In this episode of The Derivative, Jeff Malec sits down with Ian Winer, West Point grad and founder of Center 15 Capital, to unpack how modern warfare and national security are being reshaped by drones, AI, and space. Using the recent conflict with Iran as a case study, they explore how cheap one-way attack drones are challenging traditional air defenses, why firing multimillion-dollar interceptors at $15,000 drones is unsustainable, and what a proper layered counter-drone strategy looks like, including jammers, directed energy, and high-powered microwaves. Ian also explains how space-based sensors and AI-driven analysis are shortening the intelligence loop, and walks through Center 15’s investments in companies like Shield AI (autonomy for unmanned systems), Epirus (high-powered microwaves for drone defense), Shift5 (cybersecurity for large platforms), and HawkEye 360 (RF detection from space). They close with what keeps Ian up at night, from attacks on civilian infrastructure to cyber risks, and lighten it up with his Mount Rushmore of military movies, from Full Metal Jacket to Red Dawn(yes, the original)…… SEND IT!
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From the Episode:
When Skynet Writes a Substack: The AI Doom Piece That Moved Markets: https://www.rcmalternatives.com/2026/03/when-skynet-writes-a-substack-the-ai-doom-piece-that-moved-markets/
Check out the complete Transcript from this week’s podcast below:
Drone Wars, Space Intelligence, and AI-powered Defense Tech Investing with Ian Winer of Center15 Capital
Jeff Malec 00:21
All right, welcome back, everybody. I am finally back in Chicago. Had a travel nightmare yesterday, left Miami, was down at the future proof Miami event looking at ETFs and all the Josh brown stuff, and left there at 6pm got diverted to Cleveland because of some thunderstorms, tornadoes, hail, and ended up basically sleeping in the terminal there in Cleveland, got 20 minutes sleep on the floor and landed this morning, like 8am so woe is me, but that’s not why you’re here. Lot of AI talk down in Miami how advisors and ETFs can leverage AI, and we put up a nice blog post this week about the citrini research piece, which is kind of a preview of what could go wrong with AI in the economy. So go check that out. RCM, alts.com, on to this episode. Got a great one for you today. Ian Winer of center 15 came on to talk what’s happening in Iran, drones, defense tech, critical tech, a bunch of tech things I didn’t know anything about. So how do these drones work? Why are there swarms? How do we defend against them? Really interesting conversation, and really interesting that there’s venture capital and private equity groups out there looking at this kind of stuff and pushing the tech forward in ways just the government alone can’t do. So here we go. Send it.
Jeff Malec 01:54
All right, everyone. We’re here with Ian Winer, how are you? Ian, good, thank you, good. And where are you located? Just were telling me offline, la Los Angeles, yep. All right, what part live in an area called West Adams, which is closer to downtown. All right, any fires, mudslides? Are you pretty protected against natural disasters there?
Ian Winer 02:17
We’re in a pretty good spot as it relates to natural disasters. I think earthquakes are still a concern, but the other stuff, we’re okay for now.
Jeff Malec 02:25
I feel like everyone forget, at least I do forgets about that the big one still could come to LA gets mentioned more with Sam Fran than LA, right? You excited for the Olympics to come out there? I was just into these previous Olympics, or is it going to be a hassle with traffic and everything.
Ian Winer 02:42
Well, we got the World Cup first, but yes, the Olympics should be a lot of fun. I hope awesome.
Jeff Malec 02:50
So let’s get right into it. Wanted you to come on graduate of West Point in the defense tech industry. So obviously, we’ve been in a bit of a well, we can talk about that, whether it’s a war or not, but I’m gonna call it a war in a war with Iran here. But what are your quick thoughts, what surprised you, what’s kind of gone as expected on what’s happening over there in the Middle East?
Ian Winer 03:14
Yeah, so, you know, I mean, as related to what it’s called, if it’s not a real war, it’ll do until the real war gets here. But, you know, I think that that the things that happened that are not surprising, you know, is our ability to quickly establish, you know, air dominance. You know, we we degraded, we, in the Israelis, degraded the Iranian air defenses pretty drastically last summer. So no surprise that we were able to sort of quickly establish our ability over the skies to kind of do as we please. Not a surprise that we were able to take out the regime, at least this iteration of it, as quickly as we did. You know, our intelligence capabilities, again, us and the Israelis have always been sort of significantly better than others. And so it’s, it’s not a surprise that we have been able to decapitate the regime in that, in that respect, I think the the reaction from Iran has been a bit surprising, just from, you know, sort of scattershot missile launches at at, at, you know, different countries around the region, I think surprised people a bit,
Jeff Malec 04:25
yeah, like hotels and whatnot. Are those, are those misses, or is that on purpose?
Ian Winer 04:31
Well, you know, these things are hard to tell. I think just more of the fact that missiles came in the direction of those countries at all was a little surprising, you know, but these things continue. And so, you know, I think when, when you step aside from all that and just sort of look at, you know, what are, what are the lessons learned in week one of this, you know, I think that it’s clear that there is, you know, a lot of discussion that is going to happen and needs to happen around. The available supply of interceptors that we have from a missile stock basis, and what appears to be clearly an asymmetry in the costs of those interceptors relative to the drones that they’re taking out. And so I think that’s a major discussion item, which is already picking up, as far as noise around having that discussion, I think that it’s clear from the damage that’s been done to whether it’s oil installations or airports or wherever it is, that there needs to be clear counter drone priorities made, and those tie into that interceptor discussion, because I think we need to really continue to improve our layered defense around not just military bases, but really any critical installation that is out there. And so when you see these things getting attacked as they have been, I think it’s a good reminder of what could happen here on the homeland quite easily, and those threats will likely only increase. And then I think that the third thing that’s that’s pretty interesting is the use of the space domain. I think that this is the first, you know, conflict where we’re really seeing the use of assets in the space, in space as sort of a tip of the spear in terms of identifying targets, tracking targets, intelligence gathering. We’ve had these assets up there for a while, and we continue to grow them, but I think in this case, we’re seeing them use it in a much greater fashion than they had kind of previously, and a lot of the other stuff that we’ve done. So those are kind of my key takeaways, you know, sort of first, first week since this, you know, began, kind of, at least there’s, yeah, it began.
Jeff Malec 06:47
And so talk a little bit more about the space piece I hadn’t seen or heard that, right? Everyone knows satellites, and we’re, I can only imagine they’re improving exponentially with everything. And there’s real time ish views from the satellites. Or, what are you saying that it was initiated in space?
Ian Winer 07:03
Well, more just that, the the number of satellites that we have on orbit, the sophistication of the sensors that we have on orbit, has led them to bring down latency timeline to a point where they’ve become a lot more relevant on the battlefield. And so I think that that when I look at sort of where our intelligence gathering is taking place, there’s there’s more and more of it happening from the space domain, from low earth orbit, and giving us the ability to read and react in ways and gather intelligence, whether it’s from just overall sensing of different, You know, signals that are coming off the earth or in a combination with imagery and a combination of ground based radar systems that I think we we’ve been able to use assets in space for the first time in ways that we haven’t been able to in past
Jeff Malec 07:56
conflicts, and Is that I’m imagining like my old Jack Ryan books of write, an analyst poring over some satellite image. I’m sure that’s at least 80% AI now. Of like, yeah, what am I actually looking at? The AI can quickly get through all that, yeah? So that’s part of what you’re saying. Like, okay, we can more quickly turn this stuff over, of what’s happening down there?
