[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Happy to be here.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's amazing for me to be here actually.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm in your welcome company.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I'm sitting here on your assembly and production floor, which is really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you didn't your CEO of Tracer, and you are coming on the show at a...
[SPEAKER_00]: amazing time in the series that we've been running because just last week we had an episode where I interviewed my colleague at FDD Andrew Stricker who's a nuclear expert.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm glad you heard it because it was all about pickaxe mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're going to do about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm going to talk about Paycax Mountain and ask you a bunch of questions because I feel like I found the guy to solve the problem that is confounding many experts.
[SPEAKER_01]: A guy who knows the guy is maybe to solve the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: The guy who knows the guy here, but excellent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But let's start with your personal story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Who are you?
[SPEAKER_00]: You speak with an American accent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you an American?
[SPEAKER_00]: And is Rayleigh or both?
[SPEAKER_01]: Both.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mostly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Born and raised in Israel, I moved to New York about eight years ago, spent a while there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for the past year or so, I've been on a ball over.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have a new R&D facility in Austin.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're opening up now our first site in Washington, DC.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we have a site right here in Israel, a manufacturing facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: So great.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm happy to hear you're going to be my neighbor in Washington.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, definitely have you guys over for for for dinner, and Austin great town great Texas barbecue.
[SPEAKER_00]: I hope you enjoy Texas barbecue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean it was it was new for me for the past year getting to know the the call it you know local tech scene there, but man, it's it's amazing what Austin has become.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the only problem now is I'm wearing cowboy boots and you're not so yeah, we're going to get you cowboy boots for the fall of the Israel mode with uh, you know is real casual absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so tell us a little bit about your background and and how you came to be the co-founder and CEO of of this remarkable company.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I am
[SPEAKER_01]: I moved to New York to start a company called Exparity, actually in the FinTech space.
[SPEAKER_01]: I come from a software engineering background AI as if we call it these days back then it was natural language processing.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were analyzing large quantities of voice data.
[SPEAKER_01]: We found a product market fit with hedge funds.
[SPEAKER_01]: The company was acquired in 2023, and a few months later, October 7, and I think like a lot of Israelis in the US at the time, you kind of scrambled to find a way to do something about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wasn't called back for reserves like a lot of my friends from New York War.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, so my reaction, my annoying reaction was just to like call all my friends like eating shit, you know, and Gaza here and being like, hey man, can I help you somehow?
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, and you know, everyone sort of threw out a lot of different things they needed right around like one interesting thing that came up a lot was contested logistics because everyone's dealing with carrying a lot of weight for long periods of time.
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: started looking at like, can we do autonomous UGVs to follow them around?
[SPEAKER_01]: How can we help?
[SPEAKER_01]: Obviously, everyone needed drones.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there were a lot of different requests.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one that really stayed with me was a conversation I had with Asharkuts, who's my co-founder today.
[SPEAKER_01]: He is a founding member of a unit referred to as the lab here.
[SPEAKER_01]: or the longer-name the lab for tunnel detection was a unit founded in 2016 as a response to the terror tunnels crossing into the country.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they did a great job of identifying the tunnels and shutting them down, but Azure sort of request to me was, look, man, if you can get me someone who built a TBM a tunnel boring machine, that would be an interesting conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we sent
[SPEAKER_01]: to find someone who knows something about call it mechanical engineering and tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got to a guy who spent, like, most of his career at the boring company and then went on to SpaceX and got them in a room together and that was somehow the catalyst that turned into tracer.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then along the way, I reached out to Gilad, who, you know, he's the gray hair on her team, not really,
[SPEAKER_01]: He built his career both in 8200 but then in his real media.
[SPEAKER_01]: He deals a lot with influence and lobby around the world and I think that triangle between call it, my technical background, Asher's military professional background and Gilad's call it, sales, lobby government background, really created what now really, I appreciate
[SPEAKER_00]: So talk about what hard problem you guys are trying to solve, because it seems you're really creating a new category of warfare, or at least a new environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it's actually a really old environment.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the old of warfare.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's arguably the oldest.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You look back at, there are tunnels in Jerusalem from thousands of years ago, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That were used as offensive tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not new.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the oldest form of warfare, which is why it's so like baffling as to why is the technology and the oldest form of warfare the least developed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, you know, when people ask us what we do at Tracer, I say, yes, obviously we're developing the technology and the systems needed to call it when the underground war.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what I found myself doing, right, which is like I would say a company priority, is a lot on the communication side, on the government side, on talking to policymakers to make people understand, you know what, what you're an expert in, essentially is.
[SPEAKER_01]: How we win the next war, and the fact that underground takes a much bigger part in that than what I think people understand.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a lot of our our job has been getting around the smart people who understand this and we know how to communicate this and we have demonstrated this,
[SPEAKER_01]: get them to say where the capability gaps are, why we aren't hitting underground facilities, why we aren't ending the war in Gaza, and how all of this sort of trails back and connects to this new domain, which we call subterra.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, so I mean huge amount of tension and massive resources over many, many decades in
[SPEAKER_00]: warfare in the air, land, sea, now in space, cyber domain.
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, subterranean warfare, the oldest warfare, yet really, the probably the most complexing today for the good guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do we actually fight subterranean warfare where our enemies are going deeper and deeper and deeper underground?
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, I mean, Gaza was a case study in that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hamas taking billions of dollars in foreign aid and not building shelters for its people, but building attack tunnels for terrorists.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then using those attack tunnels repeatedly over many years to launch offensive operations inside Israel and then obviously the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: egregious example that was October 7th.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're interesting.
[SPEAKER_00]: They didn't even come underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they didn't.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was no penetration from underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was just like ramming through ramming through the fence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, but then of course the war that ensued, they were fighting from underground and then using civilians as human shield.
