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Palmer Luckey is clear when asked whether he would sell weapons to North Korea. \u201cIf the U.S. asks me to, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anduril, the defense-technology startup Luckey founded in 2017 after his politically charged departure from Facebook, could be set for a $60 billion valuation. The company is riding a record surge in global defense spending and a shift in Silicon Valley sentiment toward working with the military, selling autonomous systems such as its Fury drone and Ghost Shark submarine to U.S. partners including Australia, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.\u00a0<\/p>\n
War in the Middle East\u2014between high-tech planes on the side of the U.S. and Israel, and relatively low-tech drones and missiles on the side of Iran\u2014is also revealing how current-day warfare is changing, and how manufacturing capacity can quickly become stretched.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But as Anduril grows into one of America\u2019s most closely watched weapons makers, Luckey\u2019s position\u2014that arms makers should function as extensions of U.S. government policy\u2014puts him at the center of overlapping debates about alliance politics in Asia, the rise of Chinese military hardware, and how much power tech billionaires should wield over questions of war and peace.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m never going to promise to do something the U.S. wouldn\u2019t do,\u201d he told Fortune in early February, on the sidelines of the Singapore Airshow. The question is: Will other governments be relieved\u2013or unnerved\u2013by that pledge?\u00a0<\/p>\n
From consumer tech to defense tech<\/p>\n
Drones were all over the Singapore Airshow, held at Singapore\u2019s Changi Exhibition Centre on a sweltering February day. Exhibitors hawked unmanned aerial vehicles and systems to manage them; a few booths further down, other companies sold systems to shoot those same drones down.<\/p>\n
One such drone was the YFQ-44 Fury: a grey metal fuselage that resembles a fighter jet stripped of its cockpit. Made by Anduril Industries, the Fury is a jet-powered, unmanned combat aircraft designed to team with fighters like the F-35 and carry out high-risk air-to-air missions autonomously at a fraction of the cost of a traditional jet.<\/p>\n
Anduril is the work of Palmer Luckey, who founded the defense tech startup in 2017 after leaving Facebook amid political fallout over his support for a pro-Trump, anti-Hillary Clinton group during the 2016 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s funny seeing people say, \u2018Look at him\u2014he\u2019s wasting his time,\u2019 or, \u2018He\u2019s evil and trying to make war happen,\u2019\u201d Luckey said. \u201cPost-Ukraine, I feel like people have been more like, \u2018Okay, maybe he wasn\u2019t totally nuts.\u2019 Even the people who hate me agree I\u2019m not nuts.\u201d<\/p>\n
Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Oculus VR Inc., left, plays the new video game \u201cEagle Flight VR\u201d during an Ubisoft news conference before the start of the E3 Gaming Conference on June 13, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. <\/p>\n
Kevork Djansezian\u2014Getty Images<\/p>\n
Luckey, 33, was in consumer tech long before he went into defense. He started Oculus VR, a company that designed virtual reality headsets, in 2012, which was later bought by Facebook for $2 billion.<\/p>\n
Months after leaving Facebook in 2017, Luckey founded Anduril Industries\u2014named for Aragorn\u2019s reforged sword in J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s The Lord of the Rings\u2014alongside several other executives from Palantir Technologies. Last year, Anduril raised $2.5 billion in a funding round led by Founders Fund, the Peter Thiel-led VC fund, which valued the defense tech company at $30.5 billion. The company is currently in talks with Thrive Capital and other investors for a new funding round that could double its valuation to $60 billion, Bloomberg reported on March 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luckey admits that moving from VR headsets to defense was a shift. \u201cWith VR, the only thing stopping us from launching a new headset was whether it was finished and ready to launch. You can\u2019t do that with the military. You\u2019re moving at someone else\u2019s pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