Ian Winer 08:21
Yes, and as a result, it becomes much more relevant to the war fighter who’s actually on the battlefield.
Jeff Malec 08:28
And then where does that tie in with communications? Like did, I didn’t think, was that land based that we jammed all their communications into all that, or does that also start to go up into space, you know, like, I’m thinking of Starlink and Elon Musk able to turn off the Russians internet and things like that, nature, yeah.
Ian Winer 08:47
I think, you know, each system has different sort of capabilities and different weaknesses. I think it depends on the signal that you’re trying to jam. But, you know, I think that that a lot of the jamming that takes place is, is done terrestrial.
Jeff Malec 09:12
And so the second piece you mentioned of the surprising them sending these were those missiles or drones that they were sending to these other countries? Seemed like mostly
Ian Winer 09:24
missiles sent a combination of both. But there’s been a lot of the drone attacks the one way attack drones that they have.
Jeff Malec 09:31
Yeah, so let’s dive into that of kind of give us the zoom out on what drone warfare really looks like, right? Because that’s not just, this isn’t an Iran thing. This is every country in the world now has this drone capability. Or is Iran unique, and they building these cheap, one way ones?
Ian Winer 09:51
No, I think you know, most militaries at this point have different levels, and have, for years, have had certain unmanned vehicles. So whether they. Aerial or what we’re seeing more of, at least, at least, we’re trying to do more unmanned surface vehicles on the water and unmanned ground vehicles. But from a drone, most people think of, you know, kind of those quad copters that fly around. You know, historically the US military and they drones are grouped by size. So group one drones are the smallest. Those are the little quad copters. Group three drones are the mid size, drones that do more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. But there are one way attack drones that are of that size. And then the group five drones, those are have have historically been predators, and now the Reaper, they’re very expensive, fly very high, but, but have capabilities where they can target, you know, specific areas with with large munitions. And so that’s always, historically been the case. I think what’s changed, and what we saw in Ukraine, and we’ve seen in other pockets of the world, is, you know, the the ability to use a very small cheat drone to cause significant damage to very large platforms. And so that is, you know, the biggest change that we witnessed in Ukraine and other areas is just how those one way attack drones are able to extract a lot of damage at very little cost. And so that is that has essentially changed the entire way that that we need to think about both the use cases of these large platforms and how effective they can be on a modern battlefield, and whether we want to invest the kind of dollars that are required to build them. And then also, how do you defend against these, these drones that are coming in at targets, whether they are military targets or or commercial targets.
Jeff Malec 11:45
And so talk the group Well, first of all, why is there no group two or four? They just, they didn’t want even numbers.
Ian Winer 11:51
No, there, there are. There actually are group two and four. They’re just not, there’s just not that many of them. And they kind of blend a little bit. So so, you know, we tend to look kind of 135, but no group four, group five or there certainly are drones that occupy those, those
Jeff Malec 12:04
numbers and those predator and Reaper. Are those, the ones that used to be piloted, but remotely? Are they still piloted remotely? They’re still piloted remotely. Okay, so the group fives are still remote, so they’re not truly unmanned. And then the group one, those little right? I think most people, when they hear drones, are thinking those little quad copters. So what can those do? What do they put on those? Like some small munitions, or it’s just to crash into things?
Ian Winer 12:30
Yeah, put on a small munition and crash, crash it into something. It’s typically the use case that we’ve seen.
Jeff Malec 12:37
And then what’s the range on the three of those? So we’re talking
Ian Winer 12:41
range as far as how, you know. I mean,
Jeff Malec 12:44
like a group one, can they? Iran, can’t attack the US, obviously, with one of those, much, can it go 100 miles?
Ian Winer 12:52
Or, yeah, I mean, group one drones, you know, are, you know, I would think about those as primarily, very near tactical kind of, you know, on the battlefield, you know, very close to the target. You know, they can fly a distance, but the longer they fly, the more likely that they’re not going to survive up in the up in the sky, because of, you know, jamming signals and things like that. So, so, you know, are you going to use a quadcopter in the Indo, Pacific? No, it’s not going to do anything. Group three drones, midsize sort of, you know, ISR type mission sets, you know, those drones can fly, you know, 1012, hours. They fly pretty high up in the air, eight to 10,000 feet, and they’re conducting surveillance missions and intelligence gathering missions. And so that’s a different mission set that’s more appropriate for the Indo Pacific, where you’re gonna have to travel large distances. And then the group five drones, which you know are, are, have historically been what we’ve used for a lot of those missions. You know, they are becoming, you know, an interesting discussion point. You know, a Reaper costs, you know, $25 million and and for a long time, you know, many years, they were largely untouchable, but now we’ve seen the Houthis be able to take them down with shoulder fire rockets. And so, you know, the calculation that the Pentagon and the military need to make are, you know, what’s our, what’s our kind of cost benefit analysis of this? Are we going to spend another $25 million on one of these? Or, you know, are we going to just buy a lot more of these kind of group three drones that may cost $500,000 or $750,000 and we can afford to lose a lot more of them, and they can perform a very similar mission than some of the predators do. And so you know that that that’s the discussion that is happening. It’s one of many that’s happening where, where you know the administration and just. Militaries around the world overall are rethinking tactics and strategy based on everything that we’ve seen over the last few years,
Jeff Malec 15:08
and that that is why the drone exists in the first place, though, right? Like you had a $300 million F 16 and said, Hey, we can do 80% of the mission profile with a $25 million predator. Let’s build more of those. But you’re saying now we could even go a step lower, like, hey, maybe we need 100x of of a $2 million platform. Yeah.
Ian Winer 15:30
I mean, you know, it’s, it’s a, you know, it’s a constrained environment, you know, there’s only so much money and there’s only so much ability to build these things, you know. And that’s, that’s, you know, not dissimilar from the conversation that’s taking place right now about, you know, munitions and interceptors, and how are we going to restock, you know, everything that we’re using or that our allies are using, and how do we do it quickly? And so those are, they’re not they’re similar discussions. It’s like, you know, you can spend, you know, certain amount of money on things, but at some point you can’t keep spending money on it, and then you got to ask, well, what am I getting for the extra, you know, NX, what I’m going to pay relative to, well, now I’ve got some stuff that I can actually afford to lose, and I’ve got more of them. And so is that a better strategy than you know what we’re doing, or what we have done in the past,
Jeff Malec 16:22
and then, and so, flipping the card, what are the Iranians using? I’ve seen some of the videos of their they look like a quarter size jets, right? They look like small
Ian Winer 16:33
Yeah, they use, you know, they have various different vehicles. The Shahed is sort of their kind of feature. That’s the one that’s been used in Ukraine by the Russians. And that’s the one that you’ll see mostly used. It’s a one Russian made. No, it’s well, the Russians are making their own version of it. But the Iranians, you know, have been making them for a while, for years, and have been shipping them to Russia. But the, the the, you know, the it’s a one way attack drone. And, you know, it’s, they, they have a lot of them. They’ve made a lot of them. They’re losing a lot of them. But, you know, that’s sort of a great way to inflict damage very cheaply. And so, you know, that’s, that’s a drone that I don’t know, you know, $15,000 maybe somewhere in that range, depending on, you know, how many they’re making. So you know that, and you can put a lot of those at targets. And so I’ve read they’ve launched, like, more than 2000
Jeff Malec 17:37
like, what? How many do they have? Do we think 20,000 200,000
Ian Winer 17:41
like, you know, hard to say, you know, it’s, it’s whatever they, you know, they, they don’t have a lot of him, you know, it’s not like they have endless inventory of these things, yeah, and, and whatever inventory they do have is being targeted. And so, you know, they’re certainly on a short fuse as far as what their time horizon is. But you know, the the reality is they’re they still have them. They’re still firing them, and it’s still an effective way of causing damage very cheaply.
