
Unit X
How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War
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Narrated by:
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Sean Patrick Hopkins
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Raj M. Shah
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Christopher Kirchhoff
About this listen
A riveting inside look at an elite unit within the Pentagon—the Defense Innovation Unit, also known as Unit X—whose mission is to bring Silicon Valley’s cutting-edge technology to America’s military: from the two men who launched the unit.
A vast and largely unseen transformation of how war is fought as profound as the invention of gunpowder or advent of the nuclear age is occurring. Flying cars that can land like helicopters, artificial intelligence-powered drones that can fly into buildings and map their interiors, microsatellites that can see through clouds and monitor rogue missile sites—all these and more are becoming part of America’s DIU-fast-tracked arsenal.
Until recently, the Pentagon was known for its uncomfortable relationship with Silicon Valley and for slow-moving processes that acted as a brake on innovation. Unit X was specifically designed as a bridge to Valley technologists that would accelerate bringing state of the art software and hardware to the battle space. Given authority to cut through red tape and function almost as a venture capital firm, Shah, Kirchhoff, and others in the Unit who came after were tasked particularly with meeting immediate military needs with technology from Valley startups rather than from so-called “primes”—behemoth companies like Lockheed, Raytheon, and Boeing.
Taking us inside AI labs, drone workshops, and battle command centers—and, also, overseas to Ukraine’s frontlines—Shah and Kirchhoff paint a fascinating picture of what it takes to stay dominant in a fast-changing and often precarious geopolitical landscape.
In an era when America’s chief rival, China, has ordered that all commercial firms within its borders make their research and technology available for military exploitation, strengthening the relationship between Washington and Silicon Valley was always advisable. Today, it is an urgent necessity.
©2024 Raj Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff (P)2024 Simon & Schuster AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Story
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 dawned what Francis Fukuyama called “The End of History.” Three decades later, Jim Sciutto said on CNN’s air as the Ukraine war began, that we are living in a “1939 moment.” History never ended—it barely paused—and the global order as we have known it is now gone. Great powers are reinvigorated and determined to assert dominance on the world stage. And as it escalates, this new order will affect everyone across the globe.
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Disappointing
- By Douglas Peifer on 03-14-24
By: Jim Sciutto
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Four Battlegrounds
- Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
- By: Paul Scharre
- Narrated by: Steve Marvel
- Length: 13 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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A new industrial revolution has begun. Like mechanization or electricity before it, artificial intelligence will touch every aspect of our lives—and cause profound disruptions in the balance of global power, especially among the AI superpowers: China, the United States, and Europe. Autonomous weapons expert Paul Scharre takes listeners inside the fierce competition to develop and implement this game-changing technology and dominate the future.
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Insights into AI military applications and possibilities
- By BErickson on 07-04-23
By: Paul Scharre
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Rinsed
- From Cartels to Crypto: How the Tech Industry Washes Money for the World's Deadliest Crooks
- By: Geoff White
- Narrated by: Geoff White
- Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Money laundering has been around for centuries. For as long as people have been stealing money, there's been an industry ready to wash it. But recent tech innovations have created vastly complex new systems for laundering that threaten to overwhelm authorities, destabilise economies and disrupt societies. Ranging from the flamboyant luxury of Dubai hotels to quiet coastal Ireland, from the UK to Nigeria and from Indonesia to North Korea, Rinsed is a truly global relevatory investigation into the new army of innovative launderers ... and the consequences for all of us.
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Almost but not quite plagiarism
- By T.T. on 06-19-24
By: Geoff White
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Owned
- How Tech Billionaires on the Right Bought the Loudest Voices on the Left
- By: Eoin Higgins
- Narrated by: Ramiz Monsef
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Owned is the story of the underreported and growing collusion between new wealth and new journalism. In recent years, right-wing billionaires like Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Marc Andreessen, and David Sacks have turned to media as their next investment and source of influence. Their cronies are Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi—once known as idealistic and left-leaning voices, now beneficiaries of Silicon Valley largesse. Together, this new alliance aims to exploit the failings of traditional journalism and undermine the very idea of an independent and fact-based fourth estate.
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More of a screed than an analysis
- By Jamie on 03-01-25
By: Eoin Higgins
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F-35
- The Inside Story of the Lightning II
- By: Tom Burbage, Betsy Clark, Adrian Pitman, and others
- Narrated by: Rob Reider
- Length: 17 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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F-35 is the only inside look at the most advanced aircraft in the world and the historic project that built it, as told by those who were intimately involved in its design, testing, and production. Based on the authors' personal experience and over 100+ interviews, F-35 pulls back the curtain on one of the most heavily criticized government programs in history from start to finish.
