Will Robots Fight America’s Next War?

Okay, first, before we give you the facts of the day, run Hyde Fight in Fidel's is streaming now only on Daily Wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s, there's even a love story which nobody expected, and you can support Daily Wire's mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch, go check it out. The Trump administration has announced construction of a new shipyard in Maryland, supported by a 3.7 billion dollar investment from Anderl Industries. The facility is said to be the largest new shipyard since World War Two. Anderl has been granted a 2.9 billion dollar contract to build new subs. Meanwhile, the company's founder has been appointed as leadership within the Pentagon's new initiative that's exploring new military technology and autonomous fighting. In this episode, we sit down with the president of Anderl Industries to discuss the construction of the massive facility and the future of military technology in the age of AI. I'm Georgia Howe with Daily Wire Executive Editor John Bickley. And this is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Joining us now with more on all of this is Chris Bros., President and Chief Strategy Officer of Anderl Industries. Welcome on. Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. So tell us more about the scope of this new deal that your company has struck with the Trump administration to beef up our forces. The basic structure of it is we are putting in we the company are putting in 3.7 billion dollars. The administration is putting in the better part of 3 billion dollars. And really the way we tried to structure this was to have our capital investment. Again, the better part of 4 billion dollars go toward establishing all of what is going to be required to make the operation or to make the shipyard operational. So building the facility, hiring the workforce, filling it with all the technologies and capabilities we're going to need to make it a functioning shipyard. Again, we're talking 2 million square feet more or less under one roof. So it's a massive piece of infrastructure, massive investment. But we wanted to make that investment ourselves because we want to build the shipyard the way we know it can be done and really put the government in the position of buying what the shipyard is producing. So exactly what the president has been demanding of industry to do in his executive orders and other comments to make greater investments in themselves, their production capacity, their workforce. We're putting a lot of money where his mouth and our mouths are to build this facility the way we know it can be done and really start contributing to trying to get submarine production capacity increased in the country. Now, how critical is it that we increase that kind of capacity right now? I mean, I think it is absolutely vital. You know, as the old saying goes, the best time to plan a tree is 20 years ago and today, this is going to take time, right? I wish I could snap my fingers and have Arsenal 2 online in Baltimore, but it will take time. It took us a long time to kind of get into the challenge that we're in in terms of our defense industrial base. It's going to take time to get out of it. But the real answer to your question really gets down to the centrality of the Virginia class submarine program and Admiral Goucher, I think, said it great yesterday at the announcement. The nuclear attack submarines of the United States are the apex predators of our nation's oceans. I mean, they're the things out there every single day deterring conflict with Russia, with China, keeping the peace and stability of the world, keeping the sea lanes open. And our nation knows how to build them, right? Our industrial base has been building these submarines for years. We just don't have enough of them. We just need to build more of them. So, I think our task here is really supporting our industrial partners at electric boat and hunting to Ingalls, Newport News, and the United States Navy in getting more production capacity online so we can have more of these, you know, really kind of war preventing and war-winning systems out in the ocean and underway. A devout orthodox Jew invited about a dozen friends to pray in his home, his city required him to get a permit and then recruited his neighbors to spy on him. It may sound impossible, but it actually happened in University Heights, Ohio, to a man named Daniel Grant. That's why Alliance Defending Freedom and Oric, Harrington, and Sutcliffe are defending Daniel at the U.S. Supreme Court. Alliance Defending Freedom never bills its clients and right now your gift will be doubled by a matching grant while matching funds last. Go to joinadf.com/wire or text wire to 83848 to defend the freedom to pray at home. That's joinadf.com/wire or text wire to 83848 for it. 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Yeah so the facility itself you know I think we're really targeting kind of the end of this decade like 2020 or 2030 or so to have it like fully up operational online. The thing I would say is we're not going to wait until then to do work. You know this has been two years in the making. Our company at Andrewals already invested about probably $160 million to stand up. A lot of the team we already have a facility out in California where we're starting to do work that we can do now. So for example building torpedo tubes you know this is a critical component of submarines that are industrial bases not producing enough of. If there were more torpedo tubes that were you know being built and qualified to go on to Virginia class submarines you know our partners at electric boat would be building a lot more of them. So we're going to try right now to start solving problems like that that you know in the scope and scheme of this are relatively smaller. They're still very complex you know systems. We're going to get after that immediately and hope that we can start plugging components like that into the supply chain you know much sooner than the arsenal two facility comes online in Baltimore. You know but once online the you know the goal here is to be you know really start to contribute larger sections you know modules super modules you know kind of ship sections. Again not with the goal of taking work off of anybody's plate but to just increase the amount of production capacity that we have because we're not meeting the Navy's needs you know as it stands across the country. So there's more work to be done you know we're not trying to take work share away from anybody there's plenty of work to go around. We're just trying to add capacity you know