Inside Anduril: Exclusive HQ Tour w/ Palmer Luckey, Brian Schimpf, Matt Grimm & Trae Stephens

Pacifism as a political or personal position is only possible within a society that has a government monopoly on violence; without government monopoly on violence, pacifism is not a sustainable position.

“Pacifism as an idea is only possible inside of a governing system with a monopoly on violence. Like, you can't be a pacifist without a government monopoly on violence. That's just like not possible for humanity.”

Without domestic manufacturing capacity to produce weapons at scale and speed, a nation cannot maintain military capability or deterrence, making manufacturing itself a strategic weapon and core element of national defense.

“The factory is the weapon because without the factory you have no weapons”

Patriot missile system backlog is currently 15 years, meaning countries ordering new Patriot systems cannot receive them for over a decade, making the US an unreliable weapons supplier.

“you want to order Patriot missiles. I'm hearing right now the latest number someone told me over the weekend was 15 years to get a new Patriot system.”

Every nation is now increasing defense spending and developing indigenous defense capabilities because of a fundamental shift in expectations about whether the US will defend their interests, driven by the US explicitly stating it will not fight other nations' wars.

“something has changed, right? like there's this sense that um a lot of the historic grievances, the political opportunism to use violence to get to your ends, that has changed and every nation's reflecting it where they're increasing defense spending. They're ramping up their own defense. And I think the view of what the US is going to do or not do on everyone's behalf has shifted. The US reasonably is saying, 'We're not going to go fight everyone else's wars. we're going to expect every nation to provide for their own defense.'”

Anduril developed Menace Titan, a variant of Menace on a larger platform in partnership with Palantir, combining Anduril's hardware with Palantir's software as a joint program with the Army.

“there's a variant of all of these that's a uh on on a larger platform that's called Titan. We're partnered with Palanteer on the Titan program for um bringing their software onto our kind of hardware uh for for this this joint program with the army.”

The goal of autonomous weapons and AI in defense is to remove humans from dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs, protecting lives of soldiers while becoming as accurate and precise as possible in targeting.

“The goal is take humans out of dull, dirty, dangerous jobs. Um so we're not putting our, you know, men and women, brothers and sisters in horribly dangerous situations, uh and become as accurate and precise as possible. And that's really what just war theory is all about.”

Ohio was chosen for Arsenal 1 not only because it has advantages as a manufacturing location but because it has historical significance as the birthplace of aviation (Wright brothers) and hosts GE Aviation/GE Aircraft engine manufacturing, creating a cultural and industrial ecosystem aligned with aerospace manufacturing.

“Ohio is the birthplace of aviation. Um, and so in some ways it's like you're starting with the right flyer and then coming back with fully autonomous fighter planes uh to be built, you know, less than an hour drive away from where the Wright brothers uh were were building the the first airplane. Um, and so there's a tremendous history. Uh, GE Aviation, GE Aircraft, where they build the jet engines is also right down the street about an hour away from where we're setting up the factory.”

The current geopolitical environment is not peaceful despite widespread perception of peace; there are simultaneous active land wars and military aggression in Europe, the Red Sea, Middle East, South China Sea, Philippines, Cambodia-Thailand, and India-Pakistan indicating a shift in willingness to use violence to achieve political ends.

“We've got a land war in Europe. The Red Sea still, you know, intermittently shut down. Israel and Iran going at it. You've got China doing constant aggression on the Philippines and the South China Sea. Cambodia and Thailand are sparring all the time right now. India, Pakistan doing air wars and doing, you know, it's like air combat. I'm probably forgetting several of these going on right now. And so we're not in a time of peace, right? Like this is not a stable time.”

Ghost Shark submarines are designed and developed at Anduril's Sydney, Australia office and manufactured at its Sydney facility (75,000 sq ft) capable of producing dozens per year, with expansion production planned for Quanzit, Rhode Island for US market, where both smaller dive submarines and the large XL UUV will be manufactured.

“these are designed uh at our um office in Sydney, Australia, which I had the pleasure of setting up a couple of years ago when we first launched this program. Um and now they're currently being manufactured in our uh our Sydney manufacturing facility that just opened. It's about 75,000 ft² and is capable of making dozens of these a year and we'll be expanding production for them to our new facility in Quanzit, Rhode Island, uh where we'll be making both our dive LDS, our smaller submarines, and these big guys for the US market.”

Europe is expected to spend approximately 4 times the procurement budget of the US over the next 5 years, with Japan, Taiwan, and Australia also substantially increasing defense budgets, creating massive demand for defense manufacturing capacity.

“Europe is going to spend something like four times the amount of procurement that the US is over the next 5 years. Like it's a massive buildup. Japan's going to substantially increase their budget. Taiwan's increasing their budget. Australia, like everyone is ramping.”

