About this episode

Kyle Harrison joins Molly O'Shea to discuss his book 'The Anduril Thesis' and the implications of Anduril in the defense industry.

Kyle Harrison (GP at Contrary, co-author of The Anduril Thesis ) joins Molly O'Shea on Sourcery to unpack the 300-page book he just spent two years writing on the most counter-positioned company in defense. We go deep on a 100 years of military history — how Robert McNamara strangled America's industrial golden goose in the 1960s, why cost-plus contracting incentivizes the worst possible outcomes, and how the U.S. ended up building $13 billion programs that turn into trillion-dollar overruns. Then we map all of it onto Anduril: the Chick-fil-A founding story, why Lattice is the real product (not the drones), how the Sentry Tower beat a Lockheed contract that "defied the laws of physics," the new $22B IVAS contract, undersea warfare and the cables that move $10T a day, and why ghost sharks are being built in Australia. Kyle also breaks down Anduril's funding history (including Contrary's Series C entry), the talent density problem (only ~40 people in America can actually sell to the government), the philosophy of conflict deterrence, and closes with a hot take that's deeply un-self-serving for a venture capitalist. If you want to understand why Andúril is named after the…

People in this episode

Host: Molly O'Shea

Guest: Kyle Harrison

Topics covered

• defense industry
• military history
• cost-plus contracting
• Anduril
• geopolitics
• venture capital

Keywords

• Anduril
• defense
• military history
• cost-plus contracting
• geopolitics
• venture capital
• IVAS
• Lockheed
• Chick-fil-A

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Contrary, Lockheed, Chick-fil-A, Anduril, IVAS

Books & works: The Anduril Thesis

Places: Australia

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