NEWS HEADLINES: Palmer Luckey Is Simply Operating On A Completely Different Level Than Everyone Else * 100PercentFedUp.com * by Noah

Introduction to Palmer Luckey and His Vision

Palmer Luckey: Hi, my name is Palmer Luckey and I build killer robots. Palmer Luckey, tech prodigy and defense disruptor, shaping the future of AI and military tech.

You must have a thousand different ideas. What’s your calculus for filtering these?

We don’t have time for business as usual. We don’t have money for business as usual. We have to try something.

I think you’re going to see humanoid robots in defense applications pretty soon, but they’re not going to be for what people expect.

We need to avoid outsourcing responsibility for violence to machines, to robotics. If we are going to kill people, we need to kill people, and it needs to weigh on us.

Now that’s a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. I do appreciate you, you know, showing us your advanced designs here.

Uh, when I asked Palmer backstage, like, you know, do you have this under development? He goes, yeah, kind of something like this.

Palmer Luckey: Yeah, I mean, this is a long discussion, but I think you’re going to see humanoid robots in defense applications pretty soon.

But they’re not going to be for what people expect. The first use is not going to be like humanoid Special Forces door kickers.

It’s going to be robots who walk around with about the physical ability of maybe an 85-year-old man, and they operate a lot of the existing systems we have.

So think about things we have that are manned systems today, like a surface-to-air missile defense system or missile silos.

Exactly, where right now they’re fully manned. If you could build robots that, you know, an 85-year-old man can shuffle around, push a few buttons—

Having humans being bored in there day after day—yeah, and there’s a lot of jobs like that in the military.

Same thing for, you know, potentially rather than automating old vehicle platforms, you could use humanoid robots that are able to just walk into it, close the door, and then operate it.

So is that going to be the ultimate future of robotics? Of course not, but there’s a near-term future for even the limited humanoid robotic systems that exist today.

And I’m excited about that. Yeah, me too. But tell me the truth—Iron Man suit coming soon?

This is another one of those problems. It’s the classic—you are the closest thing we have. The United States should have invested—

I mean, look, Walt Disney was a huge fan of exoskeleton technology, and he was part of the Man Amplifier Project.

And a lot of the animatronics that are in Disneyland were actually a result of work that he did envisioning in that space.

Uh, that said, we probably should have invested in exoskeletons a long time ago. Too much time has passed.

And at this point, you’re probably just going to have fully remotely piloted robots or autonomous robots.

Building a robot that is capable of doing superhuman things while also wrapping it around a human made of meat—it’s very dangerous.

It’s much harder to do those two things at the same time, and you have to answer the question, why am I doing this?

The Future of Humanoid Robots in Defense

What is the point? Am I trying to reenact my sci-fi fantasies, or am I trying to solve the problem?

And so, if I had to guess, you’re going to see exoskeletons more in the consumer and civilian sector.

We had one here—people just want to do cool stuff—than people who are actually out to do a job.

We had that here in our Tech Hub this year, for kids who need help walking and for elderly adults.

I mean, kids who want to walk good and do other stuff good too. Yeah.

Um, you have taken on industries that others have considered untouchable.

I mean, first of all, the naivety and insanity of the VR industry, and then, of course—

I mean, did people ask you whether, you know, you need to go have your head examined to take on the DoD?

Uh, I mean, at this point, I’ve been doing it for eight years, so—

And I think they asked me a lot more at the beginning. Eight years ago, starting Anduril was very controversial.

You might remember—we were on, uh, let’s see, we’re on Bloomberg’s, uh, most—they called us the most controversial company in tech.

This was as Uber was going through their outing disaster, this was as WeWork execs were being indicted.

No, it was Anduril that was the most controversial company. Somehow, little old me with my two dozen people—

For the crime of daring to work with the US military—uh, I was on Wired Magazine.

Named me the most evil person in Silicon Valley. So, I mean, it’s just—it’s been a really interesting but an honor.

Oh, believe me, yeah, it is. That’s extraordinary. So why do you do this?

Why do you take on these seemingly impossible goals? I mean, what drove you to build Anduril?

So, I’ve actually been reflecting on what you’ve been asking people to do in terms of coming up with, you know, how they are going to do their moonshot.

How do you think about impacting the world? The first time that I did it was nothing like that process you’re asking people to do.

I did not start working on virtual reality because I said, oh my God, I want to impact the world, how can I best do it? Ah, this is how I will do it.

It was much more simple than that. I was a gamer. I liked gaming.

I had been asking a question of myself for a long time: What’s the next step in games?

And then one day I woke up and asked, well, what’s the final step in games? Clearly, it’s virtual reality.

And that’s a passion-driven purpose. But what I’m saying is, it was just passion-driven, yeah.