Anduril has developed the X-47 collaborative combat aircraft (called Fury or FQ-44), an autonomous fighter jet that flies alongside manned fighters, extending their weapons and sensor reach while engaging in high-risk missions, and achieved first flight in 556 days from contract signature—the fastest new fighter development since the Korean War.

“Fury. Okay. Uh also known as the FQ44, uh this is the first autonomous fighter that the United States Air Force has ever procured. We recently just flew it for the first time. We went from signing a contract with the Air Force to first flight in 556 days, which is, as far as I know, the fastest new fighter development program since the end of the Korean War.”

Anduril built and delivered Ghost Shark autonomous underwater vehicles to Australia through a 50-50 development and production split model, getting them from contract signature to first production unit in 30 days, demonstrating that speed of execution is feasible when aligned incentives are in place.

“We went and pitched them on this idea of you could build these extra-large autonomous underwater vehicles. You can build them fast. And we did this model of splitting the development 50-50. They had skin of the game. We did too... We built out a Australian engineering team. We built out an Australian production facility. And we have our first production Go Shark already ran came off the production line. Then I think 30 days of signing the production contract.”

Anduril operates on a product-company model rather than a defense-contractor model, investing its own capital to build products it believes are right and then selling them to the government, rather than accepting government contracts to perform work.

“we like to think of our of our approach as being a defense product company, not a defense contractor. uh that is we're not getting paid to engage in contracted work where they say go and do you know this many hours of work to build exactly this thing. Instead we're investing our own money in building what we think the right products are and then we sell them to the government. So we want to be going to the government generally with a product rather than a PowerPoint or at least a prototype instead of a presentation.”

Optical camouflage is relatively easy and not that militarily useful because modern adversaries (Russia, China, Iran) use thermal, radar, lidar and other sensing technologies that easily defeat visible-spectrum cloaking, making optical camouflage mainly useful only against adversaries with naked-eye observation only.

“the biggest problem with optical camouflage and the main reason you don't see a lot of money being put towards it in the modern defense base is it's not actually that useful. It's useful against human adversaries who do not have any other technology to aid them. And those are not really the enemies. as the United States is focused on stopping these days.”

Autonomy in military context enables strategic options that would be unethical with human casualties—because you can use autonomous platforms as expendable pawns on the board rather than sacrificing human lives.

“There's a lot of ways to win a fight and live to see another day. There's a lot of ways to win a fight and sacrifice pawns on the board. And autonomy means that you can do that without the ethical problems of, you know, just throwing away human lives.”

Just War Theory, developed by St. Augustine over a thousand years ago, provides ethical principles for engaging in lethal defense including discrimination (targeting specifics), just cause (good information), and minimizing collateral damage.

“just war theory which was developed you know over a thousand years ago uh by St. Augustine talks about like how you engage in lethal defense uh activity in the most ethical way possible... principles of discrimination, principles of uh you know just cause like how much how good is the information? Do we know for sure that this action that we're going to take is actually going to address the problem that needs to be solved.”

Allied nations won't have the sustainment burden problem the US faces because they have an opportunity to build new military capabilities efficiently rather than maintain legacy systems, creating an advantage for modernization.

“their countries won't have that problem as much. They have an opportunity to build new and build efficiently and something we very much want to help them with.”

Re-industrialization is critically important for the US for cultural, geopolitical, and strategic reasons, and requires the ability to build not just hundreds or thousands but tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of units efficiently and scalably while retaining a magazine inventory advantage against adversaries.

“we really need to re-industrialize. It's incredibly important. Uh it's incredibly important culturally, geopolitically, uh strategically. And you know this is what Andrew is really focused on right now is bringing back our ability to not build hundreds of things or thousands of things but tens of thousands of things or hundreds of thousands of things efficiently scalably uh and to do it in a way that uh enables us to retain that like magazine inventory advantage against our adversary.”

Gen Z men are attending church at higher rates than Gen Z women for the first time in modern civilization, representing an unexpected cultural shift that contradicts prior expectations about secularization trends.

“There's a a lot of uh surveys that show that for the first time in modern civilization, more men in the most recent generation in Gen Z going to church than women. It's like that has never happened before. 10 years ago, if you had asked me like, do you think Gen Z will have a rising church attendance and it will be more men than women? I would have I would have gotten that answer totally wrong.”

The transition from old defense systems to new ones is difficult because the US must responsibly cycle out legacy systems while determining which ones still serve useful purposes and bring new systems online, during which there will be a period of increased costs.

“we're going to have to go through this transition, which is sort of always true, of how do we responsibly cycle out the old, think about what's still fit for purpose or not, and then get the new systems in place that will cost more for a period of time, right?”