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Jordan Schneider
Founder of the ChinaTalk Podcast and Newsletter
Previously Bridgewater, Eurasia Group, US State Department, and The White House.
Highlights
Fascinating profile just out on Anduril CEO Palmer Luckey, weeb Tony Stark hoping to deter war with superior firepower.
THREAD on: -How anime inspired him to make Stark Industries -Anduril's strategy to reshape the Pentagon to beat China -What Luckey misses about tech and war
To start: Luckey was homeschooled in Cali, got into VR after realizing his 6-monitor rig would never be enough, hacked together a headset good enough to impress John Carmack and raise millions on Kickstarter, then sold Oculus to Facebook for $2bn and the promise of R&D support.
After getting fired from Facebook under very sketchy circumstances for a pro-Trump political donation, he decided to follow in the footsteps of Yu-Gi-Oh's Seto Kaiba and Tony Stark to restore America's military deterrence.
Anduril is premised on three bets:
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Just like Palantir did for software, Anduril could break though traditional cost-plus contracting models by paying for R&D in house and then coming to DC with products so much better than the competition they couldn't be ignored
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Expensive, exquisite systems that increasingly dominated the US procurement after WWII should be replaced by lots of cheap, attritable, AI-powered platforms
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Anduril could manufacture these systems cheaper and at greater scale than anyone else in the industry using commercial supply chains and automated factories
Anduril will only get Congress to change the system by being not 10x but 100x better than the Prime status quo.
And they're well on their way with some incredibly impressive systems.
Critiques: I think Luckey has a simplistic view of deterrence. Better hardware alone hardware to turn the US + allies into, as Luckey says, “prickly porcupines so that no one wants to step on them."
Technological solutions will never solve all your geopolitical challenges.
As Ed Luttwak explains, if you have an edge at one level of war, the enemy can always take the fight to a different level. Hubris and adaptive adversaries are why tech will never make strategic setbacks like the Oct 7 attack "unimaginable"
Luckey also has some blind spots particularly when it comes to politics. A longtime Trump fan, he completely misses why Trump won't support Ukraine. It's not the money, but rather sympathy for Putin and a grudge with Ukraine from his first impeachment.
Let's close with some more amazing personal stuff: he met his now wife at high school debate camp after beating her by defending DDT. "I love DDT, it's so good! But I love my wife more."
My favorite detail: he built the Sword Art Online killer VR headset where if you lose lives in the game you die in real life...just because?
Luckey on parenting: -2 year olds should be walking, not in strollers -"leave the family fortune to one child." Is he going to have a Succession-style competition to determine the one true heir?
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