Palmer Luckey on UFOs, Anduril, Invisibility Tech, & Moon Wars

[00:00] The UAP stuff and our technological development live in completely parallel development tracks right now. If and when we figure out what's going on with UAPs, UFOs, that whole universe, everything's going to change. Oh. I'm not saying I know what's up. One of the things we're most proud of lately is Fury, known as the FQ-44. This is the first autonomous fighter that the United States Air Force has ever procured. [00:30] fighter development program since the end of the Korean War. Andrel's a defense product company, not a defense contractor. Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Andrel beat all of them. The only difference between us and a lot of the other companies that are working in the defense base is that we are doing this on our own dime. We're spending our own money to move as quickly as we can. One of the things that I am most excited about right now is how we're designing a lot of our weapon systems to be manufactured by the types of industry that the United States already has. If you look back at World War II, there's this story about how we turned our [01:00] into missile factories, bomber factories. We designed bombers and missiles that can be manufactured by automotive factories, by tractor factories. And we're trying to move more towards that. - What would war look like on the moon? - What would war look like on the moon? [01:26] Paul Ver, lucky. [01:28] Welcome to Sorcery. Thank you for coming to Anderil HQ, former Los Angeles Times printing press. So finally doing some good.

[01:34] I just heard all about this from Matt. He told me all about the printing press lore. Yep, it's a lot of fun. I mean you can see where we cut all of their machines out of the floor even. So we didn't actually rebuild the floor, we just went in with a grinder and cut out all of their machines. And you're building something similar, right? Oh yeah, very similar. All kinds of cool stuff. So I'd love for you to just maybe walk through one or two of your favorite [01:58] things here. [02:00] - Sure, so this is our public showroom. We have another one that's full of stuff that I can't show to anybody without permission from the government. But of the things that are in this showroom, one of the things we're most proud of lately is Fury. Also known as the FQ44. [02:14] This is the first autonomous fighter [02:17] 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. [02:27] which is, as far as I know, the fastest new fighter development program since the end of the Korean War. [02:33] The really exciting thing about this program is we were competing against a lot of the big guys. So we were competing against Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and in the end, Andrel beat all of them, which was really gratifying to go from starting this company to going toe-to-toe with the guys who are legends of the fighter community and actually get selected to build something. [02:57] It's an AI-powered fighter jet that flies alongside manned fighters. [03:03] Thank you. [03:03] He might fly with two or three or four or five of these alongside with him, extending his weapons webs forward, his sensors forward.

[03:11] and allowing them to engage in risks that you would never want a person to do. You know, there's a lot of ways to win [03:17] fight [03:19] and live to see another day. There's a lot of ways to win a fight. [03:23] and sacrifice pawns on the board. [03:26] And autonomy means that you can do that without the ethical problems of [03:31] you know, just throwing away human lives. [03:33] And what do you think this costs you compared to what the government would cost them? I think that we're, in general, much more efficient than the government. We've done a pretty good job. You know, and we like to think of our... [03:45] of our approach as being a defense product company, not a defense contractor. [03:50] That is, we're not getting paid to engage in contracted work, where they say, "Go and do this many hours of work to build exactly this thing." Instead, we're investing our own money [04:00] in building what we think the right products are, and then we sell them to the government. So we wanna be going to the government [04:05] generally with a product rather than a PowerPoint, or at least a prototype instead of a presentation. And that's gone really, really well for us. It leads to [04:16] way better incentive structures. We make more money when we move faster, rather than more money when we move more slowly. We make more money when things work the first time, rather than more money when it takes 10 tries. And you can imagine which of those leads to better outcomes. - Recently, [04:30] Anderil got some heat in the press about testing. Can you just go through the history of testing and why failure is part of it? [04:37] Yeah, I mean, there was a handful of stories. Reuters and Wall Street Journal were both basically trying to write the same story.

