Hardpoints

On 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 miles per hour drops its link, and Ukraine needs those drones to chase Russia’s jet-powered Shaheds. Reuters says the order came from inside the White House. The White House denies it. The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk gave the order and discussed it with Trump. Mike and Neal argue over who actually holds the switch, whether Starshield changes the answer, and what it means that a private company can shape a war. From there, they turn to a Wall Street Journal report that the US has told Gulf partners to prepare for a short, intense campaign against Iran after the midterms. Neal flags the anonymous sourcing and points out that the 2003 Iraq planning was driven by the military, not the election calendar. Mike argues the Iran war is unpopular and the timing is political. They disagree on how much political skill is behind it. Next up is the EPA’s move to roll back the 2024 methane rules. Mike explains why Europe’s demand for verified low-methane LNG could hit American producers, and Neal asks whether Europe can really walk away from US gas. Finally, with CoreWeave’s bonds sliding and Big Tech borrowing at a record pace, they debate whether the AI boom is a dot-com bubble or a 2008 setup. Neal sees an overbuild, but not a bust yet. Mike worries about the debt underneath the data centers. Neal also shares what a heavy fundraising week feels like from the founder’s chair. In the mailbag, listener Loki the Trickster God says China is “10x ahead” because it skips costly wars. Mike puts the cost of America’s wars at about $8 trillion, by one broad estimate. Neal agrees China is catching up but pushes back on the 10x claim. Mike also gives a shout-out to Lavinia Gang, spotted on a Denver license plate. Goods, Bads, and Others: Mike’s good is global emissions slipping about half a percent year over year, his bad is the bipartisan permitting reform bill stuck in the Senate, and his other is late-stage venture capital growing past what startups need. Neal’s good is the Brewers’ World Series run, his bad is a Chinese rocket stage landing in a Minnesota cornfield, and his other is AI agents switching off their own monitors. Hardpoints is hosted by Mike Smith, a former Navy F/A-18 pilot who runs Aclymate, and Neal Rickner, a former Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot who runs Airloom. Questions or comments? Email [email protected]. Hardpoints is brought to you by the Valor Media Network.

Louisville 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 tracking exactly this kind of exposure, and he says most founders have more of it than they think. Mike and Neal sit down with Isaac, founder and CEO of Strategy Risks and author of America Second: How America’s Elites Are Making China Stronger. Isaac spent seven years in China as a journalist. He explains what the Communist Party actually wants (control, not stability), why every Chinese company has to stay on its good side, and why the People’s Liberation Army is the party’s armed wing rather than a national military. Then he gets practical. His China-exposure framework has four parts: supply chain, partnerships and politics, business fundamentals like investors and joint ventures, and regional ties like Xinjiang and Tibet. Mike brings the view from Aclymate, where supply chains for promotional products and branded merchandise run through Asia, and asks what a small importer should actually worry about. Isaac walks through the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, why a $4 million shipment stopped at port can make or break a company, and why a Chinese investor who’s harmless at Series A can become a real problem by Series C, once a federal grant is on the table. Neal, who runs Airloom, pushes on whether energy counts as a sensitive sector (Isaac says yes). They also cover how universities get entangled and whether there’s any ethical way to do business with the party at all. In the mailbag, @heathershoe7429 asks about reports that the president will invade Iran after the midterms. Mike and Neal explain why they think a limited escalation is far likelier than an invasion of a country that size. Goods, Bads, and Others: Mike enjoys a quiet weekend and a Broncos win, worries about the 82nd Airborne’s extended deployment, and takes on Palmer Luckey’s new cloned-dog startup, Warhound, which raised $200 million at a $1.2 billion valuation. Neal likes that troops get a day off to vote, notes that oil and gas profits are soaring, and admits his wife caught him talking to his AI. Questions or comments? Email [email protected]. Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts. Hardpoints is brought to you by the Valor Media Network.

