#171 Palmer Luckey - Superhuman Soldiers, AI Missiles and Exoskeletons in Warzones

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Shawn Ryan** (0:30)
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**SPEAKER_3** (0:58)
Palmer Luckey, welcome to the show.

**Palmer Luckey** (1:00)
Thank you for having me. I'm so incredibly stoked to be here.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:03)
I'm pumped to have you here.

**Palmer Luckey** (1:04)
It's so different when it's not on a screen.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:07)
Do you watch it? Do you watch the show?

**Palmer Luckey** (1:09)
So I don't watch podcasts regularly in general, but I've seen years from time to time. Of course, I had to tune in for Trump. And it's just, I'm a virtual reality guy. And so I understand the difference between things that's on a flat screen versus 3D, but it's just so cool to be here in person.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:28)
Oh, thank you, thank you.

**Palmer Luckey** (1:29)
We'll do the next one in VR.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:30)
Well, teach me how to do it. I'd love to be the first one to do that.

**Palmer Luckey** (1:34)
I'll set it up, I'll set it up.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:36)
Right on. Yeah, so we, you're a tech titan, and we had Joe Lonsdale on a couple months ago. Amazing human.

**Palmer Luckey** (1:46)
Amazing human, and people should just know my bias. Joe was one of the first investors in my first company, Oculus. So back when I was a teenager, he put millions of dollars into my company at a time where very few people did. This was his last VC firm, Formation 8, which has now kind of evolved into 8 VC. So I love Joe, and I like to think Joe loves me. And we've had a really productive and profitable relationship over the years.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:11)
Very cool. Well, he was a fascinating interview. And then you came up, and I was like, dude, we've got to get this guy. He's like the Tony Stark, but real.

**Palmer Luckey** (2:23)
Tony Stark, except Tony Stark got out of building weapons. And I moved into it. So we're a little bit in reverse, but I like the comparison.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:33)
Yeah. Well, everybody starts off with an introduction here. So here we go. Palmer Luckey, from garage inventor to Silicon Valley Titan, a true innovator and disruptor in technology and defense, founded Anduril Industries in 2017 to radically transform defense capabilities that the United States and its allies by fusing AI with the latest hardware advancements across many domains. Designer of Oculus Rift, a virtual reality head-mounted display and founder of Oculus VR, which was acquired by Facebook for over $2 billion. Attended Golden West College in Long Beach City College at the age of 14 and studied at California State University, Long Beach, before dropping out to build Oculus VR. That seems to be the thing with all of you tech innovators, is you drop out of school and-

**Palmer Luckey** (3:29)
The only difference between me and all the other tech guys is they were mostly going to school for tech degrees. I was, if you can believe it, a journalism major. I was the online editor of the Daily 49er, which was the Cal State Long Beach-

**SPEAKER_3** (3:40)
You've got to be shitting me. You were going to do journalism?

**Palmer Luckey** (3:42)
I was going to do journalism. I was, even as a teenager, frustrated with the state of journalism in America, particularly technology journalism. I think the thing that radicalized me was this CNN piece about a, about this, I think this was back when you had the iCloud hacks, and they were reporting on how 4chan was affiliated with it. And they had this technology analyst who's paid six figures, which was a lot of money at the time, you know, when I was going to school. He paid six figures to live in New York City and analyze technology. And the anchor says, so who is this 4chan? And I'm like, oh my God, this is nuts. And then what does he say? He says, well, we don't know the details yet, but he's some kind of system administrator, someone who knows his way around computers and how to hack things. I was like, oh my God, like technology journalism is going down the shitter. And I wanted to be part of the solution. So I'm glad that I decided to build technology rather than report on it. I think being the man in the arena is a lot more fun and a lot more rewarding, but yeah, it's interesting to imagine a world where I'd be in your chair.