PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
The Self-Improving Company | Kavak's AI Playbook
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Gabriel Vasquez, Angela Strange, Alejandro Maza Ayala)
Angela Strange and Gabriel Vasquez are joined by Alejandro Maza Ayala, Chief Product & AI Officer at Kavak, to unpack how the Latin American used-car marketplace rebuilt itself around AI agents, with 96% of customer interactions and 95% of transactions now handled by agents. Ale…
What America Learned About Democracy When It Gained Stealth
T. Nelson Collier
Editor’s note: This is the seventh article in a limited series celebrating American defense technologies born from wartime and their effects on broader national security, politics, and society. This series will run for several weeks to commemorate America’s 250th ann…
Why Conflict Gold Sanctions Fail
Amanda Kadlec
In April 2026, over a month after the United States launched its attack on Iran, leading to thousands of reprisal strikes across the Gulf, the United Arab Emirates shut down a network of money changers connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Iranian exchange houses a…
Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
In 1984, the Walt Disney Company was worth more dead than alive. Disney Animation — the heart of Walt's famous flywheel — had stagnated for years, bleeding away talent while corporate raiders circled, salivating over offers to sell off the film library to MGM and offload the par…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
The Reality of AI-Powered Cyberattacks | Truffle Security & Socket
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Joel De La Garza, Feross Aboukhadijeh, Dylan Ayrey)
Joel De La Garza is joined by Dylan Ayrey, co-founder and CEO of Truffle Security, and Feross Aboukhadijeh, founder and CEO of Socket, to discuss one of the biggest shifts happening in cybersecurity: AI models are no longer just finding vulnerabilities—they're exploiting them. A…
Warlords of Greece: Warfare in Homer’s World
Josho Brouwers
The Iliad and Odyssey have shaped Western ideas of heroism for nearly three millennia. Yet despite centuries of debate over whether they reflect historical reality or poetic fantasy, the Homeric world remains an internally consistent universe worth studying on its own terms. Thi…
How Can U.S. Special Operations Forces Help Defeat China on Taiwan?
Brian Petit
It is conceivable that in one blistering campaign, the People’s Republic of China could invade, occupy, and forcibly annex Taiwan. One question would dominate the post-occupation debate: “What more could have been done?” The obvious answers will be better intel…
Attacks, Deals, and Discontent
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.***IranOver the last two weeks, President Donald Trump repeatedly threatened…
Does Latent Nuclear Deterrence Really Work?
Matthew Fuhrmann
In 2025, Matthew Fuhrmann wrote, “U.S. Allies and Adversaries Are Attempting Nuclear Deterrence Without Weapons – Will It Work?,” where he argued countries don’t always need to go as far as actually building nuclear weapons to reap the benefits of nuclear…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
The Engine Powering Open-Source AI
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Elena Burger, Matt Bornstein, Simon Mo)
Elena Burger and Matt Bornstein are joined by Simon Mo, co-founder and CEO of Inferact, the open-source inference engine powering many of today's most advanced AI applications. Together, they explore how open-source AI evolved from a research project into critical infrastructure…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
Three Startups Reinventing Critical Infrastructure
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Erin Price-Wright, Ryan McEntush, Theo Jaffee, Doug Bernauer, Turner Caldwell, Will O'Brien, Erik Torenberg)
This week, a16z American Dynamism Films premiered three short documentaries highlighting companies tackling some of America's biggest industrial challenges: Ulysses, Mariana Materials, and Radiant. Before watching those films, we're revisiting conversations with the founders beh…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
OpenAI's Joshua Achiam: Did We Already Reach AGI?
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Theo Jaffee, Joshua Achiam)
Theo Jaffee is joined by Joshua Achiam, Chief Futurist at OpenAI, for a conversation on AI cybersecurity, frontier model capabilities, and why he believes society may have already crossed the threshold into an AGI-era without fully recognizing it. They discuss AI's rapidly advan…
PodcastsAmerican Dynamism
Ruby Thelot on Internet Culture, AI, and the Future of Taste
content+a16zpodcast@a16z.com (Sophia Dew, Sofia Puccini, Ruby Thelot)
Sophia Dew and Sofia Puccini are joined by Ruby Thelot, designer, artist, cyberethnographer, professor at NYU, and founder of 13101401, for a wide-ranging conversation about internet culture, AI, digital communities, and how technology is reshaping the way we relate to one anoth…
The Walt Disney Company
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
The Walt Disney Company is the most successful enterprise ever created for monetizing human nostalgia. Today it’s the king of global entertainment, holding the intellectual property rights to the childhood memories of billions of people (including, likely, all of you) and is a r…
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…
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…