Monthly Archives: July 2025

EP 310 Samo Burja on Anduril’s Plan to Modernize the US Military



Jim talks with Samo Burja about his report on the defense startup Anduril’s plan to modernize the U.S. military. They discuss “live players vs. dead players,” AI adoption & cognitive tools, Anduril’s background & naming origin, military technology modernization, software-defined conflicts, autonomous & software-enabled weapons, sensor deployment & data collection, the Lattice software platform, hardware offerings including drone & underwater vehicle acquisitions, surface naval warfare obsolescence, military industrial capacity, US vs. China manufacturing capabilities, personnel-to-weapon system ratios, drone production scale, cost considerations, defense industry ecosystem, traditional contractors, friend-shoring possibilities, NATO+ industrial capacity, component manufacturing, future warfare implications, training advantages of digital systems, scale of drone warfare, AI capabilities gaps between nations, industrial advantages in military competition, and much more.

Samo Burja is the president and founder of Bismarck Analysis, a consulting firm specializing in institutional analysis for clients in North America and Europe. He is also a Senior Research Fellow in Political Science at the Foresight Institute and chair of the editorial board of Palladium Magazine. You can follow him at @SamoBurja.


EP 309 Richard David Hames on the Final Performance of Western Civilization?



Jim talks with Richard David Hames, picking up from the ideas in his recent Facebook essay about the decline of Western civilization. They discuss the retreat from truth in politics & institutions, postmodernism’s impact on rationality, China’s governance model, the failure of democratic institutions, wealth inequality & social stratification, the liberation of women as our era’s defining achievement, climate change denial, the futility of modern warfare, AI’s disruptive potential, the loss of character & virtue in leadership, living in a liminal period between worlds, and much more.

Richard David Hames is a philosopher, activist, strategist, and advisor to boards and governments, mentoring leaders out of their manufactured normalcy. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is Manmade: 50 Failings of Our Own Making, coauthored with Adam A. Jacoby.


EP 308 David Chapman on Rethinking Nobility



Jim talks with David Chapman about rethinking nobility for the modern age through his recent “nobility tetralogy” of essays. They discuss character & virtue as “risible” concepts, noblesse oblige & elite education, nobility as intention vs status, “The Battle of Maldon” poem & its lessons, postmodernism & postmodernity, the failure of elite universities, effective altruism & Sam Bankman-Fried, Elon Musk & hubris, meritocracy & institutional change, Nietzsche’s master-slave morality, Tolkien’s models of nobility, Vajrayana Buddhism’s life-affirming approach, software engineers eating the world, meta-rationality & the tech industry, new institutions, visions for a more playful & connected future, and much more.

David Chapman writes and speaks about understanding meaning, purpose, and culture through resolving fundamental, unthought emotional stances that can make us miserable; leveling up technical work by going beyond formal rationality; Vajrayana, the life-affirming branch of Buddhism offering a vaster, brighter, freer way of seeing, feeling, and acting; and artificial intelligence (he has a PhD in it).


EP 307 Thomas Schindler on Heliogenic Civilization



Jim talks with Thomas Schindler about heliogenic civilization as a vision for a regenerative future. They discuss the current multipolar trap shitshow of global civilization, M3 money supply & GDP growth requirements, the doubling of energy demand, exit to planet as an alternative to traditional business exits, biomimicry & biological approaches to manufacturing, solar energy as a fusion reactor, nature’s material production vs human industrial production, construction systems using earth blocks & natural materials, bioregional self-sufficiency, feminine scaling vs traditional growth models, the Oslo Project as an inverse Manhattan Project, deep ecology & Arne Næss’s philosophy, governance structures, education systems as symptoms of industry, coordination among farmers in Kenya, project governance & preventing OpenAI syndrome, Bernard Lietaer’s alternative currency experiment, biological computing possibilities, solar energy & hydrogen electrolysis, ocean floor mining & environmental impacts, copper vs aluminum for electrical transmission, material constraints on renewable energy transition, and much more.

Thomas is co-founder of delodi.net, a mission-driven software studio and the engine behind the not-for-profit initiatives MOTHERLAND, GITA, IRM, and Project MIRACLE. The throughline of his work lies in reimagining how societies generate value—shifting from extractive models to regenerative, life-centered systems that empower local communities. He’s particularly focused on helogenic civilization frameworks, bio-regional material commons, infrastructures of generosity, systemic change methodologies, and the intersections of technology, culture, and ecology. Motivated by the conviction that aligning collective creativity, open protocols, and local agency is essential to address today’s ecological and existential challenges, he writes, speaks, convenes and assemblies to catalyze these conversations and collaborations.