In the Arena is our new series for those who wonder whether there’s a place for them in defense.
In our first episode, The Case for Working in Defense Tech, Vannevar CEO Brett Granberg sits down with Hayley Menser to discuss what it actually looks like to work in defense, what engineers entering the field should know, and why this moment is unlike any before it.
In this debut episode, Brett unpacks why there’s no such thing as a “typical” defense background. Brett traces his path from commercial consulting into defense, describing the moment he realized that some of the most capable people he’d ever met had chosen public service over more conventional tech careers. He makes the case that national security is a collective responsibility, and that closing today’s talent gap in defense is both possible and necessary.
The conversation also explores the shifting mission landscape, from strategic competition with China to pre-kinetic arenas – information, economic competition, access and basing – where the right technology can change outcomes long before conflict begins. For builders drawn to consequential problems, Brett argues, this is a rare moment when opportunity, capability, and urgency align.
“You don’t need a background in national security. You need curiosity, ownership, and the willingness to build alongside people doing hard things.”
- Brett Granberg, CEO of Vannevar Labs
If you’ve ever wondered whether there’s a place for you in defense, we hope this helps you think through your own journey to building with purpose.
Explore a career in defense at vannevarlabs.com/careers
Watch the full episode below, or listen wherever you get your podcasts:
Episode Transcript
Hayley Menser
In tech, I think the default is to work on commercial products, but at some point, a lot of people start to wonder whether they could find more meaning, or just contribute to something greater than themselves by working in national security or for public service. I want to talk about what that path looks like and how someone can know whether they're a good fit. So I guess I'll start by asking you what made you originally want to start working in defense and public service and what keeps you here.Brett Granberg
Yeah, so in terms of what originally made me want to work in defense, I started my career out at McKinsey and consulting, not for any reason other than I wanted to do a math PhD. My advisor said, hey, you're probably not smart enough to get into, one of the top three math programs, so you should consider something else and some of the smartest people I knew in that math program were actually going to McKinsey, so I ended up in McKinsey. I always had an interest in national security. I'm not totally sure why my, I have family members and grandparents and that that served, but when I got to McKinsey, the first couple projects I was working on were optimizing check, paper check processing efficiency. Those were the big projects that I got to work on and then the second project was baby lotion pricing in Brazil, and while both of these are important for somebody to think about, I didn't particularly enjoy spending 40 to 80 hours a week working on those topics, and so immediately when I got to McKinsey, I started pushing really hard to move to the DC office. I heard there was some interesting national security work going on and that led me to work on some defense prime projects. There's a couple of defense companies that I worked with, but also different parts of the intelligence community. And once I worked with the intelligence community, I got really hooked, because what I saw was people that were my age that were, really, really smart, that just decided to go on a different path than me, and I really felt those people needed to be supported and so that was the initial foray for me into defense that led me to go to In-Q-Tel and then I got more and more hooked. Vannevar came out of my experience in In-Q-Tel a little bit, so that was a little bit the initial journey for me.Hayley Menser
How would you describe the national security mission set, as a whole, to someone who is skeptical of it?Brett Granberg
Yeah, so I think for people that are skeptical, don't even worry about national security, take one step back and think about public service. So in this country, we are a representative democracy, which to me basically means you you get out what you put in. And so, I think of every decision that our government makes as something that we are responsible for. The government is just made up of us, it's just there's no we elect people in the government and then whoever chooses to go work in the government, that is, that is what the government is. So I think when I talk to people that are skeptical, it's usually, some distrust in the government and my my push on that is hey, yeah, that's totally fair. You, you can distrust the government, but it's also incumbent on you, it's literally your responsibility in a representative democracy to make the government better, and for you to put your own effort into it. It doesn't mean you need to put your whole career into it, that can look differently for different people, but it's not enough to just say that you don't want to. You should put in the effort at least. I'm just going to pick on Stanford, which, I'm obviously a fan of Stanford, but if you look at Stanford and when I was there in the 2018, 2019 time horizon, taking just the Stanford Engineering class that graduated that year, I would wager zero of them, I don't know, I was several of 100 people in the CS program, probably zero of them went to go work for the government or in any agency. Maybe one or two in national security way, but that pretty much rounds to zero. Same thing for the MBA folks, anybody who hadn't previously worked in government had any interest in going back into government and the people that were interested wanted to go into political appointee positions, not the roles where you're doing the groundwork of making the government better. And I think that's that's in contrast to a country Singapore, for example, which sends tons of really smart people into their public service. To people that are skeptical, I think that skepticism is totally fair, it's very normal, that's literally the whole point of the the democracy in the US is to be able to question what is your government doing. My push would just be: hey... it's also our responsibility, it's incumbent upon us to make that government better. So I would start there and then I would foray into national security specifically. But if we can get 1 or 2 more Stanford undergrads per year, to go into government anywhere, I think that would be incredible. That'd be a huge one.Hayley Menser