When I was raising money for Oculus, I was not at all certain that any of my investors were going to make any of their money back.

I felt like I had conned a bunch of people into paying me to work on my hobby full-time all day.

And I mean, that’s how a lot of the best companies start, right? It’s, uh—

I mean, arguably, that’s what the guys at Apple were doing. There were a lot of people who—

Computer Club, and they conned some people into paying them to play Computer Club all day and do what they were doing in the Computer Club, but as a business.

The Journey of Oculus and VR Technology

And so I was really no different than that. Oculus turned out to be exactly the right thing at the right time.

And I sold that company for billions of dollars after figuring out how to make VR headsets better.

What was key was you said no to a billion dollars. How old was the company at that point when you said no to a billion dollars?

13 months. Holy—and then Zuck came back with 2.2 quite a bit later?

And we were 18 months at that point. But the thing to remember is—

The thing that convinced us—it wasn’t at some point like, if you sell your company for a billion dollars or 2.3 billion dollars, it’s the same in terms of quality of life.

It wasn’t the bump that made the difference. It was that Mark Zuckerberg committed that he was going to put at least a billion dollars a year—

Into research and development of VR technology, which was my passion, for at least the next 10 years.

So that’s what I was weighing. What is it going to take for me, as Palmer Luckey, to raise $10 billion in R&D cash?

Well, to do that, I’m going to need to make some number of billions in revenue. I’m going to need to dilute myself by some certain amount.

I’m going to need to do some number of raises, and you start to do the math and you realize—simple math, yeah.

You say, I’m not going to be in control. It’s going to be almost impossible to do this.

And here is a surefire way to, you know, maybe not be as in charge of my destiny—

Um, and of course, I ended up getting fired a few years later, so that really manifested fully the risk.

But the positive side, and what did happen, is $10 billion—I mean, that was the commitment.

The commitment from Mark was $10 billion—a billion dollars a year for 10 years—but the actual number has been $60 billion.

Wow. And so, I mean, you got—and they changed their name, in fact.

Well, then, actually, the day that they changed their name to Meta, I actually put all of my liquid assets back into Meta stock.

So, I mean, I’m a total nut. I really fully believe in the metaverse future.

Whether people think it’s a fad or not, I’ve been with it long enough that at least you can’t accuse me of chasing the fad.

You can only accuse me of being naive or stupid, but I’m a stupid person who really believes it. I believe you.

Anduril’s core mission—so how do you define, you know, why you built it, and is that still the same mission that you have today?

So, the first page of our pitch deck to our investors said—and I wish you had come and pitched me, but you didn’t.

Okay, sorry, I’m sorry. Never too late. I mean, I’ll tell you who I—

I only ended up raising money in that first round from one fund. It was Founders Fund, and there’s a lot of reasons for that.

Uh, one of them is Founders Fund was the first institutional investor in Oculus.

After meeting with them and them beating up on me and saying, well, we don’t think this is really going to work.

If this works, you’re not just going to be a successful VR company—you’d be the first successful VR company in history, ever.

Um, and so they said, we don’t really believe this is going to work, but we’ll give you a million dollars.

And that is something I’ll never forget. So I have a lot of loyalty to them for that.

Anduril’s Mission and the Defense Industry

And then also, uh, the guys at Founders Fund were some of the only people who were still willing to talk to me after I was fired by Facebook and ripped out of Oculus.

And I know it seems hard to imagine today because I’ve clawed my way back to a level of some relevance, at least.

Uh, but at the time, people literally would not answer my texts, would stay far away from me.

And it came back to me through other people—like, they would explicitly tell other people, I’m staying away from Palmer.

That guy’s done. He’s a one-hit wonder. He got it good that one time, but he’s toast.

I’m not stupid enough to tie myself to a millstone like Palmer Luckey.

And, uh, that was a big part of why I started Anduril. I mean, you ask what our mission is—

Our mission is to revolutionize defense, save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars by making tens of billions of dollars.

But there’s also an element—I’m going to prove those guys wrong. I’m going to show that I’m still somebody.

That I’m not a one-hit wonder. And then I’m going to ask for them to come and pitch us on why I should let them invest in my company.

And at the end, I’m going to say, I don’t really want to tie myself to that millstone.

I love it, love it, love it. There is one investor who is in that category that I let invest—

Uh, just $100,000, who I won’t say who it was—just enough to get information, right?

So I can remind them how well we’re doing. I love you, buddy, you’re amazing.

No, I’m a vengeful, bitter, cynical person. I appreciate that you appreciate—

I’ve seen some of the back-and-forth salvos. I would not want to be on the other side.

I’m very kind about most things. People imagine that I have this vengeful streak in general.