Jeff Malec 18:19
Yeah, and then leading into the interceptor conversation. So what? What’s the base platform there Israel us to defend against these things. And like you were touching on, we’re spending a whole lot of money to shoot down a $15,000 drone.
Ian Winer 18:35
Yeah, I mean, there’s, there’s different, you know, levels of interceptors. There’s different systems. The Patriot system has historically been, you know, one of the ones that’s been used over the years. There’s a THAAD system for all kind of a lot of these are woven into Israel’s Iron Dome. But, you know, on average, imagine that that, you know, if you’ve got a battery or something that’s protecting an asset and you’re firing, you know, an interceptor, so to speak. You know, you could be firing something that’s, that’s, you know, a few million dollars and per interceptor. And so the question becomes, if the Iranians are firing, you know, sending $20,000 drones at, you know, our targets is, you know, in a world of limited, you know, sort of resources? Can we continue to use $3 million missiles to take out those $20,000 drones? And, you know, it would seem to me that the answer is no.
Jeff Malec 19:34
I would argue we could just print more money. But that’s, that’s a discussion for another podcast. But, um, the but then you’re saying, hey, if this is one time, like, this is this war is happening? And, yeah, it’s worth as much money in the world to protect the assets, protect the people, but if it’s constant over who knows how long. So what’s, what’s the analysis? What are you hearing of like, there’s only a limited amount of that defense, so to speak? Yeah.
Ian Winer 20:00
Well, I mean, you know, there’s, it’s unclear. I mean, my sense is that we still have significant stockpile, but, you know, I think we’re, we’re certainly expending a bunch, you know, right now, so are our allies. And so, you know, when you think about kind of where we are, we’re certainly depleting inventory. And now the question is, how quickly can you replenish that inventory? And I think that that’s that’s a challenge. It’s been a challenge for us, you know, for many years, to manufacture things quickly at scale when it comes to defense, and there’s historically, a variety of reasons for that, and the administration is quickly trying to remedy that. It’s just, it’s not that easy to remedy. It takes time and culture shift and money and so, you know, I think that that’s going to be one of the big challenges in front of us is, how do we actually replenish this inventory and do it in a timely enough fashion that it can act as a deterrent in other areas of the world that probably pose much bigger threats, right?
Jeff Malec 21:03
We’re not talking World War Two turn over all the factories to make bombers and well and all that get
Ian Winer 21:10
Yeah, I don’t think so. I think it’s more just, how do we put the proper incentive structure in place, which we’re doing to ensure that the companies are incentivized to move quickly?
Jeff Malec 21:20
And where are these things, which companies we talking about the big, huge, yeah.
Ian Winer 21:25
I mean, historically, you know, whether it’s Lockheed or RTX or General Dynamics or others who are involved in his supply chains. I mean, you just have historically had some very large defense primes, and that’s what they’ve done, you know. I mean, they do a lot of different things, to be fair. But, you know, building munitions and bombs and everything else is something that has historically been their mission set. And you know what we what we’ve witnessed over the last few decades is that the incentive structure was upside down, as far as getting product on time and cheaply, was not, you know, the incentive structure. The incentive structure was actually the opposite, which was to say that, you know, everything was done on a cost plus contract. And so as a result, there was no incentive. In fact, it was you were incentivized to take longer and incentivized to have costs go up, because it was the taxpayer that was fitting the extra bill. And so that resulted in, not just in munitions, but in but in kind of everywhere, cost overruns and, more importantly, product just wasn’t getting to the war fighter when it was actually applicable on the battlefield. And so what you’ve seen now with this kind of last few years of defense tech investing is a belief that that is changing and changing quickly. So that is, you know, the rationale, I think, for a lot of venture capitalists, who are, you know, now getting into the sector, that they see that, you know, there’s, there’s been a paradigm shift, and therefore the sector is investable, so to
Jeff Malec 22:53
speak, is the green flag for incentives has gone up, so to speak, yeah.
Ian Winer 22:59
And you know, if you were, if, you know, five, five years ago, if you were a defense tech company and you had an interesting product, you might get a little money to kind of develop that product, but you would have to wait years before a shot at any real revenue. And that valley of death, you know, where you sat was just a place where, if you’re a venture capitalist, you’re not looking to say, well, I’m going to float this company for seven years while we wait for the government, who may, by the way, change administration just multiple times along the way, to actually give these guys a real contract that would show up in the budget as a program of record. So that’s changing now. So that changed everything so now, folks like us and folks like others who are coming into the sector now can appreciate that if the government has ways of getting money and revenue into the hands of these companies sooner, then that creates a much better return profile and business model you
Jeff Malec 24:06
so let’s get into the portfolio, or give us a little background, right? We got right into the war stuff. So give us a little background on on your company, and then we’ll talk about some of the portfolio pieces there. Sure.
Ian Winer 24:19
So you know, our company is about 18 months old. Now we invest in growth stage companies doing critical tech for national security. So, you know, defense technologies are certainly a large part of that. And when we say growth stage, we define that as a company that can be a public company in less than three years. Do significant amounts of research on the companies that we invest in, but we usually have known companies for six years or six months or more at a minimum, and oftentimes we’ve known them for years. And you know, we have investors who invest with us. We do everything on an opportunity by opportunity basis, what we provide the companies. Is, you know, sort of three fold. Is that we have six years of private market experience investing in the sector. We have significant relationships that can help develop the company’s business once we’re invested. And then finally, you know, I have, you know, over two decades of public market experience. And so that is something that’s uncommon in a lot of the private world. And so we’re able to work with our founders and CEOs and discuss, sort of our thoughts around how to maximize exit valuation based on how we think the public investors are going to think about the company. And so we have a very kind of narrow and deep product, and it’s all about you know, doing significant amounts of research and trying to identify top down trends for where we think the demand signals are today and where they’re going to be in the next two to three years, and then trying to identify what we think are the best companies that are going to play that theme, where the where the dollars
Jeff Malec 25:57
are going. It’s narrow and deep I liked Yeah. And how’d you come up with the name? So I played the name.
Ian Winer 26:06
I played center 15. Capital is the name. I played ice hockey at West Point, and that was my position and number.
