Tech Unheard Episode 2: Mike Gallagher

<Rene>[0:06]

Welcome to Tech Unheard, the podcast that takes you behind the scenes of the most exciting developments in technology. I’m Rene Haas, CEO of ARM. In this podcast, I’m sitting down with some of the best and brightest in the industry to share insights, stories and visions for the future. Today, I’m joined by Mike Gallagher, a former congressman and Marine Corps military intelligence officer. Since leaving Congress in April, Mike has joined Palantir, the software platform for big data analytics. Mike was brought on board to lead their growing defense tech business, marking his first shift from the public to private sector. Mike, it’s a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

 

<Mike>[0:41]

It’s an honor to be with you, Rene.

 

<Rene>[0:42]

Great to be together. We met when you were in Congress heading up a bipartisan China select committee. So we have a little bit of history. So thanks so much. So your background is fascinating. Former Marine Corps, served in the Middle East, if I’m correct. Served in Congress. Now, you’re head of defense at Palantir. How does that happen?

 

<Mike>[1:04]

Contingency, happenstance, luck? No, I’m from Green Bay, Wisconsin, originally, but I think I always had a fascination with the world outside of Wisconsin and outside of the United States. So when I went to college, I knew I wanted to study international relations, then was working at a think tank the summer after my sophomore year in the U.K. and I got assigned to this project studying terrorist targeting methods. And we had just invaded Iraq the year prior – this was 2004 – and I became fascinated by the Middle East. I became fascinated by our response to 9/11. So I went back to Princeton. I changed my major so I could learn Arabic, which was a bad decision as a junior because you had to go to class every morning at 9 a.m. But I loved it. And that led me to think about, okay, what would I do with these language and regional skills and the military – I don’t come from a military family – jumped out at me and I saw it as an opportunity not only to scratch that intellectual itch, but serve my country, pay back a debt I felt I owed. And I felt like I didn’t want to be sitting on the sidelines while the country was at war and also test myself physically, mentally in terms of my leadership. And it was just kind of that – I didn’t know anywhere else where I could have that intense crucible and, as a 21, 22 year old, be in charge of, you know, 50-ish Marines, I wanted that leadership challenge. And so the Marine Corps was just a great fit for me. The Marine Corps is a great program for people who aren’t at ROTC or don’t come from a, you know – I didn’t come from a military family, as I said before, so it was just, it really jumped out to me. So, a circuitous path that led me to join the Marine Corps, which is one of the better decisions I’ve made in my life.

 

<Rene>[2:47]

So I want to find out also about Congress and Palantir, but let’s – let me talk about the Marine Corps for a little bit. Did you do Parris Island?

 

<Mike>[2:54]

No, so if you’re an officer, you go through Quantico. And I went into a specialty called Counterintelligence, Human Intelligence, and did another specialty school after that deployed right out of school to Iraq. And they did two back to back deployments. But the usual journey or that I mean, the journey for an officer in the Marine Corps is to go through Quantico.

 

<Rene>[3:17]

So Quantico, how many folks – I’m sorry. I’m now, I’m just so fascinated with this piece here. How many folks get through it? Do some people drop out?

 

<Mike>[3:26]

Yeah. Yeah. In officer candidate school is usually where the most attrition happens. I forget the attrition rates, but it’s tough that the initial assessment, a lot of people get injured. And then there’s less attrition once you get to the basic school, but some people do drop out and they’re really just kind of screening you to see if you have what it takes to be a Marine Corps officer intellectually, physically, the physical standards are very high. I think that is one thing that distinguishes the Marine Corps. We tend to set a pretty high bar physically in terms of the physical fitness test. But I loved it.

 

<Rene>[3:58]

And you were what, your mid-twenties at this time or how old were you?