Every 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. This week, Mike and Neal take a question from listener Aimee D. about whether the Space Force is sustainable, and the answer starts with a surprisingly thin supply chain: hydrazine, the main satellite fuel, comes from a single small plant in Louisiana. Neal walks through why fuel is the real limit on a satellite’s life, from Landsat 7 running low to the $500 million geostationary satellites that sit over one spot for years. Then comes the main event. The U.S. demonstrated in-orbit refueling back in 2007, but NASA canceled OSAM-1, its big follow-on mission, in 2024. Meanwhile, China appears to have pulled off the first satellite-to-satellite refueling in geosynchronous orbit, roughly 22,000 miles up. Mike and Neal argue about how a country falls behind on something it invented, why the same technology can work as a tow truck or a hijacker, and whether the smarter bet is expensive satellites you can refuel or cheap ones you simply replace. They also dig into what this means for the startup economy. Mike sees a golden age of space startups, driven by cheaper launches, autonomy, and venture funds flush with cash. Neal, who runs a hardware company, expects a cycle of wreckage first. And Mike makes the case that space is a commons, where debris is pollution and nobody has a plan to pay for the cleanup. In the mailbag, @viveksmom asks whether someone can be an asset without knowing it, and @dodgingrain3695 argues that gas prices and the November midterms are driving the White House. In Goods, Bads, and Others, Mike’s good is the Financial Times reporting on the collapse of diesel cars in Europe, his bad is the Ramaswamy campaign ad in Ohio’s governor race featuring Amy Acton’s estranged mother, and his other is the Colorado ballot measures on transgender youth. Neal’s good is the Brewers sweeping the Dodgers on their way to the World Series, his bad is the worsening situation in the Strait of Hormuz, and his other is two elections in one week: Brazil’s runoff and Israel’s vote. Mike Smith runs Aclymate, a climate platform for businesses without a sustainability department. Neal Rickner runs Airloom, an emerging energy company. Send questions and comments to [email protected], follow wherever you get your podcasts, and share the show with someone who would appreciate it. Hardpoints is brought to you by the Valor Media Network.

Ukraine 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 Zelensky to stop. Ukraine went along for three days. Then Russia answered with 39 ballistic missiles aimed at Ukraine’s power grid, and Zelensky says the block on refinery strikes is over. This week, Mike Smith of Aclymate and Neal Rickner of Airloom pick up where last week’s diesel episode left off. Diesel hit a record this fall, the midterms are three weeks away, and the White House is easing sanctions on Russian diesel while leaning on Ukraine to stop hitting Russian refineries. Washington has stopped paying for this war, but it still controls Patriot sales, intelligence sharing, and a Starlink network owned by the richest man in the world. So what leverage does Trump actually have left — and is Zelensky wrong to ignore him? Neal makes Trump’s case first — the US still holds the three levers that matter most to Ukraine, and Zelensky is gambling that Trump won’t pull them. Mike argues the opposite. In his read, Trump has given away his carrots, has few sticks, and has backed himself into a corner, while Zelensky has the support of his people and a European backstop that keeps getting stronger. They end up disagreeing about who is really cornered. They also look at what’s actually flying and what it’s hitting. The Ukrainian drone is built from foam, plywood, and carbon fiber — effectively a cruise missile for the price of a used car — and Mike explains why refineries make such good targets at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. On the other side, Russia is going after power plants and substations as winter arrives, and Mike makes the case that it isn’t breaking anyone’s will. In the mailbag, Amy D. asks about Space Force and the fuel it needs — a follow-up is coming. A reader from CIR Daily Updates also weighs in on last week’s episode, arguing the diesel deal may be less than the headline suggests, with no US buyer publicly committed and pump prices not moving. Their full analysis is on Cathrop Briefs. In Goods, Bads, and Others, Mike covers EVs gaining ground around the world, the rollback of PEPFAR, and Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian data centers. Neal covers Anne Carson’s Nobel Prize in Literature, the loss of Sergeant Major Anderson, and the UK prime minister saying it’s clear Russia interfered in the Brexit referendum. Questions or comments? Email [email protected]. Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts, and share it with someone who would appreciate it. Hardpoints is part of the Valor Media Network.

