INVEST ALLIES

“The issue isn't demand. People want our weapons. The issue is that people are buying weapons they know they're not going to get for 8 or 10 years, because there isn't enough production capacity. So we could streamline the FMS and DCS processes all we want, and we will. But the problem is there still won't be any more production capacity. So there's just no more apples in the bushel. And so we're all arguing over the last couple apples. And so to me, what we're really excited is like planting more trees. We need more apples in the basket.”

“Traditional multi-year contracts basically were good for the prime. Maybe it's good for a couple of the key suppliers that do like the rocket mover, the seeker, pick your piece. But those folks were never required to flow cash down into the supply chain and lock in the demand. With this deal, we're essentially demanding that the companies lock in the pricing and the availability components of the suppliers all the way through the supply chain and down. That means that those suppliers at every level have stability. They know that there's a buy for them over seven years.”

“I think, look, if you go back, the department's been trying to get Silicon Valley to play in defense for 20 years. Go back to 2005 and all the crypto libertarian crowd were gonna float around in their islands and utopian. They were never gonna deal with us nasty countries in war. Peace had broken out in the Pacific somehow. They've all come back around, right? They've all come to the department. They all want to play. They all want contracts. They all want to be let in.”

“The other thing that was most bipartisan and common was why are things so messed up? And I think that was truly a striking thing that they're like, we've given you a trillion dollars, we've given you authorities, we've given you all the authorities you want, maybe not as much as you want. Yes, occasionally we make you buy aircraft you don't want to buy, but that's on the edges. We really want you to do well, and yet you come back every year and ask for more money and more authorities. Yet if you look at the GAO reports, I mean, huge amount of problems have continued on or gotten worse over the past decade.”

“I think in some ways, we were slightly victims of our own success. You know, you go to this period of time after we win the Cold War, and everyone's into Fukuyama's end of history. And if you build it, it'll just people will automatically convert to our system. We let China into the WTO. We lost all discipline.”

“So sulfuric acid exports have been banned, from China. That's 25% of the market. That starts May 1. Sulfuric acid is used often for the processing of rare earths. It's incredibly important for fertilizer and a whole host of agricultural products.”

“Do you know the single factor that has brought the most people out of poverty throughout civilization? Actually industrialization. And so when you think about the projects you're going to do, you need the big ones that move the needle for people. I mean, it's the story of America in a lot of ways. Look at the railroads going west and everything, Towns develop alongside railroads.”

“I'd be remiss if I didn't start with the Western Hemisphere. What's going on in Latin America and across The Americas is certainly something that's never existed in our lifetimes, and I think you have to go back over a hundred years to see this type of opportunity there. You have a lot of pro American governments. You have elections moving in a direction of folks who are pro business, pro growth, anti crime, real allies to The United States.”

“It's structured to deal with the fundamental problem, which has plagued industry the past 20 years. Lack of coherent demand. FITIP's up one year, it's the most important thing in the world. Next year, the FITIP says, I don't even remember that program. I can't remember. Then the next year, it's back up again. That's chaos. It's why would anybody invest in that? How does anybody know how much capacity to invest? By stabilizing the demand, we give industry the signal that has asked for, that is, we have a clear path for demand.”

“What people don't realize about the Marshall Plan, part of it is this myth has been taken on about pure altruism and it was incredibly altruistic, but 70% of the funds that The US sent over to Europe in the Marshall Plan were used to purchase US goods and services. It was a stimulus for us and it hardwired markets for US workers, businesses, and capital, and we had a first call on strategic and critical materials.”

“What he intuitively recognized faster than almost anyone I spoke to was hey, if other insurers people talk about Lloyd's a lot, but, you know, other insurers are canceling war risk insurance because the straits closed, then implicitly that means everybody's insurance programs across the world on stuff like this rests on the back of The US Military. And what he says is, why are they getting paid for it and not us? Especially when it's our guys at risk and everything we're doing there.”

“If we get in a conflict, right, and we're unprepared, we get in a conflict because we were unprepared, nothing good comes from that. We don't want to lose. I took this job and left my very successful commercial career because I refuse to watch happen in the industrial base what's been happening for a long time. I don't want to lose. And so I'm going to leave this job knowing I tried everything I can. And I'm trying to enlist as many folks as I can in that process going forward.”

“It's incredibly important that we recognize the validity, the dignity, the quality, and the lifestyle you can have working as a skilled trademan in the United States or in any organization, but also within the Department of Defense as part of the DIB. And that's really important for me personally, because I think it's been underappreciated. We have huge challenges. You make a lot of money as a welder doing cool stuff on the factory floor or at a shipyard. And we want to make sure that's available to the next generation of people. And it's AI proof.”

“My head of investments has gone overseas to places and has gotten thank yous for being treated like a partner, to have expectations set rather than an incredibly paternalistic view that frankly does not create partners but dependency. When people actually have skin in the game, are invested in and are working hard for something, and it's why we have them we have our partner countries co invest with us.”

“So I went on part of my honeymoon with my wife to Rwanda and remember driving, when we did a gorilla trek and, you know, an amazing country, especially what they went through, with their genocide and civil war and how the country has been rebuilt. But you know, the driver on the way to the Guerrilla Tracts Plaza, guys are Americans, we love Americans. This road, everything here was built by the Chinese. We hate the Chinese. And I go, but they built you the road, why would they? And I go, yeah, they built our road. They won't pay and they won't use Rwandan workers. They don't eat at the same restaurants or anything like that.”

“I actually, I've told everybody, I've spent more time on chemistry than I have since 10th grade. I have periodic table of the elements. It's taped to the wall, right near my desk, because people are calling me about one unumtanium or another every single day. Truly, gallium, germanium, yttrium, the entire actinide and lanthanide series. You start to learn these things. You talk about atomic numbers and weights and metals and salts. It's an incredible education. And I have a bunch of brilliant chemists that work for me in a whole bunch of places, all of them who could make more money and hedge funds.”

“I think structurally the difference in approach, and you've seen that across all of our minerals deals, of which we've done, I don't know, a billion and a half just out of my portfolio of work, is that instead of investing around the edges, 5 million here, 10 million here, which has been the traditional approach, we've invested hundreds of millions of dollars in deals, coupled that with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt from Office of Strategic Capital, coupled with private capital as well. That's the scale of investments needed to really make a difference in some of these mineral markets.”

“My favorite book on this subject, obviously, is Freedom's Forge. And so it's a great book. And at the end of the day, the opportunity, I think the book, people think, you know, it's America's great and America is great, but that isn't why the book is great. The issue is because that guy Bill Knudsen every day got on a plane and went to a factory and he sat down with people and he solved problems, right? It was the most tactical thing. He sat down with engineers and businessmen, factories, every single day across this company.”