Optimists Make Money

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From his office window in Abu Dhabi, Stephen watched Patriot interceptors shoot down drones he puts at roughly $20,000 apiece. The interceptors did their job — you're glad that expensive interceptor exists when it's heading toward your city. But when stopping a cheap drone costs millions, how long can you keep making that trade?

In this Optimists Make Money compilation, defense founders and investors explain what happens when militaries need affordable systems in large numbers. They brea...

Order Stephen's new #1 Bestselling book, Disruption Investing: The Framework to Multiply Your Wealth in Disruptor Stocks. https://www.riskhedge.com/order-disruption-investing

A rocket nozzle can take more than a year to manufacture. Orbital Composites says its robotic process can cut that to less than two weeks—but getting new parts qualified remains a major hurdle.

Amolak, co-founder and CEO of Orbital Composites, joins Stephen McBride to explain how robotic 3D printing could help address a critical bottleneck in American missile production.

They explore why solid rocket motors need specialized composites, how two robots wo...

Order Stephen's new #1 Bestselling book, Disruption Investing: The Framework to Multiply Your Wealth in Disruptor Stocks. https://www.riskhedge.com/order-disruption-investing

Could turning mercury into gold make nuclear fusion commercially viable? Marathon Fusion's Jason Parisi explains how producing valuable materials alongside electricity could change the economics of fusion power.

Jason, Marathon's chief science officer, joins Stephen to explain the company's approach: start with scarce medical isotopes, develop the hardware, and work toward fusion plants that could produce both electricity and gold. Instead of entering the fiercely competitive electricity market first, Marathon is targeting materials used...

Order Stephen's new #1 Bestselling book, Disruption Investing: The Framework to Multiply Your Wealth in Disruptor Stocks. https://www.riskhedge.com/order-disruption-investing

Satellites that spot small wildfires, locate GPS jammers, and monitor drought—all built on platforms from the same company. Muon Space is helping turn space infrastructure into practical tools on Earth.

Jonny Dyer, co-founder and CEO of Muon Space, joins Optimists Make Money to explain how cheaper launches, better sensors, and faster satellite connectivity are opening up missions that once cost too much or took too long.

We dive into FireSat, a sa...

America can build advanced fighter jets and autonomous drones. So why do its military systems still struggle to talk to each other?

Zane Mountcastle, founder of Picogrid, explains the infrastructure problem behind modern military technology—and how his company's Legion platform helps connect sensors, autonomous systems, and command networks.

On Optimists Make Money, Zane breaks down why military integration is more than a software challenge. Legacy equipment, competing defense contractors, and rigid procurement requirements can make connecting systems slow and expensive. He explains Picogrid's approach: reusable infrastructure that lets new technology plug into existing networks an...

Physical AI could transform the supply chain—but why is unloading a truck still so hard to automate? Pickle Robot founder and CEO AJ Meyer explains what separates an impressive robot demo from a machine customers actually want to buy.

In this episode of Optimists Make Money, AJ takes us inside the punishing warehouse jobs his company is working to automate. He explains why handling cardboard boxes can be harder than driving a car, how reinforcement learning and simulation could unlock more capable robots, and why useful dexterity remains a major challenge.

We explore his ca...

Order Stephen's new #1 Bestselling book, Disruption Investing: The Framework to Multiply Your Wealth in Disruptor Stocks. https://www.riskhedge.com/order-disruption-investing

How did China become so difficult to compete with in manufacturing, batteries, and rare earths—and what would it take for America to catch up?

This Optimists Make Money compilation brings together founders and engineers explaining China's industrial strengths, America's supply chain vulnerabilities, and the technologies that could change the competitive balance.

Across conversations about critical minerals, lithium-ion batteries, synthetic fuels, nuclear energy, drones, and asteroid mining, a recurring question emerges: what ha...