A 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 announced shipment is 300,000 tons, about 2.25 million barrels. America uses about 3.7 million barrels of diesel a day, so the headline deal covers less than one day of demand. It comes from a country whose own fuel exports are collapsing under Ukrainian drone strikes on its refineries. This week, Mike and Neal ask what the deal is really for. Mike starts with why diesel hurts so much: Russia and Ukraine are bombing each other’s energy infrastructure, and diesel runs the hay trucks, cattle operations and grocery supply chains the working economy depends on. It also reaches your plane ticket, because diesel and jet fuel come from the same part of the barrel. Land O’Lakes CEO Beth Ford puts the rise in farm input costs at $15 billion since February, with diesel roughly double. Neal presses on the numbers and the motive. If the volume is this small, what did Russia give up? Mike’s answer is nothing, and he reads the deal as a political move ahead of the midterms that also leans on Ukraine’s president. Republican senators Collins, Curtis, Murkowski and Tillis have joined Democrats in objecting, and Mike asks why Congress is stopping at statements when it has levers to pull. Neal asks why the first call isn’t to Canada, our closest energy partner, and both hosts agree you phone your friend before your adversary. Mike then pulls on a thread most coverage misses: the transshipment points that move Russian oil out of the Arctic, and his worry that the deal could widen the war. They close on a more generous reading, that the deal is a backroom trade to ease Iran’s pressure on the Strait of Hormuz. Neal says he would back that. Mike hopes it’s true but sees a simpler explanation. In the mailbag, a listener says the F-35’s $1 trillion price tag covers 50 years of fuel, manpower and spares. Mike says the latest projection is closer to $2 trillion and argues that spending defense dollars well is how you look out for the little guy. Another listener asks whether data center water use is exaggerated and whether you could bury the buildings. Neal says the closed-loop and underground ideas have merit, while Mike says the heat, the noise and the power plants feeding them do not go away. In Goods, Bads, and Others, Mike’s good is wind and solar gaining ground in Europe’s power mix, his bad is a surprise week of prep for a garage sale, and his other is a Dodgers title run that he fears could push baseball into a labor fight. Neal’s good is the Blue Angels turning 80, his bad is what high diesel prices are doing to farmers, and his other is playoff baseball. Hosts Mike Smith, a former Navy F/A-18 pilot and CEO of Aclymate, and Neal Rickner, a former Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot and CEO of Airloom, unpack energy, national security, and the startup economy. Questions or comments? Email [email protected] and we may feature yours on a future episode. Hardpoints is brought to you by the Valor Media Network.

Local 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 to change that math by mailing every household a letter offering $10,000 if its 15-building data center campus gets built. The median household income there is about $60,000, and plenty of residents are still saying no. This week, Mike and Neal ask whether paying your neighbors is the future of how America builds big things, or proof that some things can’t be bought. Neal draws on his time winning over communities for an energy project on the Big Island of Hawaii, where showing up early and often did what money never could. Mike argues that the fear of loss runs deeper than any check — and that a payout offered after the township already voted no was always going to look like a bribe. They get into why people really object (power bills, water, secrecy, and distrust of the billionaires behind the projects), how wind developers pay their neighbors, and what a “pay your own way” power deal like Google’s with Xcel Energy in Minnesota looks like. They also cover why one township’s fight lands on a regional grid, and why the national security race for AI needs boundaries — not a stop sign. In the mailbag, a listener asks about the U.S. military buildup in Palau. Neal shares what he saw landing on islands across the Western Pacific as a Marine in 2002, and why infrastructure out there matters in the competition with China. In Goods, Bads, and Others, Mike’s good is a political ad he recorded that has people recognizing him, his bad is $20 million in Homeland Security money going to ads featuring the president, and his other is Peter Thiel’s comments on evil and competence. Neal’s good is the return of Ali G, his bad is heating oil bills expected to jump more than 30% this winter, and his other is the Navy’s birthday. Hosts Mike Smith, a former Navy F/A-18 pilot and CEO of Aclymate, and Neal Rickner, a former Marine Corps F/A-18 pilot and CEO of Airloom, unpack energy, national security, and the startup economy. Questions or comments? Email [email protected] and we may feature yours on a future episode. Hardpoints is brought to you by the Valor Media Network.

The 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 Autonomous Warfare Command, the 12th combatant command in American history, and Ukraine says drones caused nearly all of the roughly 35,000 Russian casualties it counted in March. Mike and Neal ask whether the United States is finally admitting that the next century of war belongs to machines, and whether a new four-star command is the right way to get there. They walk through what was announced at Quantico — a command with service-like authorities, new drone career fields in the Army, Navy, and Air Force, an interim team called Project Agincourt, and a future-warfare panel co-led by Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey, and Newt Gingrich. They also dig into the cost math behind it all — cheap drones against expensive interceptors, tanks pulling back from the front, and why quantity now matters as much as quality. Neal sees a necessary break from the old system, pointing to the SOCOM model of giving a new mission its own budget and buying power so it can't lose every fight to the next fighter jet or ship. Mike likes the direction but worries a twelfth command adds bureaucracy, and he wants the new four-star to start by getting close to the fight in Ukraine, where tactics are being written in real time. For Mike, the real test is whether the command can change how the Army and Navy fight, not just run its own program. Both hosts flag the conflict of interest in putting people whose companies do business with the Pentagon on the panel that shapes its future. Still, Mike, who runs Aclymate, and Neal, who runs Airloom, take the founder's view — launch it, bring in smart people, and iterate — while keeping a healthy dose of skepticism about who is writing the rules. In the listener mailbag, one commenter argues the U.S. is simply turning up the heat on Canada until it comes to the table, and another wonders whether China is safer than American AI executives. Mike and Neal push back on both — covering what it costs to treat an ally like an adversary, why China is not the safer bet, and why Mike would hold AI developers to a strict liability standard. In goods, bads, and others, Mike cheers a Michigan credit union for parting ways with its CEO after an AI-edited "Lake America" sweatshirt photo, groans at Senator Eric Schmitt's perjury accusation against Jack Smith and the Hawks versus Hawkeyes moment that followed, and tracks private investment in nature growing fivefold to more than $14 billion a year. Neal salutes seven F-22 pilots awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, six of them for Operation Midnight Hammer, laments the Ratepayer Protection Act stalling in the Senate after passing the House 417 to 3, and reflects on the last U.S. troops leaving Iraq after 23 years. Got a take? Email us: [email protected] Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

