Senator Mike Lee and Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar | The Great Defense Reformation: Innovation, Agility, and the Future Force

In this session from the Hill & Valley Forum 2025, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar and Senator Mike Lee (UT) diagnose the crippling bureaucracy hampering America's defense innovation and outline a path to reform. Sankar argues that America's defense procurement has forgotten the formula that produced previous breakthroughs: competing programs, heretic innovators, and prioritizing people over process. Senator Lee details how excessive regulation (100,000 pages annually costing $1.5 trillion) threatens America's ability to compete with China in the AI arms race, and champions the REINS Act to restore constitutional order and spur innovation by requiring congressional approval for major regulations.

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Timestamps:

(00:00) Shyam Sankar explains how America's defense innovation has been hobbled

(01:01) Introduction to the panel on "The Great Defense Reformation"

(02:34) Senator Lee on the self-perpetuating bureaucracy that throttles American innovation

(06:15) Sankar on the importance of competition among government programs, not just defense contractors

(09:56) The critical role of "heretics" and founders in American defense innovation history

(13:01) Senator Lee on America's energy disadvantage against China due to regulatory burdens

(16:52) How the tech community can support regulatory reform through the REINS Act

(18:40) Sankar on positive steps from the current administration to streamline federal acquisition

(21:08) Two key reforms: implementing service-level agreements (SLAs) for government processes and recognizing requirements documents are always imperfect

(22:55) Senator Lee's detailed plan for permitting reform to accelerate innovation and development