How Palantir Is Modernizing the Military With AI

Greg Little, Senior Counselor at Palantir, joins Sourcery to discuss how AI is reshaping national defense, why America must rebuild its manufacturing base, and the urgent need to weaponize capitalism. He shares a Game of Thrones-inspired breakdown of the defense ecosystem—from Lockheed to startups—and how Palantir’s tools are driving outcomes across the U. S. Navy, industrial supply chains, and even hospital systems. We unpack how the Pentagon needs to evolve, why AI isn’t just hype, and why Palantir’s First Breakfast initiative could be the key to winning the next great power competition. This conversation is part of Sourcery’s “Made in America” Mini-Series recorded at the Reindustrialize 2025 Summit. Topics include:- Palantir’s work with the Navy and defense contractors- The national security implications of China’s manufacturing scale- Why America must learn to build again- How AI is being deployed in shipbuilding, logistics, and battlefield awareness- A defense-tech Game of Thrones: Pentagon = Iron Throne, Lockheed = Lannisters, Startups = Starks- The economics of government procurement vs. value- Financial audits as a weapon of war- Palantir’s infrastructure advantage for startups- How AI can close the “kill chain” and the “cash chain” Timestamps:(00:00) Palantir's Role in Reindustrializing America(04:02) How Palantir is deploying AI across the U. S. Navy(05:16) The China Shipbuilding Gap: 200 to 1(06:34) Game of Thrones Analogy: Defense tech's competing houses(13:18) “First Breakfast”: “Weaponizing Capitalism”(17:13) Why the Pentagon’s obsession with cost hurts national security(21:03) AI + Capitalism vs. Bureaucracy: Who Wins?(24:51) What Palantir actually does(26:45) Can financial audits help win wars? (Yes!)(30:21) Ontologies, explained (kind of)(34:12) The “Alien Autopsy Room”Connect with us:1. Palantir: https://x.com/PalantirTech2. Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea3. Sourcery: https://x.com/sourceryvcBrought to you by:Brex—The modern finance platform, combining the world’s smartest corporate card with integrated expense management, banking, bill pay, and travel. As a Sourcery Listener you get: 75,000 points after spending $3,000 on Brex card(s), white-glove onboarding, $5,000 in AWS credits, $2,500 in OpenAI credits, & access to $180k+ in SaaS discounts. On top of $500 toward Brex travel, $300 in cashback, plus exclusive perks (like billboards..) visit → https://brex.com/sourceryTuring—Turing delivers top-tier talent, data, and tools to help AI labs improve model performance—and enables enterprises to turn those models into powerful, production-ready systems. Visit: turing.com/sourceryKalshi—The largest prediction market and the only legal platform in the US where people can trade directly on the outcomes of future events: https://kalshi.com/sourceryFourthwall—The #1 way to sell merch online — Fourthwall is the easiest way to launch a fully branded merch store—used by big brands like MKBHD, Acquired, & even the Smithsonian. 100+ products. No upfront cost. Visit Fourthwall to start today: https://fourthwall.com/Follow Sourcery for the latest updates!https://www.sourcery.vc/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Our software dominates, and I appreciate you using that tagline. Because we focus so much on outcomes.

• 0:35Molly O'Shea?

  Greg Little, Senior Counsel to Palantir. Welcome to Sorcery.

• 0:39Speaker 00

  Excited to be here. Thanks, Molly.

• 0:41Molly O'Shea?

  I'm so pumped to have you here. We're at Reindustrialize. And Palantir is a big name here. So could you share more about your presence at Reindustrialize this year?

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Yeah. First, Molly, super excited to be here. I feel like I've really made it in the world by being in your podcast. My first big public speaking engagement 15 years ago was at Golden Corral, which is the buffet chain restaurant. And so you having me here today is like the ultimate honor. And so I really appreciate it. We're super excited about this Reindustrialize conference because in a lot of ways, we think the best way to make America great again is that we need to be able to build again. And while we're incredible at software and AI, we have lost our competitive advantage in building things. And if we think of what's happening in Russia, Ukraine, while people often talk about AI and autonomy, the real narrative is about quantity. And so for us, having a strong manufacturing base that can build a lot of things,

• 1:33Speaker 00

  that is the best way to be able to lead to deterrence. And if we need to ultimately use that manufacturing capability to deter NAI and ultimately defeat our adversaries. We also think there's a huge opportunity for economic prosperity by America building again. And so we're super excited, as you heard in Cham's keynote, to be seeing the success of Warp Speed, which is our manufacturing OS, where we're taking AI and then allowing folks for the first time to be able to build wildly successful products, whether that's with Saildrone and Sironic, building autonomy vessels, or that's L3 Harris taking traditional businesses and making them more efficient and effective and getting to build more things for America.