[04:42] So you may not know this. I was a journalism major before I started Oculus, my first company, and of course before Anderil. And so I care about this on two levels. One is the kind of distraught, [04:54] tech founder who is upset when the press either doesn't understand or willfully misrepresents what his company is doing. And separately, you know, the single tear that I shed for the state of journalism in America. Remember, I wanted to be a journalist at one point. So people have said Palmer hates journalism. He doesn't want, you know, a free press. [05:13] It's kind of nonsensical if you look at me and you look at my career where I used to be the online editor of one of the largest college papers in the country. It just, the insult doesn't quite connect. [05:23] In this case, they were making a huge deal out of the fact [05:26] that we had had two aircraft that failed to release during a test. [05:31] So they failed to detach from another aircraft. Also, they were making a huge deal out of a fire that we started during a test. And to be clear, this is a very, very small fire. It was about 0.00002% of a weapons test range specifically designed to have fires on it. [05:49] And the real, they said satellite imagery, reveals the extent of the damage. There was a bunch of grass that caught on fire. And then it got put out, and it was fine. Like, nothing burnt down, nobody was injured, it's exactly what we expect. And the crazy thing is, [06:02] Anduril has started hundreds of fires during our test. [06:06] procedures [06:07] over the course of years. This is how you actually make [06:10] functional products, you test them to fail you, you push the limits, you find out where things are going wrong. Also,

[06:16] In this case, it was a counter-drone system. What do you think's going to happen when a system designed to destroy drones full of flammable lithium-ion batteries [06:24] is tested. Do you think that's never going to end in things on fire falling onto the ground? It's just [06:29] But they said Andrel runs into roadblocks and obstacles as tests fail. [06:35] That's actually not the case. Those tests were extremely valuable. They're part of our usual test campaign. We've had hundreds if not thousands of failed tests over the eight years that we've existed. We've started hundreds of fires. Usually by the time we're doing a release it actually works. It's actually quite rare for that not to work. And of course they don't mention that the Air Force gave them a statement saying our stuff was awesome and passed the certification. They don't run the statement for the Navy saying, by the way, the exercise you're literally talking about was a success for Andrel and they met all of the criteria that we talked about. Nobody mentions those things. They just want to talk about what [07:05] they see as problems because they have no idea what product development looks like. If I ran a product, [07:12] development cycle that was two years late [07:15] and a billion dollars over budget, they'd have almost nothing to say about it. [07:19] But then if I have a successful [07:22] failed test as part of moving quickly, then they're gonna write a whole bunch of what they believe are exposés. The only difference between us and a lot of the other companies that are working in the defense space is that we are doing this on our own dime, we're spending our own money to move as quickly as we can. It's not like taxpayers are paying for, you know, that... [07:39] for that drone test that we were doing internally. [07:43] Anyway, I've said this publicly, but we're not going to be changing our approach. I've had people say, oh, you know, what are you going to be doing, you know, with your test procedures in the wake of these articles? And there's this incredible arrogance, actually, in that question. When journalists ask that question, they're saying, so what are you going to do?

[08:01] to respond to what the criticism of us, the journalists, is. You've been critiqued. How are you going to please us? [08:08] Pleasure us. [08:09] Tell us how. [08:10] bow down for us and tell us how you're going to change because we criticized you. And I'm just not going to do it. We're already doing the right thing. We're not going to change. And I don't really care if there's bad stories written from time to time by people who have never done anything that anyone will ever remember. Why do you think journalists have this sense of entitlement? Journalism attracts a certain type of person. There are people who want to be heard. They want their voice to be important. They derive importance from it. [08:35] I say that as somebody who himself was pursuing journalism. So the only difference between me and a lot of other journalists is that I got out and started doing things that actually matter. [08:44] What do you think? I don't know if you saw this. It's also a good way to make money. Oh yeah. Well, like Anderil, defense, new defense startup valued at over 30 billion dollar starts. [08:55] fire in Washington state is a really interesting story. [09:00] as long as you don't educate your readers into understanding that this is how normal weapons development works. You have to be careful, for example, to not quote any of their customers. You have to be careful to not mention that the Marine Corps itself started hundreds of fires on their weapons training range last year alone, just at Camp Pendleton. You have to carefully avoid all these things. And then your readers are like, wow, this is such an incredible expose. I'm so glad that I subscribed to the Wall Street Journal. It's a pretty bad incentive. [09:30] to [09:31] convince people that they're experts, that they're providing access to information you wouldn't get otherwise, and that they are getting to learn about things that

