Palmer Luckey on Hardware, Building, and the Next Frontiers of Innovation

**Palmer Luckey** (0:00)
The very big picture here is in 2017, a lot of people believed we lived at the end of history, that there was no more geopolitical movement of significance to happen, and that United Nations could write mean letters to dissuade people from expansionist actions. The cynics were right. The cynics who said, no, war is still a thing of the present, you can't start working on bombs after the war has started and expect to have any deterrent impact. You're just gonna be part of fighting wars instead of preventing them.

**Chris Dixon** (0:26)
All of this stuff that's been talked about my whole life is like suddenly happening. AI is clearly happening, we believe crypto will happen. Do you think we're entering into this maybe unprecedented 20, 30 year period of exploration?

**Palmer Luckey** (0:35)
Absolutely. I'll give you my thesis for optimism.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:39)
In 2017, most people believed we were living at the end of history. Great power conflict was over. The United Nations could write strongly worded letters, and that would be enough. Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Palmer Luckey saw it coming. Before the invasion, he tried to sell Anduril surveillance towers to Zelensky, who had read about them in Wired and wanted them on Ukraine's border. The State Department killed the deal. They said Russia wasn't going to invade. Palmer started Anduril in 2017 with 25 people. Bloomberg called it the most controversial company in tech. Wired named him the worst person in Silicon Valley. Today, the company has over 7,000 employees and 25 products. They're the program of record for drug defense across SOCOM and the Marine Corps. Before Anduril, Palmer founded Oculus as a teenager, sold it to Facebook for $3 billion and watched MetaCore $60 billion into the vision he started. He was also an early Bitcoin holder. He bought a Samsung phone for 8,000 Bitcoin and almost became Coinbase's first merchant customer. This conversation was recorded live at a16z's Founder Summit. It covers what it takes to build hardware at scale, why the US is spending too much on getting too little on defense, and why Palmer is still optimistic about the next 30 years. Chris Dixon speaks with Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril and Oculus VR.

**Chris Dixon** (1:56)
Thanks for being here. I just watched your Joe Rogan interview, which everyone should watch. There's Talking Parrots, UFOs, China.

**Palmer Luckey** (2:04)
UFOs again.

**Chris Dixon** (2:05)
China UFOs and China, just a lot of interesting stuff. A AR helmet that you built. It's like nerd Nirvana, I think, in this video, so you guys will have to watch it.

**Palmer Luckey** (2:13)
And then UFOs again. Three or four times.

**Chris Dixon** (2:16)
And there was like the alien seed, this Joe Rogan has to always talk about, did aliens seed human evolution or something, or the uplift theory, was that it?

**Palmer Luckey** (2:23)
Talked about uplift theory, taking non-sentient species and bringing them up to or past the point of human consciousness.

**Chris Dixon** (2:29)
It's a much, it's like old style Joe Rogan of just like deep in every rabbit hole.

**Palmer Luckey** (2:33)
We were going for it.

**Chris Dixon** (2:34)
It was incredible.

**Palmer Luckey** (2:35)
I recommend going on Joe Rogan if you get the chance, but the one problem is that all of your messaging tools become completely unusable for a period of at least 48 hours. Because a lot of things like inboxes, SMS, email, it relies to some degree on there being a limited quantity. And so if you have over a thousand messages come in from everyone you've ever known saying, bro, so cool on Joe Rogan, then everything else in between. And then they're like, Palmer, you must finish your security training today or you will lose your clearance. And they're like, did you get the message? No, no. Hang on.

**Chris Dixon** (3:11)
It's a DDoS on your inbox.

**Palmer Luckey** (3:13)
That's right.

**Chris Dixon** (3:14)
Joe Rogan, that's awesome. Anyway, so I was lucky enough to meet you back in your Oculus days.

**Palmer Luckey** (3:18)
That's right.

**Chris Dixon** (3:18)
Which was, I think, I remember Mark Andreessen and I flew down and saw, I remember the demo with the QR codes on the wall. I'm going to turn a little bit. The QR codes on the wall.

**Palmer Luckey** (3:27)
I can't cheat that well. I'm not like a Broadway actor. Yes, Chris. I remember.

**Chris Dixon** (3:33)
So the demo with the QR codes on the wall?

**Palmer Luckey** (3:36)
Yep.

**Chris Dixon** (3:36)
Right, obviously. And for those who don't know, at the time, the first developer kit, you had tracking, but you had to have the boxes outside.