[SPEAKER_00]: So certainly seeing that in Gaza, his ball and Lebanon probably even better at building, even also different type of terrain, different type of geology, it makes it more difficult, even more difficult than in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I actually, I had mentioned to you this before we started the podcast, but my most pronounced experience with tunnels was actually on the North Korean South Korean border, the DMZ, where we went for a tour of the tunnels that the North Koreans had built under the border.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: into South Korea, I would have taken hundreds of thousands of troops and tanks.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's massive tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think I would say those tunnels, like do you know how they were built?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think they were they were likely built with tunnel boring machines.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not like you're guy holding a jackhammer like you have in Gaza or in Lebanon.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, no doubt, because they're, I mean, these are massive tunnels that you can literally move, you know, tanks, armored vehicles, and you know, you can move divisions of troops to under the border.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's pretty pretty remarkable with the North Koreans have done and of course the North Koreans helped his Bala and his Bala helped to mass and so the bad guys have been helping us by the way, also the cartels, his Bala has been helping the cartels.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a whole network.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, say a few words about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think for Americans who are deeply concerned about our southern border.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe some of them are not aware of what the cartels have done.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, look, I think, well, at this point, it is a fact that there are tunnels going through the U.S. southern border to smuggled both drugs and for human trafficking.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there was a tunnel identified
[SPEAKER_01]: you know it for a while it was maybe we have maybe we don't now there are tunnels are identified there's photos and videos of the tunnels being found i think the question now is how many are there and it's a tough question there there's always cooperation between um israel with the experience in gaza and um cbp on the border and
[SPEAKER_01]: There isn't a good map of the tunnels and there isn't a good understanding of the quantity of tunnels, and it's actually interesting because when we have the conversations, it's tracer with the folks on the ground there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we tell them, look, we have this, we'll talk about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we have a system to get rid of the tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're like, oh, that's perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to buy it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But first, can you help us find the tunnels?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's like their problem is search and destroy where as opposed to here, it's very much destroy, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We know where they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to just get rid of that infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the US, I always say it feels like it's a decade before where Israel is today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So detection, mapping, and identification, and then destruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I don't know the I mean the assessments the range is insane like there are assessments of hundreds of tunnels and then dozens of tunnels and one of the reasons I think one of the reasons potentially for the differences is what constitutes as a tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: We recently one of the interesting conversations we had they were talking about two inch diameter tunnels that are used as an air pipe to just pass through bags of fentanyl.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's not tunnels as you imagine them definitely not the North Korean tunnels, but sometimes they're big enough to get people through.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes they're just small enough to get bags of drugs through.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you and your partners come up with this concept, develop this company, tell us a little bit about the company where is it today?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, just that big funding rounds or congratulations.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so we, um, so we actually, you know, we set out to this domain
[SPEAKER_01]: Underground is an underserved category.
[SPEAKER_01]: The technology doesn't match the history.
[SPEAKER_01]: There should be a lot of different technologies for Underground, and we really had this fundamental belief that the world is looking at it wrong, meaning we're bearing it and line items within line items like I told you earlier, you know, it's the Air Force problem, let them deal with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We really have a belief that it needs to be a category as big as heirland sea now space, underground deserves technologies of its own, that are not always necessarily even in the form factor what you would imagine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, when you think about penetrating underground facilities, you think about missiles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Are missiles the most effective way to get deep underground?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I mean, look at the mining industry, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at drilling for oil.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have better mechanisms to hit
[SPEAKER_01]: that that was sort of our initial thesis and then it's a big one right because now there's a series of events that needs to happen in order for the company to materialize and that you know ranges from the funding side right getting the venture ecosystem to say all right we're going to underwrite this risk and what is the risk you know venture capital is they like to underwrite either a market risk or a technology risk they don't love to
[SPEAKER_01]: So when you're stepping in and you're like, all right, we're going to build technologies for this new industry.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are the technologies, sci-fi technologies, crazy technologies, which we'll talk about very difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's okay, great.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you must have a huge market.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually, market isn't there yet, but it's going to be huge.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be bigger than what you imagine.
[SPEAKER_01]: it's a really hard sell to get both across the finish line and we actually had a hard time at the beginning because I thought all right I've done this before right my previous company would go back to my venture capital friends we would raise a lot of money and just get at it and everyone said no like exactly what what I said right we're underwriting to huge risks no so we sort of
[SPEAKER_01]: Fell back, and I think this is healthy, and said, all right, let's just build something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's put together some friends and family money and just put something together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we looked at a lot of different devices.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were considering working with microTBMs.
[SPEAKER_01]: It eventually we landed on a demolition device used for demolishing overground facilities, like a type of excavator, many excavator, from a Swiss company.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got the device and, you know, it wasn't ready call it to be dropped in a tunnel in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we refactored it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Actually, it's sitting over there, you can look at it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we built this like brain behind it, ripped up some of the hydraulic pumps, put some other hydraulic pumps to make it strong enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: We built the system so that it can endure in the underground facilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: and we dropped it down a tunnel in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_01]: We did this together with Mafat.
[SPEAKER_01]: The military was involved and that was also hard-lift on its own just getting them to say, all right, we'll give you guys a shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got it in a tunnel in Gaza and it was pretty bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like it didn't do the job.
[SPEAKER_01]: But
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it did a good enough job of getting the right people who were there to see it to think differently and say, holy shit, like if this isn't off the shelf product, maybe they're on to something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we can look at tunnel demolition as a mechanical challenge versus a kinetic challenge like we're looking at today.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that was a pivotal moment for us because it became from like a theory to this can happen and it doesn't need to take you know 10 years of development that whole thing took us end to end about 60 days, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we developed this brain, we got it on an existing device refactor and then
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the discussion which we wanted to have, which is all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: If we were to design this mechanical demolition, this underground autonomous system, for demolishing underground environments, what we call type 1 subterracites environments, which is the Hamas tunnels, how would it look like, how much would it cost, how long would it take to develop?
[SPEAKER_01]: I shared some of that on X, and I think that combination between the military having interest in this, and then X is where the VCs live these days.
[SPEAKER_01]: So something in the defense tech community got stirred up about this.
[SPEAKER_01]: We got some of the right eyeballs, and this whole funding round came to be from literally cold DMs.
[SPEAKER_01]: So some great investors reached out.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had some really good conversations.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were the right people.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not afraid to underwrite the risk because they understand the size of the opportunity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then when we got the ball rolling, we had this massively over-subscribed round.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had the best investors we could wish for.
[SPEAKER_01]: We were at a position to choose the right investors to build this category.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also if you look at the cap table at the end of the day,
[SPEAKER_01]: We really did a very careful job and call it curating the investor base, because it's sensitive here.
