 400,000 in the next eight or nine years. But, like 100,000 yesterday. They said, we've looked everywhere. Do you know where they are?

I said, yeah, man, they're in the eighth grade. Yes, absolutely. And that sort of, I think, hit a cord. And then the floodgates open. And then it's like not a week goes by where I don't hear from somebody in a significant position in some industry having a similar freak out. But you're the granddaddy of all. It all kind of trickles back to the biggest, most consequential employer in the

the world. And that, back to your job, whatever, I can't remember what you told me your business card says, but maybe I should just ask you why it is the best job of the Pentagon. Because we do have these gaps, and I've been empowered to try and help, right? And I think it's an interesting thing. You remember, I think I mentioned this before to other folks, during like COVID, there was those weird weft commercials of like the handsome European man with a beard and it was like, you will own nothing and you will be happy. And it was kind of dystopian sort of pitch for the future of, you know, rental and whatever. It's like, it's bugs.

Yeah, it's exactly what it was. But I sort of saw that and I was like, you know what? Industrial-based policy really owns nothing. We don't own the actual end-item units. I don't buy weapons. We don't sustain weapons. We don't deploy with the troops. We actually help people solve problems across the industrial base to make the production

and the readiness of those platforms more available to everyone, whether that's do it cheaper, to go ahead and solve a production gap to help find another supplier. So we truly have the ability to just work with an incredibly talented team to go off and find hard problems. And luckily, the Congress has been kind enough to invest a lot of funds in our program to actually get in and work and say, how can I help you overcome this gap? There's a huge technical challenge there, the idea of actually solving and doing more manufacturing capabilities. And we partner with groups like Oak Ridge National Laboratories, which famously for World War II and uranium processing, those kind of things. But they also have an incredible manufacturing capability, which is a lot of. which is truly a national asset as part of the Department of Energy.

We work with them with associations and 501C3 charities to go ahead and find ways to just improve the way we're manufacturing. We go into the companies, we talk to them about problems they're having and ways that they can unlock capacity and capability. We also, and I have inherited this from an amazing team, we also fund 41 different workforce programs across the country right now. So we do everything from partnering with Honolulu Community College on skilled trades development. So milling machines, C&C machines, we bought machines and re-equipped a facility there in Honolulu.

Is that the Forge program? No, the Forge is separate. The Forge is actually an additive and advanced manufacturing capability, which we've built at Schofield Barracks, to allow the military services and their personnel to come and actually play around with the gear and build new stuff. The training program is actually at HCC, where they can go in and actually learn over the course of 16 weeks how to become a journeyman kind of tradesmen. We're also a program at ATDM down in Danville, which is a welding academy. It's a sponsorship, a scholarship, a scholarship academy, where people can come in 16 weeks, they come in knowing nothing, they can live there, they get fed, the whole deal. And at the end of the 16 weeks, we go ahead and help them get a job somewhere in the industrial base.

These are incredible programs. We do things in the Gulf Coast, in New England, up in Michigan. We're driving a lot of impact because it's been this gap for the industrial base, although there have been lots of state programs and tactical programs that you've talked about in the past. They're not really aligned to what the Department of War needs and what the industrial-based needs. And so a lot of times companies are forced to solve the problem on their own. And in a problem like this with the scale of the gap that you need, you really need to bring resources at scale. And that's where I'm really excited that we're talking to people like you about how we can do a better job of tying all of our programs together, leveraging your sort of expertise and contacts,

and really do a better job of moving the needle on hiring and exciting these folks, which, as you mentioned, starts with talking to kids in kindergarten, elementary school. Look, I think it was Dale Carnegie said all problems are communication problems. You just mentioned four great solutions that are clearly moving the needle and have proof, evidence. Absolutely. 99.9% of the country's never heard of them. That is part of the problem. And why I'm here talking? I thought we were friends.

You just wanted to hang. Look, it's, well, it's why I invited you partly to genuinely atone. for all of that. You are forgiven officially, Mike. Thank you. But look, I'm keen to help. I think part of what I'm supposed to be doing this year, aside from highlighting the individuals

that we've been able to assist through microworks, is to tap the country on the shoulder, right, again and again and say, hey, this thing in Tennessee, this thing in Honolulu, this other thing over here. It's almost like we need a weekly, a short weekly show called How the hell are we going to close the skills gap? This episode brought to you by?

Did you just come off the cuff? Pretty much. It's pretty amazing. Right out of the ass. That's why you're a pro. Just like that. But no, I first, like the top part of the funnel has to be awareness. Yes.

And then I think it has to be genuine because the bullshit meter on this generation is keen. They know when they're being marked. Yes. But I was at the, I was at the Army Navy game and ran in, maybe you know the guy. He's the CTO of the Army. His first name's Alex.

Okay. We just were chatting. And he had his phone out and I said, show me something in your phone right now that you're not supposed to show me that you're just super excited about. Is this a test? Yeah.

And he was like, all right. It's okay for you to see this. But I really haven't shown a lot of people. And he showed me this tank. Maybe a F-35. five or something? No, the M1. It's the Abrams.

No, I know. I think it's... Oh, another tank? He, this thing had a cockpit that was modeled after the F1. Oh. This thing, like, shoots lasers and take a satellite out of the orbit and it goes 75 miles an hour. I'm standing there at the game. We're not looking at the game, but the guy's so enthused by it.

And I thought, you know, that enthusiasm for the tech, right that's what has to like come through the camera that's what has to jump off of the page because it seems like i mean that's what's super cool that's what's going to make some kids somewhere go you know what i want to learn how to do that or more to the point some other kids say look maybe i don't get to drive that tank but i'd like to build it man absolutely that would be amazing so making all this cool is job one absolutely and that's why it's been really exciting to see secretary Hegseth off in his Arsenal of Freedom Tour where he's been visiting factories talking about the warriors behind the warriors and so from the factory floor to the foxhole as sort of the framing

is which is we've got to get people excited about however about national service as a broad category and some people will want to serve an active duty as I did as Scott my uh stratcom's lead here today did and so many people do and as you talked about today are serving currently over in the middle east doing really hard dangerous things on behalf of the country because the countries asked them to. But there's other ways to serve, right? There's other ways to serve in terms of your support to the department being a government civilian, working in the Pentagon and I work with amazing folks, or working in the many factories that actually producing the gear that we need to actually fight and win. And we really want to encourage people to think about service in that way

and serve however you want, but serve. Make that part of your portfolio over your life. You don't have to do it forever. We think part of the opportunity of the now is that there's this ability to think about skilled trades for the future and a way where you can build a real career. that's valuable, that's impactful, that is fulfilling, and also will provide a great life for you and your family in whatever way that you set that up, and that that's the opportunity of really exciting people about this moment, about getting involved with the defense industrial base, but more broadly with the skilled trades as a national issue where we can sort of draft off and make sure we're meeting our requirements, because lots of those people will want to go

