# Colonel Cukor's AI effort shows why heretics need protection

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/colonel-cukors-ai-effort-shows-why-heretics-need-protection/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Shyam Sankar](https://realalpha.app/builders/shyam-sankar/) · Shyam Sankar is chief technology officer at Palantir Technologies. · Runs Palantir's technology as CTO, having joined as employee 13 and pioneered the forward-deployed engineering model.
- Host: [Erik Torenberg](https://realalpha.app/people/erik-torenberg/) · General partner, Andreessen Horowitz · Helped build Product Hunt; founded On Deck, Village Global and Turpentine.
- Show: a16z Podcast
- Episode: [Palantir CTO on The SaaS Apocalypse & Preventing The Next World War | a16z](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/), Mar 20, 2026
- Moment: 13:46 to 17:58 of the episode (4 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/colonel-cukors-ai-effort-shows-why-heretics-need-protection/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=826

## Quote

> “someone said that Colonel Kukor is **housing Iranians in his basement**.”
> — [Shyam Sankar](https://realalpha.app/builders/shyam-sankar/) at [15:15](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=915) · a16z Podcast

## Takeaways

1. Cukor pursued AI for the Pentagon despite intense resistance.
2. Investigators searched for a basement in a home with no basement.
3. Leaders need to shield people whose ideas challenge the institution.

## About this segment

Shyam Sankar recounts how Colonel Drew Cukor pushed an under-resourced AI effort through investigations and institutional resistance. The story shows why leaders must protect people who challenge process.

From “Palantir CTO on The SaaS Apocalypse & Preventing The Next World War | a16z”, Mar 20, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/)

## Transcript

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

[13:57](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=837) Well, I think it's hard to pick only one. A new profile that we put out there, which is some of these figures are historical figures, Bernard Shriver, Edward Hall, Hyman Rickover, James Boyd, John Boyd, sorry. But the one that's new is Colonel Drew Cukor. And Cukor is the father of Maven. And here you have this Marine colonel, you know, born, raised by a single mother, Southern California, very modest background, his only way of going to college was ROTC, joined the Marines, lots of incredible experiences there.

[14:32](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=872) But he had a seminal experience where he was trying to evacuate Yazidi refugees who were fleeing ISIS. And a young Marine looking at ISR made a call that he thought he saw RPGs. And that would have made it unsafe for the Marines to land and exfil these people. And there actually wasn't one. As a consequence, you have order of thousands of people who were tortured, enslaved, and raped because of this failure of operation.

[15:01](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=901) And it just changed this man. And so when he had an opportunity in the basement of the Pentagon on a project with no resources to go after bringing AI to the department, he leaned all the way in. And you can see the journey of the heretic here where everyone hated him. Everyone tried to kill him. Every service thought they were doing AI. People tried to throw IG investigations in. Like, one of the details we document is that someone said that Colonel Kukor is housing Iranians in his basement.

[15:31](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=931) So they actually sent out criminal investigators to his house to look at this. And here's a Mormon, devout Mormon, four daughters, 1,400-square-foot home that doesn't have a basement, by the way. And, you know, the investigators were just completely dumbfounded. But it shows you sometimes that what, you know, are you willing to put it all on the line? Are you so committed, so incorruptible in what you're trying to deliver?

[15:55](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=955) Or is this just a career? And that's one of the things I think I draw a lot of inspiration from these folks is just seeing, you know, if they can do this, we can too. Seeing that these people exist inside of government. They exist outside of government. And I think that's in the moment right now, you could say, we need to build more weapons. We need to do this. Yes. But the most important thing we need to do is inspire the latent heretics.

[16:19](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=979) to actually step up. This is the moment your country really needs you. What's been exciting over the last year or so is I'm seeing those people. I'm seeing them inside the building. I'm seeing outside the building. And that is, you know, what is driving the change? So the leadership is setting the conditions to empower the heretics. They're protecting them. John Boyd, who was a famously difficult fighter pilot, his own service, the Air Force hated him, but the Marines learned everything they could from him.

[16:41](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=1001) And all of his heresy, he was really the father of the F-16. All of his heresy was proven correct in Gulf War I, where we destroyed the fourth largest army in the world in days. Just everything came to bear. It's high-low mix, it's Oodalu. But, you know, John Boyd said, to be or to do, you can be somebody or you can do something. But you can't have both. And, you know, how committed are you to this?

[17:04](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=1024) But he was so difficult, he gets a lot of credit. I think the other person who gives credit, who I don't even know the name of, is a three-star Air Force general who protected him. Because people like that do not survive in these bureaucracies on their own. It's not like, hey, he's difficult and we somehow tolerated him. It's, no, someone realized there's something special here and despite that, we tolerate him.

[17:25](https://realalpha.app/v/1LcH4lP9XbA/?t=1045) You see that with the dynamic between Bernard Schreiber, who built our intercontinental ballistic missiles, and Edward Hall, who specifically built the Minuteman. Schreiber fired Hall once and then hired him back, realizing there was no way we were going to get to solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missiles without this notoriously difficult human. And I think that's great leadership.