Anduril'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 than doubled to $2.2 billion last year, but $100 billion works out to roughly 45 times that number, while the traditional defense primes trade at low single-digit multiples. Anduril's own CEO, Brian Schimpf, says there is a bit of a bubble. Mike and Neal agree. The real question is what happens to the Pentagon, and to the taxpayer, when it pops. The conversation starts with who these companies actually are. Anduril was founded in 2017 by Palmer Luckey, who had just been fired from Facebook after selling Oculus, along with co-founders who came out of Palantir. It is named after a sword from The Lord of the Rings. It began with border security and now builds the Lattice battlefield software platform along with drones, interceptors, and missiles. Mach Industries is a very different company. Ethan Thornton founded it in 2023 after dropping out of MIT at 19, and it builds five autonomous systems, from a vertical takeoff jet drone to a cheap counter-drone interceptor. Mach's valuation went from $470 million in June 2025 to $3.7 billion this month, and it does not disclose revenue. How did we get here? Mike and Neal trace the Pentagon's path from hundreds of prime contractors in World War II to a handful, and what that did to competition and cost. Fighter programs take decades, and the F-35 keeps growing past a trillion dollars. Mike calls it regulatory capture. Neal adds that the primes got brilliant at building exquisite, expensive hardware just as software became the more important half of the fight, and startups could iterate faster than Boeing or Northrop ever could. Add Silicon Valley's change of heart — from the Google employee revolt over defense work to founders who now want to build for the military — and the Pentagon's attempt to play matchmaker through the Defense Innovation Unit, and the opening for a new kind of prime is obvious. Both hosts give Secretary Hegseth credit for going after how acquisition programs are run, even as they disagree about almost everything that follows. Then the money. Defense tech venture funding hit $12.3 billion in the first half of the year by one PitchBook count, more than all of last year. Anduril is growing fast and guiding to roughly double its revenue again, but it is still losing money. Neal brings the founder's view. As the CEO of Airloom, he has given and received the same advice — Uncle Sam is both the best and worst customer, with big contracts but lumpy revenue that startups cannot wait two years for. A dual-use company can raise private capital and win defense dollars, and each helps the other. It also has a civilian market to fall back on if it never becomes a program of record. Mike, the founder of Aclymate, remembers a veterans founder meetup where dual use was the whole play, and notes that companies now go straight to defense. He asks what the dual-use story is for a battlefield sensor fusion company. That is where the two split. Mike is skeptical of how the neo primes got where they are. He points to insider connections and no-bid contracts, and to companies that used to say "if we build it, they will come" now asking for money up front. In his view, they are starting to behave like the old cartel, with venture capital pushing toward a few winners and everyone else acquired or wiped out. He says he knows good people at Anduril and does not know Luckey personally, but the pattern reminds him of past eras of confident outsiders who did not understand the underlying systems. Neal reads the motives more generously. He sees real patriotism and a technologist solving a real problem, and in his own experience in the trenches, he has watched people win on merit and questionable technology lose. His argument is that America fell behind on defense innovation, private capital showed up, entrepreneurs followed, and the warfighter gets better technology as a result. They agree on the essentials — there is a bubble, and the status quo was never acceptable. So what should happen instead? Mike wants the Pentagon to open the playing field so venture capital cannot squeeze the market. That means giving the services more discretion to buy every year and keeping enough competition that margins get squeezed instead of exploding. Neal wants the Pentagon agile enough to bet heavily on Mach and Anduril today and on something completely different next year. The shared answer is a wider field, more frequent purchasing from more suppliers, programs that can change direction, and dual-use companies that can survive if Washington does not buy on a straight line. In the mailbag, a viewer in Nottingham asks whether Mike and Neal miss flying the F/A-18. Mike says it was a blast, but he has filled out that part of his life. Neal says he misses it and would have flown until the day he died. An electrician of 40 years says nearly every electrical device is made in China. Mike pushes back — the United States is still the number two manufacturing power, and the higher-end the product, the more likely it is built here. Goods, bads, and others — Mike's good is $1.9 billion from the Department of Energy for 31 grid projects across 26 states, which he credits to Secretary Wright as a key unlock for American energy security. His bad is ProPublica's reporting on Senator Susan Collins and a defense contractor's $150,000 donation, routed through a shell company, to a pro-Collins super PAC. Collins denies wrongdoing, and Mike uses the story to argue for deeper reform of how defense acquisition and funding work. His other is the Pentagon's new wargame-style evaluation for officers seeking their first star, which he calls a reasonable start while arguing the military needs to do far more to develop strategic thinkers. Neal's good is Mexico's energy ministry projecting 80 percent wind growth by 2030, to 15 gigawatts, while American wind slows down. His bad is the Wall Street Journal report that President Trump rejected Iran's seven-day ceasefire proposal and expects to resume bombing after the midterms. His other is the Pentagon asking industry how fast it can build more weapons, a reminder that the country is not ready for the next conflict. Got a take? Email us: [email protected] Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

