Name: Is Defense the Next Trillion-Dollar Category? | a16z American Dynamism Summit
Uploaded: 2026-05-19T14:30:37+00:00
Duration: 722 s

Speakers

Dino Mavrookas — Co-founder and CEO, Saronic

Michael Duffey — Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment

Erin Price-Wright — Andreessen Horowitz General Partner

Summary

Erin Price-Wright moderates a panel with Michael Duffey and Dino Mavrookas on rebuilding the American defense industrial base. The discussion focuses on how autonomy, modern shipbuilding, and commercial markets can reduce costs and increase production capacity. They also cover acquisition reform, private capital, and supply-chain resilience, framing defense industrial capacity as a generational investment opportunity.

Autonomy in defense enables speed, scale, and new capabilities while protecting human life.
Shipbuilding must bend the cost curve through simpler designs, software, and digitization.
Commercial markets are critical to sustain defense production and reduce sole-supplier fragility.
DoD is pushing commercial-first acquisition reform and private capital for production expansion.
Production capacity is the main constraint for foreign military sales orders.
The panel sees a generational opportunity to rebuild the U.S. defense industrial base.

Ideas

Dino Mavrookas Co-founder and CEO, Saronic 0:00

Generational opportunity to rebuild defense industrial base.

There is a real generational opportunity to build what the country needs for the next 100 years, especially in the defense and maritime industrial base. The U.S. needs more founders, builders, and government leaders pushing for change, so entrepreneurs should build conviction and go all in on this space.

Dino Mavrookas Co-founder and CEO, Saronic 0:58

Autonomy unlocks speed and scale in defense.

Autonomy is a huge unlock for defense because it enables new capabilities that did not exist before and provides speed and scale. The speaker believes you should never send a human if you can send a robot, so robotics should be leveraged to protect human life and keep as many people out of combat as possible.

Dino Mavrookas Co-founder and CEO, Saronic 1:50

New shipbuilding must bend cost curve.

Traditional shipbuilding costs are too high. To compete, the U.S. must bend the economic cost curve by building ships cheaper and faster, using first-principles design to use less steel and building for software, autonomy, and digitization to reduce labor hours. Saronic's first ship used about 50,000 labor hours versus 7-9 million for a destroyer, showing the scale and speed autonomy can unlock.

Michael Duffey Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment 5:45

Production is biggest constraint; private capital needed.

Production is the biggest constraint for fulfilling foreign military sales orders, and the traditional parade of production is calibrated only to the U.S. defense budget. The DoD is incentivizing traditional industry to use private capital to expand production and modernize, shifting away from government handouts and toward industry ownership of efficiency and capacity. This levels the playing field for startups and traditional contractors alike.

Michael Duffey Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment 8:32

Commercial-first design creates defense supply-chain resilience.

Commercial-first is a major element of the acquisition transformation strategy and provides resilience to the industrial base. Prioritizing commercial markets and producibility as primary inputs to design avoids the fragility created by sole suppliers that are unprofitable and bespoke to defense, reducing vulnerabilities and benefiting the Department of Defense.

Is Defense the Next Trillion-Dollar Category? | a16z American Dynamism Summit

Summary

Ideas

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