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E442: Nelson Mills on Building a $100 Billion Company, the China Threat, and the Future of War
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What happens when autonomous underwater vehicles become cheap enough to manufacture at scale? Nelson Mills is the Founder of Vatn Systems, a defense technology company building autonomous underwater vehicles. Nelson explains why undersea autonomy has lagged aerial drones, how advances in AI, navigation, manufacturing, and autonomy are changing the economics, and why Vatn is building lower-cost systems designed to operate at scale. We also discuss raising $85 million for a hardware startup, the rise of asymmetric warfare, lessons from Anduril, and what it takes to build a new defense prime.