• 2:16Molly O'Shea?

  Another thing that Cham noted in his keynote was national sovereignty and how reindustrialization plays a role in that.

• 2:23Speaker 00

  100%. I mean, like, we are so dependent on other countries for our supply chain. So whether you look at rare earth minerals that we're so dependent on with China, if you look at a lot of the capabilities, like CHIPS is a perfect example with Taiwan, we are at a immense risk of not having the capacity, and more importantly, the capability, to be able to build on our own. And so if we see risks within our supply chain and our adversaries control some really important parts of that supply chain, especially China, it puts America at tremendous risk. And so in order to derisk, one, any risk to our economic prosperity, but also to our national security, we have to bring manufacturing back into America.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  And it's really nice to see, whether it's these small mom and pop shops that we're working with, or these large companies, them embracing software and AI. And it's really nice to see the tech side, too, come to this and realize that we need to be builders together, both the hardware and the software.

• 3:22Molly O'Shea?

  AI has become a huge component of that and probably leapfrogged us into this whole situation where we have a new race with other countries. There's geopolitical pressure for America to dominate like software that dominates.

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 3:38Molly O'Shea?

  And so could you explain more about how Palantir is using AI and your new product, AIP, within the system?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that we always pride ourselves on Palantir is we really sell outcomes. And when you heard Cham today, that was his real message with AI. It's not just about the models, the infrastructure, all the cool stuff we talk about. Our software dominates, and I appreciate you using that tagline, because we focus so much on outcomes. So I work on our US Navy business quite a bit. And so I'll lay out the four major areas that we focus on. One is how do we use software and AI to have the most lethal fleet in the world? And if it was interesting about the US Navy, and one thing when I talk to admirals is they'll take the Russia-Ukraine example, which is fascinating. Russia actually has a pretty formidable navy, but they've been completely ineffective in the Black Sea because the Ukrainians are using new technology and new methods

• 4:30Speaker 00

  to, in essence, neutralize the Russian Navy. And so we're working with Maven Smart System to deploy across the Navy and afloat with ships to be able to have incredible battlespace awareness and time-sensitive targeting. So not only can I identify the target, but how do I make sure that I'm using the right effector weapon system to destroy that target? Whether that's in a cloud environment or on the edge on a ship. The other area that we're looking at for software and AI is how do I make the fleet more ready? So many of our ships and subs right now are sitting in a dry dock waiting on repair. And so how do I actually use AI to look at predictive maintenance? How do I make sure that the right equipment and right supplies are at the right place at the right time?

• 5:11Speaker 00

  So these ships can get off of dry dock and actually be operational in the fleet. The third area is that we need to build more things. We're getting destroyed by China in shipbuilding. They can outproduce us 200 to one. They have about 370 warships. We have about 290. They can produce almost 20 to 30 a year. We produce six to eight. And so we need to be able to increase that. So we're super excited about what the president is doing in the maritime industrial base. And there's a huge part of the reconciliation bill, about 450 million, that recognizes that we need to be able to use software and AI to be able to accelerate that journey. And then the last area, and the one that I get super excited about is how do you use AI to be more efficient and effective?

• 5:55Speaker 00

  How do you make sure that we are good stewards of those taxpayer dollars? And we're using them for the things that are going to win? And that we're making sure that we're taking any waste, fraud, abuse out of the system? And AI is incredible at identifying those patterns and then helping us go to the government and say, hey, if you made these type of changes, you could free up this money to be able to make your force more ready and lethal.

• 6:19Molly O'Shea?

  Given the conversations that are having today at the conference and things that you, a pal, and you are talking about, what exactly is the current state of defense tech today?

• 6:29Speaker 00

  Okay, so I'm gonna give you my best analogy and we're gonna hopefully geek out a little bit. Are you a Game of Thrones fan?