 

<Mike>[4:02]

Yeah, probably 21 – yeah, 20. I was 20 or 21 when I went to officer candidate school the summer after my junior year of college and then 22 because I went right after – I graduated from college, I got commissioned as an officer the day I graduated. I then had about four months before I had to report to Quantico for the basic school. So I went up to Middlebury and did their Arabic immersion program. Middlebury has a phenomenal language program. You take a language pledge where you’re only allowed to speak that language, and really you cram two years worth of coursework into a few months. And so I was able to really hone my Arabic prior to reporting to Quantico, which then served me well when I deployed, because as a human intelligence officer, I was doing a lot of interrogations, I was doing a lot of source operations. So being able to communicate directly in the language, even though I kind of spoke more of a stilted, formal version of Arabic, what’s called the Fuṣḥā. I didn’t speak the local dialect or the Amiyah. It still served me well and allowed me to go places and do things that some other people weren’t able to do.

 

<Rene>[5:02]

I feel incredibly inferior based upon – at 21, I was just hoping to get out of electrical engineering university and get a job for that. That’s unbelievable. How did you get into politics?

 

<Mike>[5:12]

So, a long story short, Marine Corps for seven years. Couple of deployments. Got to work for H.R. McMaster, General Petraeus, a little bit of a stint of tours in the intelligence community. I was a Senate staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Middle East guy, for two years. I then moved back to Wisconsin to be the national security adviser on a presidential campaign when our governor, Scott Walker, ran for president, which was a phenomenal experience, even though he didn’t win that campaign. That was in 2016. And so I was back home in Wisconsin, and I knew – I was actually trying to pivot to a private sector career. I’d use my G.I. Bill to get my Ph.D. in international relations. And so I really – the conception of the career I had in mind was I would do private sector and I would teach as kind of a side hustle and a way to scratch my academic itch. Then my congressman unexpectedly retired, a great guy named Reid Ribble. And because I had just been on a presidential campaign going around the state and the country, talking to people that were engaged in politics about the future of foreign policy, some people in northeast Wisconsin asked me if I’d be interested in running, and it was very intimidating. It was not, I mean, I was not – I don’t, I don’t have any political lineage. I’d never really been in front of the camera before. I didn’t know anything about political fundraising. I was a national security policy guy. And so at first I thought, no way, I can’t do this. But then I thought, you know, here I am criticizing the direction of U.S. foreign policy, criticizing Congress. I felt like – I was 31 or 32, why not step up. So I got into the race. I beat a long time state senator and some others in a primary and then won what was a very contested general. My district used to be a very competitive district and then it became very Republican. And so it was kind of just right place, right time. And maybe to connect it to my Marine Corps experience, I did view it as an extension, a different way to serve the country and continue to serve focusing on the issues that I had focused on in the Marine Corps defense, Middle East, national security, but also just felt like this was another opportunity to throw myself into a crucible that was very uncomfortable for me. And I tend to think like every once in a while, every three or five years, you should really get outside your comfort zone. And that’s the only way you grow as a leader and as a thinker.

 

<Rene>[7:35]

One of the things that folks have talked a lot about is leaders, are they born? Are they made? And I think of anyone who’s kind of gone through what the Marine Corps embodies to me is the quintessence of leadership, not to mention being on the battlefield. Your viewpoint on leaders: born, made? Can you teach it?

 

<Mike>[8:00]

I think they’re made, you know, recognizing everybody has different strengths and weaknesses and different gifts that are, in some sense, innate. By and large, I still think leaders are made, and I think the primary way in which you become a better leader is by failing a lot. I mean, it’s not like I emerged from Quantico as an impeccable Marine Corps leader. I made a ton of mistakes while I was deployed. I continue to make mistakes as a leader. I remember vividly one time I had a Marine who had what’s called a negligent discharge, which is when you fire your weapon accidentally, it’s not a good thing to do, particularly in the Marine Corps. And it caused a lot of drama with our local unit. And my initial response was to try and like make sure there was as little fallout as possible, i.e. nothing that could jeopardize our unit and my own career, quite frankly. And then I had a boss who was an amazing guy, and he basically took responsibility for the whole thing. He said it was my responsibility to get these Marines ready for deployment. Don’t punish the Marine, punish me. And that was like a jaw dropping moment when I realized that – what it means to be a leader, like you have to take ownership of those under your command and you have to put their welfare ahead of your own. And that was a lesson I had to learn the hard way. And I was quite ashamed of myself, quite frankly. And so it’s a continuous journey. But I do think leaders are made. Final thing I’d say, Rene, is I think sometimes people have like a Hollywood conception of leadership in their mind, particularly when they go into the Marine Corps. I think the challenge is adapting timeless principles of leadership to your own unique personality. Like I would never be the like, you know, hardcore drill sergeant type. That’s just not my personality. I’m a bit more collaborative, professorial. And so I had to adapt kind of the Marine Corps vision of leadership to my own unique personality and innate traits, if that makes sense.

