Episode summary
True Anomaly’s Even Rogers on Space Warfare, China’s Military Advantage, and the Defense Tech Boom
How I Invest With David Weisburd
· · 1 hr 1 min · Hosts: David Weisburd · Guests: Even Rogers
Summary
Even Rogers argues that space has become a real warfighting domain, not a futuristic abstraction, and that China has built a meaningful lead by investing in space weapons and counterspace capabilities for roughly 20 years. He says the U.S. largely let its post-Cold War space-defense industrial base atrophy, leaving America with weak doctrine, limited offensive and defensive tools, and a procurement system that often rewards cost inflation instead of rapid capability development.
Rogers describes True Anomaly as a defense company built to sell spacecraft and software to the U.S. government and allies, with revenue coming from spacecraft sales, maintenance, software licenses, and some services. He argues that the best defense innovation happens when government programs are large, competitively open, and structured as firm fixed-price contracts that let companies co-invest, learn quickly, and earn profit by delivering real capability.
He also frames the company’s culture around fast learning, tight feedback loops, and the OODA loop. In his view, defense startups need to compress decision-making, accept well-designed failure early, and vertically integrate where necessary to control performance and learning speed. His optimistic case is that American capitalism, talent, and industrial capacity can still out-innovate China if incentives align.
Key takeaways
- Rogers says China has been developing space warfare capabilities for about 20 years, while the U.S. fell behind after retiring much of its Cold War-era space defense posture.
- He says True Anomaly makes money by selling Jackal spacecraft, software licenses for Mosaic, support services, and related defense contracts to the U.S. government and allies.
- Rogers argues that the best defense innovation comes from large, open competitions and firm fixed-price contracts that let startups co-invest and profit from delivery, not paperwork.
- He says the right defense procurement model creates a virtuous cycle: companies take risk, earn profit on sales, and reinvest into next-generation products.
- Rogers believes the OODA loop and a learning-first culture are core to winning in space warfare and in building True Anomaly.
- He says the U.S. can still regain space superiority if it pairs American industrial capacity with the right incentives and long-term demand signal.
Notable quotes
“It's not good. China, which is our principal adversary for space warfare, has been at this problem now for about 20 years”
“Our business model is to build defense products and sell those to the US government and its allies”
“The lesson is like it is is one for biologists, like competitive pressures generate generate innovation, right”
How the episode opens
In 2024 it was reported that China had tested their first space to ground weapon. This is a satellite that is in orbit that deploys a munition. That munition re-enters the atmosphere and guides itself to the surface of the Earth. There are some velocities you can achieve in space to ground weapons that will have the yield of a small kind of kiloton class nuclear weapon. These are colloquially called rods from God.
Let's just call this military weapon the Death Star from Star Wars. So you have this object in space that can now shoot nuclear weapons in Earth's orbit. — It doesn't even need to be nuclear. The impact velocities will hit the ground with the force of a nuclear weapon, but they don't have to actually have a nuclear warhead.
There seems to be this proliferation of space companies. There's dozens and dozens of these companies. What inning of space tech are we in today?
I think we're in the second inning of space tech. I think the first inning was largely driven by the space race up until 1992 when the United States largely kind of retired many of the capabilities that were driving the space innovation. We lost the competitive pressure to really advance space capabilities for military purposes or civilian purposes.
And I think that's a really important lesson in history that Trey Stephens from Anduril and Founders Fund all of these says which is like basically it's not a company on day two. I was on an airplane, right? I was in DC.
You started True Anomaly 4 and 1/2 years ago. You built it into this multi-billion dollar defense company. If you could go back 4 and 1/2 years ago and you could give yourself one timeless piece of advice that you could bring into the founding of the company, what would that be?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- space warfare
- china military advantage
- defense tech boom
- true anomaly spacecraft software
- oda loop decision advantage
Companies and tickers mentioned
- True Anomaly
- Juniper Square
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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