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 Warren the Rocks.

This episode was recorded live at an event earlier this year, sponsored by

our friends at Leonid Capital. Mike Kaufman sat down with me to talk about why American defense

companies, particularly newer defense tech companies, have not always delivered on the battlefield in

Ukraine in the ways that we all hoped.

There are various reasons for this, and very few people are as well equipped to understand this issue as Mike.

He visits directly with units using American Defense Tech and has some unique insights.

Enjoy the conversation.

Thanks everyone for coming tonight.

We're going to have a very senior army official who had to back out, but then I thought,

what could actually be the most provocative conversation that we could have in front of an audience full of people from, you know, not just the executive branch in the military, but from the defense industry,

an important conversation, a hard conversation.

And I thought, I called up my friend Mike.

If you are a Warren-the-Rox member, one of the main offerings we have, of course, is the Russia

contingency with this gentleman right here.

Mike and a team of military analysts go to Ukraine every quarter.

And they don't just go to Kiev, like a lot of people,

or some people don't even make it that far east is to the capital. But they go to the front,

although that's harder these days because of FPV drones, but they go pretty close to the front.

They talk to units involved in the fighting and they do real military analysis.

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