Order Stephen's new #1 Bestselling book, Disruption Investing: The Framework to Multiply Your Wealth in Disruptor Stocks. https://www.riskhedge.com/order-disruption-investing

China controls more than 90% of the world's rare-earth processing capacity. If that supply disappeared, the effects could reach everything from iPhones and airplanes to advanced military systems.

Curtis Wu, co-founder and CEO of Maglut Heavy Industries, joins Stephen McBride to explain how the United States surrendered this critical industrial capability—and why rebuilding it requires more than copying China's environmentally destructive processing plants.

Maglut's ARC-1 system adapts chromatography, a purification technique refined by...

Water scarcity isn't only a climate problem—it's an engineering and infrastructure problem.

Hunter Manz, founder and CEO of Eden Technologies, joins us to explain Genesis: a patented reverse-osmosis centrifuge designed to recover up to twice as much freshwater from high-salinity water while producing less concentrated brine.

Hunter explains why water hardware has attracted less investment than software, how conventional desalination becomes expensive, and why Eden is initially targeting the enormous volumes of wastewater produced by the oil and gas industry. We also explore the potential value hidden in brine, including recoverable minerals such as li...

Can an autonomous firefighting drone stop a wildfire before it spreads? Seneca is building AI-powered firefighting drones designed to reach early-stage fires in minutes—before a small ignition becomes an acre-scale disaster.

Stuart Landesberg, founder and CEO of Seneca, joins Optimists Make Money to explain how a strike team of five 400-pound autonomous drones can locate a wildfire, assess wind conditions, deliver water or firefighting foam at high pressure, and rotate through repeated attacks. He says Seneca could reduce wildfire response times from 20 minutes—or even hours in remote areas—to roughly 3–5 minutes, at a fraction of traditio...

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A $20,000 Shahed vs a $6M Patriot missile — we can shoot them down, we just can't afford to. T

wo founders building the fix — Nathan Mintz (KG2 Industries, electronic warfare on autonomous systems) and Jamie Wedderburn (Ulysses, low-cost autonomous underwater vehicles) — break down why the offense-defense balance just flipped, why shooting the drone is the wrong game, and what a "mosaic defense" actually looks like from the Strait of Hormuz to the Pacific.

...

The U.S. has 95,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel sitting in parking lots across 30 states — and Stafford Sheehan thinks it's the country's biggest unclaimed asset. His company, Project Omega, is turning that "waste" into the batteries, isotopes, and fuel that will power the next century.

In this episode, we cover why one fingertip-sized uranium pellet holds more energy than a ton of coal, how the same "waste" is already powering Voyager past the edge of the solar system — and inside your smoke detector — and why a battery that runs for 30 years could be closer than you think.

Fewer than 10% of U.S. manufacturing facilities have a single robotic arm. By 2030, America will have over 2 million unfilled manufacturing jobs. Filip Aronshtein, CEO of Dirac, says this isn't a labor problem — it's a context problem, and a cultural one, where "China is frankly kicking our asses."

In this episode, Fil breaks down why America forgot how to build real things, the shocking gap between engineering and manufacturing on the factory floor, and how Dirac's AI+CAD platform automatically generates 80-90% of work instructions — making manufacturing engineers' jobs 95% faster. We cover the "3Ds" driving industrial demand (Defense, Data...

Is selecting embryos to avoid devastating diseases the same thing as eugenics? Jonathan Anomaly of Herasight says no — and the data behind his argument might change your mind.

In this episode of Optimists Make Money, we go inside the world of embryo selection and polygenic risk scoring — the technology letting parents assess real disease risk (schizophrenia, diabetes, certain cancers) in embryos during IVF, before a pregnancy even begins. Jonathan breaks down how large-scale biobank data turns genetic risk into an actionable score, why some countries have banned the practice outright, and why he believes the "designer babies" fram...

Could synthetic jet fuel become cheaper than fossil fuel? Syntholene CEO Dan Sutton believes geothermal energy, high-temperature electrolysis and captured carbon could bring that cost crossover within reach.

