In this first part of the Forbes Books Radio "Boss Podcast," host Gregory Shepard interviews venture capitalist, speaker, and author Scott Amex. The conversation begins with Amex’s Forbes article on technological innovation challenges in defense, where he explains the Department of Defense’s 3rd Offset strategy—also called “spin‑on innovation”—that seeks to bring private‑sector technologies (e.g., quantum computing, cybersecurity, AI) into the military. He highlights cultural and organizational hurdles within the DOD, noting that senior officers are trained in traditional mindsets that make rapid adoption of abstract, cutting‑edge tech difficult. Shepard asks how entrepreneurs can work with the military. Amex outlines the current landscape: most defense contracts still flow to large tech firms (Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon, Google), but startups can gain traction if they offer novel, high‑impact solutions. Success often depends on having a “military DNA,” such as former officers or advisors who understand procurement pathways and can navigate the multi‑branch buying process. He describes his firm’s advisory council of retired and active officers that evaluates promising technologies, helps shape solutions, and makes introductions to decision‑makers across defense, space, and longevity sectors. A concrete example is discussed: a portfolio company that uses image‑recognition and machine‑learning to identify fabrics, illustrating how a technical capability can be matched to a defense problem. The interview then pivots to Amex’s upcoming book, The Human Race: How Humans Can Survive in the Robot Age. He explains the book’s motivation: the accelerating displacement of workers by AI, autonomous vehicles, and robotics. He cites mass‑media narratives and public figures like Elon Musk that amplify fear, but argues the issue should be approached rationally. While some workers will face permanent unemployment, Amex believes the majority can be reskilled if society structures the transition thoughtfully. He gives examples of automation in logistics, retail, and fast‑food drive‑throughs, and stresses that the future need not be dystopian if policies and business models adapt. The episode ends with a teaser for part two, promising deeper dives into space survivability, DNA‑sequencing capital raising, and entrepreneurial advice.
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Gregory Shepard, an entrepreneur who's built and sold 12 businesses, a recipient of 4 private equity awards, TEDx speaker, and Forbes author. This is The Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard.
You've heard me talk to pitch masters, entrepreneurs, and war heroes. Today I'm joined by Scott Amex. He's a venture capitalist, speaker, and author. You've seen him in places like TechCrunch, TEDx, and Time. Scott, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much for having me, Greg.
It's, it's an honor, really. Thank you. I wanted to start out with this piece that you wrote in Forbes in July titled The Technological Innovation Challenges in Defense.
First of all, tell us what the US military has done to fund and nurture First of all, I'm certainly not an expert in this category per se, but if you look at a lot of the things that we take for granted, whether it's the internet, satellite, and just about everything, including the semiconductor chip, a lot of that was actually historically developed for military, and it was their research and development that over time matured and crossed over to the private sector.
And in the piece, you talk about how the DOD has responded to the need for rapid innovation through its 3rd offset strategy.
Yeah, I really had a very interesting conversation with a retired colonel, Colonel Liam. There is definitely desire to put into effect this thing called spin-on innovation, which it really is this 3rd offset strategy, which is referring to the fact that And they're looking to the private sector to be able to actually onboard new technologies for incorporation into their various, you know, defense. The challenge that they're having is even though they have new organizations and facilities like the Defense Innovation Units, there are still a lot of, I would say, organizational development and change management that's happening within the military that is frankly a little bit slower to take. And I think the way that—
I like the way you put that so gently.
The way the colonel positioned it is that when these officers are trained and move up in the ranks, they're taught in a kind of a traditional approach. So it's harder for them to recalibrate, to think about things that are more intangible, quantum computing and quantum cybersecurity, for instance. These are kind of abstract things that perhaps maybe they don't necessarily have the domain expertise. Or nor it's, you know, clear enough in terms of, you know, how is this going to make an impact on the field?
Mm-hmm. I had a guest on this podcast, actually, Captain Scott Tate, who now works for the Innovation Catalyst at UC San Diego and was the captain of the Zumwalt, which is, you know, one of the most sophisticated battleships. And he said the same thing, that now they're reaching out of the military and into universities and accelerators and other places to try to find the newest, latest, greatest technology that's coming in. And to your point, traditionally they've been pretty slow about it. The University of Defense has been more aggressive about that too. So there could be these new opportunities coming out of this world. When you look at that and you think about that as a package, how does this relationship with the military and the private sector work? If an entrepreneur is listening right now and they have a project that could be developed by the military, how would they go about doing that?
Well, first of all, if you look at it just in terms of data and historical engagement with the military, contracting dollars are really still to a great extent going to the larger big tech companies, the likes of Cisco, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. However, there are opportunities for startups to get into the action because of their novelty or usefulness specifically calibrated But again, I think there is again that kind of pragmatic realism versus aspiration. So working with the military, as much as there are new vehicles and scouting programs that are out there, it is still nonetheless very difficult to navigate. And it's one of those things, it's not like you're selling into a singular buyer. If you get into DOD, it's not sufficient because now you have to sell into the various different military branches.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
The ones that tend to do better are the ones that have some underlying DNA, or maybe they're able to onboard former military officers or someone of, you know, certain position that really understands how to navigate this space. You know, you're not just selling into a B2B type of model here.
So your advice would be like, for example, get somebody with a military pedigree and have them guide you through that process?
It depends on every startup, but I do think that you need someone who really a good grasp of that landscape and really have the existing, preexisting relationships.