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right so like whatever news channel you watch when you when you flick around and when you see a you know a boat filled with drugs being vaporized obliterated when you see some of this footage that right now we should again just remind people we're having this conversation on 6th of March who knows what the state of play is going to be a week or two from now when this drops but I mean just turning on the TV and seeing the handiwork in action is in itself its own kind of I mean not to reduce it to a recruiting video but it sure makes me wonder man who made that happen who made that thing what is that thing and you know can I be a part of that absolutely so we've been blessed by incredible engineering technical talent within the department for a long time

Since the Cold War, we have the best scientists and engineers working at an incredible scale on the most amazing weapons platforms. The challenge has always been that they're really hard to build. They're very, very slow. And so what we need to go ahead and do is incentivize kind of the next generations of engineers and scientists to help us build really cool stuff. That's a little easier to manufacture so we can get more of it. And then we need to concurrently bring in that next generation of skilled tradesmen, the laborers, the welders, the electricians that can help us actually deliver. on that promise. And that's going to be, we think, a highly automated future, which is going to be people not just manually doing stuff, but actually working in partnership with technology,

with the latest tools. And you can go to all these amazing factories. You can see how people are building a capacity, which is really unlocking speed for the skilled tradesmen to actually go ahead and apply their tools and their skills and their handiwork, but to do it at scale where you have one guy controlling 10 systems, as opposed to some sort of three-shift capability where one human being would have to sit with one machine for eight hours straight. The leverage that this provides for the future and the ability to go ahead and provide more impact is truly phenomenal. And I think we're at the cost of that innovation being here. And people have talked about some of those capabilities existing over in Asia. We're there. We've got the skills and the talent. Now we just need

to unlock it for the country. Palmer Lucky sat right there a few months. In flip-flops? You know what? No, you know what he wore? He wore these. It was the, it was a, it was a, it was like a glove for your foot. Like his toes each had an individual sleeve. Yeah. I mean, he flew his own helicopter here. So he's like, yeah, the flip flops are kind of hazardous with the pedals. He's worked better.

But yeah, full on Hawaiian shirt, goatee. And he, you know, I got to circle back with him because he made some really, really great points regarding what you're intimately around automation. I mean, I think he just outright said, look, our only hope. given the challenges posed by China and all these other categories, is to truly master autonomy in our warfighter, or some version of it. So he's busy with these subs, these unmanned subs. And, of course, everybody knows about the drones now.

But don't answer this if you can't. But what don't we know that you can share about just the sheer lethality and the awesomeness of. of the machine that is in place. I know it needs to be maintained, and I know that's your job. But I just feel like a lot of people who don't quite have an accurate understanding

of what the US military is capable of doing. So I think people's indexing around the Ukraine conflict with regards to autonomy is a useful starting point, but it's not the end starting point because I think everyone who knows how the US fights understands that we would not fight the way anyone on that conflict fights. We would bring much more mass. We'd bring much more technology. We would fly B-52 bombers over top and lay waste to huge sections of land to go ahead and penetrate

large numbers of tanks through. We would drive a thousand miles north to go around them and come around behind them. We would do lots of incredible things. But we would also enable that with a lot of incredible sensor technology, space, cyber, you name it. And so at the end of the day, I think as autonomy fits in for the future into the way we think about it is that it is a compelling capability that's going to augment the power of the individual to go ahead and achieve more. So much like we talk about on the factory floor, how that one skilled tradesman could go ahead and now operate 10 machines. Think about that in terms of the way that your near-term, your fighter pilot's going to not just have his own aircraft's capabilities. That fighter pilot

is going to go ahead and have three, four, five different capabilities that are in the air with it that are linked, mesh, controlled, and operating system synergistically with thousands of other units that are all connected to provide what is hopefully a vexing problem for the adversary at every turn and one that provides us demonstrable advantage over time. That is the promise of these capabilities. I think we're at the, again, at the cusp of that, where we're not going to fundamentally replace the human being, as you can see today. There are manned aircraft doing many of these things. There are probably a lot of autonomous systems out there. They've talked about some of the Lucas drone, which is out doing its thing now for the first time.

What's that? The Lucas drone is one of the first sort of U.S. low-cost manufactured drone systems, which is used for combat operations. So it's kind of like a one-way attack drone, as you've seen in Ukraine. And so we're really excited about these programs, E-RAM, Fram for the future, that are going to allow us to go ahead and provide these capabilities at scale in partnership with the manned capability. The challenge has always been you can sort of use these autonomous systems to achieve effects. You ultimately need people to hold grounds and objectives in a conflict.

And so we don't think there's a window where the person, person becomes with a soldier, the sailor, airman, marine, or guardian becomes less valuable in the near term. We're going to make them more important because we're going to make them more powerful through the use of all this tech that we bring to them. And that's the exciting part is actually working with the companies and getting to the factories and talking about how they can unlock these capabilities to deliver it at scale, at volume, and on time. And I think that's one of the things that the drone capabilities actually promises, I can build you a lot of these things really fast. I can deliver both of them quickly. And if I order a hundred,

for next month, I'll probably get 100 next month. Whereas if I order 100 fighter aircraft over the next five years, maybe I get 75, maybe I get 60. Those have been the real challenges for how we buy things in the past. And this allows us a level of certainty and the capacity we can bring, which is really exciting too. Well, war gets awfully foggy, as we know. We are in the fog.

We must be because I just read a story about, you know, we're spending a million dollars on a missile to take down a $20,000. And then I read another story that said, no, that's not true. And then I read another story that said, no, actually, it is true. And then another one said, no, let me assure you that's not true. Is that true? So I think it's true in the sense that if you go back and look at what we did over the past couple of years with the Red Sea sort of countering the Houthis and those kind of capabilities,

we were forced to fire a lot of very expensive weapons to keep U.S. naval aircraft and ships safe. And so a lot of times there was a cost mismatch. And one of the reasons why we won the Cold War is that we were on the, we put the Soviets on the wrong side of a cost incurring strategy. That is, they were having to spend more money on their defensive capabilities on an economy that really couldn't sustain it. We are now probably on the wrong side of that cost occurring strategy to some degree when it

comes to that fight. However, for now, and we've recognized that and we're ramping up the capacity to go and do that. We are rapidly creating a series of tools, directed energy, high power microwave, small, attritable drones themselves, interceptor drones, so that little raptor drone that's going to go ahead and take out another drone, smaller munitions and missiles that'll allow us to go ahead and deal with this at scale at a much more realistic price point. It's never going to be satisfying, given the fact that what we don't want to do is take a lot of risk with our service members. So there are