[SPEAKER_01]: It matters the ideology behind the people on your cap table matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would say even more than that, the affiliation to Israel is good and also a risk.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you want people who don't invest in the company just because they're big fans of Israel.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want people who invest in the company because they believe underground is the way to establish US deterrence.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how you create the category, not through what we're doing here in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I saw that Pomerlaki, who's the founder and CEO of Andrewl, is one of your seed investors.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't comment on that, but some of the founders of the Andrew are invested in the company.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it looked like a great cap table.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, some serious prominent people who really know the space.
[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned, so I want to talk, I want to talk about your product and the challenges it solves, but I want to talk also about the problem and you mentioned subterial one.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it's a subterial two and three.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, so we're going to, what is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's in the works right now, but you know, part of part of our job as we see it is giving words or naming the things because what we found today and it's funny, you know, it's like what I always say is you're not going to hear Trump saying air land sea space subterranean.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it doesn't sound good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, you know, the style.
[SPEAKER_01]: You might hear him say heirlancy space subterra.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so we figured, and I had this in every conversation I had people are like, is it sub-t, sub-t is strange, it's a strange name.
[SPEAKER_01]: Underground, eh?
[SPEAKER_01]: So we said, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll just name the thing, call it subterra.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is subterra?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's kind of like maritime, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a semi made up word.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's short for subterranean.
[SPEAKER_01]: But for us, it encapsulates everything in the intersection between military and underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: So first, we said that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we said, all right, we keep talking about these environments.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when I talk to policymakers, and not even that, to investors, to engineers,
[SPEAKER_01]: Depending on what the person recently read, they might imagine North Korea, or they might imagine the Hamas tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a whole different world apart.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has a completely different call at use case, and it has a completely different solution.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we said, all right, let's start having people talk in the right way to understand what so they understand what they're talking about when the referencing some sort of underground environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're going to put out sort of formal communication around this, which how we believe each category should be defined and what are the metrics that make something subtera 1 subtera 2 subtera 3.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here, I can talk to you about it where we see subterra1 as what we call temporary tunnel facilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, temporary can be for two years, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: But these are not the hardcore command and control post that you might see in Russia and Moscow, right, in Moscow.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are not the command and control facilities, obviously, that you have in Iran, in pickaxe mountain.
[SPEAKER_01]: These are more of the type of tunnels you will see in Vietnam.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good
[SPEAKER_01]: But then, subtera 2, we see as similar temporary tunnels used for maneuver but using a different set of geology so hard rock for protection that makes it a very different environment also when you're thinking about solutions.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the way we defined it as sort of subtera 1 and 2 are temporary maneuver tunnels, but different types of geologies, where subtera 3 is deeply buried underground facilities for command and control for the long run.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so just for our listeners and for me, I've been in a number of tunnels.
[SPEAKER_00]: September one would be Amastanels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: That are died under ground in the sand.
[SPEAKER_01]: Correct.
[SPEAKER_01]: And using a concrete infrastructure to sort of just reinforce it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the things I think that are interesting that it was new to me even sort of stepping into the space is an Asher, my co-founder kept telling me this and it's shocking to see People talk about dismantling the tunnels and you think I need very heavy hydraulic force or what you need in order to mechanically dismantle them
[SPEAKER_01]: a person walking into the tunnels can lift up his hands and drop the concrete and then pull the concrete on top of each other.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's how weak it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's nothing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the problem is the clay around it, the clay in the sand remains.
[SPEAKER_01]: So then you need to disrupt the ground in order to induce collapse.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the fact that it's not like, right, I can imagine exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've walked
[SPEAKER_00]: The ones that really struck me with his balla tunnels, because they are deeper, bigger, and they are bird out of solid rock, which is pretty remarkable, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's subtera too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Subtera three, I imagine, would be the massive tunnels I went through on the DMZ in North Korea.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the kinds of tunnels today that are buried underground in Iran, in which the Iranians have built these major missiles.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They have been storing their launchers and their ballistic missiles and drones.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, I assume it also includes places like Fordo and the Tons and Isfahan, 100% and pickaxe mountain, yeah, on the nuclear side.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, even the US underground facilities would be in Subtera 3, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're building them for the long run.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, okay, so that.
[SPEAKER_01]: very helpful to sort of define the terms yeah and define them glad you ask those and by the way it's still a work in progress right so this is something we're actively working on with the right people because when we formally bring it across the table we actually want you know DC to to to take this on and to use this terminology because we think it'll be sort of a good good uh common ground to work on the problem set to talk about the problem set.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so to find the problem set, let's jump back to your systems and how they actually work in these different environments.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So by the way, you spoke about the tunnels up north and in Lebanon in the hard rock and
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, right behind us there, you have something that we developed exactly for that, which is man deployed drill basically that allows them to drill a hole in the hard rock deep in the hard rock and then insert explosives and induce collapse of underground facilities and you need to bury it relatively deep and up top because you want the whole thing to collapse and you don't want just to create a crater, which is what many times happens in underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Facility, so we're still working in testing this, but because of the different geology, it's a whole different problem set.
[SPEAKER_01]: So tour systems, we have the first device we call it an excavator, class underground autonomous system, which means it basically looks like a tiny tractor, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It knows how to get into an underground tunnel, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it fits in terms of dimensions, it's small enough to get in and operate in the tunnels, it's small enough to take 90 degree angle turns in the tunnels, which is the, you know, difficult there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But most importantly, it's powerful enough using a jackhammer and a bucket, literally using, you know, demolition tools to both induce collapse of the concrete infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: The one we said that, you know, a human can just pull out.
[SPEAKER_01]: get it to the ground and then break it, but also it has the tools on it in order to disturb the ground above and induce structural collapse of the sand in the clay.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the way it works is it goes all the way to the end of the tunnel, which by the way is a feet on its own, just getting to the end of these tunnels, you got sometimes you have just like a random pile of sand, random pile of dirt separating between one side of the tunnel and another.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another time you have straight up, you know, glass door, so the device needs to be powerful enough to maneuver past all of these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we had to install the right tools, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, whether it's a regular bucket or whether it's a jackhammer or a breaker, and the capability to replace the tools in order for it to drive all the way to the end of the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then start eating the tunnel from within, demolishing it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when it goes back out, it leaves a trail of demolish tunnel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, you know, a lot of people ask us, a lot of people ask about mapping tunnels, why not just send a drone.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when you actually see the tunnels, you realize it's ridiculous because of all this stuff there.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we design the device, we really had to put an emphasis on what we call as maneuverability.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in the underground environment, you know, it's 10 times more difficult.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's tethered, by the way, as an example of like the difficulty.
