Bryon Hargis is the co-founder and CEO of Castelion, a defense startup building low-cost hypersonic missiles designed to be manufactured at scale. Before founding Castelion, Bryon spent more than a decade at Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and nearly six years at SpaceX, where he worked on national security space programs and saw firsthand how iterative engineering and manufacturing speed could reshape aerospace. Castelion’s first missile, Blackbeard, is slated for integration on the Navy’s F/A-18 Super Hornet in roughly a year.

In our conversation, we explore:

• Why Bryon believes building missiles is paradoxically essential to maintaining peace

• The game theory behind warfare and why tit-for-tat strategies require credible middle-ground responses

• How China’s 2021 hypersonic test revealed not just a capability gap but a manufacturing and cost advantage

• Why traditional aerospace processes—optimized for low risk and high cost—can’t compete with rapid iteration

• What Bryon learned in his first week at SpaceX (after 12 years in traditional aerospace)

• Why building a carrier-based, air-launched hypersonic missile as a first product was the hard but right choice

• How focusing on manufacturability and cost over maximum capability can produce more effective deterrence

• Why the person who adapts faster in warfare always wins, and how that shapes Castelion’s philosophy

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Timestamps

(00:00) Intro

(04:01) Why America needs hypersonic missiles

(07:13) China’s edge in hypersonics

(12:05) The missing middle ground in deterrence

(18:05) Preventing warhead ambiguity

(19:40) How hypersonics differ from ballistic missiles

(25:05) The economics of defensive vs. offensive systems

(28:21) How SpaceX differs from traditional aerospace

(37:40) Why Bryon chose to build in defense over space

(42:42) Key factors that drove Castelion’s success

(48:28) Designing Blackbeard, Castelion’s first hypersonic missile

(1:01:06) The importance of lower costs and quicker manufacturing

(1:10:04) Book recommendations

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Follow Bryon Hargis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hargsb

X: https://x.com/hargsb

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Resources and episode mentions: https://www.generalist.com/p/what-america-is-missing-between-sanctions

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What America Is Missing Between Sanctions and Nuclear War (Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder & CEO of Castelion)

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What America Is Missing Between Sanctions and Nuclear War (Bryon Hargis, Co-Founder & CEO of Castelion)