In this conversation, Sutton explains how Syntholene uses Iceland's geothermal heat, water and electricity to produce high-purity hydrogen—the ingredient in synthetic aviation fuel. He discusses why today's e-fuels and sustainable aviation fuel remain expensive, how solid oxide electrolyzer cells can improve efficiency, and why synthetic hydrocarbons could eventually compete with petroleum without requiring a "green premium."

Dan also shares results from Syntholene's demonstration facility, its first me...

AstroForge is attempting what no private company has ever done: reach a metal-rich asteroid, mine it for platinum and bring that material back to Earth. If it works, the company could create an entirely new source of critical resources—and potentially launch a new age of human abundance.

In this episode, AstroForge founder and CEO Matt Gialich explains how his 50-person team is building low-cost spacecraft for deep space, what the failure of its Odin mission taught them, and why the company's next mission has one overriding goal: land on an asteroid.

Matt also breaks do...

Matt Ridley has spent decades studying evolution, innovation, energy, genetics, and the forces that shape human progress. In this conversation, he argues that many of today's biggest debates about AI, energy, biotechnology, and economic growth are missing the bigger picture.

We discuss why AI is more likely to evolve through competition than domination, why America may be entering a new era of physical innovation, how breakthroughs in gene editing and medicine could transform healthcare, and why slowing innovation may be the greatest cost we impose on future generations.

Whether you're interested in AI, startups, energy...

For the last 30 years, software created many of the world's biggest fortunes.

But according to Wave Function Ventures Partner and former SpaceX engineer Jamie Gull, that era is changing.

In this conversation, we explore why AI is making software easier to replicate, why physical infrastructure is becoming the world's biggest bottleneck, and why the next generation of trillion-dollar companies may come from energy, manufacturing, robotics, space, and industrial technology.

We also dive into what Jamie learned during SpaceX's early years, how he evaluates founders today, why Los Angeles is becoming a global center...

What if we've been trying to fix housing the wrong way all along?

Most companies are trying to build better houses. Cuby is trying to reinvent the entire process of construction.

In this episode, Cuby co-founder Aleks explains why modular housing, prefab construction, and even 3D-printed homes have struggled to scale, and why his team believes the real breakthrough isn't a better house, but a new operating system for building.

Instead of giant factories, Cuby is building mobile microfactories that can manufacture homes close to where they're needed. Behind that idea is more...

Joe Liemandt, founder of Trilogy Software and principal of Alpha School, is betting $1 billion that a two-hour AI-powered learning sprint can replace the traditional six-hour school day — and deliver top 1% academic results for every kid who goes through it. This is "AI transforming education" in action. 

The data is already there. Alpha students score in the top 1–2% nationally across every subject. The average 11th grader hits 1535 on the SAT. And kids who transfer in with straight A's are routinely found to be three grade levels behind.

In this episode:

Why 90% of the learning probl...

Laurence Allen, founder and CEO of Terranova, explains why flooding and land subsidence are unsolvable with seawalls alone — and how his company is using underground robotics and woodchip injection to physically lift sinking land back up. 

We explore the scale of the global subsidence crisis, why cities from Jakarta to Miami to San Francisco are running out of options, and what it would take to deploy this technology at city scale. If you're interested in climate resilience, infrastructure, real estate, defense technology, or the future of human engineering, this episode maps out a solution most people assumed was...

Ethan Loosbrock, founder and CEO of Oros Energy, explains why batteries are the critical bottleneck holding back electric vehicles, drones, robotics, grid storage, and beyond — and what next-generation battery chemistry could unlock.

We explore the global battery supply chain, China's dominance in production, and what it would take for the U.S. to rebuild domestic leadership in advanced energy storage. If you're interested in EVs, clean energy, energy independence, or the future of transportation and AI infrastructure, this episode maps out what comes next.