[SPEAKER_01]: It needs to be tethered because you lose communication otherwise it's not reliable.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you really want something to work, keep a tether.
[SPEAKER_01]: fiber optic cable, where you get all the data and communication back for, but that becomes a challenge on its own because then cable can't be on the floor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have this smart spooling system where the spool doesn't get too big, but it releases and creates tension in order for the spool to always be above ground.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's like a million engineering challenges that just emerge as a side effect from wanting to get this underground mechanical system to demolish all subterra one tunnels.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the idea of sending the system to the end of the tunnel and then starting to work backwards, obviously, on the assumption that you're going to get your system back, yeah, systems are not going to sort of self-destruct.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Second is, you're going to use the actual infrastructure of the tunnel to collapse on itself, yes, rather necessarily having to use explosives.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: That explosives still remains an option.
[SPEAKER_01]: It remains a mechanism and it remains a mechanism on the device.
[SPEAKER_01]: So as part of the attachments of the device, we have this drill that we said man deployed, but also call it system deployed where the system itself knows how to get to the end of the tunnel and then drill a hole and insert explosives where needed.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can get into this as well, but you know, there's the entire cement strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's been gaining more and more traction right now and filling the tunnels up with cement.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, we're also working closely with the military on that, where is how does Pac-Man support cement?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, for example, for tunnel clearing, when you want to pour cement, you need to make sure the tunnel is clear, so Pac-Man actually goes in and out without doing the demolition, and then it clears the way in order for the cement to come in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And another case is where cement is very good for very long areas of work, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to fill up miles of tunnel cement is perfect.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the problem we see in Gaza, and this is very applicable to the US focus right now in rebuilding Gaza.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say you have a couple of underground facilities, let's say less than a mile in length, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just like coming out to the sides.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there isn't one artery connecting them.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to destroy those.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you set up getting cement in a tunnel is a project?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like you need basically a mini cement factory there.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's to pump the cement in strong enough so that it just goes through everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: So in some cases it's not worth the logistical operation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas our device essentially is dropped in, gets to the end, does it much more simple?
[SPEAKER_01]: So the idea is to operate a fleet of these on these college short-range tunnels and also for the long-range tunnels to work together with the military in order to clear the ways so that the cement can fill up the tunnel.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so, and you mentioned, is it the name of the system Pac-Man?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not allowed to use the word Pac-Man.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, that's why I don't say it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not, it's not our trade Varks though.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to have to figure out a long-term name.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because you're not old enough to remember Pac-Man, but this was the game that we all played.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we called it, but you know, turns out you can't just use the name.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're not using Pac-Man.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, for the record, not for the record, but colloquially, colloquially, it's a great way of saying it.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's, um, that's one system, and that would be for like subterranean, one tunnels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, subteral one environments, subteral one environments.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also applicable for subtera to environments.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a good question because not, I mean, depends, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So, um,
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, the explosive insertion is very relevant to two, but canicle demolition.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not going to demolish a hard rock with a jackhammer.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to increase the surface area.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the same device potentially, yes, but it's a very different component on top of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's why we also built it in a relatively modular way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, at the end of the day, this
[SPEAKER_01]: right it has a hydraulic pump right that gives it essentially the power to do what it needs to do and then it has different it has an arm right or retractable arm and then it has different components so again like a jackhammer breaker drill or whatever you need and it knows how to flip between those components in order to get the job done.
[SPEAKER_00]: So you're told me before we started recording, you hate the term robot.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does conjure up in my mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Kind of like a robot kind of connected to this tunnel and the robot's got, you know, it's got a pickaxe and it's got a bucket and it's got some explosives and you're sort of sending in the robot or.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll tell you why, I mean, the reason we have a hard time with robots is just like, have you ever seen a robot that can like survive?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's say, I don't know, 200 pounds of cement, of a cement slab falling on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like I have not, every robot I've seen is kind of weak.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in these environments, the military always uses robots.
[SPEAKER_01]: We've seen the military robots.
[SPEAKER_01]: The biggest problem is that their survivability is like zero.
[SPEAKER_01]: The slightest inconvenience, the robot can't operate.
[SPEAKER_01]: So ours is like, would you call a d9 a robot?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like no, even if it's an autonomous d9, it's a d9, it's a monster.
[SPEAKER_00]: The d9 are the big caterpillar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: The big caterpillar is human.
[SPEAKER_00]: If huge amounts, yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Rounder, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's how we built the system and the core of the system and everything we learn from is from those areas.
[SPEAKER_01]: We learn from caterpillar.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't learn from, you know, the humanoid companies, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's
[SPEAKER_00]: That's, that's why we're careful with the reward.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you could use another colloquial term again from my youth, not yours, which is Terminator.
[SPEAKER_00]: Terminator is pretty durable.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're building Terminators for the end of the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that guy survived everything that was thrown at him.
[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've sort of company financing founders problem set.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just the first, that's just the device here, though.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will say, we have an entire team working in our headquarters in Austin.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a drilling class autonomous system.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the class matters here as we call them because
[SPEAKER_01]: It also, it's like, where does the mind go, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You think Excavator class, you realize it kind of looks like an Excavator.
[SPEAKER_01]: You think drilling class, it's so different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, you know, for defense tech companies, call it companies in general, these days, we're so used to having like the Starship, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're building Starship.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're building this crazy piece of machinery.
[SPEAKER_01]: If this works, that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The company wins.
[SPEAKER_01]: For us, it's so far away from that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're a factory of building underground systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: The reason being the government, you know this better than I do, but what we've been seeing is there is no coherent strategy and how to win wars underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
[SPEAKER_01]: As we're building out our products, we're building out the strategy with policymakers with DC to sort of figure out where it's going to go and does it go to survivability does it go to rapidly bearing data centers rapidly bearing command and control posts in the Middle East or forces, you know, don't get hit or does it go maybe to striking.
[SPEAKER_01]: is a go to striking pickaxe mountain, and that's a whole other set of capabilities, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Our ability to strike a deeply buried target versatility to bury our own targets.