other countries that are willing to go ahead and accept a fair amount of risk. So they'll go ahead and not spend as much. We'll want to make sure that we wrap all of our aircraft and ships and ground support bases with as much capability as possible. Sometimes that's going to be expensive to make sure that they're safe until we can go ahead and find a lower cost solution. So that is the natural income instinct of the department is to go ahead and make sure that we're investing heavily to take care of the troops. It's not cheap to go ahead and be the best in the world. We think it's worth it and we're going to continue to be the best in the world as we transition to leveraging more these new capabilities. I'm interested to in the way in which conventional wisdom,

loses its convention and when so many of the things we've just accepted as dogma, especially in the business of, you know, global hegemony. Is that the right word? Hegemony. Yeah. I think you're... It's a good. Depends what you mean, but sure. I don't know what I mean. Sounds good. I don't know what I mean. I think what I'm getting at is there's this assumption, there's a fear of a quagmire. There's always a fear of a quagmire. And people are looking at Iran right now and going, well, listen, you just, you can't win it from the air and you're not going to win it autonomously because that's never happened before. The troops are going to have to go in. And when that happens, all hell is going to break loose and then you're going to have a political disaster.

And then it's Vietnam and so, but, you know, who's a Santa Ana, right? You don't learn from history you're doomed to repeat it. But on the other hand, the past is the past. And what is the goal vis-a-vis is it to keep troops from ever needing to go in to a situation like this? Will the tech get to the point where you can fight a war from that distance and actually, pardon the phraseology, but get away with it? So I can't speculate on future leaders or this leader's relationship to that decision. I mean, I know what we've been tasked to do. And I know what the situation is now, which is to go ahead and provide as much capacity

is problems so that the president, the commander-in-chief, the leadership of the department, have a lot of options. And so what I think more than anything else, what I'm focused on is how we can unlock capacity to provide those options. And sometimes you're, you just want to go ahead and stand off from a distance, do whatever you're going to do. And sometimes you're going to want to go ahead and do Venezuela, which is going to go ahead and require you to go ahead and be on the ground tactically for short periods of time. The issues of and the opportunities associated with taking and holding ground will almost assuredly for the for the near term, require large numbers of man capabilities, soldiers and Marines, actually occupying space for a period of time.

If that is your objective, I would expect you still need those people. But for the moment, we're really excited about all the mixed of capabilities that allows you to provide a solution which is faster, lighter, less expensive, more lethal, able to project power over longer distance and deal with whatever combination of things are necessary. And that's really the job for the department is to provide options in support of the president and all of the strategic commanders like Admiral Paparo out and Indo-Pacific Command to make sure that they know they've got what they need to fight and win however they want to fight and win.

Sidebar. Do you play risk as a kid? Absolutely. You a Siam, Australia guy or Europe? I read this thing the other day, man, that basically said one of the hacks in that game was if you were defending North America or the United States, say, and you wanted to, there's one thing to do to make sure you. you don't lose when you're in that position.

Three things, actually. You need to control Alaska. You need to control Venezuela. And you need to control Greenland. If you have those areas under control, you can't lose. Is he playing risk? That's the literal application of the game to this. That's pretty good.

I never thought about that. I mean, you can't lose if that's the thing you're defending. I knew I always tried to have my sister get Europe. so she'd don't end up losing. American Giant started with a simple but audacious mission. Build the best hoodie on the planet right here in America. Well, a year later, they did it. Google American Giant and hoodie, and you'll see they're in the headlines.

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So I think there's a lot of logic to territorial aspirations. And no one argues that there are incredibly strategic things. I think anyone from Alaska will remind you that, I think it was John Boyd that described Alaska as the most strategic place in Earth. Was it John Boyd or was it Billy Mitchell? Can't remember. One of the big Air Force guys.

Seward bought it, right? Seward, yes, absolutely, back in the day. But describe Alaska as the most strategic place on Earth, right? And so you could look at a place like Greenland and say it's incredibly strategic as well. But there are a number of strategic challenges associated with our role controlling the global commons that we're managing in an effective way. And we do that right now every single day. And I think, I always think back to the Ben and Jerry's commercial like 1% for peace. And then the response, which is that the Marines do more for peace every day than Ben and Jerry's will do in 100 years. And although it's a delicious ice cream, I do think I concur with that approach that. The investment we make in these capabilities, our ability to be there every day at great human cost, at great cost to the taxpayer. We generate incredible value for that as citizens. And I think we take it for granted when we don't think about what is beneficial to us as a country in terms of the things that have accrued from this presence and our ability to respond to challenge. Back to a, you have to understand a lot of interdisciplinary things, it seems, to.

to enjoy the best job in the Pentagon, or at least to, you know, to occupy that position well. I'm thinking of rare earths, which really aren't rare or earth technically. Nope. Like, how much did you know about that? And to what degree have you reacquainted yourself with the periodic table of elements? I have a periodic table of the elements next to my desk in the Pentagon that I refer to all the time. we spend, I actually spoke to a guy that previous had this job, Eric Chuning, and I said, how much time did you spend on minerals when you in this job in 2017 and 2018?

And he was like, I don't know, like 5% maybe, something like that. We're spending significantly more time on minerals, and I assure you that was not part of my plan for taking this job, because the last time I touched chemistry seriously was probably in 10th grade. And learning about it, talking to experts, we have literally geologists, PhDs, and chemical PhDs on staff for us engineers whose whole life is working in these areas and I truly am thankful they don't leave

because they could go make way more money working for some mining company. They're incredible. They're PhDs. Absolutely. Like you're surrounded with big-brained. Incredibly smart people. And they did they, like, did you bring a few of them in yourself? Did they volunteer? We're hiring some people. We are hiring, by the way.

So if you have any friends in that big rolodex. I have been blessed by, fact that this is an incredible program in office, which has attracted a lot of really talented people for a long time because we are solving problems and we have the resources to solve problems. So I inherited a team of amazing chemists and geologists that are off doing incredible stuff every single day and I did not have to hire them. But they're really motivated by national security and I think it's working on that national security challenge.

So there's no place else you can do what we do in our office, working with the services, working on really demanding challenges and trying to do it on a national security challenge. trying to do it on an operational time frame. That is, I'm not interested in like a five or 10 year sort of like science and technology study. I'm trying to solve a problem for a customer in the Department of War today. That is, how can I put money out the door to a process, to a procedure, or buying a gear, a piece of gear that's going to solve this manufacturing, this workforce problem in the short term. And that's really the exciting part about what it is. And they get to do it touching like the classified stuff, which makes it a little more exciting than normal work

if you're at the bench sitting at a lab someplace? Well, last thing I thought I'd get involved in is undersea mining and polymetallic nodules and this whole rare earth thing. But it came to me back in July. I was at an energy conference in Pittsburgh, and some guy ran up to me and he gave me this charcoal briquette-shaped thing

that he described as a battery and a rock. you know, filled with copper and cobalt and nickel and manganese, billions of them lying on the ocean floor. And an executive order the president signed about a year ago this month or in the coming month to encourage people to go get those things. That's part of what you and I talked about in the Pentagon. But I wasn't looking at it as a business opportunity. I was looking at it as this thing's going to create 100,000 jobs if it's for real.