In this episode:

Why battery energy density and cost re...

Jamie Metzl explains why he believes "AGI is BS," what artificial intelligence will actually mean for jobs, and how humanity can navigate the biggest technological transition in history.

Jamie is a leading expert on AI, genetics, biotechnology, and the future of humanity. In this conversation we discuss AGI, AI ethics, the future of work, AI education, human-centered technology, and why transparency in AI use matters more than ever.

Jamie and host Stephen McBride discuss:
• Artificial general intelligence

• AI jobs and the future of work

• AI ethics and transparency

• AI as a...

Is the panic over AI justified, or is it just the latest verse in a song we've been singing for centuries? 

In this episode, Pessimists Archive founder Louis Anslow argues that the current hysteria isn't about safety - it's about power.

We explore Louis's "Seven Deadly Cynics" framework - identifying the specific groups (from politicians to protectionists) that have historically tried to ban everything from coffee and bicycles to the Walkman. We dive into why the ruling class always fears progress, why the "War of the Worlds" panic was a media hoax, and why understanding t...

A handful of $500 drones recently caused $5 billion in damage to a fleet of Russian strategic bombers. This is the new reality of warfare, and America is not ready. In this episode, CX2 founder Nathan explains how the cheap drone revolution is forcing the US to completely reinvent its military playbook.

We dive deep into the invisible battlefield of electronic warfare, why our multi-million dollar missiles are now being defeated by simple GPS jammers, the secret strategy of "shooting the archer, not the arrow," and how a new generation of founders is building the decentralized, autonomous systems that...

China's DJI owns 90% of the US commercial drone market. A nationwide ban is about to make them illegal, threatening to collapse the industry overnight. Thoron founder Thayne Kollmorgen says: good.

In this episode, he reveals the brutal truths behind America's failure - from the "open source honey trap" that kills innovation to the product design flaws that put US companies an "order of magnitude" behind. He also lays out the Tesla-inspired playbook a new generation of American founders is using to finally build a true competitor and win the drone war.

A new generation of founders is winning the new space race, and they're doing it by breaking one simple rule. In this founder's guide, A-ray Labs founder Andrew Peterson reveals the one broken "cost-plus" law that crippled the defense industry for 50 years and created the opportunity of a lifetime.

We ran out of time just as we were about to dive into Andrew's incredible 3D mapping technology - we'll have to get him back for Part 2!

America is facing a housing crisis driven by two core problems: a massive skilled labor shortage and 50 years of zero productivity growth in construction. QB founder Aleksandr Gampel has a radical solution. In this episode, he reveals his "Factory in a Box" - a mobile microfactory that can be deployed anywhere to build a high-quality home in just 30 days with only four unskilled workers.

Plus: why most construction-tech startups fail, the secret to building at scale without a gigafactory, his plan to become the "McDonald's of housing," and how this revolution will finally make the dream of...

America doesn't have a nuclear waste problem; it has a financial one. In this episode, Exodys Energy founder Carl Perez reveals why the 50-year-old fear of spent fuel is based on a lie, and why solving it will unleash the nuclear renaissance.

Venture capitalists recently returned from China declaring America's battery race "futile." They're wrong. In this episode of The Rational Optimist Podcast, Ouros Energy founder Ethan Loosbrock reveals the new American battery technology that will not only catch up, but leapfrog the competition by making today's best batteries obsolete.

Plus: how Ouros plans to deliver a 1,500-mile range EV, the clear pathway to $10/kWh batteries, why fast-charging is an "admission of defeat," and how this breakthrough will finally unlock a future of electric flying cars and a truly cordless world.

When Elon Musk couldn't find a school good enough for his kids, he started his own at SpaceX. The secret to its success was Synthesis, a program that taught problem-solving instead of test-taking.

Now, Synthesis co-founder Chrisman joins us to reveal how he's turned those principles into an AI tutor available to everyone. We dive deep into how this technology, born from a secret DARPA project that created "superhuman" students, is making kids beg to learn math.