[SPEAKER_01]: So our responsibility today as the market is still being created is to have a range of systems, so that when the market becomes, and you know, let's say Diu announces an RFP for...
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the defense innovation unit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, when they announce large prototyping contracts, we want to be able to capture them, whether it's around survey, survivability, or whether it's around strike.
[SPEAKER_01]: So our team in Austin, which is all x space x, x boring company, and it's an amazing combination, by the way, the focus is on creating something that basically looks like a horizontal drill.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have you ever seen that before?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like not many people imagine how horizontal drill looks, but this sort of thing, like this big, basically, you drop it on the ground and trench.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then it pushes its way through the dirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, these things are typically limited, they don't get very far.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the horizontal drilling, again, I'm not an energy expert, but that was, was that used in the energy sector as well?
[SPEAKER_00]: They were drilling vertically, and then they were able to drill actually horizontally.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it was, but I would say it's more common in like laying piping infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the method is piping so you drop in a pipe and then you push the pipe and then you drop in another pipe and you push that pipe and it's very limited to range So I mean, I love this you know the conversations with our team will step in and we'll be like We'll ask this we'll get an off the shelf product.
[SPEAKER_01]: This worked for us You know in Gaza where we bought an off the shelf product dropped it in and then everyone saw the decision makers and then we got some budget for it So we said all right.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're gonna copy this
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to copy paste the strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to buy an off the shelf product, try to use it for the military use case that we need.
[SPEAKER_01]: In this case, it's maneuvering through the crust of the earth, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's explosive insertion.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's getting signals effects through the crust of the earth from point to point B.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's digging our own tunnels now, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we ask the manufacturer, we say, all right, you told us this thing is like limited to one mile.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to go 50 miles.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is it limited?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then they'll tell you, let's listen, it's the motor.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you say, okay, what's the limiting factor in the motor?
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll say the size.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, all right, what if I have the motor of the size of like brick and shipping container with that fix it?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then yes, no, maybe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then you get to another set of problems.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they say, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we can fix the, not dumb, like us, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe we can fix the range, but the pipes themselves, when you're piping and the rig is already like, call it five miles out, then the pipes themselves are not necessarily strong enough to withstand the pressure.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now you need to go to material science and figure out the pipes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I haven't even started talking about communication.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it turns out you have like pipes that know how to create a communication line back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's all these challenges just like we had in the excavator class system that pop up when you try to do something novel.
[SPEAKER_01]: And why do we try to do this specific thing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like why is the focus here?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, in Gaza was obvious, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We need to demolish those tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a thousand miles of underground terror infrastructure.
[SPEAKER_01]: For here, we're looking at Iran and we're thinking, all right, how would we strike underground if it didn't need to be air deployed, if it wasn't kinetic?
[SPEAKER_01]: What would be the ultimate method if we look at drilling these days to get to these deeply buried facilities?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we worked from that and tried to figure out what the next device might look like.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I came here and this is all a prelude to what I really want to ask you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: to destroy pickaxe mount.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, so 300, a 450 feet underground, granite, unremountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a villain like story, it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is, it's like the Bonville in layer.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: And underground there, if I,
[SPEAKER_00]: would speculate they're not going to build one enrichment facility they're going to build multiple linked facilities at different depths so that if one gets destroyed or a second gets destroyed there's a third there's a fourth there's a fifth
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, they according to Wall Street Journal reporting from a couple weeks ago, they've moved thousands of advanced centrifuges into pickaxe mountain, not clear whether they've moved in rich material that is sitting at fordo and the tons is found that's buried under the rubble, but surely the earnings are going to try to figure out some way of getting enriched uranium or highly enriched uranium into these tunnels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uranium metal production, they're going to have weapon scientists working on the bomb.
[SPEAKER_00]: In other words, Pickaxe Mountain could emerge as a full-spectrum nuclear weapons production facility.
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the problem is, according to the public reporting, and we don't know exactly what the private assessments are, that our most...
[SPEAKER_00]: potent weapons are massive ordinance penetrators that were dropped from B2 bombers.
[SPEAKER_00]: during the June war of last year, midnight hammer.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think 12 of them were actually dropped on the foredo facility, which was not as deep, was built with ventilation shafts and they had trained for many, many years to drop these bombs right from down the ventilation shaft and able to actually collapse the facility and destroy the enrichment plants.
[SPEAKER_00]: Or in a public reporting, we can't do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's too deep.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's too heavily fortified and it's too dispersed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Go.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the mission?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how do we actually use your systems to accomplish the objective?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think, you know, to add to that, it's even, it's not just the depth in the material, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also how they build these tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have like, they have both shafts and cavities to absorb the shockwave.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's really built in a structure that makes it difficult to hit the underground facilities, not just because of the material itself.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it seems that as they're building out these facilities, they're thinking about, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a whole other set of rules where your opponent is essentially building not just the protect from, you know, your average missiles, but as you say from the GPU 57s from the penetrators.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, an interesting point on those penetrators is that the military did identify this back, back in the last Iran strike.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was a small, I think it didn't get enough attention, but there was a grant issued for $200 million, which is not bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: for development of next-gen bunker busters and went to Boeing and ARA, which is good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're going to see more of those.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, DARPA issued an RFI, again, super early, no money tied to it, but still it shows you where the organization is thinking around new ways to induce shock waves in underground facilities, which is very interesting also for us personally because we're not only thinking
[SPEAKER_01]: So, for us, I don't know the answer, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And if I had the perfect answer to strike, I ran right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I likely wouldn't be able to talk about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But...
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll say that the way we're treating these problems is more of a drilling problem, as I said earlier, then a military problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's a lot of pushback to that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You think about that, the biggest pushback is, what are you going to do?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to get boots on the ground there, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that opens up an interesting discussion, because when we say boots on the ground, we think of like, you know, invading Iran, but
[SPEAKER_01]: There's different type of boots on the ground, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: If it takes one special option in order to take out pickaxe mountain, might be worth it, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So when people rush to say like no boots on the ground, it doesn't need to be umbrella no boots on the ground, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: There are methods to get there, to penetrate the target and if the return is worth the risk,
[SPEAKER_01]: then the military will do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that we don't have the capability at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the question then becomes if you do get boots on the ground, what types of systems do deploy?
