About this podcast
Every week, former fighter pilots and current entrepreneurs Neal Rickner & Mike Smith provide unfiltered insights into the biggest stories in startups, energy, and national security.
Episodes
The newest 20 of 73 episodes
- SpaceX Capped Starlink at 100 MPH and Ukraine’s Drones Went Dark. Who Should Hold the Off Switch? · 50 minOn the night of October 13, Ukraine’s drones start losing their connection. SpaceX has capped the military version of Starlink so that any terminal moving faster than about 100…
- Your Supplier Might Be Tied to the Chinese Military. How Would You Know? · 51 minLouisville Slugger, the official bat of Major League Baseball, sits under a company controlled by a Chinese-led investor group. So does Arc’teryx. Isaac Stone Fish makes a living…
- China Refueled a Satellite in Space and America Still Can’t. Why? · 49 minEvery military satellite America owns launches with all the fuel it will ever have. When the tank runs dry, a satellite worth hundreds of millions of dollars becomes space junk…
- Zelensky Is Ignoring Trump and Bombing Russian Refineries. Who Actually Holds the Cards? · 53 minUkraine is hitting Russian oil refineries more than 3,000 kilometers inside Russia with a drone that costs about $55,000. Last weekend, the president of the United States told…
- The First Russian Diesel Shipment Is Under a Day of U.S. Demand. What Did America Pay for It? · 48 minA new Treasury license allows Russian diesel to be sold into the United States through April 7, 2027, after a phone call between President Trump and Vladimir Putin. The first…
- $10,000 a Household for a Data Center and the Town Still Said No. Bribe or Fair Deal? · 41 minLocal opposition blocked or delayed an estimated $130 billion in data center projects in the first three months of 2026 alone. In Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, a developer tried…
- The Pentagon Wants $54 Billion for Drones, Up From $226 Million. Does It Need a Four-Star for Robots? · 50 minThe Pentagon is asking for $54.6 billion for autonomous warfare next year — up from about $226 million this year. That same week, Secretary Hegseth announces a new four-star…
- Anduril's CEO Says Defense Tech Is a Bubble. So Why Is His Company Talking $100 Billion? · 52 minAnduril's valuation doubled from $30.5 billion to $61 billion in under a year, and the company is reportedly in talks with investors at close to $100 billion. Its revenue more…
- 417 to 3: Congress Finally Agreed on Your Power Bill — And It Still Didn't Matter · 51 minThe price of keeping the lights on in America's largest grid went from $29 a megawatt-day to $329 in two years. Utilities have already asked regulators for billions in rate hikes…
- Diesel Just Hit $6 a Gallon for the First Time Ever. Can the White House Actually Fix It? · 56 minA $20,000 drone just took out 4% of the world's oil supply, and two days later American diesel crossed $6 a gallon for the first time in history. Mike and Neal break down how a…
- We Tariffed Hockey Sticks and Exempted the Oil We Actually Need · 39 minAt 12:01 AM on September 8, Canada's counter-tariffs went live — roughly 700 American products tiered at 15, 25, and 50 percent, covering nearly 28 billion Canadian dollars in…
- Trump's Grid Emergency Order Bans the Two Technologies Actually Fixing the Grid · 50 minNine days before this recording, the White House declared a national emergency over the American power grid—not about blackouts, but about who built the equipment. Mike and Neal…
- West Point Fired Its Only Climate Scientist · 53 minWest Point just fired the only climate scientist on its faculty. Seventeen years of uniformly outstanding reviews, tenure, a grant to research weather systems for troop…
- The Army Killed Its Drone School While Ordering Every Division to Buy Them. So Who's Actually Learning How to Fight? · 48 minMike and Neal open episode 63 with a contradiction that should worry anyone paying attention to how the Pentagon actually works: the Army stood up a unit in January with one…
- The Bill Comes Due: America Just Hit $40 Trillion, and the Pentagon Is Picking Up the Tab · 52 minAmerica just crossed $40 trillion in national debt for the first time in history—and the number that should really worry you isn't the debt itself. It's what's already more…
- The Navy Kept a Carrier at Sea for 260 Days. Trump Says That Wasn't Long Enough. · 42 minThe USS Abraham Lincoln left San Diego last November for a routine six-month deployment. It has now been at sea more than 260 days with no return date, sailors have reportedly…
- America's Nuclear Reactor Made Zero Watts of Power. Welcome to the Golden Era? · 51 minOn June 4th, a reactor at Idaho National Lab hit something called "zero power criticality"—energy in equaled energy out. The plant won't produce a single usable watt until at…
- You Are Not the President: What Tuesday's DCA Incident Actually Tells Regular Flyers About Their Safety · 47 minA missed radio call at Reagan National this week put the president's helicopter in a near miss with a commercial jet. Nobody died. Nobody even remembers it happened by Thursday…
- Nine Carriers vs. None: Why China Builds Ships 230 Times Faster Than We Do — And Who's Actually Fixing It · 48 minChina's naval intelligence assessment puts Beijing's shipbuilding capacity at 230 times America's. They already have 370 warships to America's 287, climbing to 475 by 2035…
- Oil Executives Cashed Out $400 Million Since the Iran War Began. Who Picks Up the Tab? · 42 minOil and gas executives have sold nearly $400 million of their own company stock since the Iran war started. The ConocoPhillips CEO alone sold $80 million in two separate…
