Matt Grimm, Co-Founder @Anduril: How a Trump Administration Changes the Defence Industry | E1224

Sean Maguire said on the show that Iran is the greatest evil. Do you agree?

Yes and no.

Who is?

China. Hands down.

Why?

The mindset of the PRC, I think their approach to basic human rights, I think their conducting of an ongoing genocide with their Uyghur population, I think their approach to free speech, to political assembly, to religious freedom are fundamentally antithetical to how the West values human life and how we think about human rights.

Should TikTok be banned in the US?

100%, absolutely, yesterday, b- uh, if not years ago.

Ready to go? (instrumental music plays) Matt, I am so excited for this. Dude, we get to do it in person-

We get to do it in person.

... this is so much more special. Thank you for joining me.

Yeah. Thank you for having me. Excited to be here.

Now we, uh, we're at an interesting time.

Yep.

We've obviously just had the election. I just wanna start, how do you feel post-election? Are you happy about it and why?

Yeah. I think there's, uh, obviously the election just ended, we're getting results in from some of the kind of Congressional races and Senate races. Uh, obviously President Trump was reelected to a second term. I think there's a couple interesting things here. Uh, for me personally, I'm a Democrat, I've been a lifelong Democrat, I've supported, uh, Democrats my entire life. I donated to Kamala, I donated to Hillary Clinton, donated to a number of, uh, House Democratic races, Senate Democratic races. Recently hosted a fundraiser for now Congressman, uh, sorry, now, uh, Senator-elect Adam Schiff of California. So I've supported a lot of sort of left of center or national security Dems through my career, so of course on a personal level, like, yeah, I wish the election had gone differently. Uh, that said, I think, like, there's a lot of interesting potential for both Anduril and the defense sector at large in a new administration, and I think, uh, having a new approach, a new mindset, a new approach to, uh, innovation, a new approach to funding different defense programs, um, could be pretty interesting. So we'll, we'll see how things evolve, we'll see what control of the House and the Senate looks like, and, um, and I think for, for Anduril going forward, like, you know, I think there's a lot of, I think there's a bright future. Um, the other thing I would add here is that internal to Anduril, like, we're, we're an apolitical company. Like, we don't talk about personal politics inside the company. We kind of subscribe to the Brian Armstrong Coinbase kind of philosophy of, like, we're here for a mission and our mission at Anduril is to bring the best technology to the defense sector, period, regardless of who's in the White House, regardless of what party is in control of Congress. So for us internally it doesn't really matter to the day-to-day life, uh, but, but, but externally, of course, perceptions are, are what they are so y- yeah, we have to play the, play the political game and influence where we can.