Crossing the Valley Ep. 56: "The Adversary Doesn't Give a S*** About Your Compliance State"
How Palantir, SpaceX & Anduril Veterans Are Redefining Cybersecurity for the Defense Industrial Base
About the Guests
Nik Seetharaman and Grace Clemente represent perhaps the most elite defense tech pedigree possible. Between them, they've touched the holy trinity of modern defense juggernauts: Palantir, SpaceX, and Anduril.
Nik's journey began in special operations before transitioning to the private sector. At Palantir, he learned the art of aggressive execution and brutal feedback loops that forge high-performing teams. His stint at SpaceX reinforced the culture of rapid iteration and learning from failure. But it was at Anduril where he faced his defining challenge: becoming the first security engineer at a company scaling from 100 to 4,000 people while building weapon systems under constant foreign adversary attention.
Grace built her expertise in the most sensitive areas of corporate security—insider threat and counter-espionage programs at both SpaceX and Anduril. She witnessed firsthand the daily reality of nation-state adversaries attempting to penetrate critical infrastructure and defense technology companies. Her experience shaped a deep understanding of what real security looks like versus the theater of compliance checkboxes.
Their pain points weren't academic—they were personal and professional crises. Waking up at 3 AM to alerts, logging into 40+ different security tools, spending hours gathering context for simple decisions, and watching talented security professionals burn out from cognitive overload and poor tooling.
About Wraithwatch
Wraithwatch emerged from a simple but profound question: What would we have wanted to gift ourselves as lone security engineers told to "protect the company" with 100,000 possible next steps?
The company addresses a fundamental market shift in defense technology. Security has evolved from a cost center to a revenue generator. Defense companies literally cannot sign government contracts without robust security controls, making cybersecurity teams direct contributors to revenue generation rather than overhead expenses.
Wraithwatch's core innovation is a unified security platform that breaks down the data silos plaguing modern cybersecurity. Instead of forcing teams to operate 40+ point solutions, Wraithwatch creates a "digital twin" of customer environments and runs thousands of attack simulations to identify the most critical vulnerabilities and provide actionable remediation steps.
Their "gain of function" approach uses advanced AI offensive capabilities to continuously improve defensive strategies—a co-evolution process that mirrors how nation-state adversaries actually operate. The platform deploys in as little as 22 minutes and immediately begins autonomous threat modeling without executing actual attacks against production systems.
The user experience philosophy is radical for cybersecurity: make defenders feel like Tony Stark commanding an intelligent system rather than helpless operators drowning in alerts. This includes features like AI-generated daily briefs with voice narration, 3D network visualization, and one-click remediation capabilities.
For more on Wraithwatch: https://www.wraithwatch.com/
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