Jeff Malec 26:13
Love it. So were you all in on the double USA gold medals? Watching those games? 100% Yeah. Double OTs, yeah, that was as good as it gets, great stuff. And so you kind of said critical tech and defense tech, what if I have to put you in a bucket? Is it defense tech? Or how do you kind of make that delineation?
Ian Winer 26:32
So defense tech is, is, you know, part of critical tech for national security? I think that you know where we sit and where our resources are and where we think we can be most helpful are going to be probably in the harder side of defense technology, as opposed to other areas that would fit the bill of critical tech, like a quantum computing for instance, where we’re not going to be able to be as helpful, and we likely don’t know the sector well. I know we don’t know the sector as well. And so, you know, we try to focus on where we feel our strengths are, and that tends to come in the in the, you know, more traditional defense technologies.
Jeff Malec 27:14
So tying it back to earlier conversation, like talk about some of the companies here, so we didn’t talk about what a drone swarm is, what? What’s a swarm? Excuse me,
Ian Winer 27:25
yeah, so people define it differently. I think at this stage, what most people consider a drone swarm is just, you know, a number of small quad copters flying at a target. You know, could be 25 could be 250 think that a swarm, if you’re going to truly define it the way that I think it should be, they should be interconnected somehow and be able to read from each other in order to get to a target that would be more of a truly defined swarm. I’ve yet to see the technology or the autonomy stack that could do that with a bunch of drones at this point. So have
Jeff Malec 28:07
you seen one of those drone LED shows? That’s basically what we’re talking about,
Ian Winer 28:11
Yeah, except that that I view that more as like, yes, that people can call that a swarm if you want to fly, but they’re coordinated and they’re linked, right, right? But they’re linked by a person. They’re not they’re not operating anonymously on their own, as as swarm of bees might. Where, if you watch, you know whether it’s bird formations or you watch different real swarms of things, if a few of them get killed or impacted or something happens, the swarm reforms and continues on towards its mission. That’s a true drone swarm, and that’s only done through software.
Jeff Malec 28:49
We’re talking Star Trek, no, and yeah, it’s five mind stuff.
Ian Winer 28:53
Yeah, certainly the future, but it’s being worked on. But I think in the traditional sort of, what does it mean? Like, I think most people, when they think of a drone swarm, they say, Okay, there’s some person out there or multiple people controlling 100 quadcopters, and they send them into a football stadium. That’s kind
Jeff Malec 29:10
of a swarm. And so one of your portfolio companies does some protection against swarms, right? Yeah, so our and so, like, what? Yeah, what. How would I protect and what’s the way now, and what is this company doing different?
Ian Winer 29:24
Yeah, so, so when we think about drones, obviously there’s the counter drone side of that, and how do you stop these drones? And historically and still, there’s, there’s multiple ways to stop a drone. We have everything from the very expensive munitions that I mentioned that we we spend, we have pretty significant but then
Jeff Malec 29:45
you’re talking about a $3 million missile to knock down $100 quad copter, or $500
Ian Winer 29:52
correct or something, you know, within that realm, and and it’s a kinetic effect. So if you’re firing a missile at something, then. You know your stuff’s going to blow up, and where that goes is something else we’ve got, you know, traditional jammers. That’s what we see a lot of on the battlefield in Ukraine, and you know, where you see a lot of other battlefields where, you know you can, you can use systems to jam radio frequency signals or GPS signals.
Jeff Malec 30:23
That’s one of those Humvees we see with the big kind of array on top of it.
Ian Winer 30:26
Yeah, they come in that. They come in like they, you know, they can look like a gun where you’re you’re literally firing out, or you’re disrupting signals. So there’s a variety of delivery methods, but suffice to say, you’re basically eliminating the signal that connects the drone to its end user or to know where it is. So, you know, 95% of the drones in Ukraine fall out of the sky without hitting their target because they’re operating in an environment that’s considered totally denied, and so an inability to fly and operate in those environments. So, so that’s another way
Jeff Malec 31:03
they program it to, like, at loss of signal, continue on to last known target, or something
Ian Winer 31:09
they can but again, not easy to do, and especially not on, especially not on a quad copter. Got it because you’re basically using them because they’re very cheap, right? So you’re not looking to put a lot of money into development. Developing something sophisticated for them. So, you know, so you’ve got, you’ve got kinetic effects, like munitions. You’ve got jammers. There are companies out there that have nets that try to, you know, essentially, force and find a net, put a net over the drone coming in, you’ve got other companies that shooting the nets up in the air or from one drone, you’re flying a drone, and you have a net to capture another drone. So that’s one way they’ve got, you know, for as many drones as there are, there are counter drone technologies, you know, and then there’s directed energy, and that’s kind of where we focused on what we believe is the most cutting edge counter drone technology, and directed energy consists mostly of lasers, high powered microwaves, which is where we chose to focus as a firm from an investment perspective. But what makes directed energy interesting is that if you look at the drones that we’re defending against and the options that we have right now if, if there is a drone that is truly has great autonomy, then that drone doesn’t rely on a radio frequency signal or GPS to know where it is, to know what it’s doing, to know what its mission is. And so if that’s the case, it does not have the same kind of signals that a jammer could actually jam, right? So if you can’t jam it right, how do you stop it? Same with these fiber optic control drones that we’re seeing in Ukraine. You know, those drones that are being used on fiber optic cables, they’re not using the traditional signals that a jammer takes out. So how do
Jeff Malec 33:00
you talk about that? There’s a thin fiber optic cable actually coming off the drone, yes, to the controller. That’s how it’s being operated. Yeah. How? How long is that cable?
Ian Winer 33:11
I mean, some of them are kilometers, wow. And so you know, you’re in a situation where, how do you see you stop that? So we’ve approached, we approach the counter Drone World by looking at it as a layered defense and not a zero sum game. And so all of the different technologies that folks use and folks have, we think, are part of this. But when you look at the ability to stop an autonomous drone, the ability to stop a fiber optic control drone, the ability to stop your traditional drone, company like Epirus, which has a high powered microwave, is able to do that, and that’s where, when we look at sort of, what’s the last line of defense, and the ability to take out this kind of swarm we just discussed, where somebody’s putting 50 drones towards a military base or an airport or some other high value installation,
Jeff Malec 34:03
and this is a quick reaction kind of thing, usually, like, they’re they don’t have an hour to decide how to stop these things. They’re not. They don’t see them on radar or whatnot. Or is it? No, you
Ian Winer 34:13
can put you pick them up on radar, but it’s not a lot of this stuff. It’s not, it’s a lack of, like, you know, it’s, how do you react to that radar? Right? It’s, and so, you know, these, everybody’s got radar, but it’s a question of how, how much time between, like, where are they being sent from? Because, you know, you’re not necessarily going to have the time to react to them.
Jeff Malec 34:37
That’s, right, it’s, it’s a much quicker reaction need from a defense standpoint. Yeah, you can’t fly a jet through them. It’ll basically like a bird going through its engines.
Ian Winer 34:47
So, I mean, you know, the high powered microwave that, like Epirus, has, you know, is designed to take out small quad copter drones and defeat stuff that has outboard motors on boats. But really it’s you. Know, projecting a force field out that as drones fly into that force field, you know, they they fall out of the sky. Because what the what the microwave does is essentially confuse the circuitry on the on the circuit board, and therefore the drone just doesn’t work anymore.