• 6:35Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, I've gotten, I've gotten a lot of comments that I look like Arya.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Okay, I don't know if I, I don't know if I see that. But you, but you've read, you've read the books or the...

• 6:48Molly O'Shea?

  I've watched the series. And then I stopped watching after that comment.

• 6:53Speaker 00

  Okay, I don't know if I, if I see that. But I I'll kind of give you my take on on the Game of Thrones and I'll kind of go through a little bit for your listeners who might not be familiar and then I'll go through how I I see the world and maybe see if you get the same take. Okay. So as you're familiar, Game of Thrones is this, I think it's really entertaining and hopefully you continue watching because you look you look nothing like her. Thank you. But is it's these competing houses really trying to be able to have power and sit on the Iron Throne and while all of these houses are infighting in Westeros, the real enemy is the White Walkers from the north.

• 7:33Speaker 00

  And ultimately, the houses have to unite to be able to fight the real the real enemy. And so in a lot of ways, I think that's the way we're seeing the defense tech ecosystem and defense ecosystem at large is we have these infighting houses and at some level they have to unite to be able to actually fight our real adversary, the White Walkers, which in this case is China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And so I'll go through the go through the different houses and see how how right you think I am. Okay, so you have the Iron Throne. In my mind, this is the Pentagon, right? The one that is dictating laws and policies or the ones that are allocating resources. You have House Stark, the most noble and gritty. This is the tech disruptors, the Andrals, the Saronics, the Saildrones, the ones that

• 8:18Speaker 00

  recognize that AI and autonomy are the future, the one that recognize speed and scales what will ultimately win. You have House Lannister, which are the people that are ruthless and rich. This is the primes, the Lockheed Marnes, the BAEs that build exquisite things, but it takes too long. So GAO just did a report on them. It takes almost 11 years for them to go from requirements to actual deployment of capability. And we need more of those exquisite capabilities, but they have to be faster and higher quantity. And then you have House Tyrell, which is like shrewd and sort of is whispering into the king's ears. These are the consultants and SIs that mostly sell PowerPoints, mostly can be replaced by a subscription to GPT for 20 bucks a month, but need to move more to outcomes and firm fixed price.

• 9:03Speaker 00

  And so if they can use their domain knowledge and apply that with AI, you can get immense outcomes at a better price point. And then you have the masters, which are like the the third party knowledgeable people that are supposed to be neutral. These in our land are like the F of R D C's, the warfighting labs that often take sides and actually start building things and competing with other houses versus staying in their lane. And then you have the Iron Bank, the V C's and P P's that we know and love, where they apply the private capital into, but they expect a return and they're kind of ruthless about it. And what's been fascinating to see is like almost of the private capital, $150 billion has been invested in defense over the last three years. That's as much as the previous 10 years. And then you have the White Walkers,

• 9:47Speaker 00

  which I mentioned are Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. And ultimately, what we need to do is to be able to unite. In my mind, we need to be changing the business models in a way that allow all of us to come together to build more things, because we're going to need all of those things and more and faster if we are going to build the capacity to deter China and be ready for 2027.

• 10:09Molly O'Shea?

  That is so accurate, and I have a couple of points on this.

• 10:12Speaker 00

  Okay. What do you think Jon Snow should say?

• 10:15Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know, but I just.

• 10:18Speaker 00

  You're not really a true fan, are you? You did stop watching after like.

• 10:21Molly O'Shea?

  I really did stop. I was so offended.

• 10:24Speaker 00

  Got it, got it.

• 10:25Molly O'Shea?

  My brother even started giving me a nickname because she had a little sword called Needle. They started calling me Needle. But one, one thing, it sounds like Game of Thrones actually wrote this about the U.S.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:40Molly O'Shea?

  It's so accurate.

• 10:40Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:41Molly O'Shea?

  Two, why hasn't Iliano made a meme out of this?

• 10:46Speaker 00

  So it takes so, like, Iliano's just at a different level of popularity and clout than I am, that it took me a long time to get him to even post on X, the Game of Thrones. That's a great question. I don't know, why Iliano, why didn't you do it?

• 11:00Molly O'Shea?

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• 12:39Speaker 03

  That's turing.com/sorcery.

• 12:41Molly O'Shea?

  Wow.

• 12:42Speaker 00

  Wow. Not a very good friend.

