#4 — Trae Stephens — Just warfare in the age of technology

Trae Stephens (@traestephens) is a venture capitalist at Founders Fund with partners like Peter Thiel, Brian Singerman, Cyan Banister and Keith Rabois, where he invests across sectors with a particular interest in startups operating in the government space. He’s also Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Anduril Industries with Palmer Luckey, who founded Oculus, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014. Anduril is a defense technology company focused on developing autonomous systems for U.S. military and is by far one of the most interesting, and for some controversial, new startups in the last two years. In our conversation Trae described it as a real-life Stark Industries from Ironman. Previously, Trae was an early employee at Palantir Technologies, where he led teams focused on growth in the intelligence/defense space as well as international expansion, helping large organizations solve their hardest data analysis problems. Prior to Palantir, Trae worked as a computational linguist within the United States Intelligence community. He began his career working in the office of then Congressman Rob Portman and in the Political Affairs Office at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, D.C. Trae is a publishing a paper on Just War Theory In the Age of Technology later this month and you can follow him on Twitter @traestephens. Our conversation with Trae was a wide-ranging and illuminating. We hope you enjoy the episode. Read Trae's latest piece: The Ethics of Defense Technology Development: An Investor’s Perspective https://medium.com/@traestephens/the-ethics-of-defense-technology-development-an-investors-perspective-45c71bf6e6af