But if you look, the only thing that I’m vengeful about is the people who ripped me out of my own company that I started as a teenager—

And then celebrated it, and then especially the ones who made hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.

Like, the things I’m most bitter about—it’s just that. You can actually slight me today, and I’m actually pretty forgiving.

It’s just that one event in my life—I will never forgive any of the people who are responsible.

All right, very crystal clear. So there was an event that took place recently that is epic.

Um, you took over the Integrated Visual Augmentation System contract—$22 billion contract—from Microsoft, was handed over to Anduril.

That’s extraordinary. It is. I mean, so, from my—yeah, so talk, tell us that story.

The IVAS Contract and Microsoft’s Transition

I mean, it’s a long story, but, you know, shortly—the short version is, uh—

This idea of putting a heads-up display and a computer and a radio and an AI on every soldier has been around for a long time.

It goes back to at least the 1959 Robert Heinlein novel Starship Troopers.

I mean, what’s actually fascinating about Starship Troopers is it then achieves so much cultural relevance as a film—

But the film doesn’t actually have the mechanized infantry wearing heads-up displays or mech suits.

It’s very strange. The thing that I most liked about Starship Troopers did not make it to the film.

Although there’s a new film being made, so the question is—love Heinlein stories, should all be made into film.

Oh, he has—he has a lot of incredible stuff. If you haven’t read his incredible number of things he’s written—

Then one of the things I’m proudest of was getting the Heinlein Award years ago.

Um, but so—so this idea is an old one, but nobody’s ever been able to pull it off.

There’s been many efforts—between Land Warrior, Future Warrior, Connected Soldier, Net Warrior.

But what you really lacked is a backend that could feed such a device with useful information feeds.

It’s easy to make a thing that can show a 2D map floating in front of you.

It’s hard to build something that can understand the world around you, augment your environment, show threats, show friendlies, tell you what to do.

That’s something that’s only recently become possible. Now, Anduril actually tried to go after the Army’s last attempt at doing this, which was IVAS.

Yes, almost eight years ago—almost eight years ago. But at the time, Anduril was less than two dozen people, the whole company.

And so it was pretty clear we were not going to win, and we didn’t.

Uh, and the whole time since, I’ve been wondering, you know, when I was going to get to tackle this problem.

And, uh, through the—the story then gets very long, very bound by NDAs—

But then it ends with Microsoft saying, okay, we will hand over the entire contract to you.

And the United States Army said, yep, that’s fine with us. We’ll assign all responsibility to Anduril for continuing this work, rather than Microsoft.

And, uh, the good news for me is that I’ve been putting enormous amounts of my company’s money into building exactly the system you would actually want to get onto every infantryman.

And, uh, I’m going to be able to get done in about six months what other companies would take eight years to do.

So, amazing. Thank my investors for giving me all my money that I could use to invest in that.

Did Microsoft shut down HoloLens completely? Uh, depends on the way you look at it.

Um, so actually, I didn’t just get the IVAS contract—I actually bought Microsoft’s entire mixed reality business.

The only part remaining of any substance was IVAS. Okay.

Um, yeah, the original pitch of IVAS was it was a militarized variant of HoloLens—

Which was going to be an AR/VR device for consumers and for enterprise. That got shut down.

They’re stripping Windows Mixed Reality out of Windows. Uh, it’s—

It’s not going to be a part of Microsoft’s near future, that’s for sure.

Innovations in Defense Technology and Cost Structures

Um, all right, let’s not go down that road, everybody. I hope you’re enjoying this episode.

Did you know that we’re likely to see as many as 10 billion humanoid robots by 2040?

And that Brett Adcock, the CEO of Figure, anticipates we’ll have robots in our homes in the next 2 to 3 years?

How about Max Hodak’s new form of BCI called biohybrid interfaces that could offer millions of connections between your neocortex and the cloud?

Then there’s Michael Andre, whose efforts at Eon is focusing on uploading the human connectome to the cloud by 2030.

These aren’t science fiction scenarios—there are serious efforts underway today.

I’ve distilled the most powerful insights and roadmaps from this year’s Abundance 2025 Summit into a comprehensive report—

That will transform how you see the future. Get your free copy of the Abundance 2025 Summit summary at dm-andis.com/breakthroughs.

That’s dm-andis.com/breakthroughs. I’ve played in the aerospace industry, in the launch business, early on—

And it is one of the most entrenched industries on the planet. It absolutely is.

I mean, literally a self-licking ice cream cone of people flowing in and out of the government onto these industrial-military complex boards.

How in the world did you penetrate that? The way that we did it seems crazy in hindsight.

Uh, but we believed it would work, and somehow it did. We decided that we weren’t going to start a defense contractor.

We were going to start a defense product company. And the difference there is that you spend your own money to make something that works—

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