• 12:43Molly O'Shea?

  That's a harsh answer.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, not a very good friend or colleague.

• 12:46Molly O'Shea?

  I don't think the mics picked that up, but we'll leave that out.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Not a good very friend or colleague.

• 12:52Molly O'Shea?

  I mean, third, okay, so third, I've gone through your writing. How come you haven't broken this down?

• 12:59Speaker 00

  The Game of Thrones?

• 13:00Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, have you?

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:02Molly O'Shea?

  Did I miss it?

• 13:02Speaker 00

  You must have missed it.

• 13:03Molly O'Shea?

  I missed it. Wow, that's

• 13:04Speaker 00

  But I appreciate

• 13:05Molly O'Shea?

  we're gonna bleep that out.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Of our six readers, I really appreciate that you became the seventh. And so, so this will be something that you get to look forward to on your plane ride back

• 13:14Molly O'Shea?

  I can't wait.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  of the Game of Thrones article on First Breakfast.

• 13:17Molly O'Shea?

  I can't wait. Let's talk about First Breakfast. So you started writing, and you're writing alongside your CTO, Shom.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 13:26Molly O'Shea?

  So how did this begin? And why is it called First Breakfast?

• 13:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think, I think in a lot of ways, I'll kind of give the headline version and decompose it a little bit, but In my mind, what we're really trying to get at is First Breakfast is a play off the famous 1993 Last Supper after the Cold War that led to mass consolidation of our defense industrial base. And in our minds, we need to have this first breakfast moment where we will win in many ways by our best competitive advantage, which is our American industrial base. We need to be able to weaponize capitalism. And so, we want as many players in the field coming from our American industrial base and participating in national security. And so if you double click kind of on the background of that, and you mentioned some of this already, you know, we live in a pretty crazy world right now. You know, US bases

• 14:14Speaker 00

  are being attacked hundreds of times by Iran and the Middle East. We had the horrific event of October 7th with Hamas killing almost 1,400 Israelis. The Russia-Ukraine war, hundreds of thousands have died on each side. The CCP is running aggressive phase zero operations in the Indo-Pacific. The 12-day war against Israel and Iran just finished. The US just attacked Iran nuclear sites. And so, to some extent, it's not hard to imagine that we live in a pretty hot Cold War. I don't think it's hard to imagine that we're at the brink of World War III. But unlike World War II, where our biggest competitive advantage was our capacity to build things, we have lost that, like we

• 14:56Speaker 00

  talked about earlier. And we've given that up to China, who can outproduce us in many things. They have more people than we do. They have more capacity. Again, I mentioned the shipbuilding 200 to 1. But that wasn't always the case. So before the Berlin Wall fell, what was really interesting is that 86% of defense spending was with companies that both had a government business and a commercial business. So, General Motors built cars and missiles. Ford built satellites. General Mills, the cereal company, built artillery parts. All of that changed after the Cold War, where America demanded a peace

• 15:37Speaker 00

  dividend and the DoD budget shrank by 67%. Secretary Aspen at the time brought the 51

• 15:44Speaker 00

  Primes together to the Pentagon at this dinner and said, hey, you'll either consolidate or die. And that led to the five primes we know all in love today. And so the story really here is that American innovation didn't leave, but it left national security. And with the crazy world that we live in, if we want to protect our economic prosperity, if we want to protect our way of life, we have to be able to bring that American industrial capacity, as well as our allies and partners, back into national security. And so our attempt to do this is through this first breakfast initiative, which in my mind is two parts. One is Palantir, we have this program called Fedstart. Palantir has been building capability in defense for 20 years. We build on classified environments, air gapped environments, top

• 16:28Speaker 00

  secret environments. While we deliver those outcomes, we've also built amazing infrastructure. So how do we share that infrastructure with startup companies to be able to easily access data if the government approves it, but also to be able to ride on our infrastructure backbone to deploy their software in our DevSecOps-like environment? And that's been wildly successful. We've helped almost 45 companies in that. The other part is, what we mentioned earlier is that Warp Speed Manufacturing OS is how do we bring software to American manufacturing for them to be able to produce more at a very cost-effective price?

• 17:06Molly O'Shea?

  One thing that you mentioned in that answer was one of the pieces I wanted to talk about. So weaponizing capitalism. In this piece, you mentioned the Pentagon and constraints around that, whether it's regulation or other government hurdles. The dynamics are changing now. Could you explain this piece and what you mean by it?

