131. Edge AI for the Warfighter with Jason Rathje, President of Public Sector at webAI

Most AI being built for the military assumes a steady connection to a data center. In a contested fight, that connection is one of the first things to go. Jason Rathje has spent a decade building new ways for commercial companies and capital to reach national security, and now he’s building AI that runs on the devices soldiers already carry. He joins Tyler to talk about designing AI from the edge up, and what the defense tech market looks like after ten years of change.

What's happening on the second front:

• Why local-first architecture wins when power, latency, and connectivity are the real constraints
• How small, mission-tuned models for comms, intel, and fires can work together like a fire team
• What a peer-to-peer AI mesh makes possible when there’s no central service to call back to
• Why talent follows capital, and how new government financing tools changed the math on hard tech
• The case for keeping dual use, critical minerals, and the industrial base in the national security conversation

Jason is President of Public Sector at webAI and the founding director of the DOW’s Office of Strategic Capital, and previously ran AFWERX’s AFVentures program after six years as an Air Force engineer.