Jeff Malec 35:17
Is it harmful to humans? How does it it’s like a electric, an EMP,
Ian Winer 35:23
no, it’s not harmful to humans. It’s it’s really just designed as a force field that kind of gets put out there at a certain range and is able to stay there continuously, you know, so that as things run into that force field, they they then fall out of the sky. So it’s
Jeff Malec 35:45
not a pulsing sort of effect. It’s, it’s always on, continuous, always on, yeah, just don’t go through there with your cell phone.
Ian Winer 35:55
Well, you know, anything, anything that’s not hardened, that has circuit boards, you know, would would be at risk, but you know, it’s most larger vehicles. Even larger drones have a pretty hardened exterior, so it’s not like you can sneak your way in there the way, the way you could do with a small drone.
Jeff Malec 36:14
You bought at Best Buy. Got it. That’s cool. So what’s next? So you mentioned that on that, I don’t know if we call it offense, right on the other side is okay,
Ian Winer 36:24
the enemy is going to have this force field technology as well. Eventually, maybe. So how do you defeat that is the autonomous drones. Well, the autonomous drone is still, they still hadn’t have the circuitry. It’s still, you know, at risk with the high powered microwave. I mean, I think it’s just a question of what you’re firing at different things and whether you can overwhelm I mean, you know, it’s, it’s the idea that we’re going to have these, it’s going to take decades before this kind of technology could be everywhere. I think that, you know, it’ll just be a question of, of what people are willing to do to attack a target. You know, the high powered microwave is not going to stop a missile. So if somebody wants to fire a missile at something, then you know that’s that’s certainly, which
Jeff Malec 37:09
is why you’re saying layered, right? We need, that’s why that’s this, that’s right,
Ian Winer 37:12
that’s why you need multiple different types of defenses around major assets in order to protect them. Mm,
Jeff Malec 37:29
what’s the next company want to talk about? Shield?
Ian Winer 37:32
Yeah, shield AI is a company that we’ve known for five and a half years while at my old firm, we led their series D fundraise. That was the summer of 2021, so we’ve known them for a long time, and they are the premier autonomy provider for the military, for unmanned vehicles. You know, they have their own feature drone called the V bat, but they also have a a software called hive mind, which is their autonomy stack that they integrate onto that VBAT, but then they also license to other hardware providers, both domestically and internationally, so that those hardware providers can then build their own autonomy stack. And so those are their two main businesses right now. But what they’ve been able to demonstrate, and they did this in Ukraine, and towards the end of 2024 is the ability to operate in those environments I discussed, where you have no radio frequency or GPS signals, and so you need to have a software actually on board that can read and react and make decisions based on mission parameters and what they’re trying to accomplish and still relay back appropriate information. And so very hard to do, but shield has been able to do it. And shield, if you’ve been following the collaborative combat aircraft program, it’s the future of the Air Force. CCA is what it’s called, but basically, two weeks ago, the Air Force publicly announced that shield AI was one of the vendors for that program. It is a massive opportunity, because the Air Force has decided and the Navy that they no longer are focused on the Top Gun sort of mentality of fighting and dog fighting, but instead looking to put one fighter in a strike fighter with multiple drones on their wings. And then so they need to have folks make the drones, and they need to have somebody behind the brains and connecting the drones to the pilot and using the autonomy to do it. And that’s where shield AI comes into play. And so what shield AI is doing is, you know, providing what we think is the premier group three drone to do intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, paired with the greatest autonomy out there. And so that’s why they’ve become, you know, a bigger and bigger player in the Defense Department. And then last October, they unveiled the expat, which is, you know, their future product that. That they expect to be the first vertical take off, launch and land, six generation strike fighter that would be unmanned at a fraction of the cost of a traditional F 18. And, you know, it’s a very ambitious effort, but if they get it right, could completely change warfare as we know it, because without the need for a runway or an aircraft carrier, you know, you clearly change everything in terms of the way that we fight.
Jeff Malec 40:25
Lots to unpack there, right? That’s truly Star Trek futuristic stuff, right? So the pilot can basically, hey, drones one and two peel off, take out that threat. Drones four and five reform. I mean, whatever they they’re kind of instructing them, the pilots instructing him what to do in conjunction with it his or her mission? Yeah.
Ian Winer 40:45
And clearly, it’s a lot. So, you know, having, having the software there to help that pilot is critical, and that’s, that’s part of what shield AI does in that, in that program.
Jeff Malec 40:56
And like, the compute, right? Like, takes away that whole compute and energy conversation. I guess there’s enough energy on board crazy, crazy stuff. All right, take us to the next one. Yeah.
Ian Winer 41:09
So the next company we invested in was a, is a company called shift five. And you know what we realized, and what the military knows, and even the even the commercial world is aware of is the vulnerability of large platforms from cyber attack. And when we think of cyber attacks, we almost always think of an IT network or, you know, somebody phishing your your social security number. But the reality is, we have massive exposure, whether it’s commercial airliners or rail or military fighter jets or even large drones, different large platforms that we operate that are very susceptible to bad actors hacking into them. And then the other major issue that has plagued the United States military is that oftentimes when something breaks, that’s when it’s fixed, and not until it breaks. So what shift five does is they have a hardware software combination, where they install a piece of hardware over the main serial bus of a vehicle a large platform, and then they extract the data from that platform, and then are able to tell the end user, or the maker of the vehicle. Here’s everything we can see that’s going on. Here’s an anomaly, if somebody’s trying to hack into this system, here’s some predictive maintenance kind of tips. Hey, this looks like this is not functioning properly. You should take a look and maybe fix it. It can detect if your GPS is being spoofed. So a lot of commercial airliners, they fly near these battle zones, and suddenly their GPS is acting weird because of all the GPS spoofing that I mentioned earlier. So, so shift five is designed as a as a company that does Operational Technology cyber defense, as opposed to information technology cyber defense, and so, you know, we have seen in this year’s budget, you know, requirements over the next few years that every large platform in the military is going to need to be able to show that it can’t be hacked into. And so define a large platform. We’re talking ship, ship, fighter jets, yeah, because a lot of people think like, you know, we get into war, and we send a bunch of fighter jets up, and you know, they’re fighting. And what happens if we lose all those fighter jets? And you know, so what happens if somebody launches a cyber attack and hacks into those jet, fighter jets, and they can’t even get off the ground and so, so what shift five does is, is protect and and essentially, those large platforms and give alerts to people as to what’s happening there. And the commercial airline business is is critical, because that is another area where, where again, we are, we are woefully unprepared for that kind of attack. And, you know, I just hope Don’t tell me that. But yeah, it’s, you know, it’s terrifying, you know. And historically,
Jeff Malec 44:07
you mean, even down to the the controllers on the airplanes themselves, or down into the air traffic control systems and everything, all of them, yeah,
Ian Winer 44:17
yeah, they’re all, they’re all, you know. And it’s an area that, again, like many things we’ve seen over the history of this country, is that it isn’t until there’s a tragedy that we, you know, sort of kick things into gear. And but yes, these are, these are vulnerable assets, and you know, we need to be able to defend against that. And so that’s why shift five for us was an interesting opportunity, because we feel they have the solution to meet this problem. Yeah.