[09:39] would otherwise be buried or hidden, but for these truth-seeking journalists. And so there's this weird [09:45] They can't actually, imagine if they admitted the truth. They're like, here's our story. By the way, this is totally normal, and the military starts fires on their test ranges all of the time, and the customers said that this is normal and they love it, and that they actually pass the qualifications. It's like, well, wait, this isn't a story. Why did I pay for this? So unfortunately, there's a profit incentive and an ego incentive combined. [10:06] to [10:07] twist the truth in these ways. Sorcery is brought to you by Brex, the financial stack trusted by more than 30,000 companies, including one in three venture-backed startups in the U.S. Nearly 40% of startups fail because they run out of cash. Brex is literally built to help founders avoid that. Unlike traditional banks that let your money sit idle, chipping away at it with fees, Brex is designed to help you spend smarter and move faster. Their all-in-one solution combines [10:37] FDIC protection into one powerful account. You can send and receive money globally at lightning speeds, get 20 times the standard FDIC coverage through their partner banks, and even high yield from day one. With same day and even same hour liquidity, access your funds anytime. Companies like Scale AI, DoorDash, Service Titan, HIMSS, Anthropic, Flexport, Robinhood, and Plaid trust [11:07] E-R-E-X dot com slash sorcery. In today's high-speed business world, staying ahead means using the smartest tools possible, including the powerful capabilities of artificial intelligence. Meet Turing Intelligence. Turing builds customizable AI systems designed to solve your mission-critical challenges, no matter your industry. From expert guidance to tailored projects, Turing helps top companies realize AI that's more capable, more adaptable, and more effective.

[11:37] your business growth. To learn more, visit turing.com slash sorcery, spelt S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. That's turing.com slash sorcery. I think we talk a lot about [11:49] war and defense on Earth, I'm really curious to hear from you. What would war look like [11:55] On the moon. What would war look like on the moon? [11:59] I mean, I've considered this, [12:01] on the moon. So usually I'm thinking about how do you use the moon as part of a warfighting strategy that is still very Earth- [12:09] So for example, the moon would be a great place for large phased arrays, [12:16] large antenna fields that can do a variety of electronic warfare schemes, radar tracking schemes, [12:23] But what would war on the moon look like [12:29] I mean, have you ever read Robert Heinlein's novel, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? No. What year was that? That was probably like late 40s, early 50s that he wrote that. That's a pretty good picture of what warfare on the moon would look like, which really... [12:45] Until we develop our space technology a long way, [12:49] Life on the moon or anywhere off Earth is very, very fragile, right? If your life support systems fail, you die. If your vacuum... [12:57] containment systems fail, you die. If your food resources go bad, you're probably a long way from help. [13:06] the things that we take for granted on Earth, like, oh, equipment breaks down and I'm okay,

[13:10] The bar is just much higher on the moon. [13:13] And so I think he correctly predicted that almost any level of warfare [13:19] is catastrophic. [13:20] probably for both sides that are engaging in it. [13:24] Um... [13:25] unless you're able to do some really, really creative stuff like [13:29] put yourself inside of a lava tube or deep underground or in an asteroid. But at that point, it's not even so much about, you know, moon warfare. You're just back to like, you know, normal subterranean bunker type stuff. I guess warfare on the moon is probably going to be, [13:44] decisive and swift and catastrophic for everybody involved. [13:50] until we get much much much better at uh [13:54] building [13:55] building space technology. [13:56] I asked this-- - By the way, same thing for spaceships. Like people say, what is a space battle gonna look like? It's like, man, it is so easy to rip apart a spaceship. You know, the requirements are so severe on the weight side, on the mass and volume side, [14:12] that you can't armor a spaceship. [14:15] Currently, it just doesn't really work. Space combat's going to be all about never being detected, never being targeted, never being fired upon, because the moment that you're hit, you're probably totally wrecked. [14:28] How far do you think we are from invisibility cloaks and masking? And I don't mean by radar, [14:34] Sure, you mean like visible spectrum. Yes, yeah. [14:38] That's actually a lot easier. - You think so? - Oh yeah, way easier. - Really? - It's a lot harder to hide from synthetic systems. So if you're talking about like radars or lidars or... There's a large number of ways that you can see the world that are not just visible spectrum imaging. People are actually relatively easy to fix.

