a16z's Connor Love on why the old defense model gave soldiers systems "developed for 10 years ago," and how private capital lets startups build what they need before the Pentagon asks:

"I experienced this in my past when I served in the Army. The buyer is not the user, and the appropriator of the dollars for the buyer is completely removed."

"You had primes who would just sit there and listen, like, 'Tell me what you want. I'll develop the thing after you give me the money.'... You get a system that was developed for 10 years ago."

"The beautiful thing is venture capital and what we do in American Dynamism, but also the rest of the capital markets is saying, 'We will actually fund that in advance.'"

"The outcome of that is the soldier gets a better product, gets something that actually fundamentally changes the battlefield and helps with deterrence or security or safety."

"More importantly, you get a type of system that is actually aligned with the requirement of the market and what technology can do today."

"Instead of sitting and waiting for the government to tell you what they want, the government signals, and you see it, and you build it in advance by using private capital, and that just has not happened in the history of defense."

@ConnorLoveCA