WSJ x a16z: The Next 25 Years of Defense Innovation

I think the world has changed. I think people realize that we're in a new reality. Our view is investing in sort of ahead of what is the next theater? What is the thing that we need to be investing in in the next ten years? Is that the next war is actually going to be fought in space. A couple years ago, if I had said I invested in a hypersonic weapon company in Silicon Valley, I think I would have been kicked out of the room. And in 2023, when we invested in Andreessen Horowitz, there was not a peep out of people thinking that this was terrible. Technology is the backbone of what makes America strong, at what is the envy of the world. And if we don't apply that to our national security and our national interest, we lose a lot of that competitive nature. This is something that I think is going to define the next twenty five years of innovation in Silicon Valley. In 1956, Lockheed Martin had six times as many employees in Silicon Valley as HP Defense Investment built the region. Then the pendulum swung to software, and by 2017, Google employees were walking out rather than work with the Department of Defense. Three weeks after a sixteen z announced its American dynamism practice in January 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. That changed everything. SpaceX and Palantir alumni started founding companies focused on the national interest, autonomous surface vessels, hypersonic weapons, attritable systems built cheaply and mass produced quickly. Now every venture firm in Silicon Valley is investing in defense. The question is whether this represents a lasting category of innovation or a one time thesis. In this episode, we share a recording from WSJ Invest Live where Barron's editor at large, Andy Serwer, speaks with Catherine Boyle, general partner at a sixteen z, about why this moment will define the next twenty five years of Silicon Valley. So tell us about the American dynamism practice at Andreessen Horowitz, which is one of the world's most prominent VC firms. And what does it mean? Sure. So so four years ago, I joined Andreessen Horowitz, and it was a very simple thesis. It was instead of building a practice around a new type of technology, say AI, or around a a customer set, a go to market set, enterprise or consumer, what if we built a practice around a very simple mission, which is companies that support the national interest? And at the time when we announced it, we announced it actually in January 2022. We had been investing a lot in these categories before. I had been investing my partner, David Ullovich, who was already at the firm, had been investing in companies like Anduril and Shield AI and SpaceX. And when we announced that we were, you know, starting this practice and and actually going to dedicate capital to it, Silicon Valley was really stunned. I mean, it was it was shocking. …