[14:56] Andrel has a project going way back, building optical camouflage for the ghost helicopter drone that we make. And it's essentially a projection system that looks at the target, [15:07] looks behind, it looks at where the target is, knows where you are, looks behind you, and it calculates the luminance, [15:14] and color values that you would need to match whatever is between your target, your surveilling and the background. So that might be the sky, that might be a mountain. [15:22] It might be a cloud. It's not that hard and our eyes don't have very good resolution. You know, Ghost has a very narrow frontal cross section. And so it was actually designed partly to make itself [15:33] very [15:34] very workable with optical camouflage. [15:37] So building drones, [15:38] that are invisible to the human eye at the ranges that you're using them, [15:43] It's not just like [15:45] A hypothetical, Andrew did this in like 2019, 2020. [15:48] Um, [15:49] Actually, let me see if I can find something for you. I might have a picture I can pull up of some of those tests. An invisible. [15:56] Yeah, invisible drones. Yeah, we're looking for an invisible drone right now. [16:01] You'll notice. [16:02] So this is a ghost drone, just the body of it, like, you know, not with without without without the landing gear attached. And we put up on this tripod. [16:10] and we were testing it against the truck and then also the sky, because they're very, very different systems. So we were moving up and down to make it change color as the observer moved. [16:20] But this is with... [16:21] Optical camouflage disabled. See how you can clearly see the body against the sky? Mm-hmm. [16:26] See how you can see this ever so slight disturbance? See how it's perfect and it lines up and it can't, the goal wasn't, and by the way, you'll see how the body

[16:35] is also copying the truck as well. - Right. - In this case, it was turned off, then we turned it on, so it has to have part of itself be the sky, part of it be the truck. It's a very, very difficult high contrast problem to do both at the same time. If you're all in the air, it's even easier. The point is, [16:50] Visible spectrum optical camouflage is actually quite easy, but something like this would be trivially easily seen by, you know, an infrared camera, thermal camera, you know, lidar, radar. [17:00] So the biggest problem with [17:02] optical camouflage and the main reason you don't see a lot of money being put towards it in [17:07] the modern defense base is, it's not actually that useful. It's useful against [17:13] human [17:14] adversaries who do not have any other technology to aid them. And those are not really the enemies the United States is focused on stopping these days. So like, for example, you might notice ghost doesn't come with optical camouflage. [17:26] All of our customers have been briefed on this. They've seen this. Their point is, "Calmar, I'm not going up against a bunch of guys, you know, who are walking around with their naked eyes." [17:34] and nothing else. These are people who are, we are concerned about adversaries like Russia and China and Iran that are armed with very very high [17:43] levels of technology and there, if anything, the optical camouflage in some ways actually makes you easier to spot. [17:49] easier to spot. [17:50] If you've got the right technology. [17:52] So you don't think UIPs use optical camouflage? [17:56] I think that [17:58] to the, there's a lot that we don't understand about these vehicles and what they are, where, or when they come from.

[18:06] but [18:08] it is likely that [18:10] whatever they are doing is a side effect or an artifact of what's going on. So like, [18:17] I've talked about this with the people, they're like, well, you know, how come, [18:20] "How come sometimes they're invisible in certain spectrums?" My point is, well, what if they are not interacting with reality itself in a way you would expect? Some of these things, you see them, and they don't have any radar signature either. I don't know if that means they're cloaking themselves actively, or if it means that just they do not exist even in the way that we think about [18:40] physical matter. I don't know if it's an active countermeasure so much as the nature of the thing itself. But of course, there's so much that we don't know. My current working theory [18:49] is that they come from the past. [18:52] Interesting, okay. Coming from the future is too hard. The physics just don't seem to work out. [18:56] But if you think about it, think about it in a certain perspective, like there's a question of where they come from, like, [19:02] Do they come from Earth? Do they come from nearby? Do they come from really, really far away? [19:06] Wherever they come from, [19:09] you know, spatially, [19:11] The question then is, okay, temporally, [19:13] what is more likely, that they happen to have come from this particular instant in time, or the hundreds of millions or billions of years that existed prior to our existence? That could be true if they were just like waiting around and then came over, you know, at some point. It could be the case if they are regularly surveying and have just been around for a long time. You could imagine a world where maybe the Earth hosted advanced civilizations a billion years ago, and we just don't even know about them, and these are the remnants of that. I'm not betting on any of these. It's just that,