I don't know if you know the answer to this. What is it about Singapore culturally or structurally that makes those young people want to go into public service?Brett Granberg
Yeah, this is a great question. There are people that are going to be way smarter on this than me. I think one very key component is they pay public servants more money. It's viewed as a very prestigious job, whereas for me coming out of undergrad, going back to I didn't have a clear path coming out of undergrad, I was just following where the smart people went and that to me led me to consulting. For them, following where the smart people go leads you to go work for the government. It's just a different talent pool, some of that is compensation related, some of that is how the government is oriented, trying to set up so that people that are just joining can have more of an impact than joining as a GS 7 or something super low level in an agency. Singapore also is historically not quite the same type of democracy as we are. So there's just a lot of structural differences, but and I'm not saying we should copy Singapore's model, but just that that concept of wouldn't it be great if people weren't going to go work for McKinsey but we're actually going to go work for different government agencies. I feel that's a that's a positive thing and we should try to make that happen.Hayley Menser
What is it about this moment now that makes you say now is the time to come work in defense, why now?Brett Granberg
The time to work in defense has been the last decade for sure, but I think now is the most easy and there's the most opportunity. The reason I started Vannevar with Nini is because was when I was looking at what to do post In-Q-Tel, I knew I wanted to work in defense and I knew I wanted to be about building new technology because there's a huge gap between what the incumbents are able to provide versus what's actually needed for national security. The problem was that there were no options. The options were go be employee number 2000 or something at a company that's already been around for 20 years. Palantir is the company I'm talking about, which is not, it's not a bad option. Palantir is a good company, but that was it. Palantir, maybe SpaceX, but SpaceX was not primarily a defense company, it was primarily commercial, and then maybe, Anduril was really early at the time. There were not a lot of options 5 or 6 years ago, but there are a lot of options now. This has been a top problem for a decade, but nobody’s solved it. The the fundamental problem of we don't have the right engineering teams or product teams working on defense has been the case for a long time and it's still the case. And so I think it remains an extremely urgent, urgent thing. It hasn't changed, but now it's just that there's a lot more opportunity for people to go do this with us or with other companies too.Hayley Menser
I guess the second part of that is why now, why are there more opportunities, what is making defense tech spike in this environment?Brett Granberg
I think it's because I think it was 2017 when Anduril got started and in 2019 that we got started. And I think we were the first couple of defense-only companies that actually achieved real revenue growth. And it's rare in startups for for early tech companies to, get past 20 million in revenue. 20 million is super hard, for us we're around 80 million and Anduril's around a billion in revenue now. That's very much unheard of for just tech companies overall and so I think that was a breaking point for investors to be able to say OK, there are data points of defense-only companies being able to generate revenue and therefore it's actually an investable asset class where as before, it was not. It was not when we raised the seed round, and the Series A. Nobody cared about defense and it was an uphill battle the whole way. So I think you're seeing more capital come in because it's turns out that yes, when you have this, these market dynamics of $400 billion being spent on defense procurement are only going to maybe, roughly 10 or so companies and all those companies are underperforming. Literally you ask customers, the government on particular programs, these companies are underperforming on many of these programs, those market dynamics are very good for new entrants. If you can come in and do something better, you can start eating that, that's a lot of market share to eat with very little product and technology competition. So I think that that's been the biggest change is people are starting to see, oh, this can actually work. Therefore, more money is coming in, which means more teams are able to operate, more companies are getting created. Obviously, the macro environment, the geopolitical environment has warmed up in the past decade.Hayley Menser
I’m not necessarily asking you to predict the future here, but where do the mission set of defense tech companies is broadly going over the next decade?Brett Granberg
