PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
Samo Burja on Growth, Energy, and AI
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Theo Jaffee, Samo Burja)
Theo Jaffee speaks with Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, about AI, industrial capacity, economic growth, and the institutions that shape civilization. The conversation explores how AI’s demand for compute, energy, and infrastructure could trigger a new wave of industria…
The Gulf Arab States Need a Shield Built for Limited Trust
Mohammed Alotaibi
Missiles, drones, and maritime disruptions do not stop at national borders. Gulf defense architecture still too often waits for national permission to act. The Gulf Cooperation Council has spent decades building defense institutions, diplomatic forums, and a language of indivisi…
Strike, Counterstrike, Repeat
WOTR Staff
Welcome to The Adversarial. Every other week, we’ll provide you with expert analysis on America’s greatest challengers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and jihadists. Read more below.***Iran Hostilities have increased notably in the last few days, effectively…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
Designing the Physical World with AI
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Erin Price-Wright, Alex Modon, Davide Asnaghi)
Erin Price-Wright speaks with Alex Modon, cofounder and CEO at Unlimited Industries, and Davide Asnaghi, CEO at Diode Computers, about how AI is moving from software into the physical world. They discuss automating construction and electronics design, using code and simulation t…
Wargaming for Improved Acquisition: What Does It Take?
C. Travis Reese
A few months ago, I attended a panel discussion for a wargame simulating rapid industrial mobilization for armed conflict. Conducted by a leading university, with teams composed of former senior defense officials, the game probed how government and industry collaboration would p…
The Maritime Action Plan Needs a Yardstick: Enter the Mahan Ratio
Ander Heiles
Washington is littered with the corpses of grand plans to restore the Merchant Marine. The Trump administration’s Maritime Action Plan is the latest attempt, and to its credit, the most comprehensive since World War II.The plan is the government’s blueprint to resurr…
Dusting a Dirt Road: How The United States Can Break the Cycle of Failing Military Infrastructure
Jason McMahon
Winter Storm Uri ripped through Texas in January 2021. The frigid temperatures froze pipes, which then burst and caused flooding in aging barracks at Fort Hood, many of which were overdue for renovations and had vulnerable mechanical and utility systems. The burst pipes, damaged…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
Tyler Cowen & Alex Tabarrok on AI, Jobs, and Economic Growth
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Wyatt Thomson, Tyler Cowen, Alex Tabarrok)
Wyatt Thomson of OpenAI speaks with economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok about AI, labor markets, and the future of economic growth. The conversation explores one of the most common fears surrounding AI: that increasingly capable systems will eliminate jobs. Cowen and Tabarr…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
AI Eats the World? A Reality Check with Benedict Evans
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Erik Torenberg, Benedict Evans)
Erik Torenberg speaks with tech analyst Benedict Evans about the current state of AI, what has changed over the past year, and which questions remain unanswered. The conversation covers coding agents, foundation models, AI infrastructure spending, software economics, and the ten…
The Lawmakers Fighting to Modernize the Pentagon
Rep. Pat Ryan
Congress rarely moves fast, but Reps. Rob Wittman and Pat Ryan are trying to change that. The two lawmakers founded the bipartisan House Defense Modernization Caucus in 2024 and have driven reforms through two consecutive defense authorization acts, targeting acquisitions and ot…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
Building Search for AI Agents with Exa CEO Will Bryk
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Sarah Wang, Will Bryk)
Sarah Wang speaks with Exa cofounder and CEO Will Bryk about building search infrastructure for the AI era. The conversation covers Exa’s origins, why traditional search engines were not designed for AI agents, and how search changes when the user is no longer a human but an aut…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
AI Agents and the Fight for Customer Data
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Martin Casado, George Fraser)
Martin Casado speaks with George Fraser, cofounder and CEO of Fivetran, about the future of data infrastructure in the age of AI. The conversation covers Fivetran’s merger with dbt, the changing role of data platforms, and why Fraser believes many companies are overestimating th…
Reiner Pope – Chip design from the bottom up
Dwarkesh Patel
New blackboard lecture with Reiner Pope: how do chips actually work - starting with basic logic gates, and working up to why GPUs, TPUs, FPGAs, and the human brain each look the way they do. Reiner is CEO of MatX , a new chip startup (full disclosure - I’m an angel investor). He…
Vanguard
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Vanguard is the most effective vehicle ever created for participating in the fruits of American capitalism. Today it’s the single largest equity owner of the majority of corporations in the S&P 500, on behalf of 50 million clients (including, likely, many of you). And yet Vangua…
Ferrari