[19:42] wherever they come from geographically, [19:44] uh, [19:45] There's a very, very long tail of time. And also there's ways to travel forward through time very quickly. You know, if I create a very strong gravity distortion, [19:52] I can have subjective time inside of that bubble. [19:55] passing very, very slowly relative to the time racing by outside of it. And so it's very believable that something from the distant past could come to our present. It's not really believable that something can come from the future back into our present. So that's my bet, is basically, given that there's been a lot more time before now than now, [20:16] just probabilistically speaking, I think it's likely these things have been around for a very long time. [20:21] and either spent a long time coming to us, [20:24] or [20:25] to themselves subjectively not much time at all. [20:27] Wow. [20:28] That's it. Look, I'm not saying I know what's up. [20:32] That's just my... Not saying I know, but I'm using some ideas. I'm not saying I know what's up. I'm saying that is my current guess. Okay. Based on what I know. [20:41] - Interesting. You said this was your most underrated product. So why? - Oh sorry, the real bad here is I don't think any of these UAPs, I think it's unlikely they were manufactured or created like, [20:52] within the last few years. That seems... [20:54] That seems very unlikely. I think they've either been around for a very long time, stored for a very long time, created a very long time ago, or traveled from the distant past into our present. [21:05] Well, see, this... [21:07] That's impossible to say. This is the theory of course, that there's these undersea alien bases,

[21:13] that these things are destroyed there. There's an out of print book called the [21:17] the UFOs and USOs of the Santa Catalina channel, and it's all about [21:22] how people have seen these things that have gone into and out of the ocean in extremely similar ways over the course of decades. And so, like, it's believable. But of course, being stored on Earth does not necessarily mean they came from here. [21:33] nor does it not. [21:34] But I would bet that these things are not [21:37] recently manufactured. I suspect they've been around for [21:40] either a long time or maybe a really, really long time. [21:45] How does that make you feel about [21:47] our technological superiority. [21:50] I think that I think the UAP stuff and our technological development live in [21:54] completely parallel development tracks right now. If and when we figure out what's going on with UAPs, UFOs, that whole universe, everything's going to change. [22:05] And this won't [22:07] be relevant. So we have to, we have, we have, but until that happens, you have to treat them as completely independent parallel tracks. Yeah. So this is one of our products that I think doesn't get nearly enough attention. It's our Seabed Sentry. Okay. For context, Anderil's best-selling product has been, [22:26] our sentry tower. So we sell them to the military, like Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, a bunch of foreign customers. The Brits have a bunch of them. [22:36] uh, [22:38] and Border Patrol has a bunch of them. We're covering about 35% of the U.S. southern border now. It's basically an autonomous tower that scans 360 degrees,

[22:47] Detects all the people, vehicles, animals, drones, whatever, within a few miles. [22:52] and then most importantly, [22:54] After detecting everything, [22:56] reasons about what you might care about and what you would not and then strips out all of the data you don't need. The hard part is not detecting. It's actually [23:04] classifying and paring it down to what you actually care about, and then pushing those targets to people. So giving you basically perfect situational awareness of what's going on in an area. [23:13] The seabed sentry is an extension of what we've done with the land-based Anderil Sentry Tower products. It's something that allows you to know where everything is [23:24] under and on the surface of the ocean. [23:27] We use a few different ways of doing this, but the primary way is this extending [23:31] fiber optic microphone array. It's an extraordinarily sensitive microphone. [23:37] that, [23:38] can allow you to hear things that are very, very, very far away. [23:43] and then it runs it through processing that is more sophisticated than any human sonar operator. [23:49] could ever be. And it is able to figure out by working with other systems where all these signatures are. So I can know where all the whales are, I can know where all the submarines are, I know where all of the boats are, I know where all the divers are. And of course the hard [24:03] Problem again becomes not just detecting things, but filtering out all the things you don't care about. I probably don't need to know where all the whales are. [24:09] I probably don't need to know where all the fish are. [24:11] Probably don't even know where all the swimmers are. [24:13] But I might want to know if there's divers in a harbor where there shouldn't be any people. I might want to know about ships that are not showing up on radar, but I can find their acoustic signature. I might want to know about submarines that I can't find for my space-based sensors or my air-based sensors or my ground-based or my...

