Hardpoints

VALOR Media Network
  • 5.0 (4)
  • TECH NEWS
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

Every week, former fighter pilots and current entrepreneurs Neal Rickner & Mike Smith provide unfiltered insights into the biggest stories in startups, energy, and national security.

  1. 3H AGO

    China Told Trump: Touch Taiwan and We Go to War

    Yesterday in Beijing, President Xi told President Trump directly: if Taiwan is not handled properly, the two countries will have — and he used the word — conflicts. That is the most direct statement any Chinese leader has made to an American president about Taiwan. Ever. Mike and Neal unpack why this moment matters and why most of the conversation about Taiwan skips the part that actually explains Chinese behavior. They trace the split back to 1949, walk through Nixon's one-China gambit, and explain why the US has spent 75 years pretending to believe something it doesn't. Then they get into the military reality: what an amphibious assault across 90 miles of open water actually looks like, where the US has real advantages and where the logistics become genuinely nightmarish, and why this fight — if it ever happens — would not look anything like Iraq. The energy angle gets serious attention too. Taiwan imports 97% of its energy. China's oil supply runs 80% through the Strait of Malacca. And the 90% of the world's advanced chip supply sitting on that island means a conflict there wouldn't just be a military event — it would be a $10 trillion hole in the global economy. Plus: Neal flags the new NERC cybersecurity standards that took effect today with zero grace period and a $1.5 million-a-day penalty, the administration's quiet kill of 200+ wind and solar projects through the Defense Siting Clearinghouse, and ICE activity in Neal's neighborhood — what he actually saw, and what it might mean. Mike is back from the PPAI conference with good news, and both hosts respond to listener mail from the Canada episodes, including TerryZanger7152 and his drunk uncle with a knife. Got a take? Email us: hardpoints.show@gmail.com Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

    49 min

  2. 6D AGO

    We Accidentally Made China the Climate Superpower

    The Strait of Hormuz has been closed for months. Qatar's LNG complex took a direct hit in March and won't be back online for three to five years. Asian spot prices for natural gas are up 140%. And in the middle of all of it, China is exporting 68 gigawatts of solar technology in a single month while EV registrations in Europe jump 50% in the first full month of the shock. Mike and Neal lay out the argument that the Iran war may be the single most effective climate policy in history, not by design, but by accident. China spent its last five-year plan funding a hundred electric vehicle companies and building out the clean energy supply chain the rest of the world now desperately needs. The US, meanwhile, destroyed the oil markets it was trying to protect, handed China a willing customer base across Europe and the developing world, and left itself with no diplomatic off-ramp and no military path forward that the American people would accept. They also get into why domestic oil production is not going to save us, why the oil executives called to the White House told the administration they couldn't just drill their way out of this, and why the peak oil story is now about demand, not supply. Plus: Neal shares a promising development for Heirloom in the Arctic, where clean power options are almost nonexistent and NATO is paying close attention. Mike calls out the ongoing targeting of Senator Kelly as straight-up abuse of power, names the person doing it, and does not mince words. And both hosts respond directly to the Canadian listeners who made the last episode explode, including Mermaid Grace and Doug Noble, 1449. Got a take? Email us: hardpoints.show@gmail.com Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

    45 min

  3. MAY 14

    When Insurance Leaves, Everything Else Follows

    Four hundred thousand home insurance policies canceled in California since 2021. Twenty-nine percent of markets in the state are already showing slowed home sales because of it. That is not the start of a problem. That is the middle of one. What nobody is connecting loudly enough is what happens next. When insurance leaves a neighborhood, mortgages go with it. When mortgages go, property values fall. When property values fall, the tax base shrinks. And when the tax base shrinks, the municipalities that financed 70 percent of America's essential infrastructure through the $4.2 trillion muni bond market suddenly cannot service their debt. Mike and Neal trace that entire chain and ask whether we are already past the point of no return in some markets. They also get into the energy angle that makes this harder: the clean infrastructure we need to build to reduce the climate risk driving all of this is becoming harder to finance and insure at exactly the wrong moment. Mike talks about how Acclimate is building physical climate risk modeling into its software using the TCFD framework, and what that could mean for how companies and insurers price exposure. The startup opportunity in parametric insurance, climate risk disclosure, and resilience tech gets real attention here. Goods, bads, and others: Neal shares a standout LinkedIn moment for Heirloom, Mike calls out Denver entrepreneur Grant Gunnison and Zero Homes, and both hosts weigh in on what it means that we have likely already blown through the 1.5 degree warming threshold years ahead of schedule. The Strait of Hormuz, the end of the American century, and the California governor's debate round it out. Got a take? Email us: hardpoints.show@gmail.com Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

    47 min

  4. MAY 7

    Canada Keeps Your Lights On. So Why Are We Treating Them Like an Enemy?

    Canada supplies 98% of America's natural gas imports, 93% of its electricity imports, and more than half of the oil it brings in from abroad. Three years ago, 5% of Canadians supported increasing trade with China. Today that number is 44%. That is not a slow drift. That is a break. So what happens to American energy security when you pick a fight with the country that keeps your lights on? Mike and Neal unpack the economics of Canadian oil, why the tar sands are not going anywhere soon, and why the infrastructure dependency runs so deep in both directions that even a fast pivot toward China would take years to execute. They also get into the bigger picture: the US is no longer the obvious anchor of the rules-based order, Canada knows it, and Beijing has been watching the whole thing with a very level head. Plus: a sub-two-hour marathon that still finished second, Trump's name on the currency and his face on the passport, the UAE quietly walking out of OPEC, and a special operator who bet on a raid he was running. Got a take? Email us: hardpoints.show@gmail.com. Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

    42 min

  5. MAY 1

    We Burned Through Half Our Missiles in Seven Weeks... Now What?

