The New Founding Podcast

Today, Santiago & Josh interview Ethan Thornton, Founder of Mach Industries, to discuss the future of warfare, drones, and what Mach Industries is building to prepare the US to win the next conflict.

The future of warfare is mass-scale unmanned drone & hypersonic missiles.

Total victory depends on the ability to build the most, the fastest, and the cheapest.

Ethan Thornton dropped out of MIT and raised ~$90m at 19 years old to tackle this problem.

This is the first look at Mach Industries: America’s next-gen warfare factory.

Part I - Factory Walkthrough

(0:41) Viper: autonomous VTOL cruise missile

(3:00) Scaling from one Viper/day to thousands/month

(8:05) Balancing flexibility and automation in manufacturing

(12:35) How a former Boeing facility became the heart of Mach’s operations

(16:26) Additive manufacturing for rapid R&D

(22:23) Aerodynamic testing with trucks and subscale models

(25:10) Composite materials and flexible processes

(29:03) Why iterative production is crucial for the future of warfare

Part II - Sit-down Interview

(30:41) Ethan’s path: from making knives to making drones

(33:37) "A company is just a tool to achieve your goals."

(37:00) Scaling production is the game

(45:58) Learning to build on his Grandfather's farm

(56:43) “The stratosphere is the most important domain of the next century.”

(57:19) Mastering the finance of manufacturing

(1:01:31) Lessons from the UKR-RUS conflict

Learn more about Ethan Thornton's work:

https://machindustries.com

https://x.com/mach_industries

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The New Founding Podcast is recorded at the New Founding HQ in Dallas, Texas, produced by Santiago Pliego & Joshua Clemans, and edited by Jared Cummings.

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