Army operators can turn domain expertise into software in weeks

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 21:05

   Like, I mean, you've obviously worked with the department for years, but being on the inside now, what surprised you? in my so my my focus is really um two things i'm helping them think through how to plan for structure over long periods of time so how do i generate the force i want for all the different military occupation specialties uh so that's been one but the second part of it is thinking through how do we want to employ software as a almost like a malleable weapon system as something that our commanders can wield uh to drive advancement and they call these the operational data teams. What's been hugely impressive to me is the quality of talent in our green suitors. People who are not formally trained computer scientists, people who have just learned these things. The most compelling AI applications I'm seeing across commercial or,

2. 21:55

   you know, so private sector or public sector are being built by these green suitors. And it's, and I think there's something about the existential stakes. You know, you're not doing this for fun. You're not doing this for 10% efficiency. It's a binary outcome win or lose. The other thing about this moment that I think is really interesting with AI is it's massively empowering to people with specific skills. So, you know, it is the Intel warrant officer who really knows their domain. And I was wondering, you know, as someone who's been doing this for 20 years, like, where was this person 10 years ago? And the conclusion I came to is they were always there. 10 years ago, what would they have done, though, with their idea? Make a PowerPoint slide? Brief some program bureaucrat who would tell them how

3. 22:33

   bad their idea is? No, because they're smarter than that. They wouldn't have wasted their time. Now they spend two weeks, they build it themselves. Now they're having an empirical conversation about how what they've built actually drives the army forward. And everyone is quick to adopt it because everyone wants to win. So it's been really exciting to see that. The other part of it, I think, is big institutions. It's conserved across private sector as well. Struggle with zero to one. Everyone wants to get, you know, everyone wants, if you have some sort of innovation, they almost want to rush to get to N as quickly as possible.

4. 23:08

   How do I scale this across the formation? Well, the Army is a very big place. And thinking very critically about the pathing of what is the journey and cycle of getting an innovative idea to scale, that's literally what we do as an industry all day long, right? And how do they take and imbibe those lessons rather than cargo culting their way there, which is frankly what I think the private sector, you know, large Fortune 100s do as well.

5. 23:31

   So they have more to learn from startups in this capacity than they do from, you know, big Fortune 100 companies.