NEW POD with Zane Mountcastle, Co-Founder and CEO of Picogrid (@zanemountcastle @Picogrid) on the integration problem inside modern defense. We discussed why the next era of warfare depends on infrastructure that can connect autonomous systems at scale, the economics of drone warfare, and why so many promising defense technologies never make it into operational use. Thanks to our founding sponsor Cushman & Wakefield (@CushWake) for sponsoring this episode. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:18 What Picogrid actually does 03:34 The integration problem across defense systems 07:02 Building infrastructure instead of one-off integrations 10:41 Deploying software inside the DoD 12:05 Picogrid’s early contracts and growth 15:07 Why acquisition incentives create friction 18:45 The engineering talent problem 22:31 The changing defense industrial base 27:05 Drone warfare and air defense economics 31:10 Scaling a defense startup 35:02 Hardware and manufacturing realities 39:04 The future of autonomous warfare 42:58 Marketing and communication in defense tech 46:32 AI hype vs reality in defense 50:14 Venture capital and defense startups