And ever since then, with every passing day, it's for real. We're going to go get those things, and some of them have rare earth, some of them have these other minerals. But if you could, just talk generally about the impact that that industry represents, not just for workforce, but for the national security that, I imagine, is your prime directive. Absolutely. So this is an incredible situation in the country where if you think about our dependence on overseas resources, primarily China, but there are other dependencies as well for things like coal ball, which come from Africa, and processing can be in different places, a lot of that in China.

Last April, when the spigot got turned off for rare earths, everyone in the White House at the time, the NSD, as I understand it, got really concerned very fast because industry called and said, this is going to practically, tactically limit my operations here very shortly. What are you going to do about it? And so all of a sudden the word went out that we needed to change. And so you saw the executive orders. You saw the urgency from the White House and from the Department of War to start investing.

You've seen some of these deals. We're investing substantial into and in partnership with others in the department, within the Department of Energy, within Department of Commerce, to go ahead and unlock resources that are available domestically, but also with our partners. We partnered with our Japanese colleagues, Australia and European partners to make these capabilities available for the future. The challenge has been there very dirty, and they take a long time to come online. And so what we need is in all of the above approach to this.

That is, I need investments in mining today to unlock capacity for the future. I need opportunities to invest in production and refining. I need to go ahead and find every rock I can to bring forward and figure out the quickest, fastest, most viable way for us to make that available to the industry writ large. For us, if you think about what I said earlier on about our acquisition transformation strategy, to drive things from the top down that is, I want to fix the demand signal so that everyone knows we need way more of these missiles, right?

That's a huge thing. I don't want to gloss over what you just said. Did we abdicate our responsibility to take care of our own rare earths simply because the process of cultivating them was dirty? Yes. Is that why we just set back and watch China do it? So essentially in the 90s,

at the end of the Cold War, we decided there were industries that no longer needed to be done here. The Chinese were happy to go ahead and take these dirty chemical processes and do them in China with far less environmental restriction. And as a result, we were quite happy to go ahead and ship that stuff over. They started delivering that to us. And over time, every individual factory, every individual process here was outsourced to China, almost entirely. And so we became incredibly dependent on them.

That was a decision we made in light of, again, rosy assumptions. about how things would work in a globalized world. Those assumptions were wrong. We're revisiting them now, hence the need to go ahead and literally take billions of dollars. And I think that's our challenge is trying to make the case to folks that some of the deals we're doing look really big. We're like, oh, here's a billion dollars that the government is investing. Oh, my God, it's outrageous.

When you think about the standpoint that the Department of War, just the dib, probably uses 0.8% of domestic demand for rare earths. We are a very minor consumer of this. It is the nation writ large all of its industries your iPhones your laptops your cars Aircraft everything else you do your TVs that is where the demand signal is in terms of domestic demand and so for us We recognize that we have a problem from the national security standpoint of assured access to these capabilities And we have a stockpile with some stuff on the shelf which allows us some flexibility But we need to unlock this for the country because the same spick it could be turned off again and that's going to affect not just us

It's going to affect everybody working to go ahead and do electronics and software and anything else that you can imagine across the economy. So you've got billions of dollars, billions of dollars that you can invest. The department does. The department does, not my God, Nazi personally. But you've got access to a lot of money. And, I mean, are companies just queued up outside your office now? And if so, what kind of companies? Are you looking for uniquely American companies, wholly American companies?

wholly American companies? How do you reinvigorate? My friend Tom Albany, who used to run Rio Tinto, sent me a thing earlier today that said, look, half of the existing mining workforce will be gone, retired by 2029. That whole sector needs to be wildly reinvigorated. And he's dealing with that same crazy math,

five out two in, five retire two come in. I think it might even. to be worse than that in mining at this point. I believe it. But I mean, I just find it really from the, it's fascinating from the investment side. It's horrifying from the workforce side. It's a challenge. But in the end, do I understand, right, that you're sitting on a pile of money trying to figure out how best to deploy it?

So we and our teams, luckily these amazing scientists and engineers, are building essentially national and global models of mineral demand across a whole variety of them. So it was probably like 30 or 40 that were focused on, kind of 20 something that are the key. And our goal is to understand what do we need to meet the defense industrial-based requirements, which is, again, a relatively small amount in most cases. And then how do I go ahead and meet that from the mine through to production, refining, all the way to recycling? And then we're trying to go ahead and target our investments in the most opportunistic way. That's everything from preliminary site assessment to sort of say, what's here, is it worth it, into direct investments in mines, to technology unlocks. And so there's a need for investment at every level. And I think that's why there's so much money flooding this from our side. What we're trying to do is catalyze all the private investments. So the folks at Rio Tinto will sort of come along and say, all right,

well, the department of war, the government's done some of the initial testing. They're investing. We think we can help scale this. And that's sort of the, you're talking about the seabed nodules and those sorts of things. That's really the opportunity is for us to partner and figure out what's the economic unlock there that allows that company to sort of do what it needs to do. and then bring it back here. We're not overly indexed on US only

because I think we recognize that some cases, it's gonna take a long time to unlock capacity here because there is no mind. So we're just gonna have to go ahead and work with our partners or our partners already have capacity and they're willing to share it. And I'll say that for all of our partners, these deals that we've set up,

they've been a lot of interest in terms of how we move forward. And I'm really excited about that we've got investments in three or four countries at this point, just since I've come on board. And that's really exciting to find that there's so much interest in solving the Western problem, which is, you know, the West writ large being our European partners, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada, the U.S. We're really excited about that broad interest and making sure that there's enough capacity

for all of our economies and our militaries to deliver the capabilities required. It just seems in so many cases like the resources that we need, we have, or we have access to, and we just get in our own way so often. Do me a favor, Chuck. Google polymetallic nodules and just put up a couple of these images so people know what we're talking about. You know, I think about the incredible petroleum reserves that we have and the whole conversation around energy independence. And I think about the timber that we have, maybe more than anyone, but we're a leading importer of timber. We have these things.

And we have access. I say mining, just so people understand. These nodules, you don't dig them up. They're just sitting there. They're sitting there at the bottom. Now, granted, they're sitting there at like 20,000 feet, and there's a lot of tech to get them. But this is a, what do you reckon, a $16, a $20 trillion industry? Oh, there you go.

Look at those things. Absolutely gorgeous. Little boogers at the bottom of the sea. They are sitting there. Waiting to be picked up. And that's, that's nickel. Cobalt, copper, and manganese. I think that is a great example of the challenge to your point around.