That sluggishness is partly why Anduril doesn\u2019t rely on defense grants to develop products, instead relying on its own funds. \u201cCost-plus contracting has perverse incentives: people make more money when programs are slow, more money when things are more expensive, more money when things break all the time. If I relied on the government to give me money to start development, I\u2019d have to wait years just to even start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not all of Anduril\u2019s customers praise the company\u2019s work. The Wall Street Journal reported last year that some Ukrainian operators stopped using Anduril\u2019s drones in 2024, following frustrations with their performance. U.S. testers, too, have reportedly criticized the responsiveness of Anduril\u2019s Lattice operating system.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Anduril has pushed back against these reports, arguing in an extended response that failures are part of a broader strategy of \u201chighly iterative model of technology development\u2014moving fast, testing constantly, failing often, refining our work, and doing it all over again.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is not surprising that Anduril, as a leading new defense technology company, is subject to increasing scrutiny,\u201d the company wrote.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m not willing to go to prison to sell you spare parts\u2019<\/p>\n
Anduril is riding a record defense spending boom and a wave of government-aligned tech sentiment in Silicon Valley, as investors pour billions into autonomous weapons, AI-enabled sensor networks, and cheap, expendable drones. The company projects about $4.3 billion in revenue this year, even as it expects to lose more than $1 billion and does not forecast adjusted profitability until later in the decade, The Information reported in early March.<\/p>\n
Global arms spending rose to a record $2.7 trillion in 2024, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an international institute that tracks military expenditure and security trends. Shares of defense contractors have shot upwards over the past year: The Global X Defense Tech ETF, which includes companies like Lockheed Martin, RTX, Hanwha Aerospace, and Leonardo, is up by more than 45% over the past 12 months, compared to 14% for the S&P 500.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some of that boom in defense spending, in Luckey\u2019s view, is due to longstanding U.S. demands that allies pay more for their own defense. \u201cThere\u2019s an appetite in Washington for Anduril to work with Asian countries on domestic production. The view is that if Japan isn\u2019t building any of its own weapons, they\u2019re basically a freeloader,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Australia is spending $1.1 billion on Anduril\u2019s autonomous submarine, the Ghost Shark. Anduril has also signed deals with companies in Japan and South Korea, as well as the government of Taiwan; that last partnership caught the ire of Beijing, which slapped sanctions on both Anduril and Luckey last year.<\/p>\n
A general view of the Anduril Fury an autonomous air vehicle (AAV) displayed on March 28, 2025 in Avalon, Australia. <\/p>\n
Asanka Ratnayake\u2014Getty Images<\/p>\n
Australia, Japan and South Korea are all close U.S. security allies and longstanding democracies, and so obvious markets for a U.S. defense company. But what about countries that are less democratic, or those who don\u2019t have decades-long security arrangements with Washington?<\/p>\n
\u201cI have opinions on which countries are going to stay close U.S. allies and which ones aren\u2019t. But my opinion can\u2019t be the one that counts,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
He takes it to an extreme: he would sell arms to North Korea, if the U.S. asks him to. \u201cIf I take any other position, then what I\u2019m effectively saying is that U.S. foreign policy should be decided by a handful of corporate executives based on who they\u2019re willing to sell to or not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
What Anduril\u2019s customers may be more concerned about, however, is what happens if the U.S. orders the company to stop working with a particular country. Many countries have looser ties to the U.S. alliance system, bound together by more transient economic and geopolitical alignments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And even close alliances don\u2019t seem as solid as they used to be: President Trump has repeatedly picked fights with South Korea, Japan, Canada, and the European Union in disagreements over tariffs, defense spending, and support for U.S. military endeavors.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t reassure them. I\u2019m never going to be able to promise to do anything that the U.S. would not. If a country asks me \u2018commit to supporting this even if the U.S. doesn\u2019t want to,\u2019 all I can say is no,\u201d he explained. \u201cI\u2019m not willing to go to prison to sell you spare parts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The rise of China<\/p>\n
It\u2019s impossible to talk about defense spending in Asia without talking about China, a strategic rival to the U.S. and a growing military power in its own right. The country makes up the second-largest share of global defense spending, at 12%, though it is still far behind the U.S.<\/p>\n
\u201cChina has actually gotten its shit together,\u201d Luckey said.<\/p>\n