• 17:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think if you've been in the department or you've been in government, there's a mismatch between how people think about costs and think about value. So when you buy your, I don't know, what kind of phone do you have today?

• 17:39Molly O'Shea?

  iPhone.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  So do I. iPhone's the best.

• 17:41Molly O'Shea?

  Twins.

• 17:42Speaker 00

  Twins. We bonded just on that in our, your soon-to-be-like-of Game of Thrones. So when I buy an iPhone, I view the value of it, right? And I believe that that value is commensurate with the cost. But I don't care if Apple makes 80% margin on me or 20% margin. I want the thing and I want it to work. The Department of Defense is obsessed with cost and has no concept of value. And so, you know, I'll take a hypothetical that I write about in the article, which is actually often true is, you know, you can, I can bid something for a hundred dollars and I will take a 80% margin. My competitor can bid something for $200 and take a 10% margin.

• 18:25Speaker 00

  And the government feels more comfortable with the $200 bid, that's twice as much as my bid, for the 10% margin than the $100 bid with an 80% margin. And because there's a mismatch of that, they need to explain cost. That's how they're incentivized, that's how they're judged, not to be able to explain value and then allow that the vendor to take the risk and be more efficient and innovate to be able to get the right margin, but also deliver for that end customer. In my mind, like the, the culture needs to fundamentally shift. We do need to move to more firm fixed price, outcome-based contracts, but we also need to pull people accountable. And that accountability is a really missing piece within the government. And so, you know, why oftentimes you're at conferences like this, they'll talk about closing the kill chain.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  I think we should be closing the cash chain. And the reason for that is, we need to be able to rapidly allocate resources to things that are winning, the things that are going to have big bets, but we also need to kill things that are not working. Because if we don't kill things that are not working, we are not freeing up those dollars to invest in things that our warfighters actually need. And so, I think for the first time, even these concepts are not new, we're seeing really impactful executive orders to be able to focus on outcomes, to focus on firm fixed price, to focus on use of commercial capabilities, which I think is fundamentally changing how we do business, which is going to make it more successful for new entrants to get into

• 19:50Speaker 00

  the department, but also for private capital to get the corresponding return. Because the department allows for flexibility, as long as they deliver value, they don't care as much about what margin those companies are, are making.

• 20:04Molly O'Shea?

  In the commercial industry, the private sector does move at rapid pace and they can

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 20:09Molly O'Shea?

  With unlock of this capital. You mentioned a couple examples there. Can you share some ways in which the private sector has outpaced and well, there's many even like

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I kind of think of almost an example of when defense in the last 20 years has ever outpaced industry. And I think to some extent, that's fine. Like, that is sort of the American capitalistic way. And you want companies to be able to have a large customer base because as we're learning from Tyson's Food on their supply chain, I'm applying that same learning to how we think about logistics and into Paycom, right? And so they're feeding each other constantly. All of this R and D money that's from our commercial business is greatly helping the taxpayer on our other side. To some extent, to your

• 20:59Speaker 00

  point, it's like the economics don't work in anything. Like, take AI as a perfect example. Department of Defense had a budget for AI in 2024 of 1.8 billion. You just saw like the announcement with Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank for 500 billion.

• 21:17Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah.

• 21:18Speaker 00

  And that's like only part of their investment for only three companies. And so you're just never going to compete at scale with these level of technologies. And we don't need to. And the beauty of it is we can tap into the OpenAIs, or the XAIs, or the Oracles, or the Microsofts, or the Azure's, or the Palantirs, or the Andro's. The part that worries me the most is I want the Andro's, Sironics, and Sail drones, though, to do well. Because if they don't do well, private capital will recognize, like they did previously, that this isn't a good market to be in. And so I want those companies to be successful so more private capital, so more people can be successful, which is a benefit to Palantir, and more importantly, a benefit to our nation.

• 22:02Molly O'Shea?

  This is critical for national interest. And like, we're seeing this, part of the point was that this is kind of a gift to our adversaries if we're stagnating because our government and maybe public entities are causing roadblocks for this innovation, for expansion of technology tools, rapid advancements.

• 22:23Molly O'Shea?