Jeff Malec 44:45
And talk about, was there a debate in the military over the last whatever 510, years of do we do they go to a walled off system versus a connected model, right? So it seems like ship five is protecting, protecting against this is connected to the internet, essentially, right? Or we’re saying it’s still walled off, but it could still be hacked.
Ian Winer 45:03
Yeah, I mean, I think that was clear, but no, I think it’s more stuff moves to the cloud, and there’s more and more stuff. And, you know, you just just the way things are going, the more risk there is to stuff being out there, and the ability to find your way into these systems, whether it’s air traffic control systems, whether it’s the vehicle itself, and so you know, it’s it’s all about, how do you extract the data and detect what’s happening on board of those systems to give actionable intelligence so that the end user could make a decision, or maybe it gives them 30 Seconds to adjust something before it becomes catastrophic.
Jeff Malec 45:48
But I’m saying, if I’m top, I’d say we need a disconnect, like a manual mode. But we’re saying that tech is too advanced. Doesn’t exist, like we can’t unconnect from the network, so to speak, on some of these fighter jets and warships.
Ian Winer 46:03
I mean, there’s ways to connect and disconnect, but I think at this point, it’s sort of too everything’s so connected that it would be
Jeff Malec 46:12
hard to see that scenario. Actually, a friend of mine’s brother was a captain of a nuclear submarine, retired and now works for I didn’t even know this was a thing, but AWS is military cloud, right? So I guess there’s a military private AWS, Amazon Web Service Cloud just for the military. Amazon Z, which makes sense, but yeah, you went on just, we don’t want to be using the public servers.
Ian Winer 46:37
Yeah, AWS does a significant amount of business with the government.
Jeff Malec 46:52
One more, right? Yeah, the kind of
Ian Winer 46:54
company we invested in last year was a company called Hawkeye 360 what they do is they detect radio frequency emitters around the globe. They have 36 satellites on orbit that do this, and then they ingest all that data, and then they sell that data to the end customer, who are typically government agencies here and abroad. And then those government agencies can either take the raw data or the raw data, plus an analytics package that Hawkeye 360 provides to them, as, you know, software as a service. And so they, you know, imagine that there’s, you know, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of boats out there. They all have AIs. They’re all supposed to identify where they are when they’re
Jeff Malec 47:40
doing this is, like this map in the straight Hormuz, we keep seeing of the that map,
Ian Winer 47:45
but imagine that, like that map’s just capturing a very small fraction of everything that’s out there. Yeah. So, you know, you can have everything from fishing boats to wherever it is, and so, you know, the the the when those AIS systems get turned off, you know, the the ability to, you know, sort of track them and figure out where they’re going, and the fact that they’re likely doing something illicit, that’s where Hawkeye is very valuable. But they can detect radar. They can detect a push to talk radios. They can detect GPS spoofing devices. So, you know, they’re able to ingest all this data and then provide that data to the end customer, and so it becomes a very effective way of monitoring what’s going on out there in the world.
Jeff Malec 48:31
Crazy, what are your thoughts? I’m thinking you’re going to be biased because you’re in this business, but like a company like that, why doesn’t or I’ll rephrase the question, how did this all become private versus all government created technology. And do you see any issue there, like this, companies licensing it out to other governments and whatnot?
Ian Winer 48:49
No, so, I mean, I think that that you know, the government, the government has, has their own technology, continues to have their own technology. The intelligence agencies have their own dedicated satellites and dedicated assets. The issue is that, first, a lot of them are at capacity. They don’t have the ability to do all the different missions that you know need to be done. So they need to outsource some of these to commercial companies. The commercial companies oftentimes have better technology. They move quicker, cheaper. So you know what? What the intelligence agencies and the finding is that, you know, if we can outsource some of our, you know, our needs to trusted partners, and they don’t have many, which is why it’s so important, if they do trust you, then you know, we can use those assets to augment everything. You know, there’s a lot of stuff happening all over the world every day, right? So there’s only so many assets that the government has, so now they need to outsource to commercial companies.
Jeff Malec 49:50
And then there’s rules and regulations about, you can’t license it to North Korea, or something of that nature, yeah.
Ian Winer 49:56
And there’s rules around, I mean, certainly not North Korea, but there’s rules around. Any foreign military sale, as far as what you can sell and how it, you know, how it needs to be sold, and approval process, and a lot of different things that go into that.
Jeff Malec 50:10
And then are a lot of these founded by ex intelligence or military. They come out see a need and create the companies.
Ian Winer 50:19
Yeah, no, there’s definitely been, you know, there’s definitely a large portion of these companies who have, you know, founders and leaders who spent time in the military or the intelligence apparatus, and so therefore understand, you know, kind of the needs, but but also how to coordinate and work with those agencies.
Jeff Malec 50:38
And then talk a little bit about your background. So you’re playing hockey at West Point, playing
Ian Winer 50:43
on West Point. And, yeah, I spent 20 years on Wall Street in the public markets. I spent six years in the private markets and founded this firm, you know, 18 months ago. So, you know, bring a diverse set of experiences from a markets perspective. And and, you know, we’re, we had a really great 2025, and you know, we’re excited about what’s happening this year, and you know, we’ll see. I mean, every day it’s, it’s a new adventure. But, yeah, pretty, pretty.
Jeff Malec 51:13
What’s your are you doing? Private Markets, venture or PE, it was pro stage.
Ian Winer 51:18
I worked at a firm called disruptive technology advisors at the time, now just disruptive, but they were a pre IPO investor sector agnostic, and so I worked there for about four and a half years before heading out on my own. And so we have a similar business model. We just happen to focus on companies that are a little earlier in their life cycle, still growth stage, and with more of a specific focus on critical tech for
Jeff Malec 51:48
national security. And then how do you think about the venture piece that you need 100 bets to five to pay off huge? Do you think of in those kind of like lotto? Yeah, we’re the opposite. We’re okay.
Ian Winer 52:02
We take three or four shots on goal a year, and, you know, we we don’t. We’re not looking to kind of net out five winners against a bunch of losers. Yeah, significantly more losers. We’re looking at it as each investments, its own vehicle. And you know, we want to minimize as much of the downside risk as possible for our investors, and that requires significant diligence to do that, but at the same time, give them the optionality for, you know, a pretty good return over three years. We’re not looking to hit home runs, because we’re not investing in this stage where those things typically happen.
Jeff Malec 52:41
And then what personally was this something you wanted from your background, like, or you just saw the opportunity, yeah?
Ian Winer 52:48
I mean, I think, I mean, I think some of it is, is, you know, sort of, as life goes, you find yourself back in worlds you didn’t think you’d, you’d find yourself back in. And that was, that was part of this, you know, clearly, there’s a mission here that matters, that helps motivate us and myself to support best companies to develop their business. And, you know, it’s, it’s an opportunity to help our investors, and it’s a skill set that that, you know, I’ve, I’ve spent almost three decades now developing, and so, you know, it’s sort of a culmination of all that and a combination of all that, that sort of led to kind of where we are at this point in my life.