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we look at drilling systems, we look at ways to both
[SPEAKER_01]: I wouldn't even say autonomously, I would say intelligently navigate the underground facilities that you're boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the biggest problems with boring holes, now I'm talking about the general category of boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: You look at what Elon Musk is doing and Vegas are dealing with hard rock there, and they're dealing with
[SPEAKER_01]: large diameter hard rock, so the logistical footprint is massive, but they're doing it, right, it can be done.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're doing it using high pressure water jets, right, to board through hard rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to deal with the dirt removal.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to deal with everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the way we look at it is we look at these challenges.
[SPEAKER_01]: So challenge number one is how do you board through whatever you need to get through, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, what I told you earlier, what we're doing in Austin,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not going to work with the regular piping method, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not just going to bash the hard rock, doesn't work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you need a type of drill bit on the other side.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is that drill?
[SPEAKER_01]: What is the boring mechanism?
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, like high pressure water jets is a very effective method to get through hard rock.
[SPEAKER_01]: Start developing a system that specializes in boring through the specific set of geology that you need to get through.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then the second problem that emerges is steering, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to pinpoint, you want to be very precise onto where you get in the underground facility.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you're dealing with slippage, which is very normal working in underground environments.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we use methods, by the way, some of them that we've used in order to identify, to detect the tunnels in Gaza, in order to pinpoint where it devices on an XYZ access underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: So think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have something literally boring.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's way through the earth and we know where it is at all time.
[SPEAKER_01]: That has a lot of value.
[SPEAKER_01]: That thing is carrying whatever we want, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: And it can be 5-inch 10-inch 100-inch diameter.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's going through the earth right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, the argument also is
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, it's very noisy, let's say.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you do about it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine now, like I would tell you look, there's something boring through the earth that's gonna arrive here in like 10 minutes.
[SPEAKER_01]: What are you gonna do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like try to get an excavator to dig for it?
[SPEAKER_01]: There are no interceptors for these types of technologies.
[SPEAKER_01]: So even if you're loud, even if you're detectable, it may be too late.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is how we're thinking about the problem set, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Getting things that know how to maneuver on their own through the crust of the earth at a relatively high low depth and very precisely and carry whatever they need to carry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we start knocking off the different challenges, whether it's navigation, whether it's boring, whether it's dirt removal, whether it's precision, and eventually we get to a point where we have the capabilities to strike these deeply buried targets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Timing.
[SPEAKER_01]: The great question.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look, so that takes me sort of to, I would say, like, you know, call it sales, right, or government relations, or, like, how you build a defense tech company.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right now,
[SPEAKER_01]: were way too early to, I would say, even think about capturing a program of record near term.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're trying to create new budgets in Congress for the space.
[SPEAKER_01]: So my focus right now is getting the prototype in contracts, but the prototype in contracts aren't even there.
[SPEAKER_01]: The prototyping authorities will come out and say, all right, we want drones that can lift whatever 300 pounds, right, and they'll put a budget on it and then the different startups will compete and someone will win.
[SPEAKER_01]: For us, it's about writing the requirements.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have two jobs right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: One is on the R&D front.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, we'll develop it and, you know, with the funding we have, I think we can get to real milestones called it within, I mean, the autonomous, the excavator class system right for Gaza, it's going to be fully the, the next system right not the refactored first one that we did in two months, the next system is going to be ready in October, which is end to end clean sheet build and about nine months.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so the development time can be very short, same thing with Austin.
[SPEAKER_01]: About that, that'll be deployable, deployable in October.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, in Gaza.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, going after tunnels.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we've been in Gaza already with the refactor, right.
[SPEAKER_01]: But hopefully this is going to be a much bigger scale.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, there's a lot of politics in here.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's the U.S. Board of Peace.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's, you know, the Israeli prototyping authority, which is Mafak.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's Bikud Darol, which is like, you know, the, the,
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a lot of different units of triangulate with obviously there's the alomor doing it's the combat engineering corpse or doing a lot of deployments so there's a lot of work to be done call it on the government on the sales on the whatever we call it side, but yes the device will be ready to go and I do think that also on the call it political side or on the deployment side.
[SPEAKER_01]: we will likely be operating in Gaza within that timeframe.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, very short, overall, and I would say the same thing is going to happen within Austin, but in the U.S., I think the gap between the R&D is ready to a product we can demonstrate and call it granite in wherever to actually deploying somewhere or for the military to adopt these capabilities, there's a gap of call it influence and a gap of funding.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, the company, you know, everyone asks us, okay, you raised $25 million right now, everything's going to R&D, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're hiring a bunch of engineers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And like, actually, we're hiring a bunch of folks from government, X, you know, White House, XDOW, that understand how the procurement cycles work, that understand how to write the requirements, that understand the prototyping authorities, who cares about this in the government.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, my personal focus right now has been
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, let's say DIU gives us or whatever prototyping authority gives us a $20 million check and says, all right, we want to be ready, the typical prototyping cycle is about 24 months.
[SPEAKER_01]: There was actually, I think they just released a new directive where the government wants to see systems fielded in 24 months.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can beat that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we can get to systems fielded in eight months.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the question is, where we're going to field it, where we're going to demonstrate it to, will there be a client?
[SPEAKER_01]: So on the R&D front, I think it's very doable.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the bottleneck right now is actually
[SPEAKER_00]: which I have to say as somebody who's been obsessed with pickaxe mountain for many years and and obsessed with Iran's nuclear weapons program and has been struggling and I think many people have been struggling to figure out what to do about it is unsatisfying answer.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, if you can get to by October subterre one.
[SPEAKER_00]: and by when subterritu, let's say, let's say June or August next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: June or August next year.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I would think that there would be huge incentive both in Israel and in the United States to do an absolute crash program.
[SPEAKER_00]: and move as quickly as possible and throw as much money as possible and as needed at this and actually get a system that's ready to deploy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because again, I'm obsessed with pickaxe mountain, but they are clearly applications.
[SPEAKER_00]: Our southern border, missile cities, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: and militaries that we don't have years to waste and certainly don't have years to wait for DOW's slow procurement process to grind its way through and finally get you guys to get you need to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree, look, isn't this a five-alarm emergency for the United States?
