"First Kill!" - Palantir, Nuclear War, Bio-Hybrids & AC-130 Bombing | Jesse Hamel • 377
Julian Dorey · 27 Jan 2026 · 2h 41m
Guest: Jesse Hamel · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
This conversation is built around Jesse Hamel, a retired Air Force officer who spent two decades flying and commanding AC-130 gunships in combat before founding a drone and AI defense company that has worked with Palantir. The episode moves from his personal path into the military after 9/11 and the mechanics of gunship warfare, into a much broader argument about great-power competition with China. Hamel lays out a thesis that anything monetized will eventually be weaponized, and argues that Chinese telecom infiltration, intellectual property theft, and manufacturing scale represent a more serious long-term threat than people appreciate. From there the discussion widens into AI, biohybrid robotics grown from living neurons and muscle tissue, and genetic engineering projects like Colossal's mammoth de-extinction work, with both men wrestling openly with how close these technologies sit to catastrophic misuse. Hamel repeatedly frames the debate as a choice between American leadership in these fields or ceding ground to authoritarian rivals, while also warning against surveillance overreach and the erosion of individual liberty. Later sections turn personal and philosophical: how commanders make life-and-death decisions in seconds, how anxiety and past trauma can be reshaped into professional strength, and how Hamel reconciles his Christian faith with having killed in combat, including a long reflection on moral clarity versus self-justifying double-mindedness. It closes with an unflinching account of the psychological toll drone and gunship warfare takes on operators.
Ask this show a question Watch on YouTube
What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- 9/11 and joining the Air Force
- AC-130 gunship training and combat
- Bond between war fighters and their weapons
- CCP infiltration of US telecom
- AI arms race and the 'agentic age'
- Bio-hybrid robots from living cells
- De-extinction and Colossal Labs' guardrails
- Working with Palantir
- Decision-making frameworks under pressure
- Psychology and morality of killing from a distance
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“In my perspective, it was merciful.”
“Any area of human activity that has been monetized will be weaponized.”
“Every single aspect of the US telecom system the CCP's fully penetrated.”
“If we do it wrong, we will enslave our kids and ourselves maybe permanently.”