We have the solution. We know we could do this. And that's the same across the country. There's lithium in Arkansas. There's coal balkalts in different parts of the country. There's the rare earths that are in California. All these rocks are available. What it takes is the will and the leadership to go ahead

and actually start the process of thoughtfully working through reasonable environmental considerations, which are reasonable, making sure that there's enough investment from the country to go ahead and stimulate the private capital to do that, and then to make sure that we're thinking holistically about how we get it to the people that are going to buy it for the end user needs. And I think there's been times when we've started and stopped this, and I'll take our investments in MP materials and what that means for the future. We've tried Molly Corp back in 2010 went bankrupt and they went bankrupt again. I want people to understand this.

Yeah, sure. So MP, what do they do and what did the defense? do to allow them to do more of it? Sure. So MP Materials is the the resurrection of a company that has been trying to go ahead and do domestic rare earths manufacturing since the 20, 2005, 2008 time frame. They've gone bankrupt twice in various formats. And MP Materials is trying to create a domestic capability for us to go ahead and manufacture these so that we get off of entire.

You're not going to meet all of our requirements, but to go ahead and provide capabilities that meet a large chunk of U.S. domestic demand. And so going forward, we made a partnership with MP materials to sort of invest in them. We catalyze that investment by bringing in other investors, so Apple actually invested them on the back of this. And we've started the process of trying to work with them to make sure that they're producing new capabilities at their facility down in Texas and that we can find other partners that want to come in and bring new capabilities to accelerate what they're doing.

It's a really exciting opportunity. one of some people don't like because they're like, why is the government getting involved in this? At the end of the day, I think we're trying to solve these problems in a very different way from the past because we're forced to. I don't think anybody, again, came into this business thinking that we were going to go ahead and start, spend so much time on mines. We have to. It's not optional because we don't have access to the materials we need and therefore we won't be able to build the weapons and systems we need to fight and win. And so that's kind of like a necessary challenge. It's a national security issue for us. We're keen to be talking to the guys like at Rio Tinto and your other folks there that are interested in solving these problems. There you go. Nodules.

They're so great. Gives you an idea of the size. Mary, do you have one on your desk by any chance? A nodule? One of those little... I might have one of my backpack, too. I just think these things... It's the coolest thing that just exists.

And no, I mean, again, it's like nobody really knows too much about them. I'd wager later this year, metal independence will become a phrase in much the same way energy independence has become. It just takes time. And people are drinking from a fire hose. There's just endless information. The tech is just moving so fast. The headlines change before we have a chance to read them. It's just impossible to keep up to speed on anything.

But that stuff is primary. You know, it's fundamental. You've got to build, while you're building top down from the demand side, you've got to stabilize bottom up, but making sure that you have enough materials because you could say you want to build new factories and all these new capabilities. You can't if you don't have the rocks,

if you don't have the metals and the materials to close it. And so that's a really exciting opportunity is to go ahead and think about, you want to toss it over there. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's a little one. It's a baby one. Yeah, this is a baby. This is a little thing.

Cute little thing there. It's adorable. Thank you. No, I just, I mean, like the idea. This was introduced to me, this whole thing. I told you I was at an energy conference, but it was a guy from the old days that had these produced shipwreck stories

and treasure hunting, you know. And like after all these years, you know, bring it up millions of dollars in gold and silver off these old galleons, you know, finding them first and then diving on them. And then he said, you know, this whole time, the real treasure, which is lying around on the ground all around them.

Yes. These things, a battery in a rock. I think the leadership here that you've seen from the White House and from the department, I think, is really the key. We're committed to this. We're spending a lot of time in it. We're talking to industry. We're trying to encourage them to go ahead and take steps to do just that, which is how can we help you take advantage of this resource, which is sitting there, and make sure that we go ahead and get it into the economy in some thoughtful way.

So that's really cool stuff. Those kind of things are going to unlock capability for us for the future. Specifically, when this thing is processed and when its various component metals are separated, what's the practical application for them? What industries are most in need of what's in that rock? So pretty much every industry, your cameras, your microphone, that TV, the sensors that are going ahead and providing RF capabilities. They all need something, right? They all need cobalt and germanium and gallium and yitriam. Turbine blades

for engines, you name it. They're all requiring an incredible number of very bespoke minerals that are very, very difficult to get. Even just standard lithium for your battery, right, is something that we require tons of. Copper. If you talk about data centers for the future, you're going to need boatloads of copper to go ahead and make that work going forward, your power lines, et cetera, the demand is relentless. And if you want to grow the economy, you have to grow your access to this. And again, the point is that they're all there, right? That isn't that America lax us. In fact, we have pretty much everything we want, maybe not everything, but pretty much

everything we need to go ahead and do it. We just need to unlock that in a reasonable way. And we'll find partners that can close the gap on the minerals needs that we don't have in abundance. We just need the leadership to continue to understand that this is a national security threat. What do they say? History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes, right? And I think about, you know, Edwin Drake and Titusville and oils discovered really for the first time. And people know, this is portentious. This is a game. It's like another one of those moments, you know, surely the consequences of finding oil and being able to bring it out of shale, bring it out of rock, it's going to change the world.

They probably didn't think, you know, what else is going to do is it's going to save the whales. But of course it did, you know, because lamplight, we needed the oil from the sperm whales. So we hunted them down. I think there were like six of them left. And I'm thinking of the fight that's going to be coming from the NGOs and the conversation that's going to involve getting these things off the ocean floor. And I know somebody's going to point to the rainforest and say, where do you think we're getting the cobalt now? What do you think we're doing to the environment now?

I mean, we've got to be mindful and we've got to be careful for sure. But I just, when I look at the child labor, when I look at the biodiversity, when I look at the indigenous tribes that have been totally displaced in the Amazon and our quest for these, we're going to get them. We need them. And the idea that there's decades of them just lying there. I mean, it's just mind-boggling. Well, that's one of the things I think that, again,

we made a mistake in the 90s of assuming that we were going to go ahead and continue to do what this and then the processing was dirty at the time but that we would continue to process dirty forever and it would never get better and that's not the history of the country the history of the country is we do some dirty things for a while and then we find technology unlocks that actually make it cleaner the challenge with a lot of these technologies is because we've exported a lot of the refining and processing we're still doing it the old way we've missed two and three generations of scientists working on these problems at the cutting edge American institutions. We've had unlocks in things like cell phone technology and RF and space and other things and sensors.

