Rickover’s Playbook: Building Hard Things Inside the State

Admiral Rickover — America’s most famous, perhaps most influential admiral of the second half of the 20th century. To discuss his unbelievable life story, dramatic impact on the Cold War, and implications for the future of what the U.S. government should do when it tries to build hard things, we have two guests — Charles Yang, founder of the Center for Industrial Strategy, who also does AI science work at Renaissance Philanthropy, and Emmett Penney of FAI.

We discuss:

• Rickover’s immigrant origin story from Polish village to almost being deported at Ellis Island and his improbable path into the Naval Academy.

• Drive, discipline, expertise, and how Rickover bent Washington to his will.

• Rickover as tyrant, teacher, technocrat — what his contradictions reveal about leadership, power, and effectiveness.

• Why Rickover matters now — nuclear revival, defense procurement reform, engineers vs. lawyers, and a major archival digitization effort.

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