HR McMaster mtg

Attendees: Dustin J Ross, HR McMaster Date: March 18, 2026 Type: Advisor Meeting

Summary

Student Backgrounds

• Speaker B (GSB first year)
  • Former finance/investment background
  • Left job when Russia invaded Ukraine to build military medical supply chain
  • Delivered $4.5M+ in aid to Ukraine front lines
  • Built hospital in Western Ukraine (opening ceremony May 22)
  • Went to Ukraine 8 times in first 1.5 years of war
• Speaker C (GSB first year)
  • Currently works 10-15 hours/week with Palantir on special products
  • 4 years at Palantir on Gotham and Project Maven
  • Was at Fort Carson last week for NGC2 work with Andrew
  • Just finished finals, took Global Futures class with Kotkin and Rice

Course & Academic Connections

• Both students interested in taking McMaster’s spring course “Building Strategic Competence”
  • Half course, mostly second-year students
  • Co-teaching other half with Matt Colford (GSB alum, Carpenter Capital founder) on talent management
• Student C loved Global Futures class with Kotkin and Rice
• Mentioned Professor Gilvardi’s “Modern Battle” class as excellent

Iran/Middle East Discussion

• Current campaign objectives: ensure Iran can’t project power outside borders
• Intelligence capabilities rebuilt after Obama administration dismantled them
• 3-week campaign timeline expected (20-30 ballistic missiles, 80 drones daily)
• Regime collapse scenarios discussed - internal coup vs civil war concerns
• Ethnic tensions (Azeris, Kurds) could complicate post-regime transition

Business & National Security Opportunities

• Key principles for business students:
  1. Don’t help enemies develop weapons to kill our children
  2. Don’t help them gain unfair economic advantage
  3. Don’t help extinguish human freedom/build police states
• Recommended companies/contacts:
  • SHIELD Capital (advisors: Philip Billinan, Rajshah, Mike Brown)
  • Matter (Menlo Park) - advanced manufacturing
  • Rhombus Power - AI decision tools
  • NEO Labs - satellite tracking
  • Hawkeye360 - RF collection from space
  • Quake company (Arjun Tambi) - supply chain alternatives
  • Metro Chem (Vivas Kumar, GSB grad) - battery manufacturing
  • Substrate (James Crowd) - new microprocessor without advanced lithography

Introductions Made

• Connected students with Sean Singleton (finance background, defense industry outreach in underserved communities)
• Sean is US Venture Partner at Beaten Zone Ventures (Australia-US sovereign tech flow)
• Mentioned potential connections to Chris Moran at Lockheed Ventures for digital twinning work
• Students working on semiconductor supply chain digital twin project for summer

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Co-founder Signal Debrief

Sourced from Signal chat, 2026-03-18

Pre-meeting: Founders printed materials and prepared. Bliss added Dustin to the invite. Both attended.

Post-meeting Dustin captured two pivotal insights from the broader discussion (which included Joe Malchow and Ali Keshavarzi, met outside McMaster’s office):

On probabilistic modeling: “It’s not a certification that there is no China; it’s a probabilistic dynamic model that can help figure out the scenarios and probability of different cost outcomes.”

On buyer persona: “Cost engineers — these are the people in the company with a lot of power/value.” (Not supply chain teams or compliance teams — cost engineers hold the budget.)

Day-of new contacts made outside McMaster’s office:

• Sean Singleton (already in vault) + Steve Baxter — both at Beaten Zone Ventures; call scheduled Apr 22
• Avery Tallman flagged as semiconductor contact to pursue

Bliss’s press release edit inspired by this meeting: added “enabling the globalization of tomorrow” framing and tightened the restricted party screening angle.

Note re Feb 11 McMaster talk (separate event): Dustin found it “nostalgic without being filled with unique forward-looking insight.” The Iran question response was the best part — “much more tactical and focused.”