U.S. officials have long been concerned about China\u2019s ability to develop hypersonic missiles and other forms of asymmetric warfare that might undermine the U.S.\u2019s traditional strength.\u00a0Last year\u2019s brief India-Pakistan conflict was also a wake-up call for military observers, when Pakistani-operated J-10Cs\u2014a Chinese-manufactured plane\u2014shot down Indian jets, including a French-made Dassault Rafale, along with other aircraft, according to Western officials.<\/p>\n
Aircraft of the Bayi Aerobatic Team of the Chinese People\u2019s Liberation Army PLA Air Force perform during the 10th Singapore Airshow in Singapore, Feb. 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
Then Chih Wey\u2014Xinhua via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIs China building the world\u2019s best fighter jets? No. But you don\u2019t need to build the world\u2019s best fighter jets to be a massive threat,\u201d Luckey said. \u201cA lot of times, two pretty good fighter jets will kick the butt of one really good fighter jet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckey uses a Second World War comparison to illustrate his point. Nazi Germany manufactured tanks using complex systems that could withstand repeated use\u2014but were difficult to fix when they did break, he notes. The U.S., by comparison, used techniques that required pieces to be replaced constantly\u2014but made tanks \u201ccheap to make, easy to maintain, and fast to repair.\u201d<\/p>\n
He now sees China as the U.S. in this analogy, producing things that are \u201cengineered to be manufacturable.\u201d The U.S., he worries, is now like Germany: \u201cWe\u2019ve built exquisite systems without regard for manufacturability and maintenance.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anduril is trying to position itself on the Chinese side of that comparison. The company is building a 5\u2011million-square-foot \u201cArsenal-1\u201d factory in Ohio that aims to mass-produce drones and other weapons systems by mid\u20112026, part of Luckey\u2019s bet that industrial scale, rather than a handful of exquisite platforms, will decide future conflicts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Luckey\u2019s more reasoned views on China are balanced by his public persona, which is far more provocative than what he says in private. Just hours after his conversation with Fortune, where he praised China\u2019s ability to innovate, the Anduril founder posted a photo mocking the Shenyang J-35, a Chinese stealth fighter jet developed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China. \u201cNot convinced China\u2019s J-35 measures up to the real deal,\u201d he posted on X.<\/p>\n
Luckey\u2019s post prompted a backlash from both Chinese netizens and state-owned media. \u201cThis is more like a piece of performance art, and I think he lacks professional dedication,\u201d one Chinese military expert grumbled to the Global Times, a Chinese state-owned English-language outlet.<\/p>\n
\u2018An appendage of our democracy\u2019<\/p>\n
At the Singapore Air Show, Luckey mused that \u201cyou\u2019re going to see a return of American corporations, particularly the ones large and powerful enough to be of national importance, working closely with the United States as a country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Luckey\u2019s views on how tech should work with the government are increasingly common across Silicon Valley, as U.S. tech companies embrace a more overtly patriotic mindset in the Trump era\u2014whether to get on the president\u2019s good side, avoid his bad side, or both.<\/p>\n
But there are still tensions between the U.S. tech sector and the Trump administration. In late February, Anthropic\u2014the developer behind the Claude large language model\u2014refused to accept a Department of Defense request to roll back its red lines on how its AI was used, particularly around surveillance and autonomous weaponry. In retaliation, the DoD deemed Anthropic a \u201csupply chain risk,\u201d putting it on the same level as firms like Huawei; Trump later barred all federal agencies from using Claude. (A U.S. court paused that order before on March 26.)<\/p>\n
Anthropic\u2019s decision set off a fierce debate in Silicon Valley about how much deference business owes to the U.S. government. Anthropic supporters are angry that the U.S. government is punishing a company for trying to decide how its product gets used; Trump supporters, on the other hand, see Anthropic as unfairly harming U.S. national security and undermining Washington\u2019s democratic legitimacy.<\/p>\n
Luckey, perhaps unsurprisingly, has come out on the side of those criticizing Anthropic.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, you have to believe\u2026that our imperfect constitutional republic is still good enough to run a country without outsourcing the real levers of power to billionaires and corpos and their shadow advisors,\u201d he wrote on X on Feb. 28.<\/p>\n
As he told Fortune in Singapore: \u201cI\u2019m an appendage of the will of the people\u2014for better or for worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
#Palmer #Luckeys #insistence #deferring #U.S #scare #allies #arm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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