Luckey and Stephens kicked off the conversation by discussing their inspiration to start Anduril after noticing the lack of U.S. resources and attention dedicated to competing with countries like China and Russia, particularly in the defense sector. They noticed the ways in which the government’s current approach to defense funding is not conducive to economic growth or the cultivation of upstart companies in the industry. This is because, unlike countries like China which concentrate their investments in a small number of promising companies, the U.S. spreads out their investments, and rarely, if ever, allocates enough money to any one company to give them a chance at becoming a new defense prime. Stephens illustrated this point by drawing attention to the fact that “Palantir and SpaceX are the only two multi-billion dollar companies based on government use cases in the last 30 years.”
According to Luckey, this lack of innovation as a result of the current funding strategy has created a situation where the U.S. is “marching to a future where we are bound to fight a war at some point with one hand tied behind our back.” Luckey explained that “ethical considerations make a big difference in the architecture of defense technology and how you build things.” So, in order to compete with countries just as technologically advanced, but who are comfortable with taking ethical shortcuts, the U.S. defense industry needs to be innovating at a much faster rate in order to produce new companies who can contribute to the development of defense technology.