so that our partners at E.B. and Newport News can produce more submarines and the Navy can get more of these systems in the water. Now you mentioned not taking jobs away from people. What kind of economic impact is this expected to have in Baltimore? It's a it's a massive victory for Baltimore. You know this is going to create 3,100 direct jobs about another 11,000 indirect jobs. Many of those will be you know kind of in the Baltimore County and surrounding counties in Maryland. So this is going to be a huge economic impact for Baltimore in the state of Maryland. It's why you've seen from the governor of Maryland to state and county and other local leaders you know just unanimously supportive of this you know Maryland has been a phenomenal partner in welcoming us to the state really attracting us to the state. I mean as you would imagine when a company is getting ready to spend the better part of four billion dollars it's going to do a nationwide search high degree of diligence to determine the best place to put a facility like that and I think we can say objectively you know Maryland is the best place for this yard in terms of its existing infrastructure that we're going to be building on. It was a shipyard. I mean this was one of the war-winning shipyards in World War II and we're going to make it a shipyard again. The geographic proximity to our shipbuilding partners up in New England and down in you know Newport news down in Virginia Beach and then just the access to labor that we're going to have you know kind of a cross Baltimore Southern Maryland you know kind of all the adjacent areas kind of within a one-hour radius of where this site is going to be you know it's millions and millions of potential workers that we're going to be able to pull into this shipyard and get them contributing to building you know one of the most important weapon systems for the United States. Now looking forward what does the future of military technology look like to Andorl you know will we be fighting with you know fully functioning robots autonomous robots you know what's coming in the future. Yeah it's a great question and I think you know if you look back at everything that Andorl has done to date it is very much you know kind of future of warfare focused. I mean we're building autonomous systems robotic fighter jets and robotic submarines were building low-cost weapons of all different kinds you know software enabled AI enabled defense capabilities and weapons. So you know I think we are very much on the cutting edge of you know the future of defense the future of warfare where that is all going. At the same time there are systems that are in our nation's arsenal that are going to be absolutely vital for the United States military or allies and partners for a long time to come and you know like we're talking about here I think the Virginia class submarines at the top of that list. So as much as I believe the future of warfare is going to be defined by drones and low-cost weapons and all these other remarkable capabilities that are here today that Andrew is building today, it's also going to be defined by systems like submarines, traditional ships, tanks and other things that are not by any means going away. And it's really how those old and new technologies work together and how we get the quantities of them that we need into the fight, which I think is the real challenge for American industry and the real thing that Andrew is so excited to be contributing to. Now, with all of the autonomous weapons that you're building and presumably other countries around the world are attempting to build, do you anticipate this is going to mean greater safety for our troops or are you also concerned that some of these more powerful weapons could cause a lot of harm for people either here or just around the world? Yeah, I think when we look at the question of sort of increased levels of autonomy or kind of uncrewed systems, look, the primary goal here is to get human beings out of these very dangerous positions that many of them are in, where you can have a robotic system, fly out in advance of your troops and conduct reconnaissance of an area, figure out where the enemy is, shoot back, I mean, if we can do that without risking the lives of our troops, you know, I think that is a primary motivation for us as a company. I would say that also goes hand in hand with recognizing with these new technologies, there is an absolutely high bar for safety and reliability as any weapon system should have, right? We don't want weapon systems that are going to malfunction or hallucinate. So as we are putting artificial intelligence and other kinds of advanced technologies into the defense systems that we're building, we also recognize that these have to be used by human beings on behalf of human beings. They have to be safe, they can't misfire or malfunction. So that safety bar is going to be as high as it needs to be to ensure the safety of our own forces as well as, you know, protecting, you know, civilian lives and other kind of considerations that our United States military always has when it engages in operations. Final question. The founder of your company, Palmer Lucky, is involved with Project Meridian that Secretary of Warpede Hegseth announced during his State of the Force address. What role will he be playing on that team? Yeah, it's a great question. You know, I think Project Meridian came together very quickly. I mean, I don't actually have all of the details of, you know, how it's going to go. My sense from just what I've seen is, you know, this is going to be a goal of producing a report on a very quick timeline, about 120 days. So I think this is a very sort of short term effort to, you know, at a very high level, think about where future trends and warfare are going, not commenting on any particular programs or products or initiatives or anything like that. And, you know, I think this is something that the Department of War has done for many, many years, right? In terms of really trying to look ahead and look around corners and, you know, I can't think of a better group of people to help lead that. But again, my sense from what I've seen is that the goal is to have the whole thing wrapped up, you know, really in the next few months. Well, as you've laid out here at a fascinating time in terms of military readiness for the U.S., with all these new technologies and also some tried and true technologies as well. Chris Bros. Thank you so much for joining us. That was my pleasure. Thank you, guys. That was Chris Bros., President and CSO of Andral Industries, and this has been a weekend episode of Morning Wire.