[SPEAKER_01]: I think so, look, I think, but you do see little slices of funding for the penetrators,
[SPEAKER_01]: do people understand that the method to strike these facilities is not necessarily the methods we know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a big question.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I do think like looking at DARPA's RFI, looking at some interest in the Pentagon, that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The consensus is starting to change, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Towards, okay, maybe it's not air deployed, maybe it's not only kinetic, maybe there are new methods or alternative methods to strike deeply buried targets.
[SPEAKER_01]: I completely agree with you, obviously.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it's not even about tracer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the government right now should be going out back to back every day with new programs, funding new methods to strike deeply buried targets.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, look at all the defense, look at all the drones, look at all the money pouring into new ideas, new categories, and new companies.
[SPEAKER_01]: The number one problem for us right now is the U.S. is that we don't have deterrence underground.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why is this not a priority?
[SPEAKER_01]: Get us underground deterrence.
[SPEAKER_01]: The government shouldn't care how.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't matter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be plasma drilling.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be like, you know, new types of bombs, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be kinetic.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's fine.
[SPEAKER_01]: New penetrators.
[SPEAKER_01]: But like, why aren't the prototyping authorities going out every day and banging on the industry, right, door and saying, we want to develop U.S.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's very far from reality right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, the reason also may be semi-political, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you say that, that is like admitting defeat.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is admitting that we don't have underground deterrence.
[SPEAKER_01]: The US doesn't want to say that, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to say, look what we did in Fordo.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have these 30,000 pound bombs.
[SPEAKER_01]: When the B2 goes up in the air, we want to be able to say, like, look how strong we are.
[SPEAKER_01]: A big, beautiful B2.
[SPEAKER_01]: Exactly.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's President Trump.
[SPEAKER_01]: call that exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, he was asked about pickaxe mountain finally a couple weeks ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess, you know, at FED, we've been pushing pickaxe mountain for years and banging our head against a granite wall.
[SPEAKER_00]: And finally, he hewitt and trading, asked him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And good, President Trump acknowledged the problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then he said, not to worry, we're going to put a missile right through the front
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're not going to put a missile through the front door.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, maybe you think it sounds great.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, maybe you can blow up entrances and exodus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that's the strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: By the way, that's the strategy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's always claimed as a victory in the US.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the big question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, if you blow up portals, did you shut down the facility?
[SPEAKER_01]: Am I pinning the answers?
[SPEAKER_01]: Of course not.
[SPEAKER_01]: you have to get down there and you have to destroy the facility underground and everything that's in it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, that leads to another huge problem set that I don't think is getting enough attention, which is BDA, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: The battle damage assessment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Today, no one knows what we're hitting.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's a massive problem.
[SPEAKER_01]: And literally, you'll talk across the board to everyone, intelligent.
[SPEAKER_01]: The only way we know what we hit is through intelligence these days.
[SPEAKER_01]: So definitely, there's no
[SPEAKER_01]: There's no good way to assess what the damage was.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's why also, you know, as civilians, we're all seeing like conflicting reports, because it goes all the way up, no one understands.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we and our systems also put in extreme emphasis, like a freakish emphasis on BDAs, also in the tunnels in Gaza, huge problem as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you fill them up with cement.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the bigger problems they're seeing with cement is that the terrorists are redigging the tunnels, and then because the cement didn't go all the way to the top.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you have a small cavity.
[SPEAKER_01]: they get in the cavity and then they dig and then what ends up happening is now they have reinforced infrastructure for their new tunnels right and that is because of a lack of BDA because no one said wait the cement seaped in through the sides we need to pump more or whatever same thing in Iran right we're hitting and we don't have the capability to say with certainty this is what we hit so
[SPEAKER_01]: a big process of our engineering cycles is BDA first.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, when we're thinking about drilling class systems to penetrate deeply buried targets, can we do this in a way that delivers back a BDA?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's really challenging because, you know, if you're blowing up the facility, how do you send back something?
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why we think about tethered systems.
[SPEAKER_01]: We think about
[SPEAKER_01]: you know we go creative here because we do believe that it matters.
[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine also like the political win it would be if Trump could strike like pickaxe mountain and then you'd actually see like a photo or something of the damage done there.
[SPEAKER_01]: You never see that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You see these like small satellite images because the end of the day maybe we didn't do a ton of damage though.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay then maybe I'm naive about how this works.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't understand sophisticated procurement processes
[SPEAKER_00]: United States and Israel, but if it were me, I would basically like lock a bunch of guys in the room and it would be you, your engineers, the guys from DDR&D, the guys from afar, they is really DDR&D.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would put in people from Delta Force and Shal-Dag is really special forces that's essentially these really equivalent.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I would say, okay, we have a problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have pickaxe mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have X months.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have X months and we got to figure out a mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's going to be a technological mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's going to be a special forces mission.
[SPEAKER_00]: It may require boots on the ground.
[SPEAKER_00]: We may have to insert these things by human beings.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to need x, y, and z.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Specket out, figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: Give me a timeline.
[SPEAKER_00]: How much money do you need?
[SPEAKER_00]: I need.
[SPEAKER_00]: the livable systems by this date go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was seem to be, but I think it's all problems, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I think it's like with all political systems and incentives and ego, there's a lot of different drivers here, and at the end of the day, if you pick up random people from the Pentagon and ask them, are we able to strike pickaxe mountain?
[SPEAKER_01]: A lot of people might tell you, yeah?
[SPEAKER_01]: Not a lot, I don't think a lot of people will tell you, no, we don't have the capability to do so.
[SPEAKER_01]: because we want to think we want to hope that's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I hope it's true that I hope I also hope we have the capabilities, but then you and I are not aware of developments underway.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, but I don't even think that treated our new dark rooms.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, for sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of, you know, new GPU 57s times 10 that have the ability to go.
[SPEAKER_00]: much deeper, vertically, and then horizontally, and are able to actually, chances are they massive damage on these kinds of sites.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, there is something called, by the way, the US Israel Optech Working Group, which was established by Congress, after he was very involved in getting it stood up, and it is, say, part of the anti-tunneling cooperation act, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was separate.
[SPEAKER_00]: Anti-tunneling is part of a working group as cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: it, my understanding, but essentially it's bringing together folks from the Department of War and the Ministry of Defense and, and my fought in DDR&D and working through a whole set of military challenges.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, hypersonic and drones and edge computing, and I mean, there are many of these technologies, including anti-tuntling technology, that I think our folks are looking at with your folks.