[24:30] you know, C-based sensors, but with this I can see them. It's really just trying to make the world transparent, [24:37] to [24:38] military. We want to know where everything is. We don't want anyone to be able to hide from us. [24:44] It's been like very popularly reported and even in the venture capital community that we are at a loss of shipbuilding and shipmaking. That's right. China's hundreds of times ahead of it. Hundreds of times more capacity than us. But is it important if we have missiles? [24:59] It is important because, well, I mean, for one, something has to carry those missiles. So you do need ships. [25:07] You need something that can deploy aircraft, [25:09] Also they can deploy submarines. You need big stuff to carry the little stuff. To just have lots of little stuff go all the way on its own, the physics generally don't work out. [25:20] Very hard to build a small cruise missile that can fly all the way to the Taiwan Strait from US-controlled territory. [25:28] So yeah, we unfortunately do need shifts. [25:32] Unfortunately. [25:33] Sorcery is proudly sponsored by Carta. Carta is transforming the private marketplace, connecting founders, investors, and limited partners through software purpose-built for private capital, trusted by more than 65,000 companies in over 160 countries. Carta's platform of software and services lays the groundwork so you can build, invest, and scale with confidence. [25:55] Carta's fund administration platform supports over 9,000 funds and SPVs, representing nearly $185 billion in assets under management, with tools designed to enhance the strategic impact of fund CFOs. For more information, visit carta.com slash sorcery.

[26:13] That's C-A-R-T-A dot com slash S-O-U-R-C-E-R-Y. [26:18] Some of you may not have heard this yet, but our sponsor Public just launched something called Generated Assets, and it brings AI into investing in a way I've honestly never seen before. Here's how it works. You type in an idea like AI-powered supply chain companies with positive free cash flow or defense tech companies growing revenue over 25% year over year. Public's AI then dispatches a swarm of agents that scan every single US stock, evaluates them, and instantly builds a custom [26:48] why each stock is included. And before you invest, you can even backtest your idea against the S&P 500 so you're making decisions with real context, not just guessing. And beyond generated assets, Public lets you invest in stocks, bonds, options, crypto, all in one place. They'll even give you an uncapped 1% match when you transfer your investments over from another platform. If you want to build a portfolio that actually reflects your thesis, visit public.com slash sorcery. [27:14] Paid for by Public Investing. Full disclosures in the description. [27:18] I know you have some of your own toys and you're a bit of a mechanist yourself. I am. So how did this evolve and what is your current set like what is in your garage? Well, my garage at home is mostly full of my my personal stuff. So I have a bunch of motorcycles. I have a bunch of cars. I have a lot of personal projects. [27:37] I don't really have a lot of Anduril or weapons related projects at home because I've got a way better workshop and a way better lab here at Anduril HQ. It wouldn't make sense for me to go home and do that stuff. If I'm gonna work on those things, I'll just stay late at work.

[27:52] But that's been an evolution compared to the days [27:57] you know, in the very beginning of Anderol, [28:01] Even before Anderleon, I was building jet engines. [28:04] at my house in my empty swimming pool. So it's come a long way. Now I have a better place to test everything. [28:12] Anything like a jet engine? [28:14] - Here or? - No, personally. - Oh, anything like a jet engine at my house? - Yeah. - I mean, I have some jet engine powered personal toys at home, but nothing military relevant. [28:26] I've been working on a turbine-powered motorcycle for a while, which I think is [28:30] You can get really, really high power density with turbine engines. [28:34] And so I've been working on a motorcycle that red lines at about 200,000 RPM. [28:39] and uh... [28:40] That'll be a lot of fun when it's done someday. - Wow. - Someday. - Wow. And you also have Mod Retro. - That's right. So Mod Retro is a side project I've been doing for a long time. It was actually the first company I started even before Oculus. So back when I was about 14 or 15 years old, I started Mod Retro as an online community for people who wanted to [28:59] modify vintage game consoles, electronics, computers, kind of combining the best of modern technology with a lot of these retro systems, building portables out of home consoles. [29:12] doing really cool modifications of existing handhelds like the Nintendo Game Boy, [29:18] And so I've had this project I've been working on for over a decade to make the world's ultimate Game Boy. So, I mean, I mean, like, you know, compatible with original Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, but with...

