14-05-2025
Tyler Sweatt: It's "a miracle" nontraditional companies want to work with the Pentagon
There is a clear need for "strong leadership" to unify the Department of Defense and its dozens of innovation shops with unorthodox technology companies and venture capitalists, according to Tyler Sweatt, the chief executive at Second Front.
With so many balkanized programs, offices, processes and preferences, he added, "it is a miracle that any nontraditionals want to work with the DOD."
Why he matters: Sweatt's a former U.S. Army officer. He previously helmed national security work at CalypsoAI.
His company's Offset Symposium kicks off Thursday.
Q: When you hear "future of defense," what comes to mind?
A: You do.
Q: When will wars be waged solely by robots?
A: I think that probably depends on how you define war and the waging of it. You could probably make a pretty convincing argument that, in certain aspects, we are already seeing it happen.
Q: What's a national security trend we aren't paying enough attention to?
A: It's domestic and it transcends party: The food, information, and energy that our younger generations consume, combined with how America views the passage of time. I think there is a very real chance we think we are playing a different game with a different clock than our adversaries.
Reminds me of the quote about watches and time that we heard in Afghanistan — that the Americans have the watches but the Taliban has the time. I worry we are using the wrong time horizon for some conflicts.
Q: What region of the world should we be watching? Why?
A: Latin America. The amount of capital generated by cartels, connectivity to transnational criminal and terrorist orgs, mineral-rich soil and a limited focus from most national security news makes it the place I would watch.
Q: How many emails do you get a day, and how do you deal with them?
A: Entirely too many. I think about deleting all of them for about 15 minutes every morning and night, and then I read them. I use my inbox and calendar as my task management check, and zero inbox every Sunday.
Q: What time do you wake up? What does the morning routine look like?
A: 4:05 every morning I am home, which, unfortunately, hasn't been as much as I'd like the past few months.
Look at the phone to make sure nothing caught on fire while I was sleeping. Have an Americano, and then I walk into the gym at 5, do a powerlifting class at 5:30, and by 7:30 I am dressed and ready for whatever comes next.
Q: What advice would you give your younger self?
