From recruiting for Palantir to landing a plane on Highway 85: meet defense tech’s wildest power broker | TechCrunch

Peterson Conway VIII is one of the defense tech industry’s biggest behind-the-scenes power brokers.

He has recruited for some of the buzziest defense and hard tech firms in Silicon Valley over the last decade .

Conway is wildly successful at luring very talented people away from stable jobs and into startup life.

When Palantir launched, Conway was in the right place at the right time and began recruiting for the firm.

Conway apparently had no official title at the defense company, ”but was just Peterson ,” like a defense tech “mononymous artist in the style of Prince or Madonna ’s.

Conway hosts regular dinners for candidates there (his father cooks), as well as parties ranging from a birthday bash for Joe Lonsdale to a wedding for Sankar .

Conway has fashioned himself as something of a cowboy in the Valley for years .

He applauds the current interest in American Dynamism , the term coined by Andreessen Horowitz for government-adjacent companies.

Conway has a common theme in how people describe Conway : a genius, an influential player in defense tech, and, at times, a liability.