The top priority is going to be China, competition with China, that's a huge problem. China has more shipbuilding capacity than us by possibly orders of magnitude, possibly at parity platforms in some key domains, but produced at again a maybe 5 or 10x lower price point. China is going to be the most important national security priority. I think for the next 4 years, what we're seeing with the the new administration in the White House is you're seeing China up there, you're also seeing counter-narcotics being a top priority. I think that's going to be a problem certainly for the next 4 years and I think it's a problem that's worth working on and worth solving. Outside of that, things change significantly, but I think for us it's just about staying laser focused on competition with China. And then invest our additional R&D in other areas as we see fit. China, I know it's going to be on that list for the next 10 years.Hayley Menser
So let's say that all really resonates with someone who hears this as an engineer who is curious about getting into defense tech, but maybe feels an outsider to the national security mission, just given. Background or lack thereof in the space, what would you say to that person?Brett Granberg
I guess what I would say is we just had one of our teammates who does not have a defense background, actually just came to us straight out of undergrad, but has been at Vannevar for 3+ years now. She just went on an aircraft carrier deployment, for 16 days. They’re not supposed to be that long, but she was embedded. She was the only civilian for the majority of that deployment, embedded with the operations and intelligence team on that aircraft carrier deployment. If that's exciting to you. Then you should work in defense because that's what working in defense is all about. It's about being able to go forward with the mission users that have the problem and help them make their jobs easier or or do some, damage on a particular mission problem. So I think it's more about hey, what, what are you excited about more than anything else. What's really interesting, and I think it's actually a misconception about the military, is that there is no background. It's just people of all backgrounds end up in the military. I think there's a perception that it is one type of person and that has not been my experience. It's actually an extremely diverse set of people, and I think, so there's no are you going to fit in with this group or not? And then the other part of it is hey, when you're forward deployed with people, everybody's on the same team. It doesn't matter if you're stuck on an aircraft carrier with people. You're going to make friends with the people on that aircraft carrier. If that thing is interesting for folks, that is how you end up working in defense. For me it was contrasting that life with the life of sitting on my laptop, in Excel, working baby lotion prices, for supermarkets or whatever. Those are very different experiences in terms of where you feel fulfillment. So it's just more hey, what is interesting, how do you want to spend your time?Hayley Menser
What do you think people misunderstand about working in defense tech or the mission as a whole?Brett Granberg
I think it goes back to what I was saying around public service. I think it goes in waves of how people feel about this based on what's happening more in politics in America. But defense is not a partisan issue. It's a nonpartisan issue and for Vannevar, we have people that are Republican, Democrat, and independents at the company. We're not here to support specific political parties. We're here to just do what's right by the public servants that we're asking to do these important missions. That's probably the one thing that I think we see: ebb and flow a little bit. Is defense political or not? It's national security for us. It's not political. Our job is just support that the national security mission for the United States regardless of what the more broad macro situation is. And then it goes back to my earlier point of - hey, if you don't agree or don't believe in something that the government is doing, my personal belief is it's incumbent upon you to participate and make it better versus choosing to not participate, which also is a valid, choice sometimes. My macro message to people that are skeptical is just - yes, your skepticism is extremely useful, you should apply your talent to change the thing that that you are skeptical about. —Hayley Menser
If someone is choosing or deciding between working at another big successful tech company, maybe on potentially national security adjacent products, AR/VR at Apple for example or, AI at Meta, or any other company that's doing that - What are the trade-offs between working at a company on a project that versus working at a company like Vannavar?Brett Granberg
I think it really is just ownership of what and how much of an impact you are going to have and what are you going to own. For us, we built, our first hardware product, an RF sensor that we built to try to detect specific signals coming off of ships in certain locations around the world. And that team started with 2 people, maybe, maybe 3 people we round up, and that single 3 person team built a V0, deployed it overseas on a literal island to detect ships in 4 months. If you take that and apply it the Facebook version of that is - right, we're going to take 100 engineers and there's probably not going to be clear ownership. Maybe your piece of the pie is some very small segment of the thing you're working on. And it's going to take 1 or 2 years. There's nothing wrong with working at big tech companies. I think you actually learn a lot from that experience, but it's just that if you want to build things quickly with with small teams where you're actually engaged with the users on a mission problem, you can't do that. You structurally can't really do that at bigger companies. Startups are the only answer for people that really 0 to 1 stuff.Hayley Menser
