Things Travis Metz Has Said on Podcasts

“There's a SEAL, well-known SEAL that came to help us evaluate these and fly these things. … He's four standard deviations on this thing. I can't rely on his judgment about which drones to buy for that reason. He wants to fly the drone, do backflips, and land it on a dinner plate. I don't need that. We want the drone that takes care of itself.” — Travis Metz, ChinaTalk

Metz says one mistake at the first drone trials was having too many special forces operators judge the drones. The aim is aircraft an ordinary soldier can learn in a few weeks, with the drone carrying most of the mental load. He expects jamming on the battlefield to make autonomy essential.

ChinaTalk · 2026-10-17 Permalink → Listen →

ChinaTalk Around 58:42 into the episode

Travis Metz

…to fly them. This is going to be at most a few weeks' school. We're going to put enough technology on these drones that they take over most of the cognitive load. One of the mistakes we made in Gauntlet One, with all respect to Justin's heritage here, is too many special forces folks were there.

Justin McIntosh

…in their basement and know how to do it. And that's what they live to do. And they're going to be the guy that shows up and they're going to be like, this thing is great. And then it's going to get into a private's hands and they're going to be like, I don't know how to make it take off.

Travis Metz

Yeah. I won't use the name because of OPSEC, but there's a SEAL, well-known SEAL that came to help us evaluate these and fly these things. And he's smart. He's thought about drones a ton. He's really helpful for people like me. And then you see him fly it. And you're like, oh, this is not the guy. This is Maverick. He's Maverick, right? He's a top gun. Like, he's exquisitely good at this. He's in the top. He's four standard deviations on this thing. I can't rely on his judgment about which drones to buy for that reason. Like, I…

Speaker 2

Can we talk about this for a second? The idea

Brian Clark

of like inference on the

Travis Metz

edge, I mean, that's basically been like cell

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

“We actually have a very wide, and I would say sophisticated drone industry here. I say wide because it's not deep. I'm sort of impressed by the quality of the entrepreneurs and the quality of the ideas that they have, but none of them scale. … Everyone gets mad at me when I say that. And when I say scaled, I mean, tell me where you are on the log chart versus 8 million a year. Because that's what scaled looks like. It's not having made 1,000 last week.” — Travis Metz, ChinaTalk

Asked where the bottleneck is in US drone production, the acting head of the Defense Innovation Unit says it is in the component supply chains. He goes on to describe the department's first orders for drones that use no Chinese motors or battery packs.

ChinaTalk · 2026-10-17 Permalink → Listen →

ChinaTalk Around 28:37 into the episode

Travis Metz

about it. Be transparent.

Justin McIntosh

…way up? Or do you want to see a more expanded like tier two, tier three supplier base in the United States? And I guess the question would be, if that doesn't get solved, is that indicative that there is a bubble because we're not able to grow the base enough to actually feed the need that we have?

Travis Metz

Yeah. One of my theories is to try to not be too prescriptive about the market structure on the basis that if you just consistently apply demand, the market structure will end up in a sort of optimized sort of place. My own view is that this is something where vertical integration is not the goal from our point of view. From the United States Department of War's point of view, you'd like to have a diverse set of vendor bases across all the way, not single-threaded through anyone. It would be nice if some of these factories and component suppliers were dual use so that we're getting the benefit of coming down the cost curve from commercial demand. But my key issue is to broadly not be prescriptive. I do think, and you're quite right, that the components, the component supply chains are the ones that are immature. We actually have a very wide, and I would say sophisticated drone industry here. I say wide because it's not deep. I'm sort of impressed by the quality of the entrepreneurs and the quality of the ideas that they have, but it's not, none of them scale. Like literally, and they get everyone gets mad at me when I say that. And when I say scaled, I mean like, tell me where you are on the log chart versus 8 million a year. Because…

Brian Clark

So to build those, you need mineral supplies that are outside China and processing outside China because you need permanent magnets. You need lithium and other components that go into batteries. So how big do you think the market needs to be to incentivize the companies to then pay for suppliers to…

Travis Metz

Yeah, that's a good question. You asked the exact question I never like answering. Because of course, I was very careful with what I said. I said Chinese battery packs, not sells, right? Because the chemistry we can't do outside. We broadly can't do the rare earth magnets in those brushless motors…

Brian Clark

That's what I was going to ask. Do you see efforts across the government to try to maybe coordinate the demand signals sufficiently to drive that? Because obviously there's all these areas that have Chinese dependencies like packaging and printed circuit board manufacturing or production. All those…

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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