And that's fantastic. We haven't had our best and brightest at volume working on these issues to say, how do I process rare earth in a way that's relatively clean? So we reduce the amount of environmental waste. What we know is that eventually we'll do it much cleaner. We'll actually reduce carbon emissions and whatever your particular concerns are. There are ways to do this. We've always found that. And so there are programs at DARPA, in research and engineering within the Department of War that are investing in now, finally, new and exciting ways to do this stuff, to process it into something useful, but to do in a way that's much cleaner. And that's a lot of hope for the future. But we've got to go ahead and get

scientists engaged, which means we need the capital engaged and the support for that change over time. Tell me again how we lost two generations exactly. Well, we shipped the capabilities over there and the Chinese just continued to do it the old-fashioned way. So there's no incentive of us for to go ahead and invest in the science to actually make it better. There's no demand signal for it. So why would I go ahead and become a rare earth scientist if there's no demand for rare earth scientists in the United States of America? All that went over there. And even we changed generations of scientists that were Chinese and then ship them back and then they've taken that technology and they now own it. So we have to come up with our own unique Western capabilities to sort of leap ahead what the

processes are for the future or we're going to end up stuck doing it the dirty way. And I don't think that's where the country wants to be. And it's not been our. history that we just sit quietly and let bad processes continue for it. Well, it sure feels like, you know, sometimes the country needs to be grabbed by the lapels and just shook. Like, we need a wake up call here and there. And how do you think about, like, did the lockdowns really send a message through the Pentagon and through the halls of power when we realized just how reliant we were, you know, from a medical standpoint? By chains. Like, is there a corollary to that?

100%. I think everyone sort of recognized in the moment. You've seen the rhetoric change since then regarding the critical need for countries to have some level of domestic resilience. That is, I may not need to go ahead and disconnect entirely from these globalized supply chains, but I need to know that a certain amount of my capacity is domestic. The challenge is markets don't like that. They're like, why would you have an onshore capability that is 15 or 20% more costly

than just buying it from wherever the original source is. The challenge is in those moments when supply chains break down or when a competitor wants to go ahead and turn off access, you're forced to go ahead and face the fact that you have no capacity that you can scale up. And so I think we're in an interesting time where business people, consultants, bankers, governments, are thinking through how do you go ahead

and create resilience at scale on the domestic level, how you do that among like countries, so say in the West, And how do you go ahead and take the best advantages of a globalized supply chain that is maybe there's things that I do want for cheap, but to not let yourself be at a vulnerability or suffer a vulnerability from adverse situations. We're at the beginning of building that resilience right now. We're nowhere near or long. And I don't think we have a playbook yet. We have a lot of people trying a lot of different things. And more than anything else is that we have to continue to go ahead and experiment with how we create that resilience domestically.

How much time do you think we have? to get this done. We need it now because I think you're in a world geopolitically where there's likely to be more disruptions for the future. We're certainly betting on the fact that disruption will be more significant and faster, and that's why we're taking so much time and effort here. It's hard to say when. I just want it all move to the left immediately as fast as possible. How much urgency do you feel on a day-to-day basis? Like when you wake up and go to What's it like being?

I mean, it's a powerful job. You know what I mean? I mean, it's like, do you, how do you unwind and how do you think about just the consequences of what you've been tasked to accomplish? And what happens if you screw it up? Thanks. No pressure. Honestly, I don't like view it that way that I am honored to be doing this job.

The country trusted me through the president's nomination, through the confirmation, through the confirmation process to go ahead and take a stab at doing this at a time that it's incredibly important. So every day I am there grateful for the incredible team I have and for the opportunity. And I really am super psyched that I have the ability to actually go out and meet people like you or go to companies and say, what do you need? How can I help you? And they're like, really? I said, yeah, we can go ahead and pay for that. We can go ahead and call that guy. And a lot of times, I think my biggest value is just orchestrating discussions between really smart people who have an interest in a problem and that I can connect them together and help lubricate that discussion with

something that is an imperative from the government or connection to a requirement, occasionally to invest in it. But I think that's the most exciting part is actually seeing these things come together and driving real change. So for me, it is an honor. I do feel the pressure at times because I know that when I took this job, I said that I wanted to be a part of America's future of victories. That's why I did this. And so I want to make sure that I'm there contributing every day. I couldn't look at myself in the mirror, my daughter's in the mirror every day, to go ahead and say that I didn't give it at all. And so we're going to leave it all on the table. We're going to smoke to the filter. Phrase it however you like. I'm going to go ahead

and do whatever I can to have a difference and know that I tried my best. How many daughters do you have? I have three daughters. I have my 25-year-old daughters married over in London. She's a lawyer. I have a 23-year-old daughter who is in New Jersey and works in the city. and then a daughter who is 20 years old and is a junior in college. What do they think of what you do? So they come from radically different political backgrounds. One of my daughters was definitely during the election was like, America, America, America, America.

And the other daughter was a little bit horrified. So we definitely span the background. They are very supportive of me and have always been incredibly supportive of my work. I think they appreciate the fact that I'm out here trying every day. They know that I care. They know that I'm still a sailor at heart when I think about who I am. It's still a midship and Caddnazi trying to go ahead and prove that he can do something for the country. I take that really seriously.

What was your confirmation hearing like? And did anybody oppose you? And if so, why? So I did get 23 votes, four and four votes against. I don't know who voted against me yet. Everyone was pretty supportive, as I said, in the process. I was surprised it was not more contentious, I should say. people asked some really smart questions.

There was no drama. Senator Warren even asked me some great questions. And I think a lot of people to expect that politically, you'd get some nonsense in that environment. But really, it was a thoughtful discussion. I learned a lot from it about what the Senate cared about and the amount of support for change that's there. Change is hard.

It requires compromise. And there's not a lot of appetite for compromise right now. So I'm mostly trying to go ahead and use my opportunity here to be incredibly collaborative with all of my partners in the defense industrial base within the Department of War and across the government to demonstrate that we can get big stuff done. There's no way you're going to get a lot done alone. You've got to go ahead and work as a team. And I think I made that case to the senators involved. And so there's four of them that didn't vote for me. I did have one that I thought didn't vote for me. He reached out and actually

said, no, no, I voted for you. And it was very gratifying. Thank you, Senator. You know who you are. So I appreciate it. The thing that surprised me, most of all, I mean, for people who haven't been to the Pentagon, it's hard to overstate the vastness. The five-sided puzzle palace? Well, you know, how interesting that you would use the P-word being a cryptologist. It is a puzzle. I mean, it's so easy to get lost in the place.

But I really expected to kind of feel like I was just waiting through, you know, molasses. I went there to meet the bureaucrats. Man, you guys move fast. what do you call Scott over there? What's his official title? He's my strategic communications advisor. I mean, he just ushered us through the, you know, he was a great navigator. And then I met, I guess.

Retired Marine officer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Marine and Navy, you guys get along? Yeah, we're okay. All right. We're good. I think we're good, Scott. We're a department in the Navy.

Oh, right, of course. So who else do I meet? Feinberg, who I suppose is the undersecretary? He's the Deputy Secretary of War. He's the number two. He reports straight to? Secretary of Heggs-F, yes. Right.

