Why I’m Covering Defense Tech; Founders Fund’s Concentrated Bets

Greetings from Los Angeles, where I’ve taken up a new residence after a cross-country road trip from New York. 

During a tour of a defunct U.S. Steel mill in Pittsburgh and a visit to the uranium boom-and-bust town of Moab, Utah, I spent time thinking about the technology that has reshaped national security, industrialization, energy and geopolitics. That sounds a lot like what I want to cover from my new home, which is not far from Anduril’s Orange County headquarters, SpaceX’s Hawthorne Falcon 9 factory and the raft of defense and industrial startups that have taken root in El Segundo, Calif.

I’m going to spend more time reporting on defense tech and aerospace here. This morning, Katie Roof and I scooped that Stoke Space, an up-and-coming space startup trying to remake the economics of launches, is in talks for funding that would value it at nearly $2 billion. My colleagues’ coverage in recent days also explains my interest: Miles Kruppa revealed that Founders Fund was sitting on a more than $19.5 billion gain from its investment in SpaceX since it started investing in 2008—more than its total assets under management! Peter Thiel, the firm’s founder, lives in Los Angeles.