 

<Rene>[9:54]

Totally. And I agree with you. I think leaders are made. There are qualities we’re all born with. But we also have the ability to adapt and be made and learn, etc., etc.. And one of the things that I talk about a lot with our company is around resiliency and making mistakes and the fact that you just can’t learn and develop and get to that next level without making mistakes. Now, going into your commentary about making mistakes and learning: you served in Iraq. How do you recover from mistakes when you’re actually in combat? That seems to be a whole different level.

 

<Mike>[10:29]

Well, listen, I mean, I was an intelligence officer, so I’m not trying to pretend like I was some, you know, big combat hero or anything like that. And by and large, I was the beneficiary of the sacrifices that were made far earlier in the surge, you know, and we lost a lot of good Marines in western Al Anbar province. But by the end of my second deployment, I mean, we were walking around, you know, without our body armor. It had largely shifted to more of a like, a humanitarian in some sense, a humanitarian and civil society building mission. But yeah, yeah, there’s certainly, it’s still a life or death enterprise, and that can be hard for certain people to deal with. But that’s where I think, you know, having men and women to your left and your right that you trust really building a shared culture and ethos. I think the Marine Corps does that better than maybe any other organization on earth, right, everyone, you know, rich, poor, black, white, men, women, if you make it through the basic Marine Corps crucible, you’re Marine. Everybody bleeds green, as the saying goes. And so it’s only by having a strong team around you that you can cope with failure. And to the point about mistakes. My sort of personal mantra in life is just to make original mistakes. My only goal is to not be making the same mistakes over and over again. And I try to encourage my subordinates to make original mistakes and give them enough of a leash where they don’t feel like they’re going to get punished for taking intelligent risks.

 

<Rene>[11:45]

Absolutely. I think about my career and the most growth I’ve ever had has been making mistakes and the learnings. So now you’re at Palantir. Amazing company. Alex Karp, fantastic CEO. Palantir has been on fire. Before I ask you about the transition. I’m not sure how many of the folks who are listening to this know exactly what Palantir does. So maybe tell us, what does Palantir do and what was the inspiration to kind of go from public service to joining them?

 

<Mike>[12:13]

I mean, the inspiration was I have been aware of Palantir’s work for a while. It had started to be deployed into the Marine Corps as I was getting out of the fleet and I had some friends that had used it very early on and were blown away. I mean, If you think about like what an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps does, right? In my case, you collect information from humans. You sort of write that up into a report. You can plot certain information on a map. You brief things on PowerPoint slides. All of this is very time intensive and involves a lot of humans in the loop. It was very like analog, even back then. So along comes a piece of software that allows you to automate that process and speed up your decision making, make sense of disparate sources of data, and now use satellite imagery and take a process that used to involve hundreds of human beings and thousands of hours and distill it down into, you know, one human being and make it a matter of minutes. I mean, you can see the benefits in terms of creating decision advantage. And so today on the battlefield Palantir software operationalizes AI and allows our fighters to make sense of the battlefield, see bad guys, target more precisely. And then in the boardroom, on the commercial side of our business, Palantir’s software – basically the way I like to think about it is anywhere in a business where information is instantiated on a whiteboard or in an Excel spreadsheet or in the mind of a human being, you can now embed that into our core product, which is called Foundry, and then use AI to automate various processes and just move faster than your competitors and save money in the process.