And do you report straight to Feinberg? I report to the Under-Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment, Mike Duffy. Mike Duffy. Okay. Who reports to Deputy Feinberg. Now, Deputy Feinberg, when he walked in the room, people sat up straight and paid attention. Absolutely. That guy did like some amazing things in the private sector.

Yes. Like real, like serious things. He brings up. a capability set and experience that I don't think we've ever had in that role at the deputy role within the department. And you're seeing it in how we're approaching the way we buy, the way we think about investment, the way we approach the defense industrial base. It's an incredible unlock for us to be able leverage his experience and knowledge and have him talk Turkey about the way things are going to run because he understands it in a deep, in a deep way.

Yeah. I just pointed out because I want to add, it's really, really the question I wanted to ask you, vis-a-vis him, but both you guys were killing it in the private sector. I mean, you did great, and you didn't have to do this. And it's impressive to meet people who are doing the hard thing for the right reason, you know. I mean that as a compliment, obviously. Please pass it on to him. But I think the thing I want people to understand is there's so many people. You keep talking about your team, but they're voluminous as well. And certainly the ones I met all seem to give a profound damn. Yes. So I will say the biggest, we make fun of, we criticize, we're unhappy with government often. I will tell you,

and I'm like everybody else, I've criticized the government left and right. The number of people who are incredibly talent that work every day to make the government do what it does is phenomenal. A huge number of them do it through terrible processes. They do it through rotten times and good times. They do it through news cycles. They do it through rain, sleet, and snow. And they just are there every day in a building that is very difficult to get stuff done in. They do it for one reason, a fundamental belief in national security.

And they do it not making a lot of money relative to the peers that they could go ahead and work with out in the civilian sector. They do it for not a lot of benefits. They do it in austere conditions oftentimes, but they do it because they think it's important. And we owe them all the debt of gratitude. And so running down government employees is a big mistake. We need them. And I don't mean me. I mean the folks that actually make the engine run.

The rest of us here, I am relatively well taken care of in my role. The folks that actually are out there doing the work every day, keeping them motivated, exciting people to join them, making sure that they know they're appreciated, demonstrating and letting them unlock their incredible skills. so they can actually have the impact. That is the, I think leadership is about. And I think Admiral Paparo from Indo-PACOMs talked about eating risks so that the middle, the frozen, you can get the frozen middle to unlock

and actually do what they're supposed to do so that employees can go ahead. Eating risk? Eating risk. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that is what I think, and I think he said it very succinctly, which is the leadership's job is to go ahead and get the employees to go ahead and work and allow them to work. And so to make sure we're focusing them on the right.

things. So if they don't have to worry about the BS every day, that's really the exciting stuff for me is seeing them actually solve problems. I can't solve those problems. I don't have a PhD in chemistry. What I need to do is get them in the right place with the right people and the right resources. And the problems will get unlocked. And I think that's the amazing thing about our government at this time. How many people work for you directly? I don't have about a hundred and something government civilians and another couple hundred contractors. So it's a big, super talented team. It's not a small thing that you, took the time to come here and talk to me. Where did you come from right before this?

Today? Yeah. I was in Texas before that for LA. Yeah. Yeah. So you're Texas, L.A., where are you going now? I'm going to Hawaii next. What are you doing in Hawaii? I'm going to, we actually have a bunch of investments you talked about the Forge in Hawaii and Honolulu Community College. We're doing an industry day at the Forge to sort of bring in people to look at what we're building with the services so we can build more demand there. And then I'm speaking at a conference on Tuesday with a lot of other defense people. Is this thing online, The Forge? Like, is there a website?

I don't know if there's a website. We're talking about building a website for it. I think we're probably going to get there, but I was really focused on just trying to get the gear into the building first. So you're basically on a kind of roadshow. At the same time, you're doing all this other stuff. Yes. And every appearance I've seen or read about,

you've invited people to bring you their best ideas. Like you're literally knocking on Silicon Valley's door and saying, what do you got? Have they responded? I get hundreds of LinkedIn invites a week. I get 50, 60, 80 different messages a week. We have tons and tons of outreach to our office. I think people are responding. And that's why I'm trying to do this as much as possible, which is we are looking for,

and I think of Tuckus and some of the environments you've, some of the things you've seen, we're looking for radically different outcomes. Like we're not going to solve the nation's national security. problems, doing it the way we did it five, six, eight years ago. We really need to think fundamentally differently about the kinds of companies we're working with, the way those companies operate, the way that we invest in and incentivize people to join. And you go back to your, you know, why would I go ahead and participate in this stodgy, boring industry, working in a factory that was made, you know, 50, 60, 80 years ago using technology that is

40 or 50 years old. We need to change that. And so that for me is the exciting part about this job, most of all is going out and actually spreading the word at the fact that this is our chances as a nation to go ahead and really fix these problems. Do you think on an, like, education has to fundamentally transform as well? I'm not an education expert. I will know, I will say that I did pretty good with my daughters. They're all smart, talented folks who went to college. They achieved, are achieving a lot and I'm really excited about to see what they're going to do for the future. I struggle with the whole educational framework in America. in a way that has created all these incentives

to not have people that have skilled trades careers. So I presume that there's some fundamental mismatch there relative to the economy. And I don't understand what that is. It's guys like you talking to other people that'll unlock it. But I'm really excited about what I'm seeing as a recognition of the problem as much as anything

is you've got to start with recognition before you can start thinking about the solution. Well, look, I mean, anecdotally, I've heard from Carnegie Mellon and MIT, both of whom are kind of, of, I think, maybe saying, hey, we're certainly trades adjacent. I think Carnegie Mellon was really the country's first actual trade school. Oh, really?

Yeah, and there's a real desire to kind of reconnect to that. So I think there's a role that the Ivy League could play as trade schools morph and evolve. But I also wanted to ask you about what individual companies are doing in your estimation that's moving the needle. I was looking at Palantir, you know, Alex Carp, who just looks like a mad scientist and is easy to kind of dismiss at a glance, is actually running. More so than Palmer Lucky? You know what? I would love to get them in the same room because both of them seem upset. I mean, they each name their company after a Tolkien creation, right?

Andril, the sort of power. It's a thing. Palantir, the Seeing Stone. But he is going straight in a high. schools and taking out like 30 kids at a time, you know, gifted kids and putting them in, I think you called it a meritocracy program. And he's teaching them like liberal arts, Western civilization, at the same time exposing them to these big engineering projects with real consequence. And they're going to go through this program in a couple of years. They'll have no debt. They'll be making a few

hundred grand a year working for a premier company. That's what I meant earlier when I'm like, I I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to be doing with what's left of the useful part of my career. But I think it has something to do with letting people know when a company gets it right or when a government office gets it right. And I just can't imagine the skills gap is going to close unless it closes on a thousand fronts contemporaneous. So letting a thousand flowers bloom, trying lots of different things. And that's kind of what our approach is, which is lots of different models for how we do this. We know that we need to go ahead and talk to kids in elementary school to get them excited about manufacturing. If you don't, by the time they get to kind of high school, you're probably missed the boat for a huge number of them.

