If you took top Trump officials, Silicon Valley elite, some of the world’s wealthiest investors and executives, and a whole bunch of defense tech founders and stuck them in a room, what would you get? The Hill and Valley Forum, apparently.
Yesterday, as budget negotiations continued overhead, tech and policy big guns (pun intended) gathered in the basement of the US Capitol for the annual meeting, designed — at least initially — to bring tech, finance, and policy elites together to counter the threat from China.
- This year’s theme was “Rebuilding America,” focused on reindustrialization and the build-up of US advanced manufacturing and tech.
- Speakers included everyone from Palantir’s Alex Karp, to Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, to Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf, to 8VC’s Alex Moore, to Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson.
For context, Hill and Valley was founded by Jacob Helberg, Christian Garrett, and Delian Asparahouv in 2023.
- Trump nominated Helberg as undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment this year.
- Asparahouv is a partner at Founders Fund and the co-founder of Varda Space.
- Garrett is a partner at 137 Ventures.
Luckily, we attended the conference so you don’t have to wade through the ten-hour live stream. Click the link below for our main takeaways.
Trump’s Pentagon: Trump administration officials remain very bullish — at least publicly — on defense innovation and non-traditional defense companies.
- US National Security Advisor (and group text aficionado) Mike Waltz said in a five-minute appearance that “the administration is committed to reforming the way we acquire [defense systems]” and “seriously looking at modernization.”
- Speaker Johnson said that the administration wants to cut back on regulations that “put a boot on the neck” of innovation and praised companies like Saronic building cutting-edge systems. (Saronic just made a major purchase of a shipbuilder in Louisiana, Johnson’s home state.)
The First Breakfast: Anduril’s Brian Schimpf, Palantir’s Shyam Sankar, and Saronic’s Rob Lehman all made the case for overhauling the Pentagon’s acquisition system and the way weapons are built.
- Schimpf called for streamlining Pentagon bureaucracy. “The number of people that can actually say no compared to the people accountable for delivering is 10-1, 50-1,” he said, “It’s insane.”
- He also said that the DoD should buy at scale from nontraditional defense producers — that would keep money flowing into defense. “If you buy stuff, capital will come in,” he said.
- Sankar reiterated his call made in The First Breakfast (and to Tectonic) for competition in the defense industry and an end to the “monopsony” of the primes.
Drill, baby, drill: AI and advanced manufacturing require, like, a lot of energy. The people gathered at Hill and Valley want more power, and fast:
- Both Johnson and US Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum said the administration plans to unleash energy production. That means all of it—coal and gas alongside cleaner options, like nuclear. Deregulating energy was a call made throughout the day.
There was also a lot of talk of restoring critical minerals (China controls most of the world’s supply of critical minerals, which are used in everything from iPhones to weapons systems).
- Representatives from both parties, including Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said that the US needs to ramp up minerals mining for “critical mineral independence.”
The future is here: If you ask the people at Hill and Valley, AI is here to stay and we need to learn how to live with it.
- Nvidia’s Huang said that AI would have a similar impact to electricity — an “industrial revolution.”
- There was a lot of talk of physical AI — automated robots capable of doing everything from working in factories, to fighting wars, to delivering our dinner. Hill and Valley seems to think that is the future.
- Executives and representatives across the board called for re-skilling of the American workforce toward specialized fields, like electricians and shipbuilders.
Walking on eggshells: There was also a lot, like, not said at Hill and Valley. The forum was held on Trump’s 101st day in office, a period marked by a lot of policies that have the potential to negatively impact defense and the tech world:
- Until Johnson spoke, there was very little discussion of tariffs. Johnson framed them as a way of rebalancing the global trade system.
- Market turbulence (it was announced yesterday that the US economy shrank by 0.3% in Q1) did not take center stage.
- Executives and officials shied away from talking about SecDef Hegseth and the chaos that is reportedly enveloping the Pentagon.
- Qasar Younis of Applied Intuition — and a few others — did mention how Trump’s immigration policies could negatively impact the tech and software-building workforce.