Episode Summary
The future isn’t coming, it’s being built, line by line, chip by chip, in workshops and labs across Australia. From defense-grade autonomy to data infrastructure for robots, this episode of Oversubscribed dives deep into the frontier of hard tech with the founders building it.
Host Brendan Hill sits down with Michael Irwin (Breaker), Joe Harris (Alloy), and returning guest Charlie Gearside (Eucalyptus / Build Australia) for a wild conversation about robotics, national ambition, and why Australia needs to start making things again.
They talk building AI that lives on the edge, the ethics of defense, hiring A-players for impossible problems, and why the next industrial revolution might start right here. It’s an unfiltered look at the people shaping Australia’s place in the age of autonomy.
Chapters:
00:00 – Intro: Founders, frontier tech, and Australia’s new wave of builders
02:00 – Breaker’s origin story: building robots that act on human intent
05:00 – From drones to defense: autonomy, privacy, and life on the edge
08:20 – The hardest problems left to solve (and why easy ones are gone)
10:40 – Sponsor: Vanta – building trust and compliance for startups
12:00 – Alloy’s story: from Eucalyptus to building the data brain for robots
16:00 – Why Joe left a rocket ship to start from zero
19:30 – Building for the age of robotics: data, telemetry, and the next frontier
23:00 – Finding A-players: how ambitious missions attract ambitious people
25:00 – Culture, conviction, and what passion really looks like inside startups
27:00 – The defense dilemma: ethics, values, and the post-Ukraine mindset
30:00 – Going global: why Australia’s best founders build beyond its borders
34:00 – Build Australia: a new movement for ambition and national pride
38:00 – Manufacturing, energy, and why we stopped making things
43:00 – How robotics could solve Australia’s affordability crisis
46:00 – The humanoid debate: specialized vs. general intelligence
50:00 – Life in 2035: what robots at home might really look like
52:00 – Data, autonomy, and the next AI arms race
56:00 – How Breaker and Alloy could power each other’s missions
59:00 – Skynet, manipulation, and the ethics of AI power
1:03:00 – Competition, collaboration, and the Cambrian explosion of robotics
1:06:00 – Founder stories: from CB radios to humanoids in hack houses
1:09:00 – Building the next industrial revolution from Australia
1:10:00 – Final pitches: why you should join Breaker, Alloy, and Build Australia
1:11:00 – Outro: Vanta, 1013, and building what comes next