And is there any specific places to go for that or is it something you just have to go out there and start looking in coach websites and mentor websites and accelerators and stuff like that trying to find somebody who has a military pedigree and understands how they operate?
Yeah, that's a tough one. I don't think there is one singular approach to securing or sourcing that kind of a resource. It really comes down to what you're looking for. But one thing that I would caveat is that for a startup, though perhaps maybe they're focusing defense, I think a more kind of natural, kind of organic approach is they're first and foremost really interested in solving a technical problem.
So we have 2 companies in our portfolio. One of them does image recognition and then uses ML to tag and tableize all of the images it sees. And it specifically focuses on fabrics. So it can look at a fabric and it could say, oh, it's made out of this and it's this kind of fabric, so on and so forth. So they can get a database of all of the different fabrics. It's common for manufacturers to use the same fabrics and materials and that sort of thing. And so that's an example of like image recognition combination with, you know, machine learning and NLP, natural language processing, to put together the labels. So that's an example of somebody that could say, hey, listen, we have the ability to do this, and then see if the military has a need or And the reason why I say that is because problems are opportunities, and sometimes the hardest thing is to find a really good problem in something like the military.
When we find something that's super interesting and has really technical superiority, then we will actually bring in, in this case, our next level of advisory board that's made up of essentially military officers that are really in that space, both retired and active. And we'll get them to chime in in terms of what do they think, and is this a viable solution? a real technical solution that will solve a big problem that the military is facing. So, we basically have a council of domain experts in that sector. And again, we're just talking about defense for now, but we also cover space and we also cover life extension and longevity and survivability on Earth as well as in space. So, we have those panels that we can go to and allow them to help and shape. And then, when it's appropriate, They will then help make those introductions or connections into the decision makers within, in this case, the military, for example, and be able to see if it in fact really has legs and there's a demand signal that indicates that they'd like to explore further.
I want to switch gears, but before I do that, because this is so helpful for a lot of people in the military space, how can they get a hold of you?
The best way to get a hold of me is probably through my website, just simply scottamix.com, and through that, They should have a way to connect with me directly or via social media.
Okay, so let's switch gears a little bit. You have a new book coming out entitled The Human Race: How Humans Can Survive in the Robot Age. And so I was looking at this and I was like, this is, this is a pretty active subject matter a lot because Elon Musk is, you know, pretty avid speaker about this. What was the inspiration for that book?
So thanks for that question. So yeah, when we think about things like AI, robotics, and various other forms of autonomy and the potential for displacement of certain segments of the population, it's not something that we want to just, you know, brush it under the rug. We need to face that and we need to understand what that really means and the true fallout from that. Now, I will take a step back and say, when we watch, you know, mass media, and I think there was a video documentary that came out maybe about a year ago or so around the implications of AI where If I'm a truck driver, and certainly in the US, many people are employed in the logistics and supply chain.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah.
And when those trucks become autonomous and reach level 4 and do not actively need the supervision of a human computational layer, meaning they don't need human drivers, then what's going to happen? I think it's a bit of a slippery slope, but they're still nonetheless interesting to explore is that Those people then are going to be displaced, and that also goes for the Ubers and Lyft drivers as well. So where are they going to go look? Well, they're going to go to retail, such as, let's say, you know, clothing store. But the clothing stores have shut down because of movement towards e-commerce, or if the ones that are actually still surviving on a retail physical context, they're employing more automation, whether it's robotics or self-checkout or, you know, computer vision that automatically knows that you And so then they start to look at fast food. Well, I know one of the startups that we're working with is potentially going to be in just about every fast food restaurant where they're going to provide the virtual interaction on the drive-through. So you're not going to speak to a human being anymore. You're going to speak to a virtual assistant that sounds and behaves and acts just like a human to an extent, at least in terms of the interaction. You can't perceivably understand that it's not human and be able to order everything on the menu. And then, of course, in the kitchen, it's going to be robotic arms and so forth. And part of it, I think, is the mass media and the content or the film industry that has created this artificial construct around the fear of AI in the worst way possible.
Elon Musk has made some comments too that are a little scare the hell outta people, to be honest.
Right.
I love the guy, but some of the stuff he says, you're like, whoa. So I understand this is like a big movement toward, I mean, this is a tsunami I've been thinking about too. And so what, go on please. I just wanted to add that in and you have my attention. I'm super focused in on you.
So the thing is, I think the way I think is that we always have to think in terms of from a very balanced rational perspective. Yes, are there going to be pockets of the population that's going to be displaced? There are some people that are just going to be structurally displaced and unemployed perpetually for the remainder of their life, either because they just don't have the motivation or they really don't have the fundamental skill set or the capability to retrain, whatever the reason might be. So that is true, but we think that that's a smaller segment. The context of, you know, this book and the premise is that it doesn't have to be bad per se. But rather it's about how we structure it.
You're so focused on the future. It seems like there are 2 particular areas that you're super passionate about: surviving and thriving in space and raising capital for DNA sequencing. We're going to do a deep dive on those subjects in part 2 of my interview with Scott Amex, the world-renowned venture capitalist, speaker, and author. Also in part 2, Scott has some serious advice for entrepreneurs.
There is nothing from a life lesson than failure and past experience. It's those humbling experiences and successes that over time builds up who we are.
Thanks for checking out the Boss Podcast with Gregory Shepard. Get more on Greg's business operating support system, Boss, at GregoryShepard.com. This has been a production of Forbes Books Radio.