We need to reinforce it with their parents, with their grandparents. We need to get them excited about what the opportunities are. And it needs to be repetitive. And so for us, I think that's one of the major opportunities is to continue to fund new and interesting programs that are all different in their own way. But, you know, sort of a common backbone to them, which is we wanted to be meaningful, we wanted to be focused on the kids. focused on what the outcomes are for them, making sure that we're tying it together. So there's a pipeline of excitement that is it doesn't just like, it's cool to go ahead and excited a kid is in sixth or seventh grade.

But if you don't touch them in eighth grade and ninth grade and tenth grade, they lose the fire and they'll get fired up about something else. And so programs like the program at Palantir, which I've heard about, every company is sort of dealing with it in their own way. And that's great. We need to start investing resources and pulling the best of those models forward and sort of hyper-scaling them across the country. And that'll allow us to sort of think about some of the, some of the

some positive outlook for closing that gap. Well, look, I'm probably out of my, I'm certainly out of my comfort zone, maybe out of my depth. You know, I'm talking to Google in a week or two. I'm talking to Invidia. I'm going to talk to BlackRock,

who looks like they've got a big, giant investment they're contemplating in this space. And I'm talking to you. And I figure, we're all like throwing a lot of mud against the wall. Well, you've been talking about this problem for a long time.

I remember watching dirty jobs and talking about and being impressed by your ability to highlight the dignity, the honor, the challenge, the value of these roles. The first one I remember watching is you crawling around underneath some house with the guy who was replacing, I don't know, it's the under part of a house. And it was super claustrophobic and I was just glad I wasn't there and there with you. And so you've done a great job for this. And I think you having these conversations will be incredibly important for the future. Well, the lesson from that show was that nobody wants a lecture, nobody wants a sermon.

There was a mission, and I had my opinions about what I hoped would happen as a result of it. But until you get somebody's attention, whether you entertain or satisfy curiosity, you just have to do something else. And that's why we went under the house, because optically it was a shit show. People couldn't turn away. And then they watch and then maybe they listen. And then maybe later you get permission to go, hey, to me again, right? That's what I hope to do with you guys. Make a more persuasive case for some of these 400,000 open jobs.

And as we land the plane here, because I know you've got to go and save the world and whatnot, what do you think are the most enticing opportunities that exist in your portfolio for people who are willing to learn a skill that's truly independent? demand and go to work in earnest. There are a raft of new companies that are kicking off their work with that fusion of new tech capabilities and skilled trades. That is, CNC machines, mailing machines, automated processes, orchestration software, tying those together at the latest factories and building parts for the latest weapon systems.

Incredible demand. And a lot of them are designed to not require a lot of skills. You don't need to be a tradesman certified 10 years experience to go in and do this. You can walk in the door. They will train you to run their software. You will learn how to go ahead and deliver these capabilities for the future. That is an incredible opportunity to sort of be at the cutting edge of what the next generation of trades is. There's also, if you want to work outside, if you want to work with your hands directly, there's still boatloads of programs. I would encourage you to check out our office anywhere you want the industrial-based policy office,

our workforce teams. Again, manages 41 different programs across the country. We've got a trade and a training program that's available for you. Most of the time, there's some sort of scholarship or paid stipend that goes along with it so you don't have to do this for free. You don't have to do this at your own expense. We just want you to go ahead and give us the chance to convince you why this might be the right thing for you, why this would be the right thing for you to offer a service to the country. And ultimately, what it means for your future and for your family, these are great jobs. There's honor it. You can make good money. You can be happy and you can feel the dignity of actually working with all of us as we're trying to go ahead and serve the nation.

It seems unlikely, Chuck, that we're going to have a more articulate government worker in here any time soon. Whoa, whoa, wait a second here. So, I mean, if you have any parting questions, Mary, if there's anything you wish I would have asked this gentleman, shout it out now, because he's been here nearly 90 minutes and there's stuff to do. Going? Going. as you sift through all of those responses as a result of your invitation to bring people their best ideas, if it starts to feel overwhelming, Mike,

just forward them to my info account. It'll be well cared for it. And I will give them all into the bin box. The attention they deserve. Thank you, Mike. I'm so grateful for your time. I mean it.

I know you got a lot of plates that are spinning. And look, I'm micro, your macro. Your macro works. You're the government, man. I would love to find a way to thread that needle and work with you.

Me too. I mean, I literally, I first offered in 2009. I wrote Barack Obama an open letter. I just started the foundation and you're old enough to remember. Remember the three million shovel-ready jobs?

Absolutely. Well, I said, look, man, I'm rooting for you. And I love investing in the infrastructure. And I love the idea that you're creating these three million jobs, but you're going to have a easier time selling them to a country who's enthused about picking up a shovel. Yeah. Right. And I meant it.

You know, you have to make a case for the work. You can't just go, oh, look, there's a job open. Go get it. And at this conference where I learned about these polymetallic nodules, you know, the president was there. And Alex, I sat next to you. Alex Karp. That's when I learned about his project. And there were 35 other CEOs in the room. And these guys collectively might pledge $93 billion to data center construction in Pennsylvania. And it's just a deja vu all over again. I said to the president, look, man, I'm rooting for you.

These two million new jobs that you're talking about appearing as a result of reshoring and reinvigorating manufacturing, I think it's great. what about the 450,000 open positions right now in manufacturing? Like, what do we do with that? And I was like the turd in the punch bowl, you know, just raising my hand going, look, but it's $93 billion. Give me just a little little piece of it, a tiny little sliver to make a more persuasive case for the very jobs that you're talking about creating.

So I've been singing out of this hymn book for a while, and it's awesome. You have a partner in our team in our office because we're really excited about, the opportunity to actually make a difference in this front. And we're thrilled to have you talking about and talking about not just the skilled labor thing, which has always been your jam, and we understand and appreciate that, but also the national security implications of this is incredibly important, that there is a unique angle on this, which at this time, and I think is going to be more important going forward. Well, just so you understand, you're on camera right now.

This has all been recorded. I will take you up on that. And Mary Sullivan is sitting here taking notes, bearing witness. So we will darken your doorstep again. And Scott, the Marine, will hopefully lead us to your office. Absolutely. Once again, for more enlightenment. Scott, get Mary's email so I don't get forward next time.

Don't send them to info. Thank you. What a pleasure to meet you again, to see you again, and thank you for doing what you're doing. I feel better knowing you're on the case. Thank you, Mike. It's my pleasure. Appreciate it.

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