EP 64 — HAVOCai’s Paul Lwin on Winning Through Asymmetric Naval Economics

When America's adversaries can outbuild us in ships, what's our strategic advantage? Paul Lwin, CEO & Co-founder of HAVOCai, shares how his company is revolutionizing maritime operations by creating affordable autonomous vessels that can operate in swarms. As a Myanmar refugee who first saw American uniforms during his evacuation at age 10, Paul brings a unique perspective to defense innovation, combining his military experience with Silicon Valley approaches to solving national security challenges.

On this episode of DIB Innovators, Paul tells Dave about how, in just 17 months, HAVOCai has delivered 31 autonomous vessels to the Department of Defense, generated $3 million in revenue without government R&D funding, and demonstrated capabilities that outpace competitors who've been in the space for over a decade. Their conversation highlights how defense startups are creating asymmetric advantages for America by leveraging commercial manufacturing capacity, off-the-shelf components, and sophisticated software to transform maritime operations in the Pacific.

Topics discussed:

• Creating a strategy where adversaries must spend million-dollar missiles to target $100,000 autonomous boats, creating favorable cost exchanges in conflict scenarios.
• Leveraging existing American manufacturing capacity and proven commercial components rather than building expensive custom solutions from scratch.
• Developing software that enables small teams to control dozens of vessels simultaneously, creating true swarm capabilities rather than the 90% remote-controlled systems offered by competitors.
• Abstracting away boat building to focus engineering resources on sophisticated algorithms that enable autonomous decision-making and collaborative behavior.
• Implementing theatre-level, sector-level, and unit-level command structures that mirror traditional military organization while integrating autonomous capabilities.
• Using autonomous vessels to resupply isolated units on island chains when traditional air logistics would be vulnerable to enemy fire.
• Building resilience into autonomous systems that can continue missions for days or months without human input when adversaries jam communications.
• Integrating COLREGS compliance for commercial environments while maintaining tactical capabilities for conflict scenarios.
• Leveraging the unprecedented convergence of government acquisition reform, venture capital interest in defense, and Silicon Valley technical talent to accelerate innovation.
• Creating logistics and manufacturing processes capable of delivering up to 10,000 vessels annually when required for operational deployment.

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Guest Quote: 

“We knew if we started with a big boat, all we would build is one big boat. And we knew that wasn't the game. If the game is software that you need 10 to 30 of these vessels that we could easily operate with a team of five people. And so that's why we started with the 14 boats. They're perfectly sized so that a team of two to three people can launch 10 of them regularly. And it's running the same software. The 38-foot vessel is going to run the same software as the 14-foot vessel. So when we put it under water, we know it's going to work. We know that it's going to do the missions that the 14-foot vessels are doing, and it's going to do it with a high level of confidence.”