Summary: Trae Stephens, co-founder of defense technology firm Anduril Industries, used a Washington forum to sharply criticize both U.S. lawmakers and segments of the technology sector, arguing that domestic policy failures and industry choices are creating a strategic opening for China. Stephens also announced that Anduril has begun production at its new Arsenal-1 manufacturing campus in Ohio, which will initially produce the FURY autonomous combat drone.
Speaking to an audience of executives and policymakers at the Hill and Valley Forum in Washington, Stephens placed responsibility squarely on American institutions for ceding ground in what he described as a competition with Beijing for military and technological supremacy. He said the United States’ own internal failings - not external inevitabilities - explain growing vulnerabilities.
"Our federal government is not doing its job," Stephens told the crowd. "It does not help us build great things. It does not solve hard problems. Frankly, it has abandoned its post."
Stephens, who is chairman of Costa Mesa, California-based Anduril and a partner at San Francisco-based Founders Fund, outlined what he called a generation of legislative shortfalls. He said a large majority of Americans back immigration reform, yet Congress has produced no meaningful change in four decades. He pointed to healthcare, noting the United States spends roughly double what peer democracies spend while delivering worse outcomes. On education, he observed the country has fallen out of the top 10 in educational attainment and is "lagging far behind competitors in math and science" at a time when artificial intelligence is reshaping opportunities for recent graduates.
He was particularly scathing about recent infrastructure spending tied to semiconductor and green-energy policies. Stephens said more than a trillion dollars allocated under those initiatives has resulted in little tangible industrial progress, offering the assessment that the money produced only "a handful of lousy EV charging stations and not a single fully built chips fab."
"We haven’t even sent a man to the moon in my lifetime," Stephens said. He also rejected defeatist rationales, saying "'It’s too hard' or 'someone else is going to do this' aren’t excuses that cut it anymore in the 21st century."
Beyond cataloging legislative failures, Stephens argued that the structure and speed of modern technological change have outpaced lawmakers. He cited examples that, in his view, show regulation trailing innovation: platforms achieving mass scale before platform rules were crafted, drones being used in conflict before legal frameworks governed their domestic use, and widespread cryptocurrency activity occurring before regulators agreed on its contours.
"If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail," he said, adding that when the principal tools of governance are "investigations and the bully pulpit," the resulting rules "are often already obsolete by the time they take effect."
Stephens reserved pointed criticism for parts of Silicon Valley as well. He argued that resistance within the technology community to working with the Pentagon helped strengthen potential adversaries. He recalled pushback from software engineers against defense-related projects such as Project Maven in the 2010s and said that era of resistance contributed to China becoming "stronger, richer and more capable."
"There is no moral neutrality in that decision," he said.
Stephens made these remarks as Anduril began production at its new Arsenal-1 manufacturing campus south of Columbus, Ohio. The $1 billion facility is expected to hire more than 4,000 people over the next decade. Initially, Arsenal-1 will produce Anduril’s FURY autonomous combat drone, which the company has pitched as its entrant for the U.S. Air Force’s Collaborative Combat Aircraft program that aims to pair uncrewed platforms with human fighter pilots.
The comments combine a critique of domestic policymaking and industrial strategy with a concrete expansion of Anduril’s manufacturing footprint. Stephens presented both the diagnosis - a failure of legislative and institutional responses to emerging technologies - and an example of private-sector response in the form of Anduril’s Ohio campus and its production plans.
Contextual note: Stephens’ remarks at the forum connected public policy debates - from immigration and healthcare to education and industrial subsidies - to perceived national security and technological competitiveness challenges. They also highlighted friction between Silicon Valley ideals and defense priorities.
This article reports the statements and facts presented at the event and the company announcement without introducing unlisted details or additional commentary.