Geopolitics: USAI vs Chinese AI Stack

Filmed at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Reagan National Library, Molly walks with Dan Wright, CEO of Armada, to unpack why the next era of AI infrastructure will not live only in hyperscale cloud campuses – it will move into the physical world.

Armada calls itself the hyperscaler for the edge. The company builds modular AI factories that bring compute, connectivity, storage, and real world AI into environments where latency, security, and reliability are mission critical. Dan shares how Armada started with SpaceX as an early point of entry, why Starlink fundamentally changed what is deployable around the globe, and how Armada is pairing connectivity with infrastructure to bring the most powerful AI models to places that have never had access before.

The conversation spans Armada’s partnerships with Microsoft, OpenAI, and Skydio, plus what it takes to deploy in extreme environments, from U.S. Navy operations at sea to the Saudi desert with Aramco Digital, and all the way to Alaska for real time disaster response. Dan also lays out the geopolitics of AI infrastructure, why he believes the world will run on either the U.S. AI stack or the Chinese AI stack, and why exporting infrastructure to allies is central to winning that race.

We also go long on space. Dan explains why data centers in space are coming, why Starship is a prerequisite for lunar and planetary industry, and why compute becomes unavoidable once you imagine robots building bases on the Moon and later Mars. He also reacts to the ongoing SpaceX IPO speculation for 2026 and why broader access to SpaceX would matter if it happens.

Armada has raised $200M+ to date, backed by investors including Founders Fund, Dragon Global, Lux Capital, Shield Capital, 8090 Industries, Microsoft’s M12, Overmatch, Silent Ventures, Felicis, and Marlinspike, with later strategic participation including Pinegrove, Veriten, and Glade Brook.

Dan Wright: https://x.com/danwrightSF 

Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea 

Sourcery: ⁠https://x.com/sourceryy

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YT: https://youtu.be/iCD8nuxSgKw

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