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Ferrari is the pinnacle of luxury scarcity — across its entire 79-year history, the company has sold just 330,000 cars at an average price today of $500,000. For context, Hermès sells that many Birkins and Kellys roughly every 2 years, and Rolex moves that many watches every 3 m…
Dylan Patel — Deep dive on the 3 big bottlenecks to scaling AI compute
Dwarkesh Patel
Dylan Patel , founder of SemiAnalysis , provides a deep dive into the 3 big bottlenecks to scaling AI compute: logic, memory, and power. And walks through the economics of labs, hyperscalers, foundries, and fab equipment manufacturers. Learned a ton about every single level of t…
Formula 1
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Formula 1 is three competitions in one: a 200mph battle of the world's best race car drivers, the world cup of engineering where thousand-person teams spend hundreds of millions designing cars from scratch, and — as one of our listeners perfectly put it — the “Real Housewives of…
The NFL
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
The NFL is nearly synonymous with America today. Practically nothing is more quintessentially and universally American than tuning in every Sunday (and Monday, and Thursday… and sometimes Saturdays and holidays too) to watch the world’s most beautiful ballet of violence. It gene…
Rolex
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Rolex is a series of paradoxes. They sell obsolete and objectively inferior mechanical devices for 10-1000x the price of their superior digital successors… and demand is stronger than ever in history! Their products are comparable to a Hermès Birkin bag in price, luxury status a…
Costco
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
Costco is not only Charlie Munger’s favorite company of all time (plus he’s on the board, natch), it’s an absolutely fascinating study in how seemingly opposite characteristics can combine to create incredible company value. For instance: Costco has the cheapest prices of any ma…
Fully autonomous robots are much closer than you think – Sergey Levine
Dwarkesh Patel
Sergey Levine , one of the world’s top robotics researchers and co-founder of Physical Intelligence , thinks we’re on the cusp of a “self-improvement flywheel” for general-purpose robots. His median estimate for when robots will be able to run households entirely autonomously? 2…
@Asianometry & Dylan Patel — How the semiconductor industry actually works
Dwarkesh Patel
A bonanza on the semiconductor industry and hardware scaling to AGI by the end of the decade. Dylan Patel runs Semianalysis , the leading publication and research firm on AI hardware. Jon Y runs Asianometry , the world’s best YouTube channel on semiconductors and business histor…
PodcastsLex Fridman Podcast — Industrial
#412 – Marc Raibert: Boston Dynamics and the Future of Robotics
Lex Fridman
Marc Raibert is founder and former long-time CEO of Boston Dynamics, and recently Executive Director of the newly-created Boston Dynamics AI Institute. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – HiddenLayer : https://hiddenlayer.com/lex – Babbel : ht…
PodcastsLex Fridman Podcast — Industrial
#394 – Neri Oxman: Biology, Art, and Science of Design & Engineering with Nature
Lex Fridman
Neri Oxman is a designer, engineer, scientist, and artist working on computational design, synthetic biology and digital fabrication, previously at MIT, and now at OXMAN. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Babbel : https://babbel.com/lexpod and use…
PodcastsLex Fridman Podcast — Industrial
#380 – Neil Gershenfeld: Self-Replicating Robots and the Future of Fabrication
Lex Fridman
Neil Gershenfeld is the director of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – LMNT : https://drinkLMNT.com/lex to get free sample pack – NetSuite : http://netsuite.com/lex to get free product tour – BetterHel…
PodcastsLex Fridman Podcast — Industrial
#374 – Robert Playter: Boston Dynamics CEO on Humanoid and Legged Robotics
Lex Fridman
Robert Playter is CEO of Boston Dynamics, a legendary robotics company that over 30 years has created some of the most elegant, dextrous, and simply amazing robots ever built, including the humanoid robot Atlas and the robot dog Spot. Please support this podcast by checking out…
PodcastsLex Fridman Podcast — Industrial
#309 – John Carmack: Doom, Quake, VR, AGI, Programming, Video Games, and Rockets
Lex Fridman
John Carmack is a legendary programmer, co-founder of id Software, and lead programmer of many revolutionary video games including Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and the Commander Keen series. He is also the founder of Armadillo Aerospace, and for many years the CTO of Oculus VR.…
David Deutsch - AI, America, Fun, & Bayes
Dwarkesh Patel
David Deutsch is the founder of the field of quantum computing and the author The Beginning of Infinity and The Fabric of Reality . Read me contra David on AI . Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify, or any other podcast platform. Read the full transcript with he…
PodcastsLex Fridman Podcast — Industrial
#252 – Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI
Lex Fridman
Elon Musk is CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, Neuralink, and Boring Company. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Athletic Greens : https://athleticgreens.com/lex and use code LEX to get 1 month of fish oil – ButcherBox : https://butcherbox.com/lex to get…
David Friedman - Dating Markets, Legal Systems, Bitcoin, and Automation
Dwarkesh Patel
David Friedman is a famous anarcho-capitalist economist and legal scholar. Watch on YouTube . Listen on Apple Podcasts , Spotify , or any other podcast platform. Episode website + transcript here . David Friedman's website: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ Follow me on Twitter for…