This week on All Quiet on the Second Front, Tyler sits down with Brian MacCarthy to talk about why defense innovation keeps getting stuck between good ideas and real delivery. They dig into why the ecosystem keeps confusing motion with progress, and what it takes to get past pilots and into production.

What’s Happening on the Second Front:

• Why capital without execution doesn’t move the mission
• The real friction slowing commercial tech adoption in government
• Culture change as the hardest (and most necessary) battleground
• Why “prime vs. neoprime” misses the point
• What it actually takes to move from pilots to scaled impact

Connect with Brian

• LinkedIn: Brian MacCarthy

Connect with Tyler

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt

Leaving the uniform doesn’t mean leaving your identity behind.

In this episode of All Quiet on the Second Front, Tyler Sweatt sits down with Bill Wall — former Green Beret, JSOC veteran, and CEO of Accrete AI Government — to talk about transition, purpose, and why the skills forged in special operations translate far beyond the battlefield.

What's happening on the Second Front:

• How military frameworks like F3EA translate directly to business growth
• Why identity loss — not skills — is the hardest part of leaving the uniform
• What it really takes to drive innovation inside institutions that resist change
• How AI is maturing inside government, and where it actually delivers value
• The role of risk tolerance and financial resilience in post-military success
• Why meaningful progress rarely comes from easy or comfortable answers

In this episode of All Quiet on the Second Front, Tyler sits down with former US Congressman Brad Carson to examine one perspective in the evolving debate around AI governance, public trust, and national security.

Brad brings decades of experience across government, academia, and policy, having served two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and in senior Department of Defense leadership roles. He is now President of Americans for Responsible Innovation, where he focuses on AI policy and public trust.

The conversation explores frontier AI risks, innovation versus regulation, and the tradeoffs policymakers face as public skepticism around AI continues to grow.

What’s happening on the Second Front:

• AI governance and competing views on guardrails
• Frontier AI risks and national security implications
• Public trust, skepticism, and potential backlash
• Innovation, regulation, and policy tradeoffs
• Workforce impacts and public perception of AI

Connect with Brad

• LinkedIn: Brad Carson

Connect with Tyler Sweatt

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt

On this episode of All Quiet on the Second Front, Tyler Sweatt sits down with Meghan Moretti, CEO of the Johnny Mac Soldiers Fund, to talk about service beyond the uniform and what it takes to sustain impact long after the fight fades from the headlines.

A West Point classmate and former Army MP, Meghan shares her path from the military to healthcare to leading one of the most impactful military family nonprofits in the country. The conversation explores leadership transitions, generational responsibility, and why community, not just capital, is essential to honoring service and sacrifice.

What’s Happening on the Second Front

• Why nonprofit leadership is faster and harder than most people expect
• The scale of need facing military families as the next generation reaches college age
• How community and storytelling cut through generational numbness
• What meaningful service looks like after the uniform comes off

In this episode of All Quiet on the Second Front, Tyler Sweatt is joined by Fred Thomas, UK Member of Parliament for Plymouth Moor View, Royal Marines Reservist, and member of the House of Commons Defence Committee.

Fred brings a perspective shaped by time in uniform and now inside Parliament, where he focuses on modernizing defense capability and accelerating the adoption of new technology. Together, they examine how allied defense ecosystems can move faster without sacrificing sovereignty, why procurement and information-sharing remain persistent friction points, and where NATO and partner nations have real opportunity to collaborate more effectively.

The conversation spans the UK, US, and broader NATO landscape at a moment when security, technology, and public trust are increasingly intertwined.

What's happening on the Second Front:

• Why defense innovation continues to lag behind the threat
• The tension between sovereignty and interoperability across allied nations
• NATO’s underutilized role in collaborative procurement
• Where emerging technologies could unlock advantage in the next 3–5 years
• The role of public service and cohesion in long-term security

Connect with Fred Thomas

Connect with Tyler Sweatt

This week, Tyler is joined by Adam Lackey, COO of Onebrief, for a conversation on building mission-ready software that operators champion. Adam breaks down how Onebrief’s culture of iteration, empathy, and urgency shapes everything—from watching users stress-test the product to delivering changes in hours, not days.