  Puts us in a bad place.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think I think we're giving every single time we add something in the process that doesn't give us capabilities or scale with the world that we live in today is a gift to our adversaries. And this is why I think your your questions and your points around, you know, how do I fix the procurement process to be able to go at speed? How do I get new entrants in the field? How do I make sure those new entrants prosper so they want to continue to do well in Department of Defense, but also the other folks are watching, the commercial folks are watching those companies come into defense now and saying, is there a market for me, too? And if there is, then they should be wildly successful. The reason why the VCs and PE firms are so important is they're incredible matchmakers.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  They understand what's happening in commercial. They understand what's happening in defense. We want those defense businesses to also do extremely well in commercial, too. So if you take SpaceX as an example, you know, they started out in government with government contracts, but they now have a robust commercial business with space. The more we can see those type of examples, the better it is for America, the better it is for those companies.

• 23:32Molly O'Shea?

  How do we make that shift? Like, how do we unlock this then and make it so that public sector is on our side?

• 23:43Speaker 00

  I think to some extent, like, you know, unfortunately, in every narrative, like, there's a sense of urgency that drives this. And so I think there's a couple of things why I'm hopeful. One reason I'm hopeful is I think I think we have the the exact right messaging and team right now in this administration. And I feel I think leadership leadership gets this. And I think it'll be a prolonged thing. I think Americans are understanding the need. I also think, you know, sometimes there's a silver lining to a tragedy. Russia, Ukraine, I think, woke up America, woke up Our industry to realize that I need to actually have a national security business to protect my economics. I also think China being more aggressive has made it, American companies realize that

• 24:27Speaker 00

  it is a risk to do business with China economically. And so now they need to figure out and actually start building and doing more here with our allies and partners to be able to protect their economics. So I think all of those things have sort of led, and I think the revolution of AI that allows them to be able to scale in a way that they could not dream of before and a cost point that they could not dream of before, it actually makes what you're saying a reality.

• 24:51Molly O'Shea?

  So let's unpack Palantir a little bit more, your software AI company. What problems are you solving?

• 25:00Speaker 00

  It ranges tremendously. On the warfighting side, as I mentioned with Maven, you know, we're using things like computer vision to be able to identify the battle space. So how do I be able to see in these swarm of threats, you know, is that a T90 or T80 Russian tank? Am I seeing different patterns within the battlefield that are identifying a particular risk to our allied forces? We're doing things like time sensitive targeting. So as I'm deploying and seeing a target, what are the right weapon systems I have there? Which one is best to use based on fuel munitions consumption with the next mission and the next mission? We're doing things around logistics optimization.

• 25:41Speaker 00

  So as I'm expending munitions and fuel, how do I best reorder that into my supply chain and then make sure that that's stocked with the right place at the right time? We also do really interesting use cases around basic things like how do I be able to track a dollar through the life of the entire labyrinth of the Pentagon? And that's where the financial statement audit comes in. We're looking for fraud, waste and abuse efficiencies as well. We work on different vaccines with HHS and CDC.

• 26:14Speaker 00

  But then we're also doing some really cool use cases in in commercial for AIG. We're using AI to be able to dramatically improve their claims process. For example, we're working with General Hospital to be able to identify and prevent sepsis.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  So it's a wide range of use case. Fundamentally, like, everything comes down to, like, can I get the data in order and prevent data fragmentation? And then can I build an analytic or a workflow that allows me to save time or money?

• 26:45Molly O'Shea?

  You mentioned something shocking.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 26:48Molly O'Shea?

  You mentioned financial audits.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 26:50Molly O'Shea?

  This doesn't sound like warfighting. Why should the warfighter care about it?

• 26:53Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm glad you asked this question.

• 26:55Molly O'Shea?

  Pressing.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  So I think the financial statement audit does three things. The two things that everyone thinks of, which is improve stewardship and will drive efficiencies. I'll talk about that. I would make the argument that the financial statement audit is a warfighting capability. And so let me let me explain why.

• 27:14Molly O'Shea?

  All right.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Okay. See if unbelievable.

