RTX

And I think that's the biggest problem, with the exception that, as we've been talking about, they're going to be much more powerful than the CEOs of Lockheed Martin, in part because they're unconstrained.

They're not dependent in the way that Lockheed Martin or RTX were and are on government funding.

So you see that.

So, yeah, I think that's the biggest danger, that you get the same sort of closed defense industry.

So rather than five big defense contractors, maybe now you'll have seven or eight and it will be sort of Anduril and Palantir, you know, and another along with Lockheed and RTX and Northrop and the others.

Except that those new ones are going to be much more politically powerful and much more influential.

So then you maybe get the best of both worlds.

This as U.S.-Ukraine-Russia talks are expected soon in Abu Dhabi.

The Pentagon approves Patriot air defense missiles from Ukraine in a $2.1 billion deal with RTX, but the 500 weapons won't be delivered until the 2030s.

British Chancellor John Healey discloses his budget that includes more money to rebuild the country's military.

This as BAE Systems discusses a role for Airbus in the Global Combat Air Program that also includes Italy and Japan.

That Sharia compliance is almost a misnomer.

I never assumed that these funds would be investing in companies like RTX and Rayathon and BAE Systems.

Politics is completely stripped

out they say the mix of this company rtx is only a third defense and hence it slips into the net

Yeah, so I think the Hyphen article and the Middle East article kind of laid it out in very stark terms in terms of the numbers.

that are being invested, and especially things like defence companies, which, to be quite honest, in February, I thought even that was beyond the pale.

I never assumed that these funds would be investing in companies like RTX and Rayathon and BAE Systems and so forth.

However, what my research explored or kind of brought forth was the fact that there are companies which are in the grey zone, if you like.

And the book rose to number three on the New York Times bestseller list.

Their urge to take over national security, invading the longstanding domain of a few huge companies, Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northup Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics, the top five military corporations in the world.

That urge figures more prominently in Nerd Reich than it does in Trillion Dollar War Machine, but it's still just one aspect of a larger narrative.

I'm working to book an episode with Duran.

So the angle that I'm coming from it as is this idea that, as you put it, the privatization of military technology.

When I end the book, I talk about this idea that what we're seeing is that more and more technologies that are crucial for the military, crucial for national security, everything from AI to to internet satellite constellations like Starlink are being developed with private money, often venture capital, and they belong to the companies and people who have developed them.

And that creates a different and in many ways more dangerous dynamic in the past because The question I often get asked is, well, we've always had private industry, you know, RTX, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed.

And I have two answers to that.

Yeah, I also noticed too, in like the earnings report, they were talking about some of their suppliers, specifically their engines as being a little bit of a, this is one of the things that's throttling us back.

So, you know, there's certainly a conversation to be had of how much GE and how much Pratt & Whitney, which is, I guess, is RTX, how much they're going to be able to keep up because their ability to produce is just as important as, you know, Boeing being able to put together airframes.

But that does bring up another question, too.

They're a little bit slow on the supply chain, but there's also the buyers of it as well.