Jeff Malec 53:26
But if you if someone said, Hey, we’ve got a good, I don’t know, autonomous cruise ship controls or something, you’re like, No, we’re sticking more in the military space, the defense space, or you’re willing and able to go different places like that.
Ian Winer 53:40
No, we would stay in the defense space. I mean, the companies we invest in can have commercial applications for sure, and we encourage that if it’s possible, but we’re defense first,
Jeff Malec 53:52
and then what are the exits look like for these companies? Like, are they going to get bought up by Raytheon, like the big boys? Are they going to get Yeah, public themselves.
Ian Winer 53:59
When we make our investments, we typically, you know, we we underwrite, or we expect an IPO, that’s, that’s our sort of exit strategy. There are companies that may get bought that’s possible, but it’s not something that we typically sort of think as, or imagine an exit strategy. But it’s possible. You know, the reality is, you know, the Defense Department is not looking for more consolidation. That’s what got us into the problems we’re having right now with with munitions and everything else. And you know, the valuations of a lot of these defense tech companies are not cheap, and so the idea that companies like Lockheed or some of these other big primes are going to suddenly come in and pay very high multiples for other businesses, not likely. So we think that that for the sector, it’s going to be mostly exits into the public market.
Jeff Malec 54:51
You ever worry that the talent pool like that, the smart people are going into more commercial AI, or trading crypto? Or going into hedge funds or things like this, and right of like, how do you keep that talent pool of creating this new tech for these smaller companies?
Ian Winer 55:07
Yeah, I mean, I think that so it’s always a risk. I think what’s changed is, you know, and why? I don’t, you know, if you’d asked me that four years ago, I would have said, yeah, it’s a it’s a problem. But I think you know, what we’ve seen is that the Ukraine and other regions of the world have made it so that people are starting to understand that putting deterrence in place to defend yourself is not the same as just some kind of crazy war mongering sort of idea. And I think guys like Alex Karp and Palantir sort of have articulated it best. You know, it’s just a question of the mindset changing, and so we’re seeing that, you know, because people want to, you know, the smartest folks out there, the smartest young engineers, are really excited about joining defense tech companies. So, you know, you’ll, there will always be competition in AI and different sectors, but we’re finding a lot more people who may, may have historically never touched defense for whatever reason, who now want to be a part of the effort.
Jeff Malec 56:13
And then just you mentioned war monger there. Do you ever run across investors are like, I’m out. I don’t want to be right. Seems like, Are there weird incentives? Of like, we need wars. We need things to happen in order for this tech to prove itself. Does that ever come across investor conversations? Of like, This feels weird. No.
Ian Winer 56:32
I mean, I think that there’s always healthy, you know, moral and ethical discussions that take place. I mean, we don’t, you know, pretend to tell people sort of, you know, that kind of stuff, you know, we have a view. And our view is that, you know, putting the proper deterrent in place changes the calculation of an aggressor. And so that’s what we’re trying to do. And the companies we support are doing that mission. And so hopefully, by doing that, we actually avoid more war than than actually contribute to it.
Jeff Malec 57:01
I’ve always thought eventually you’ll have, like, maybe US versus China, and we just go over the South Pacific somewhere and just have a drone, a drone battle, right? It’ll be like virtual wars. We have all this stuff. No lives are lost, and each person can kind of prove their tech or not prove it, and then be like, Okay, you, you, won China, you get this little island for now. We’ll we’ll do it again in five years, and then the next guy wins, and they get this island. We’ll see. That’s my futuristic sci fi, I will say, solution.
Jeff Malec 57:42
Well, to follow it up. I want a fun, more fun or lighter and a darker. Of like, what keeps you up at night, or your Mount Rushmore of military movies, would you want to go light or dark first?
Ian Winer 57:56
Let’s go dark first, and then that way you can add light note, yeah,
Jeff Malec 58:01
it’s hard to go back there. So yeah, just what keeps you up at night? Like, now I’m gonna be up at night my wife’s flying on a plane, like right now in an hour, worried about the people hacking into the systems. But and this right at 2050, years ago, for a bad actor, they had to have huge funding, huge ability to build stuff, right, like platforms to deliver intercontinental missiles, like now you could get something small into a country. And you mentioned stadiums before, so, yeah, I’m front running you. But yeah, what? What are some of the things nobody’s talking about, at least outside of defense tech, nobody thinks about,
Ian Winer 58:40
yeah, I think that. I think that, you know, you kind of touched on it. I mean, you know, from a, from a geopolitical strategic perspective, losing Taiwan to China would be a significant problem for us and for for citizens of this country that they probably don’t you’re saying just chip wise, yeah, I think the semiconductor industry people don’t appreciate how behind we are from a actual sort of manufacturing perspective. There, we’re doing what we can to quickly change that, but it takes a it takes years, and everything that we have that relies on, you know that that kind of technology and high end processing is it would get a risk on a tactical, smaller level? Yeah, I think what you’re saying is the fear that keeps me up at night, which is to say that, you know, it’s very It’s too easy for a bad actor to throw a bunch of drones or something at, you know, a civilian target, a military target as well, but really a civilian target that’s unprotected and is able to cause maximum damage. And, you know, it could be anywhere. And so that keeps me up at night, because trying to think about how we protect against that stuff on the homeland is to challenge, and it’s a race. And. And I fear that one of these days, you know, and it could be sooner rather than later, there’s going to be some some attack, because it’s not hard to do, and so it’s just a question of somebody having the will and could cause maximum damage in a civilian atmosphere, right?
Jeff Malec 1:00:16
What people have been talking about dirty bombs, and that’s scary, but you’re saying this would be much easier, much harder to much easier. Yeah, 500 drones in in country. Well, you
Ian Winer 1:00:25
don’t even need 500 all you need is, you know, a handful of drones with the proper munition attached to them. And you know, you could do a significant damage to, you name it. So, so, yeah, it’s
Jeff Malec 1:00:38
so do you see, like some of these force fields or around football stadiums and all that eventually,
Ian Winer 1:00:43
yeah, I mean, I certainly think that that is a use case that needs to happen. And, yeah, I think, I think it’ll happen around all major installations. And I think, you know, there’s going to be more and more need for different counter drone defenses around different targets that are, you know, clearly big risk and and like I said, all you need is you’re always going to have people want, willing and able to do bad things. And so now it’s just a question of, have we gotten to a point where it’s so easy to do this? And I would argue it is that that, you know, it’s just a matter of time, and then, then, then, are we? Are we? And are we going to wait for that time before we put the proper defense in place? And I hope we don’t,
Jeff Malec 1:01:33
and the AI doesn’t worry you that, right? This pilot’s up there with his six autonomous wingman. What do you call it a wing man at that point? Yeah. Wingman, yeah. Um, that they turn on the pilot, shoot down the pilot, coordinate and go do AI stuff like Skynet takes over.