• 27:18Speaker 00

  All right, so if you think about CJSC2, Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control, which is like the main warfighting theme of the department, the fundamental thing of that is decision advantage. Do I have better and faster awareness and action than my adversary? So in essence, can I know where my adversary is going to be? And can I defeat them faster than my adversary knows where I'm going to be? And so when you think about what is a commander really trying to do? The commander is trying to take his or her resources and move them in a way that deter, deny, or overly defeat the adversary. That commander fundamentally needs to know what do I have? Where is it? And what condition it's in to be able to move those resources appropriately? And so if you think about what the financial statement audit is really trying to do, it's like, what do I have? Where is it?

• 28:04Speaker 00

  What condition is it? How many tanks do I have? Where are they? Are they fully mission capable? How many people do I have? How many SM3s do I have? And so this ability to accurately and timely count all of the things within the department is the same data our commanders are using. So when I was in the building, we were using the platform that supported the financial statement audit to be able to respond to COVID-19, to respond to the Afghan-EO, to respond to the Russia-Ukraine war, to respond to the Israel-Iran 12-day war. Because fundamentally, it's about moving those resources. And in order to move those resources, you need to know accurately what do you have? Where is it? What condition is it? What did you think of that explanation?

• 28:45Molly O'Shea?

  Why aren't more people talking about this?

• 28:47Speaker 00

  You're like the first podcaster that's actually cared about the financial statement audit.

• 28:53Molly O'Shea?

  This is an exclusive.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  This is an exclusive.

• 28:55Molly O'Shea?

  Oh, my God.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, only Eliana brings that to here. I think because mostly I think of it as a compliance drill. I think they think of it as like, they don't really understand it. Like, I have, you know, the department has failed an audit eight years in a row. Nothing has really, like, happened to it. Nothing has changed. So why do I be able to understand that? I think they don't think of it also in the power of, like, efficiencies. They haven't seen that gain. I mean, we've been able to stop working with the data to also support the financial statement audit, almost prevent a billion dollars in improper payments to vendors per year, and able to reallocate almost four or five billion a year to things that actually matter because we did the financial statement audit.

• 29:40Speaker 00

  But I don't think people think about it in the warfighting lens. I think oftentimes, we divorce these two communities of the back office of defense and the warfighting office of defense and not think of them as this interconnected thing.

• 29:53Molly O'Shea?

  As we wrap up-

• 29:53Speaker 00

  And people aren't as cool as you.

• 29:55Molly O'Shea?

  People aren't as cool as me. I'm sorry to interrupt you there. That's like the most, one of the most important points, you know? As we wrap up, I'm going to cruise through two important segments. One is on Brex. Brex is one of sorcery's partners. They're all about spending smarter, moving faster. And they love helping companies from small to large with their performance. So as you think about reindustrialization and Palantir's role in it, how is America going to improve their performance?

• 30:30Speaker 00

  I think of like, how can, and I'll talk about what I know on software and AI side. Like, I think to some extent, I want there to be more people that can get into manufacturing and make that more accessible. And what a lot of people will say is like, we don't have the workforce for this. And, you know, one lesson, Henry Kaiser was an incredible shipbuilder in World War II, built a Liberty ship. And his take was like, the only requirement I have for someone to join my shipbuilding, manufacturing enterprise is like, they want to work. That's the only qualification. At the time, he only had, he didn't care about race, he didn't care about creed, he didn't care about religion. Most, a lot of his workers were women at the time.

• 31:10Speaker 00

  And so how do we use AI to be able to enable a workforce that isn't familiar with these capabilities? Or doesn't have that level of experience? I think the best example that we have that Cham also mentioned is the stuff we do in Panasonic with Reno. Reno is not a manufacturing hub, right? It's a services industry. People at casinos, people at restaurants, people in entertainment. How do we use AI to be able to level up these humans and introduce them to manufacturing? And make Reno a manufacturing hub on really complicated Japanese machinery? And we have this really cool capability where we adjusted all these manuals. We have mixed realities where you can see the machine and it tells you exactly what's going on and what's going wrong and how to fix it. And so it's leveled up the workforce tremendously. And so we can make manufacturing more accessible to more of the workforce.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  To do that, in workforce now longer becomes a hindrance for a lot of these companies who are trying to get into this, into this space. And so you can do more, you can do, you can do more with less. The other part is like, if you've ever been to a manufacturing plant, and I spend a lot of time with the shipyards, which are the worst, is like, in essence, is a fragmentation, right? Engineering isn't talking to inventory, isn't talking to procurement, isn't talking to operations. And so a lot of what our software does is to be able to see the second or effects. As I change a design, what is the impact to other designs? As I make those design changes, what are those impacts to the parts that I need? Okay, now if I ordered the right part from the right supplier, what are the risks of my supply chain? Now that that part has showed up, do I have the right workforce?