Would you have the same answer for a big tech company versus a defense prime, because at least in the defense prime you're working directly on that problem.Brett Granberg
The Problem with defense primes - and there's actually some really smart people that work at the primes, some I've worked with before - the challenge with defense primes is more structural than anything else. You have these organizations that have often been around for 80 years, not exaggerating, and their decision making process and how they operate has been completely shaped by the government's procurement process. So the people that are usually the smartest people at defense primes, they're A players, they put on sales and program requirements and program shaping and capture, which is a very useful function, but it's not building the thing. It's not building the product or doing the engineering, and the reasons why they do that are business incentive reasons. They make their money off of winning these very large, often times cost plus programs that take 3 years to shape and win with program managers and so that's how their entire organization is aligned. It's not aligned to build new things and so if you try to go into a defense prime and build something new, even though the leadership might be very smart and completely well-intentioned, you're going to be fighting an uphill battle for no reason, basically the entire time until the project suffocates. So I think there's some counterexamples that you could use, but not very many, and that's why companies like us and Anduril and others are able to come in and eat large parts of the market that we should not be able to go in and eat. But the only reason we're able to do it is because of complacency. There are structural setups that prevent these big companies from actually making product bets on tech areas that are new for them. So, a lot of things that are good about the primes - I think you can learn a ton, especially on the BD side. There are some things that you can learn at a defense prime that may be useful at a smaller company. The sale cycle is still very different, but that would be a hard one between a Google and a Boeing. I think it would be very manager dependent on how to make that choice. If you knew the manager at the defense prime and knew they were really good, then maybe that's a better path, but that would be a hard call. But if you are going from 0 to 1, work at a startup. I don't mean to knock the defense primes, but there's a reason we exist and there's a reason we've been able to be successful and that's largely due to the defense primes not keeping pace with what they've needed to keep pace with.Hayley Menser
So we talked a little bit about the mission of Vannavar to deter conflict with China. I want to ask you about deterrence and why that distinction is important to you.Brett Granberg
At least for the China fight, there are a lot of people that focus on kinetic deterrence and actually the majority of the government thinks about it in this way - which is how do we build more capable fighter jets or, more, bigger aircraft carriers? These sorts of things are really expensive and oftentimes geared towards fighting the last war and oftentimes are meant to be kinetic, have a kinetic end effect in nature, meaning we're going to go, destroy all the, PLA navy ships, which is very important, we need to be able to do that, that's an important mission. I think the better focus is not needing to use those assets. I think it's better to not have to go to war in that way. And certainly being able to demonstrate capability overmatch - our fighters are just so much more sophisticated than yours that you can't win a fight is part of that. But there's a lot of competition that happens outside of the kinetic realm - not really related to is our fighter more capable or not - that definitely shapes the odds of us going to war. And so when we focus on China, we focus a lot on the competition domain and things like economic warfare, access and basing - where do we have assets and in airfields and fuel supply depots - and where does the CCP have access to those and how do we shape the terrain so that, it's advantageous to us and not to them is really important.Hayley Menser
What's that saying? It's an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. OK, last question in this line of thought: let's say an engineer or someone is coming to Vannevar or some other defense tech startup from their big tech job or just from, general commercial tech industry. What do you think would be the biggest surprise that they would encounter?Brett Granberg
There are probably a lot of surprises a lot of surprises. I think the main one is just being able to go on a military base and talk to people and watch people doing some important intelligence function or some important operations function is crazy for a lot of people that haven't experienced that before. The other shock is going to be size. So again, Facebook is really big, which means it's slower to get things done, but it also has a lot of really useful support functions. If you're an engineer, maybe you don't have to worry about infrastructure and DevOps nearly as much as you would at a startup. When we say there's a 3 person engineering team that's building an RF sensor, we literally mean that the engineers are also assembling the RF kit in our New York office. We have to build a bunch of kits, parts of which are scattered across the office because the team was coming in to assemble these things before going overseas. That's also part of the job. It's so you have a more ownership, more freedom and flexibility to do what you want. We also have way less support. That can be good or bad depending on the type of person.