For 50 years, nuclear power has meant billion-dollar cost overruns and decade-long delays. That's about to change. Valar Atomics founder Isaiah Taylor joins us to reveal how his company is rebooting the entire industry by manufacturing small, safe reactors like SpaceX builds rockets. We dive deep into the new executive order that gives him until July 4th to turn on America's first new reactor, why his design can't melt down, and his vision for a future where cheap nuclear energy makes everything from food to fuel abundant.

For decades, "Made in China" was the default setting for the global economy. That era is over. In this episode, Atomic Industries founder Aaron Slodov explains why globalization has failed and how the great reindustrialization of America is happening faster than you think.

We dive deep into why Apple is trapped by its own supply chain, how America literally forgot how to build parts for a B-52 bomber, and the critical role of "tribal knowledge" in rebuilding our industrial base.

The modern panic over AI isn't new; it's a predictable pattern driven by elites whenever a technology threatens the status quo. 
In this episode, Pessimists Archive founder Louis Anslow reveals the four archetypes behind every tech panic in history—from the novel and the bicycle to chess and coffee. We explore why this fear from the ruling class is actually a powerful sign of progress, and how understanding this pattern is the key to remaining a rational optimist in an age of hysteria.

China's 70% monopoly on the world's drones is being broken by a new American "flying brain" with 300 trillion operations per second of onboard AI. In this episode, Flyby Robotics founder Jason Lu reveals the incredible challenge of building a high-performance drone with zero Chinese parts, what a 30,000-drone swarm attack actually looks like, and why an open, accessible platform is the key to unleashing decentralized innovation across America.

After selling his software startup to DoorDash, most founders would cash out and relax. Steve Simoni decided to build an AI-powered machine gun instead.

In this episode, Steve reveals his unbelievable journey from Navy nuclear engineer to successful software founder, and why the war in Ukraine convinced him to tackle the drone threat head-on. We dive deep into his AI turret "Bullfrog," how it turns a machine gun into a drone-killing sniper rifle, and his shocking prediction that the drone threat will increase 1000x in the next decade.

After working on SpaceX's Starship and America's return to the Moon, Halen Mattison left to solve a key problem for a multi-planetary future: building a gas station on Mars. His breakthrough is a propulsion system that uses electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen—one of the most efficient chemical rocket fuels known. In this episode, we explore how this technology offers a safer, more powerful alternative to legacy fuels, unlocks the lunar economy by using water from the Moon, and will help humanity explore the solar system faster than you think.

Michael LaFramboise's grandfather rose from sleeping in a Detroit bar booth to become Ford's chief chemist. Today, Michael is building the AI-powered laser that will make million-dollar missiles obsolete. In this episode, we explore how his system destroys drone swarms for pennies, why a $10M tank is now worthless against cheap drones, and how this new generation of directed energy weapons could soon protect everything from military bases to Super Bowl stadiums.

What if you could get a full day's A+ education in just 2 hours? It's not a hypothetical - it's happening right now at Alpha School, the school we all wish we had growing up. 

In this episode, we explore their revolutionary model: using AI to maximize learning so students are free by 10 AM. But it's what they do with the rest of the day that's truly incredible. With no homework and afternoons free, kids explore their passions, build real-world skills like grit and financial literacy, and launch projects that were once unimaginable for their age.

Casey Handmer quit his dream job at NASA for one reason: to build the machine that will end the oil industry by making unlimited, cheap fuel from nothing but sunlight and air. In this episode of The Rational Optimist Podcast, Casey, founder of Terraform Industries, explains how this technology works, why the solar revolution is unstoppable, and how energy abundance will reshape geopolitics forever.

We also uncover why China is on a collision course to claim the moon by 2029, how barren deserts are about to become the planet's most valuable real estate, and what a future of...