The 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 this year alone. And on September 16, the House of Representatives did something Congress almost never does: it passed a bill to address it, 417 to 3. Mike and Neal break down the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would require state utility commissions to consider making large data centers (100 megawatts or more at a single site) pay the full cost of the grid upgrades built to serve them, instead of spreading that cost across everyone else's electric bill. It sounds like a fix. It passed almost unanimously. And it barely does anything. The bill only requires states to consider a standard that most of them already have in some form, and one day after House passage, Senator Martin Heinrich blocked it in the Senate, arguing it doesn't go far enough and amounts to taking tech companies at their word. Mike and Neal dig into what's actually driving the price spike, the data center and AI boom eating up nearly 40% of capacity charges in PJM's last auction, and why a near-unanimous vote in an election year should make you more suspicious, not less. Mike, who runs Aclymate, makes the case that this is capitalism's weak spot: margin always gets found somewhere, and it's usually found by squeezing public goods like the grid. Neal, who runs Airloom, pushes back on writing off the bill entirely, pointing out that exit-fee liability protections are genuinely useful and have saved communities from getting stuck holding the bag when a company walks away mid-build. They also get into the wave of state-level data center moratoriums in New York and Texas, and why Congress moving fast on a toothless bill while slow-walking real reform is the actual story here. Plus: Goods, Bads, and Others covering Mike's sustainability conference, EPA rollbacks, Thomas Massie's impeachment articles against Pete Hegseth, DOE geothermal funding, rising diesel prices tied to the Ukraine war, and Canada's growing defense-tech independence from the US. And in the mailbag, listener questions on Canada's Trans Mountain pipeline and whether Canada actually needs F-35s for northern defense. Got a question or comment? Email us at [email protected].

A $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 strike on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline — the kingdom's main workaround for the still-closed Strait of Hormuz — turned into a real cost at the pump for American truckers, and soon for everyone buying anything that rides on a truck. The strategic question underneath the headline: the White House wants to invoke a 1950s wartime production law to build out US refining capacity. Mike and Neal dig into why that fixes the wrong timeline. New refineries take years to permit and build, oil executives know the current price spike is likely temporary, and nobody is going to sink billions into a 25-year asset to solve an 18-month problem. They trace the chain back further, too — to the power vacuum in Iraq that let armed groups operate freely enough to launch a drone strike hundreds of miles into Saudi territory in the first place. The real debate of the episode is bigger than one pipeline. Neal, a former Marine and current energy founder, argues the national security case for domestic energy production over Middle East entanglement. Mike, whose company Aclymate helps businesses without in-house sustainability teams track and cut their own emissions, pushes the same conclusion from a different angle: energy independence and climate progress aren't in tension — they're the same fix wearing different hats. Both agree the real story of the week isn't the pipeline attack. It's that EV sales just hit record highs in 50 countries while the US keeps arguing about refineries. In Goods, Bads, and Others: Mike is buried under a sustainability industry summit he's hosting in Denver this week (and hoping to survive a weekend backpacking trip with 15 Boy Scouts right after). His bad goes to the treatment of political refugees in immigration detention, and his other flags BlackRock's public acknowledgment that markets aren't pricing in climate risk — paired with skepticism about whether the money will actually follow the words. Neal's good is the EU stepping up with a new air and missile defense package for Ukraine, his bad is the end of "duration of status" protections for international students, and his other is Amazon suspending a cargo carrier partnership after a fatal runway crash. Got a question or a take on today's episode? Email the show at [email protected] — we read every one and might feature yours on a future episode. And if you're finding value in these conversations, share the show with someone who'd get something out of it too.