You are listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

My name is Ryan Evans, I'm the founder of War on the Rocks.

This is the first of a couple episodes I've recorded while visiting Austin, Texas.

For this episode I sat down with Dr. Casey Pearly, who's the director of the Army

Applications Laboratory. Hope you enjoy the show. Thanks so much for sitting down with us today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I'm really glad you came to Austin.

Yeah, you have a beautiful view of the Texas State Capitol building.

I'm staring right at it.

You're lucky.

I have this office space.

Although it's pretty cool how this building is designed in such a way that so many people have that view.

It really is fantastic.

One of the things I joke about when anybody comes to visit us at AAL is like this looks exactly like the Pentagon, right?

You know, leather couches, standing desks, tons of windows, views of the Capitol.

So we're really lucky to be here and we are we are purposely designed to not look like your standard government office building the views just a perk.

Yes, whereas in the Pentagon you're in the basement or in an internal office and have no view of pretty much anything.

The decade before I came to AAL, I worked in biocontainment labs.

I worked in biocafety level three and biosefty level four on things like tuberculosis

and hemorrhagic fever viruses.

So my first week in the lab, somebody asked me how I liked my new job and I said,

there's windows, because I'd spent a decade in labs that had no view of the outside.

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