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Corporate Propaganda
- By Kindle Customer on 10-04-24
By: Tom Burbage, and others
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The New Rules of War
- Victory in the Age of Durable Disorder
- By: Sean McFate
- Narrated by: Joe Knezevich
- Length: 8 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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What is the future of war? How can we survive? If Americans are drawn into major armed conflict, can we win? McFate calls upon the legends of military study Carl von Clausewitz, Sun Tzu, and others, as well as his own experience, and carefully constructs the new rules for the future of military engagement, the ways we can fight and win in an age of entropy: one where corporations, mercenaries, and rogue states have more power and ‘nation states’ have less.
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Refutes Himself Repeatedly...And Never Notices
- By Brian on 01-06-21
By: Sean McFate
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Gambling Man
- The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son
- By: Lionel Barber
- Narrated by: Keong Sim
- Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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As Wall Street swooned and boomed through the last decade, our livelihoods have—now more than ever—come to rely upon the good sense and risk appetites of a few standout investors. And amidst the BlackRocks, Vanguards, and Berkshire Hathaways stands arguably the most iconoclastic of them all: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son. In Gambling Man, the first Western biography of Son, the self-professed unicorn hunter, we go behind the scenes of the world’s most monied halls of power in New York, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Saudi Arabia, and beyond.
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A deep look into the life of a man who doesn’t quit!
- By JoeShon Monroe on 04-22-25
By: Lionel Barber
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7 Seconds to Die
- A Military Analysis of the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War and the Future of Warfighting
- By: John Antal, Alexander Kott - foreword
- Narrated by: Jim Seybert
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The second Nagorno-Karabakh war—fought between Armenia and Azerbaijan between September 24 and November 10, 2020—was the first war in history won primarily by unmanned systems. This forty-four-day war resulted in a decisive military victory for Azerbaijan. Armenia was outfought, outnumbered, and outspent and lost even though they controlled the high ground in a mountainous region. The fact that Azerbaijan won the war is not extraordinary. What is exceptional is that this was the first modern war primarily decided by unmanned weapons.
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Military tactic summary for the 2nd Azerbijan and Armenia conflict
- By George Burdick on 01-03-25
By: John Antal, and others
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Tribal
- How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together
- By: Michael Morris
- Narrated by: Michael Morris
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Tribalism is our most misunderstood buzzword. We’ve all heard pundits bemoan its rise, and it’s been blamed for everything from political polarization to workplace discrimination. But as acclaimed cultural psychologist and Columbia professor Michael Morris argues, our tribal instincts are humanity’s secret weapon. Ours is the only species that lives in tribes: groups glued together by their distinctive cultures that can grow to a scale far beyond clans and bands. Morris argues that our psychology is wired by evolution in three distinctive ways.
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Well educated, institutionally, but otherwise naive
- By Zirrus on 12-14-24
By: Michael Morris
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A Clean Kill in Tokyo
- A John Rain Novel
- By: Barry Eisler
- Narrated by: Barry Eisler
- Length: 8 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Half American, half Japanese, expert in both worlds but at home in neither, John Rain is the best killer money can buy. You tell him who. You tell him where. He doesn’t care about why... Until he gets involved with Midori Kawamura, a beautiful jazz pianist - and the daughter of his latest kill.
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Intelligent, engaging, clever, and instructive
- By Cholmondeley on 07-04-16
By: Barry Eisler
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Dark Wire
- The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
- By: Joseph Cox
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim
- Length: 11 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes--the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organized crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement. Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld.
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Amazing story
- By Katie W. on 06-08-24
By: Joseph Cox
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Default
- The Landmark Court Battle over Argentina's $100 Billion Debt Restructuring
- By: Gregory Makoff, Lee C. Buchheit - foreword
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Default is the riveting story of Argentina's sovereign debt drama, which reveals the obscure inner workings of sovereign debt restructuring. This detailed case study describes the intense fight over the role of the IMF in Argentina's 2005 debt restructuring and the ensuing bitter decade of litigation with holdout creditors, demonstrating that outcomes for sovereign debt are determined by a complex interplay between financial markets, governments, the IMF, the press, and the courts.
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Delivers on promise
- By Lukk on 06-28-24
By: Gregory Makoff, and others
Hope for our national security!
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Excellent Current Event
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Cautionary tale
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More on politics than on technology
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Connects the dots
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Great eye opener
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This was an excellent read, and I highly recommend.
Thoroughly Enjoyed
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Sustained Leadership
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Want next?
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Insider’s view of bureaucratic warfare
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