    In the first 72 hours of Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. Navy fired roughly 400 Tomahawk cruise missiles into Iran. More than the total number produced over the previous five years. Seven weeks later, we'd burned through half our Patriot interceptors, half our THAAD missiles, 30% of our Tomahawks, and 45% of our precision strike missiles. The Pentagon is now asking for a 1,327% increase in Tomahawk procurement. And it takes 24 months to build a single one. So what does it actually mean to run out of bullets - and what happens next? Mike and Neal break down the real numbers behind America's munitions crisis, why the defense acquisitions system is so broken that a weapon built on 40-year-old technology somehow costs $2.6 million per shot, and what a startup-driven defense economy might actually look like. They also get into the part nobody's talking about: China is watching all of this very closely, and the stockpile we just burned through is the same one standing between Taiwan and a very bad day. Plus: the Iran war isn't ending anytime soon and the administration doesn't have the negotiators to close it, off-lease EVs just got shockingly affordable, and the White House Correspondents' Dinner shooting - why political violence is never the answer, full stop. And yes, they read the harshest listener comment they've ever received. MarkStuber4731, this one's for you! Got a take? Email us: hardpoints.show@gmail.com Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

    44 min

  6. APR 27

    The AI That Taught Itself to Hack — And What Happens When China Gets It

    Anthropic built an AI so dangerous they refused to release it. Mythos taught itself to find vulnerabilities, chain them together, and take down entire systems — autonomously, in minutes. No human in the loop. No patch fast enough to stop it. By Anthropic's own assessment, left unchecked it could dismantle a Fortune 100 company and disrupt large parts of the internet before your IT team finishes their morning coffee. So instead of releasing it, they handed it to 12 companies — Apple, Google, Microsoft, JP Morgan, and yes, the NSA — under a classified program called Glasswing. The idea: give the defenders a head start before attackers get the same capability. Here's the problem. Dario Amodei, Anthropic's own CEO, says open-source Chinese models will hit Mythos-level capability in 6 to 12 months. This was never really a technology story. It's a geopolitical one — and we're not sure the people in charge are equipped to handle it. Mike and Neal break down what Mythos actually does, why your power grid is the most terrifying target on the map, and how AI-powered phishing attacks are already hitting small businesses with click-through rates that should scare the hell out of you. They also get into where the real startup opportunity lives inside all of this — because defense tech is about to have a moment, and the window won't stay open forever. Plus: California's battery grid quietly hits a landmark milestone, the data center bubble shows its first real cracks, and the goods, bads, and others — including Neal's travel hell, a birthday, and Mike's feelings about the Baltimore Orioles. This is the stuff that's actually shaping your world. Let's get into it. Got a take? Email us: hardpoints.show@gmail.com Follow Hardpoints wherever you get your podcasts.

    40 min

  7. APR 23

    The Underwater War Nobody's Talking About

    95% of all international internet traffic — every email, financial transaction, and military communication crossing the ocean — runs through undersea cables that are almost entirely unguarded. Russia and China figured this out. And they're using it. - Why dragging an anchor across a cable is legal under international maritime law — and why that's exactly the point - A Swedish submarine commander's assessment from this week's NATO meeting: "We're not at peace, but we're not at war" - How the U.S. did this first in 1971 — Operation Ivy Bells — and why our Cold War underwater surveillance infrastructure (SOSUS) has since atrophied - Neal's Ramadi 2005-2006 insurgency parallel: why a smaller, nimbler force doesn't need to win, it just needs to be a pain in the butt - The asymmetric defense problem: cables are thousands of miles long, unbuilt for hardening, and one cut takes out the whole line - Where the startup opportunities actually are: undersea drone fleets, cheap mesh sensor networks, faster cable repair — and why NATO has money for this - Why distributed wind and solar might be the real answer to energy infrastructure security — and why Mike and Neal are already talking to the DoD about it Hardpoints is hosted by Mike Smith (CEO of Aclymate, former U.S. Navy FA-18 pilot) and Neal Rickner (CEO of Airloom, former Marine Corps FA-18 pilot). Every week: energy security, national security, and the startup economy.

    38 min

  8. APR 16

    Why VCs Are Betting on Fusion (And Why They Probably Shouldn't)

    There's $2 trillion a year flowing into energy — and almost none of it is reaching the startups that could actually change things. Mike and Neal break down the full investment stack, and don't pull punches on where the money is going wrong. Why $2 trillion sounds huge but early-stage clean energy VC has declined three years running — and how AI ate the rest Mike's case that nuclear fusion is a scam: the Trump Media/$6B fusion merger, Sam Altman's track record, and what an MIT nuclear fusion PhD actually says about its odds Why enhanced geothermal is the one legitimate moonshot — proven tech, perfect US geology, and a potential CO₂ capture angle nobody's talking about The green hydrogen myth: 70% energy loss, no infrastructure, and why Japan bet on the wrong horse Grid tech's real enemy: not the technology, the regulators Trump paying $1 billion to stop an 80%-complete offshore wind project — and who actually picks up that tab Hardpoints is hosted by Mike Smith (CEO of Aclymate, former U.S. Navy FA-18 pilot) and Neal Rickner (CEO of Airloom, former Marine Corps FA-18 pilot) — two founders with skin in the game on energy and national security.

    47 min
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
4 Ratings

About

Every week, former fighter pilots and current entrepreneurs Neal Rickner & Mike Smith provide unfiltered insights into the biggest stories in startups, energy, and national security.

Information

  • Creator
    VALOR Media Network
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    45
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025
  • Show Website
    Hardpoints