Uncapped with Jack Altman Uncapped #35 | Trae Stephens from Founders Fund
215 snips
Dec 3, 2025 
Trae Stephens, a Partner at Founders Fund and co-founder of Anduril, dives into pressing topics like AI ethics and the future of warfare. He advocates for tackling challenging AI quests instead of opting for easy solutions. Trae shares insights on scaling manufacturing at Anduril, comparing it to giants like Tesla and SpaceX. He also emphasizes the necessity of understanding government procurement processes. Finally, he touches on his faith and its influence on his views regarding just war theory and moral frameworks in defense technology.
AI Snips
Chapters
Books
Transcript
Episode notes
Choose Hard High-Leverage Quests
- Avoid chasing easy, consensus AI ideas just because you can build them quickly with LLMs.
- Prioritize hard, high-leverage quests that use top talent on deep technical problems instead of many shallow clones.
AI Companions Can Reshape Society
- New AI products that feel comforting can erode real interpersonal relationships and social incentives.
- Trae warns this could change mating markets and increase a socially dangerous population of unmatched, underemployed men.
The Feels-Good vs. Good Matrix
- Use a two-by-two: how something feels versus whether it's actually good for society.
- Defense and law-and-order live in the 'feels bad but is good' quadrant and require moral acceptance despite discomfort.