Ian Winer 1:01:54
I mean, I’m not worried about that. I think that that’s, that’s, you know, there’s always been sort of that fear of the Terminator kind of situation. But, yeah, no, I’m not worried about that. I mean, we’ve been using autonomous or semi autonomous weaponry for many years. You know, to me it would be much more concerned about, you know, the the the sort of commercial AI chat bot type situation, as far as being more of
Jeff Malec 1:02:20
crashing the economy, just a, well, just a
Ian Winer 1:02:24
you know, threat to to then, then what’s going on up in an air.
Jeff Malec 1:02:31
That’s good to hear. I like that. All right. Well, it wasn’t too bad. It wasn’t too dark. Yeah, that’s pretty good. So, but you’re, but overall theory, there’s, there’s something will come to the US mainland, or to right to, yeah, yeah. 100% Yeah. And then we didn’t quite touch on but does so protecting, like power plants and bridges, all that kind of stuff of just like that, anything that’s connected, but that, right, that’s out there too, that’s more just pure cyber, anything
Ian Winer 1:03:05
that’s a high value target. Yeah, could be a people. It could be a nuclear installation. Could be, you know, whatever it is, and there’s plenty of them out there, but just imagine, you know, the what would happen, you know, to the economy, just to the people, to to the economy, to our way. I mean, look at what 911 did, yeah, and you know, that changed everything. And so now, you know, I just fear that there’s another type of event that’s sitting out there on the horizon, just waiting and you know, the question is, what are we going to do to try to defend against that? And you know, we need to move quickly, and we need to put stuff in place that can help do that.
Jeff Malec 1:03:49
Do you go through the airport and just laugh like you’re, I’m taking my shoes off and going through this cheap metal detector, like there’s way bigger threats out there. You’re like, Come on, guys, you know, I know too much
Ian Winer 1:03:59
well, you try not to think about it as much, but it’s, it’s, it’s a, you know, there’s threats everywhere, right? And so just try to think about the ones that we might be able to stop. And I see those kinds of attacks as things that we might be able to stop. It just requires, you know, getting out in front of it, which, historically,
Jeff Malec 1:04:21
yeah, well, has not been, after the fact not
Ian Winer 1:04:23
been the case. You just don’t do it.
Jeff Malec 1:04:27
All right, we’ll finish with a little less dire circumstances. If this is too cliche, let me know. But being West Point in this industry, what’s your kind of Mount Rushmore for Top Movies military adjacent, I’ll call them, not necessarily, war movies, military comedies. You could put stripes in there if you want.
Ian Winer 1:04:47
I mean stripes, you know, obviously, you know, I think dating myself a little bit. But you know, fantastic, fantastic movie. And you know one of, one of John Candy’s best, best performances. Yeah. I think, if you’re looking for a pure kind of quotable war movie, you know, I think Full Metal Jacket is probably still the kind of tip of the spear, you know, the first 20 minutes of that movie, or probably some of the greatest 20 minutes of any, any movie ever.
Jeff Malec 1:05:15
Was that what your was that? What it was like at West Point to some degree yelling. Yeah, there was
Ian Winer 1:05:22
something, you know, it was, it was probably, it wasn’t as inappropriate, or this way it was, it was less politically incorrect. Then, you know, during in that movie, then, then at West Point. But, you know, there was, there was, it rhymed a little bit, you know, the yelling and the screaming and everything else so, but they had your attention for sure, yeah, but that was definitely one of the, one of the, you know, one of the best war movies out there, for sure.
Jeff Malec 1:05:55
All right, wait, you got three more. You got a Mount Rushmore. You gotta come up with four.
Ian Winer 1:05:59
So I would say that, you know, based on on guys I know, and things that The Hurt Locker painted a pretty good portrayal of, not even what went on over there, but you know guys, when they come back, and you know, and you see this kind of all over the place where guys come back and you know, you kind of just don’t know what to do with yourself, because, like, you’ve gone from like this insane environment to like you’re now buying milk in the grocery store. And so I think it, think it certainly does that, you know, I thought that,
Jeff Malec 1:06:34
you know, Best Picture winner, I think, right? And when best Yeah, yeah.
Ian Winer 1:06:38
And so I thought that was that that’s a really good one, you know, I think that Zero Dark 30 was pretty good. Thought that was a again, you know, touched on a lot of themes and a lot of debates, and as far as you know, Guantanamo or places like that. And so thought was an interesting story.
Jeff Malec 1:06:59
And that did, I was reading recently. They built that whole compound to practice, but it was like a fake wall. They didn’t have time to build like a huge stone wall, and so when the Black Hawk actually came in, the draft off the wall, caused that one to crash, because in the training, the wall wasn’t as solid. So they didn’t get that that draft off the wall. That’s interesting. Yeah, crazy, yeah, no.
Ian Winer 1:07:23
And then, and then, you know, and then, I mean, I gotta, I gotta date myself a little bit here. But you know, the original Red Dawn,
Jeff Malec 1:07:32
yes, that’s on my
Ian Winer 1:07:33
list, terrific Patrick Swayze movie, who, in my opinion, is the most underrated actor of all time, and had an incredible plugging percentage, if you look at the movies he was in and which ones of them were fantastic. So, you know, it’s,
Jeff Malec 1:07:47
it’s, and I, like you said, the original, because the the follow up one was terrible. Yeah, I came up with that new 110
Ian Winer 1:07:53
years ago. It’s just like Road House. Like, I won’t watch the new road house out of respect for Swayze. But if you look at Red Dawn, Red Dawn, you know, was sort of peak US, Russia, you know stuff. And obviously there were fantastic movies. Then first blood, you know, movies that you know, you really could, you know, get behind, sort of the anti hero, but, but yeah, I thought Red Dawn was great. You know, reality is,
Jeff Malec 1:08:21
we’re probably close in age. That was right. You were like, I, that would be me and my high school football team. We would have fought like that.
Ian Winer 1:08:27
Percent you go up until you go up into the woods, and, you know, you do you had to do to survive.
Jeff Malec 1:08:33
Love it. That was on my list. I had a few other ones. Taps, yep, I had to throw Top Gun in there. But now you’re saying there’s not going to be any
Ian Winer 1:08:42
more top guns. Well, you know, it’s, it’s a dated thing. It’s still, it’s still, there’s still guys out there doing it. It’s just not what it used to be. And, yeah, taps, good movie. George C Scott, you know, who, obviously, you know, Patton was unbelievable, but, but he was, yeah, he was really good in taps as well, three
Jeff Malec 1:09:01
kings with George Clooney and iced tea. I think you ever see that they like steal the gold in the in Iraq so and then my it came out same year as Top Gun, iron Eagle, yeah. Do you ever watch that one with Lou guy with the kids? Yeah? Yeah. The kids dad’s shot down in some African country, and he steals a 16 and goes and saves them.
Ian Winer 1:09:22
Yeah, yeah. No, that was, that was a, it was a good soundtrack to that, if I remember correctly for sure.
Jeff Malec 1:09:29
Yeah, he plays his heavy metal as he’s flying. Yeah, awesome. We’ll leave it there. Ian, thanks so much. Keep up the good work, protecting us, and we’ll talk soon. All right,
Ian Winer 1:09:41
Jeff, thank you very much for your time.
This transcript was compiled automatically via Otter.AI and as such may include typos and errors the artificial intelligence did not pick up correctly.