They dig into Onebrief’s evolution from a kanban board to a full mission-planning platform, why “don’t be the contractor no one wants in the room” is a guiding principle, and how true value comes from mastering workflows, eliminating friction, and meeting users at their exact point of need.

Adam also reflects on the broader purpose of defense tech: preparing so well that capabilities deter conflict rather than drive it.

A candid, practical look at building tools that are as reliable as a rifle—and evolving them at the pace the mission demands.

Connect with Adam Lackey: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-j-lackey/

Connect with Tyler Sweatt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylersweatt

The defense ecosystem works best when it works together. Mission Cultivate is helping make that happen.

Tyler Sweatt sits down with Robert Fehlen, Managing Principal at Dark Corner Solutions and Mission Cultivate, to talk about what comes after the startup buzz: how lessons from Mobilize Vision led to a platform built to connect the fragmented defense ecosystem.

They unpack what’s broken in today’s industrial base, what it really takes to bridge the Valley of Death, and how Mission Cultivate is helping the builders, operators, and advisors who keep showing up because they know what’s at stake.

Request to join Mission Cultivate: https://www.missioncultivate.com/

Connect with Robert

• LinkedIn: Robert Fehlen

Connect with Tyler:

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt

Government bureaucracy isn’t exactly the sexiest problem in defense—but it’s one of the most painful. 

In this episode, host Tyler Sweatt sits down with Zachary Long, Founder of ConductorAI and former Palantir leader, to unpack how his team is taking on one of the biggest bottlenecks in government operations: paperwork.

From automating complex approval chains to bridging the gap between policy and real-world execution, Zach shares how ConductorAI is bringing modern software principles to the most frustrating parts of government workflows. He and Tyler get candid about startup lessons, from navigating base access and culture gaps to building tech that actually works for users in the field.

What's happening on the Second Front:

• Why “showing up on site” beats every virtual meeting
• How Palantir’s culture shaped ConductorAI’s approach
• The challenge of solving diffuse problems that everyone feels but no one owns
• Zach’s unconventional “king for a day” policy wish

If you’ve ever wrestled with a CAC renewal, an ATO, or just the endless maze of government forms, this one’s for you.

Connect with Zachary

• LinkedIn: Zachary Long

Connect with Tyler

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt

Tyler sits down with Tyler Xuan Saltsman, co-founder and CEO of EdgeRunner AI, to talk about building air-gapped, domain-specific AI for the warfighter. From his time as a Penn State wrestler and Army logistics officer to leading supercompute projects at AWS and Stability AI, Saltsman’s journey has been about speed, precision, and making technology usable where it matters most: at the tactical edge.

What’s happening on the Second Front:

• How EdgeRunner AI builds personalized, disconnected models that know your MOS or AFSC
• Why smaller, localized models outperform one-size-fits-all AI in the field
• Real-world logistics workflows — op orders, manifests, and mission pivots — powered by edge AI
• The importance of sovereign, culturally aligned AI across partner nations
• How synthetic data can expose unit readiness and knowledge gaps
• Lessons in velocity: why 80 percent deployed beats 100 percent delayed

Connect with Tyler

• LinkedIn: Tyler Xuan Saltsman

Connect with Tyler

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt

Tyler chats with Andrew Black, co-founder and CEO of Kovr.ai and former AWS Emerging Tech lead, about the unsexy work that makes mission software real: turning security and compliance into something fast, predictable, and built into the dev loop. Andrew explains how Kovr.ai reads system docs, maps to NIST 800-53, drafts control implementations, flags gaps, and recommends fixes, so engineers focus on high-judgment problems while AOs and risk owners get reliable packages that move.

What’s happening on the Second Front:

• The true Valley of Death, speed and scale in production
• AI that automates SSPs, findings, and control mapping
• How to make compliance native to CI and CD with JIRA, Jenkins, SIEM
• Why fixed-price software and clear architecture matter for customers
• Culture over strategy, setting weekly “big rocks,” hiring for grit

Connect with Andrew

• LinkedIn: Andrew Black

Connect with Tyler

• LinkedIn: Tyler Sweatt