 

<Rene>[13:48]

Two questions. So first off, Palantir, I think externally has a brand that people are associating with defense. And as you said, you guys use it in the military. But do you think the commercial opportunity for Palantir is larger? It feels like it should be just given the problems that you described and the scale of data that exists in a commercial sector.

 

<Mike>[14:10]

Well, Palantir, you know, it’s unique. It certainly got its start in the wake of 9/11 and looking at the failures that led up to 9/11 and believing strongly that they could have been prevented with a better use of technology and allowing decision makers to better connect the dots in terms of what our enemies were doing. But then it evolved and in the last five years, the commercial business has really taken off. And now we’re in this unique position where we have a thriving commercial business and a thriving government business. But really what intrigues me the most is the opportunity to take the lessons learned from both sides of the business and cross-pollinate them. Right, because there’s certain insights we have because we’re working with warfighters in the Pentagon, helping them make sense of the battlespace or helping them, like, digitize a process that used to be a matter of PowerPoint slides that we can apply to the commercial business and vice versa. The Marine Corps is launching a big barracks modernization initiative right now. I see an opportunity to take some of our insights in the construction field, in the commercial world and apply it directly to the defense business and help our military automate the so-called tail – that’s all the supporting establishment – and use those saved resources to sharpen the tooth – that’s the things at the tip of the spear, that’s the war fighters, that’s the weapons that directly enhance our lethality and increase near-term deterrence. So that’s the opportunity I see from both a business and a national security perspective. And increasingly, if you look at the defense industrial base, it used to be the case that most of our biggest defense companies had thriving commercial businesses and would actually subsidize their own R&D and not ask the U.S. taxpayer to do it. Because the defense industrial base has grown smaller and ossified, it is increasingly rare to see a company like that that has both thriving commercial and defense work. And so I think this is the model we need to return to. And I think that’s sort of the unique position Palantir is in right now. And hopefully we can harvest those commercial insights in order to better serve the warfighter going forward.

 

<Rene>[16:08]

Do we need more Palantirs from the perspective of an interesting comment you just made, because I started my career 100 years ago at TI, and this is 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s our president, Star Wars. We had a huge semiconductor effort that was all about doing work for Patriot missiles and everything that was really during the Cold War. And to your point, TI, at that time largest semiconductor company in the world, had a gigantic defense semiconductor business. And as you said, that’s kind of gone by the wayside. Do we need more companies doing the kind of work Palantir does – not directly in your competition, but to your point of a thriving business that helps them on the defense side? Because I wonder, how can government keep up without it?

 

<Mike>[16:52]

That’s right. Well, we should obviously have no competitors. There should be no – I’m just joking. Yes, every business’s dream.

 

<Rene>

Now that you’re out of politics, you can say that. Yeah.

 

<Mike>[17:00]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I would put it this way, I think we need more non-traditionals to be, to get into the government space to cross the so-called valley of death that Palantir has spent the last two decades and spent billions of dollars doing. It is far too hard for a company who wants to help the government and help the Defense Department or the intelligence community to do so. Because the Defense Department is not an easy customer. It’s part of the reason why we launched our FedStart program to allow the younger and non-traditional tech startups, which still face these incredible barrier entries to get into the defense ecosystem and not have to do that journey that Palantir did. And so I think if we do that, we can have a defense ecosystem that isn’t dominated by a small number of defense primes, but it’s far healthier where the primes are working with non-traditionals. But where the rubber meets the road is just how the Pentagon buys things and how it spends money. And we’re still struggling with this problem of – we tend to sprinkle out, you know, money for non-traditionals in innovation and dilute in small grants, as opposed to DOD making big bets on non-traditional companies. And I think fixing that, combining that with a greater tolerance for what’s called multi-year appropriation so you can provide some predictability to companies that are trying to build things for the Defense Department, is the path forward. all of this redounds to making sure we have the best and brightest human beings in these companies willing to work with the Defense Department. That’s another way where we can build a bridge between Silicon Valley and the defense and the technology industry and the core national security community.