• 32:36Speaker 00

  Is that workforce scheduled to actually do the thing with the parts I have on the parts of the ship that I need? And then is it actually being maintained in a way that I can repair it if something, something happens later on? And that's what our software really does.

• 32:48Molly O'Shea?

  Ontology.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  Ontology, exactly, exactly. How do you define an ontology?

• 32:53Molly O'Shea?

  I can't tell you.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 32:54Molly O'Shea?

  It's classified.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  Gotcha. I'd be very impressed if you could, because often Palantirians struggle with the definition of ontology.

• 33:01Molly O'Shea?

  I think I had like a five minute back and forth with Eliano on this.

• 33:05Speaker 00

  How do you describe it?

• 33:06Molly O'Shea?

  I don't know.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Well, we'll have to do another segment on, on like, what is an ontology? That could be the entire segment.

• 33:12Molly O'Shea?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll block out three hours.

• 33:14Speaker 00

  That will get a lot of viewers. That'll get a lot of viewers.

• 33:18Speaker 00

  Here's my bad explanation, just so we finish it out.

• 33:20Molly O'Shea?

  Let's do it.

• 33:20Speaker 00

  It's the nouns and verbs of your organization. And it gives you, to use a buzzword, the semantic meaning. But really, what it does in my mind is it allows everyone to be able to understand what you're being said. So in a lot of ways, it throws that a stone. So if you speak English, you don't care if others speak Spanish, or Chinese, or Latin, the language I took in high school, which makes, as you've been useless.

• 33:41Molly O'Shea?

  Impressive.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Thank you. And then, how do I actually encapsulate that tribal knowledge? So how do I encode what's in your brain into the ontology? And so now it's accessible, and all that great knowledge that you have is now accessible to everybody, which should be, based on this conversation, hugely valuable.

• 33:58Molly O'Shea?

  Hugely valuable.

• 33:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, to America.

• 34:00Molly O'Shea?

  To America. Let's try to do one or two of these Calshi markets. Hopefully, they're compliant, right?

• 34:05Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 34:07Molly O'Shea?

  Who knows? I think, I think maybe, let's just keep it to one. I want to know, Greg, will the US say that aliens exist this year?

• 34:19Speaker 00

  You know, you want to hear something funny on that story? That, so I had a team in the Pentagon that worked in a room called the Alien Autopsy Room. That was the name of the room. And it got shut down because the tour guides of the Pentagon would come to, actually run by and show the Alien Autopsy Room. And people actually thought there were real autopsies of aliens occurring there. And so the Secretary of Defense had to write an edict to ban anyone from saying Alien Autopsy Room in the Pentagon. So I haven't seen an alien. I don't know if they exist. There's a lot of people that ask me about that, that thought that's actually what I did in the Pentagon, was like, do data, and then also hang out with aliens.

• 35:04Speaker 00

  And unfortunately, the latter part hasn't happened yet.

• 35:06Molly O'Shea?

  I really thought that was the case.

• 35:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:08Molly O'Shea?

  I'm a little disappointed.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Do you believe in aliens?

• 35:11Molly O'Shea?

  I definitely do.

• 35:12Speaker 00

  Why?

• 35:13Molly O'Shea?

  I think it's hard to imagine that we're the only people in the universe that are blessed to live.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah. Eliana's an alien.

• 35:21Molly O'Shea?

  He definitely seems like an alien.

• 35:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:27Molly O'Shea?

  An alien that's very good at merch.

• 35:30Speaker 00

  But maybe that is like the skill set of the aliens. He's also investor relations. He's the main reason why our stock price has gone up. Obviously, well, that and this.

• 35:39Molly O'Shea?

  And this.

• 35:41Speaker 00

  This interview, yeah.

• 35:42Molly O'Shea?

  I'm gonna be watching it.

• 35:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:44Molly O'Shea?

  Well, Greg, this was so much fun. Thank you for taking the time.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm excited. Thank you, Molly.

• 35:49Molly O'Shea?

  Of course.

• 35:49Speaker 03

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