WSJ Events · Nov 4, 2026 · 27m · 20m saved
With Brian Schimpf, co-founder and CEO of Anduril Industries
The US military is still planning for wars that resolve in weeks, Brian Schimpf says, while Iran fired roughly ten times the volume of munitions in the first 40 days of recent fighting that the US used in the entire Gulf War.
Most defense contractors get paid for effort under a cost-plus model; Anduril's new submarine-component deal with the US Navy only pays out if the parts are actually delivered.
"The way the administration wanted to approach this was... they would offtake from us and they would buy output. So if we don't actually deliver these components, we don't get paid. It's a pretty good model. We're taking a huge amount of risk on it." — Brian Schimpf
Brian co-founded Anduril, the defense-tech company now building autonomous weapons systems, border-surveillance towers and, under that new Navy deal, components for the Virginia-class submarine program. He told WSJ Events how he reads the state of modern warfare, Pentagon procurement and AI's role in targeting decisions.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 27 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 5 takeaways that matter.
Key Takeaways
Modern wars burn through munitions far faster than Pentagon planning assumes, Brian says
Iran fired roughly 10 times the munitions in 40 days that the US used in the whole Gulf War
China intentionally choke-pointed rare-earth and battery supply chains for political leverage, Brian says
Anduril's Navy submarine-component deal pays the company only if it delivers
A break from the traditional cost-plus contracting model
The decision to use lethal force remains a human decision, not an AI one, across administrations
A strike that hit a former military site turned school was a database-update failure, not "AI gone rogue"
Brian says setting US surveillance policy isn't his call as a "tech bro" — that belongs to Congress
1. A New Kind Of War
Brian argued the US military's planning is still anchored to an "anomalous" model drawn from the 1990s Gulf War, where conflicts were assumed to resolve in weeks.
The Pentagon's planning model is still anchored to the 1990s Gulf War, Brian says
"When you look at how the current US system is constructed, I think it's based off of a pretty anomalous experience, which was really the Gulf War in the '90s... that's not how any conflicts typically go." — Brian Schimpf
Real conflicts today, he said, are protracted and consume munitions at an overwhelming rate.
Iran fired roughly 10 times the munitions in 40 days of fighting that the US used in the whole Gulf War, Brian says
"In Iran, in about the first 40 days, they shot something like 10 times the volume that they consumed in the entirety of the Gulf War." — Brian Schimpf
He also noted that cheap drones have let state and non-state actors like Iran achieve effects once reserved for major powers with cruise and ballistic missiles, and that the nature of targets has shifted from military installations to economic infrastructure — data centers, oil and gas, commercial shipping lanes — forcing every nation to defend its civilian economy, not just its bases.