 

<Rene>[18:44]

Yeah, makes sense. And it’s a good segue into this question, which I think you are probably in a very unique position to have a perspective on now that you are in the private sector, but obviously served our country in Congress. And this is around AI, and should there be a national policy around AI? And when I say national policy, it’s – obviously that’s an umbrella term for the government having a much higher involvement in terms of security, safety policies, procedure guidelines, etc., etc. What’s your view on that?

 

<Mike>[19:18]

Well, in one sense, I’m not sure it makes sense to talk about a national AI policy per se, because AI is not a single piece of technology. It’s a cluster of technologies. And the risks and opportunities are different depending on what specific aspect or what specific cluster you’re talking about. So I think the good part of the latest executive order, which is the closest we have to a national policy, is that it does  recognize that sector-based approach and defers to the various sectors in terms of drawing on their sectoral proficiencies to cultivate AI development and manage the risks. But the problem is that we haven’t put any real investment behind that policy. So put differently, I think the most important national policy we can have where the federal government has a clear and unique role with private sector input, is for the Defense Department to spend more money on responsible AI use. Right now I think the numbers that the Defense Department spends about 0.2% of its budget on i.e. increasing that amount to just 1% or 8.42 billion. To support our troops with the most advanced form of software available from commercial providers would have an outsize impact on our defense and our deterrence capabilities. And so that to me is one area where we do need more national involvement. Another is having a policy that forces the Defense Department and other agencies to adhere to existing law. There’s a commercial preference embedded into existing law so that the government doesn’t try to build software and AI tools itself, and yet this law goes violated on an almost daily basis and we waste a lot of money on government off the shelf solutions when we should be seeking to buy commercial off the shelf solutions. So there’s a series of things I think we can do in the pure defense space that amount to a national policy and balance the sort of need to go fast and innovate with the legitimate concerns about the safe and responsible deployment of AI, if that makes sense.

 

<Rene>[21:24]

Makes sense. But should it be regulated? Should large language models be regulated and tested before they’re available for the consumer, for example?

 

<Mike>[21:34]

Well, I think the best way to ascertain what the right form of regulation is, is a field to learn or a test fix test approach. Right, you field AI with the end users and operators with workflows that are relevant to their missions. The models are then improved through iteration with operators in the field, and then you refine the systems as you extend it to larger groups over time. And in that journey you figure out what the right guardrails are. I think it would be the height of hubris to think that a few bureaucrats could sit in a room, even if next to them were the leading minds and private sector leaders when it comes to artificial intelligence and construct a perfect regulatory framework that still allows room for going fast, you need to approach it with that field to learn and test fix test approach.

 

<Rene>[22:25]

In the private sector, when people talk about things they hate most about their jobs, they’ll say, I love the technology, I love the company, I love the people, but God, I hate the politics inside my job. You worked in a domain called politics. What did you like most about that role inside politics and what was something you look back and say, gosh, that was not fun to do.

 

<Mike>[22:46]

Well, the latter question is easier. The thing I hated most was fundraising. And I do think the fundamental dilemma, if you’re a member of Congress, is that you are having to do your job while also raise money to run for your job simultaneously. And in the house where you’re on a two year time horizon, that can be very difficult. Just carving out enough hours in your day to do responsible oversight, attend all your committee hearings, and then have to go across the street and raise money. I never enjoyed fundraising. I always found it weird, maybe because I have Catholic guilt, to ask people for money, and so not having to fundraise anymore has been a huge blessing in my life. So that was definitely the bad, the good. However, and I think I had the benefit of, I knew I never was going to make it a career. I believe in the model of a citizen legislator. I think that’s why I’m a proponent of term limits. I think members tend to stay too long and it should be a season of service. So that was very liberating for me. And so that gave me the freedom to really focus on the committee work. I was most passionate about the Armed Services Committee work, chairing the Cyberspace Solarium Commission and then ultimately chairing the Select Committee on China was profoundly rewarding. I love that. And then what do you do when you’re back in your district? Well, one, you go round to all the different businesses in your district and you just learn what people are making, what their daily lives are like. It has a way of helping you fall back in love with where you’re from. I didn’t fully appreciate it when I first ran and that was really rewarding. And you learn a ton or you help people solve problems, helping people get their VA benefits, helping them deal with the thorny immigration issue, helping them deal with weird government regulations. I mean, it’s sad that sometimes you have to call your congressman to get those issues fixed. But if you’re the congressman and you can really help someone, that’s a big deal and that’s super rewarding. So I love that. The final thing I’d say, Rene, which I think you’ll appreciate, is, you know, it’s really hard to build a team in business in the public sector. So it took me a while to really get my office team and culture exactly how I wanted it. But in those final two years, I really felt like we had an incredible team. Everyone was kind of operating by commander’s intent. And our decision making was really fast. And that was really rewarding for me because you’re working with a lot of young people on the Hill, too, which is, it was just energizing. So I miss that team.

