Anduril Founder Trae Stephens on Our Modern Defense System

I ask this for myself, too.

Like, how do you, how do you bring an intellectual cultural shift to an organization? Like, uh, whether it's the government or, you know, I assume, or if it's, like, more of an incumbent company.

Like, a, how, how does one make that shift culturally?

Well, I think there's, like, all sorts of micro things that you can do.

But at the end of the day, like, culture is set at the top.

Yeah.

And as someone who's now in a leadership position, uh, in, in multiple different places, I don't want to believe that's true 'cause I want to believe-

[laughs]

... that it's, like, diffused throughout the organization.

But people really do look to, like, how do our leaders behave?

Yeah.

What are the, what characteristics are they bringing to bear? If the leadership is incredibly conservative and incentivizes, um, you know-

Risk aversion

... risk reduction-

Yeah

... yeah, risk averse behaviors, then that's what the whole organization is going to do.

Yeah.

And so I think what I would have liked to have seen when I worked in the intelligence community was, um, empowerment and-

Mm-hmm

... uh, promoting people on merit rather than tenure.

Right.

Um, I would have liked to say, have seen them say, "I don't know if this is going to work, but I believe that we need to try."

Right.

These things didn't really happen.

Like entrepreneurial spirit.