[SPEAKER_00]: This would seem to be a natural fit for the object working group.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Where there is actually a ready system and a process and Congress is legislated.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how much money's been allocated, but there are smart people hard to work right now on these kinds of military challenges.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, within that framework, you potentially could see my scenario, you pull everybody together and you bring in all of these different people with different capabilities from special forces to engineering, to planning and pull them all together and solve this problem and get us a deliverable solution, not in years, but in one in months.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's where industry comes in also and like obviously you know this wave of defense tech companies um and you know defense tech as a category that sort of and real pioneered but I think
[SPEAKER_01]: one of the big differences here and this we see a lot we do work with you know special ops teams both in Israel and the U.S. and we kind of hear by the way a lot of our engineers come from like 7-6 Ayrith Matka like the special ops units here and they worked in the colored weapon systems unit in these special units so we really have a lot of like the in-house capabilities of how
[SPEAKER_01]: special systems are designed for the military like for a specific a project for a specific you know target and I will say that within those there's a lot of developments in that you know subtero domain so.
[SPEAKER_01]: what we see though is that the speed of development is very different.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right, so they'll say, oh, yeah, I worked on similar projects, but the speed and the funding and the chain of command in order to get things authorized and what's fascinating is that many times you will come up with an idea and someone on our team will be like, oh, you know what?
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually worked on this and then we'll ask what happened and we'll be like, eh, didn't get enough attention so it died down.
[SPEAKER_01]: But now, you know, you have venture capital dollars, which are high risk high reward by definition, and they're basically saying, forget about it, like get the spark of interest from a prototyping authority, will fund part of it, let them fund part of it, but let's get to a product in six months, rather than six years, and show the skeptics that it works.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that's also like a critical change in a critical distinction.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that the military doesn't have programs and dark rooms working on these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: They do and they're great, and they have the best engineers in the
[SPEAKER_01]: But they have a lot of conflicting decisions to make.
[SPEAKER_01]: They have priorities to set.
[SPEAKER_01]: It changes all the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whereas in private industry, can do what you want.
[SPEAKER_01]: You work towards a finish line.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that you see DC affected by this, by the rapid innovation in the commercial market.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we have to as Americans.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, we have to.
[SPEAKER_00]: change our model of development procurement and the other thing we have to do is we have to leverage incredible talents in Israel because it's not just that Israel's got great entrepreneurs and engineers, which of course it does, but it's also as you say that your people are coming from the battlefield.
[SPEAKER_00]: These are technologies that are literally being used and implemented in real-time
[SPEAKER_00]: hot procurement decisions and productions and the market decisions by a major factor.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I, you know, coming here, being in Israel, learning about the defense sector, coming to your company, you can just see that there's a, there's a different and heightened level of urgency.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: I get this out because your lives are on the line.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it really is like the proximity to, you know, to deployment too and I think it's very interesting looking at this through the College startup lens where the
[SPEAKER_01]: In the U.S., developing, I would say, long-term contracts to the D.O.W.
[SPEAKER_01]: is, at least, for us, and I think, for many, even these drone companies like getting to massive quantities of drones, always China, China, China, China, we're going to get a war with China tomorrow, hopefully not.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's all about deterrence in the U.S., it's about putting together technologies and hoping, I think we can all hope that we never use them.
[SPEAKER_01]: right, whereas in Israel, it's a reactionary to something that's happening and there's always like this criticism on Israel that we're very tactical about strategic and I think it makes sense because every time there's something to deal with so there's no time to think about long term or in the US it's completely different.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like we're building technologies that will maybe use in 20 years when the time comes and that's why also are pushed so much as around
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not worth, you know, digging pickaxe mouth and it's not worth building the facilities.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't have time when it comes to Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we'll have time with respect to China.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't read Xi Jinping's mind.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe he's going to invade Taiwan in 2027, 2028.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very hard to read.
[SPEAKER_00]: Art to know what I do know, for sure, is today we're in a hot war with his Lamic Republic of Iran.
[SPEAKER_00]: And his Lamic Republic of Iran is rebuilding its nuclear weapons program.
[SPEAKER_00]: deeply underground at pickaxe and maybe at other sites, it is reconstituting its missile program, that that we haven't destroyed is still available for use, that that we have destroyed is being rebuilt with the assistance of China and Russia and North Korea and other players.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the president is deeply frustrated right now with his options.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's long past the time where we need the kind of technologies that allow us to do exactly what the Iranians have done so well and have trained his baller to do and Hamas to do and were trained by the North Koreans to do, which is to fight underground and to store their most deadly weapons underground and to build nuclear weapons underground.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think that it states we may have time with respect to China and we don't have time with respect to his
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: I always say that, you know, the B2 created the opposite effect, because it didn't create the deterrence.
[SPEAKER_01]: It created the catalyst for Iran to say, all right, underground works, underground works.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll continue to do what we're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there needs to be some sort of, you know, decisive strike.
[SPEAKER_01]: that shows we can hit your underground facilities, but how it looks, how it seems today, is that we don't have the capabilities, and that's very worrying.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know, there were recently articles also about the depletion of the stock, of the penetrators that we have, which is a whole other problem, like how do we get to that stage?
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's a series of problems when it comes to our ability to strike underground, and you've got to ask yourself the
[SPEAKER_01]: We saw it, we see it all around our adversaries using that domain.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it has been a pleasure.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, thank you for having me at your company.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for coming.
[SPEAKER_00]: You and your men and women have done to protect Western civilization.
[SPEAKER_00]: And
[SPEAKER_00]: I've taken up too much of your time, so get back to work.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hell yeah, let's go.
[SPEAKER_00]: And develop this technology, get it out, get it deployed, so that we can destroy fake axe mountain.
[SPEAKER_00]: And looking forward to seeing how the company progresses and look forward to have you back when we know more.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for coming by as a great discussion.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you, sir.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's it for today's episode of The Oron Breakdown, if you want to better understand what's really happening with these LAMIC Republic, please subscribe, rate us five stars and show this to people who need to hear it.
[SPEAKER_00]: If it's your first time here, go back to episode one.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's where we began laying the groundwork, then episode with Crown Prince Reza Palavi.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can find me on X, an Instagram at M&Dubowitz, or M-D-U-B-O-W-I-T-N-Z.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Mark Dubowitz.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for listening and look forward to breaking it down again with your next time.