 

<Rene>[25:05]

You’re an amazing speaker. When you went up and did a campaign speech in your district, prepared remarks or you just wing it?

 

<Mike>[25:14]]

You know, the first four years, very prepared. I had never been in front of a camera. I was incredibly nervous the first time I did a local TV show, let alone going on a national news show. And so I would overprepare. I would often write my speeches out and I would memorize them. But then I would say I got comfortable doing everything extemporaneously and I went too far in the complacent direction of not preparing. And now I find myself having to remind myself that I need to prepare and that I’m a bit out of shape. I will say, however, I do think the one life hack or maybe two life hacks that have melded into one that have given me a competitive edge are that in the Marine Corps, I started up I started waking up really early and I would devote, you know, after I do my sort of Catholic thing in the morning, I would devote an hour just to writing. And I do think forcing myself to write out my thoughts, even if it didn’t result in a publishable Op-Ed or article or a talking points that I would use on TV, it’s still a discipline that I practice every single day and I think helps me communicate, because my view is that if you can’t write clearly, then you can’t think clearly and you certainly can’t speak clearly.

 

<Rene>[26:28]

Yeah, that’s kind of how I do it. What I do is an outline of things and a flow that I want to go. And when I’m doing a presentation, for example, I always drill on my team, don’t show me the slide I’m presenting, show me the next slide. So what the next slide does for me, it just gives me a context of the story I’m trying to tell and that there’s a continuum to it. Brett Favre, Aaron Rodgers, who do you take?

 

<Mike>[26:52]

Bart Starr, number 15. Every Sunday, you see me wearing number 15, Bart Starr’s jersey.

 

<Rene>[26:59]

It’s a great answer. A truly gifted politician. I give you two choices and you come up with a third. Would you ever run for president someday?

 

<Mike>[27:08]

Genuinely, I do not look in the mirror and think ‘one day I’m going to be president’. Like I am at core still that kind of, I think of myself as a national security professional, so I’d love to serve if the moment were right in a national security job, but there are no plans in my head for running for president one day. My wife is pregnant with twins. So we’re going to focus on having children and building out our family for a while before I get any political ideas. I’m trying to be you, Renee. I’m trying to learn how to be a leader in the private sector. So I’m on month two of this, so I’ve got a long journey ahead of me.

 

<Rene>[27:45]

Oh, my gosh. I don’t know where to start there. Mike, thank you so much for giving us the time here. This was terrific.

 

<Mike>[27:52]

Thank you, sir.

 

<Rene>[28:00]

We’ll be back next month with more exclusive conversations and insights from the world of technology. Make sure you follow tech unheard wherever you listen to your podcast.

 

Tech Unheard is a custom podcast series from Arm and National Public Media. Executive Producers Erica Osher and Shannon Boerner. Project Manager Colin Harden. Creative Lead Producer Isabel Robertson. Editors Andrew Meriwether and Kelly Drake. Composer Aaron Levison. Arm production contributors include Ami Badani, Claudia Brandon, Simon Jared, Jonathan Armstrong, Ben Webdell, Sofia McKenzie, Kristen Ray and Saumil Shah. Tech Unheard is hosted by Arm CEO Rene Haas.