Jared Isaacman: What went wrong at NASA | The All-In Interview

The interview opens with a short timeline. President Trump nominated Jared Isaacman in December to be NASA's fifteenth administrator. The nomination cleared the Senate committee in May, and a full Senate confirmation vote was expected the week of the recording. On the Friday before that, the President withdrew it. The introduction lists what the conversation will cover: Isaacman's work as an entrepreneur and fighter jet pilot, his command of the first all-civilian spaceflight, his role as the first civilian to do a spacewalk, and what he learned in six months of studying NASA. It also names the main argument to come, that government bureaucracy has worn down NASA's performance and puts the country at risk in its space race with China.

The introduction also asks directly why the nomination failed. It offers two possible explanations: "a discovery about prior donations to Democratic candidates or an association with Elon Musk". This opening part of the interview raises that question but does not answer it. Most of the section covers background, how the nomination came about, and a diagnosis of NASA's problems.

The interviewer describes NASA's history. The agency was founded in 1958, the year after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. It has led missions to the Moon, Mars and the outer solar system, launched Earth and deep-space science missions, and installed and operated the ISS. The interviewer calls it, "in my opinion, the US government's most pioneering agency", and says Isaacman looked well qualified as a business manager, entrepreneur, and flight and space enthusiast.

Isaacman's interest in space is traced to childhood films: Top Gun, The Right Stuff and the 1980s film Space Camp. The conversation pauses for a light exchange about Space Camp being hard to find on streaming services, and about students at Space Camp no longer recognizing the film.

In this account, business and flying grew up side by side. He started the company now known as Shift4 at 16 and took up flying as a hobby to avoid burnout. Flying in air shows in 2010 and 2011 put him alongside current and former military pilots. They told him he could fly fighter jets part time in the guard or reserves, but that required a college degree, which he did not have. That is why he went back to school at Embry-Riddle, which the account says graduates more Air Force pilots each year than the Air Force Academy.

The interviewer describes Shift4 as a public payment processing company with an "8 and a half billion dollar market cap". The interviewer says their understanding is that Isaacman has flown about seven thousand hours in fighter jets. The account explains the balance this way: the company and the flying both started before family responsibilities, so the time went almost entirely to work and to flying, mostly at night. An attempt at the around-the-world flight record fell short in 2008, and he broke the record in 2009. Both efforts raised money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, as the air shows later did.

The air show flying turned into a defense business. The account describes the shows as loops and rolls set to music, "10 feet off the ground, 18 inches between our wings". He and his partners moved toward something with "commercial intent" that also helps the country, and founded Draken. It is described as having built the world's largest fleet of fighter jets. Its pilots flew as aggressors for the Department of Defense and the Air Force, replicating Russian, Chinese and Iranian tactics. The segment ends with a comparison: running two companies is "nothing compared to Elon", who is said to hold about half a dozen CEO titles at once.

The account of the relationship with Elon Musk is modest. A first handshake probably came in the early 2000s, possibly during a TV interview. A later meeting may have been at a charity poker event at Musk's house in Tesla's early days, after a 2008 trip to Baikonur to watch a Soyuz launch with early commercial space figures. The account says the two do not know each other well and have spoken "a couple dozen times maybe over the years", almost always about the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn missions.

The interviewer points to a widely shared narrative, visible in clips from the confirmation hearing, that the nominee was close to Musk and acting for him. The reply says nearly every senator from both parties assumed this and asked about it. The answer given to the senators combines praise for Musk's record with a plain description of the relationship as a customer's:

I paid his company to go to space twice.

The reply goes further: with more providers than SpaceX competing, the price would "probably" have been lower. It describes a pro-competition position that is not "beholden to Elon at all" and that wants all of commercial space to succeed. This is a first-person account. The section offers no outside evidence either way about how close the two are.

The origin of Inspiration4 began as an attempt to invest. In 2020, word of a SpaceX secondary round led to a call to a banker, described as "I think it was Citi", and then to a conversation with SpaceX's CFO. The CFO said the round was closed and that the company was selective about investors. The reply mentioned an offer from 2008 to pilot the first Dragon spacecraft. According to the account, the CFO answered that investing was not possible, but a human spaceflight mission could be discussed.