[29:28] no price limits, no cost limits. And so, uh, [29:32] It took a long time, mostly because I've been so busy with Anduril, that I can only put a tiny bit of time here and there. You know, get a little time over Christmas, a little time over Easter. [29:40] Finally got it out last year. So the Mod Retro Chromatic is the world's ultimate Game Boy. It's an heirloom-grade tribute to the most important handheld console of all time. Instead of a plastic screen lens, it has a lab-grown sapphire crystal screen lens. Instead of a plastic shell, it's made with the same aluminum-magnesium alloy that we use in a bunch of our attack drones. It has a perfect one-to-one replica of the pixel structure of a Game Boy Color. [30:10] 144. [30:11] It's harder than you would think to build a... [30:14] display that bad in 2025. It's actually very, very difficult. Everyone's used to making things that are an order of magnitude more dense. [30:24] But yeah, that's been a fun-- and our new project that we're about to put out there is a [30:28] the Mod Retro M64, which is an heirloom. - I've heard rumors about this. - Oh yeah, it's good. It's an heirloom grade tribute to the Nintendo 64, compatible with all your Nintendo 64 games, but with a lot of really cool new features as well. [30:42] This is more of a personal question, but what's it like [30:45] being a father, how has this changed your perspective of the world? [30:49] I don't think it has changed it all that much yet. I think it will happen over time. [30:54] Me and my wife are very traditional. She's raising a kid. I'm working for the dough.

[31:03] and [31:04] A lot of the usual things people say like, oh, you know, the kid, you know, really made me appreciate the long term perspective or short term. I like to think I'm already a pretty long term thinker. I'm doing things like Andrel because I care about the long term future of our country. I feel like I want our country to be better. I want to leave a better place for my kids. I actually cared about that even before I had kids. So I was already pretty amped up on a lot of the things that I think people say change over time. And then also he's just so little right now. [31:34] which are pretty good words to start with. Those are hard words. Yep. And he can also mimic the sounds of cars, the sounds of trains, and the sounds of airplanes. Actually, he now calls airplanes up. [31:46] because he understands the word up a little bit, but he thinks airplanes are also called up. [31:52] So your point says up. [31:54] and on the ground [31:56] Hopp. [31:58] Anyway, we'll see how my perspective shifts over time, but thus far, [32:02] Maybe it's because I've been planning on always having kids. [32:04] I feel like I was already doing a bunch of the same stuff and had a lot of the mindset that I have. But we'll see as he grows up and becomes more of a challenge. I know. I'll start challenging you. Oh, yeah. I look forward to it. It's great. So as we close out, what are you most looking forward to? [32:19] That's for Anne-Aruel. [32:21] One of the things that I am most excited about right now is how we're designing a lot of our weapon systems to be manufactured [32:28] by the types of industry that the United States already has. [32:32] If you look back at World War II,

[32:34] There's this story about how we turned our automotive factories into missile factories and into bomber factories. [32:41] But it went the other direction too. We designed bombers and missiles that could be manufactured by automotive factories, by tractor factories, by industrial equipment factories. [32:52] Things like the thickness of the metal that we used, the level of heat treat that we could do, even the way that we fastened or welded those pieces together, they were based on what we already knew how to do at scale in American industry. And I think that we've lost that as a country. [33:07] We've mostly, as a country, been building weapon systems that require highly specialized workforces, highly specialized factories. I want to get back to the basics. How do we design cruise missiles and fighter jets that you can make in a Ford plant? How do I get back to making high-end weapon systems that you can make in any automotive factory, heck, any machine shop in the country? [33:27] One example is like Fury's landing gear. [33:30] is a few percent heavier than it could have been because we could have either made it manufacturable by only two places in the entire United States or [33:37] any machine shop in the entire country. And we're trying to move more towards that, because in wartime, [33:43] Andruil's probably not gonna be building all of our systems directly. We're gonna need a whole of country effort to reconstitute what we've lost and keep fighting. [33:52] And so one of the things I'm most excited about is a lot of the weapon systems that we've already made and that we're going to be announcing in the future that are designed to be made on existing automotive style, tractor style, agricultural style factory lines. Because those are the ones that we're actually going to be able to scale up to hundreds of thousands or even millions of units without having to build an entirely new industrial base, without having to find, hire, and train an entirely new workforce just for building weapons.

[34:22] that is gonna be a big deal here in the United States, and I think it's also gonna be a big deal in allied nations that similarly have a lot of their own existing industrial capacity. [34:31] You don't necessarily have to build so many weapons factories if your existing factories are capable of building weapons. And that's going to be a big change that I think people have not fully realized the importance of. [34:43] It's a great place to end it. Thank you so much. Of course. Thank you so much for coming.