Palmer Luckey (L) is a very young Billionaire.  He started a small company in the Virtual Reality (VR) field called Oculus VR, and soon sold the startup to Facebook, all when he was only 24.  The sales price paid to Palmer was 2 BILLION dollars. Less than three years later this maverick young billionaire was fired from Facebook – – – which may turn out to have been a break for America’s creeky if not antiquated, massively costly, and slow-moving Military Defense Industry.

After the Cold War ended in 1989 when the Berlin Wall was abandoned with the collapse of the Soviet Union, our some 50 large Defense Contractors went through a large-scale consolidation, leaving us today with only 5 major corporate Defense Corporate players:

1) Lockheed Martin Corporation
2) The Boeing Company
3) General Dynamics Corporation
4) Raytheon Company
5) Northrop Grumman Corporation 

These five behemoths remain the current backbone of our US Military Industrial Defense Contractor group as the principal collection of government competitors for our military establishment.  Mr. Luckey is focused on becoming a major disrupter to the old arrangement. At this stage, his new manufacturing firm, Anduril Instries, Inc., behaves as though it just might bring about a genuine reinvention of the old, costly, slow-moving ‘Cost Plus’ Defense industry.

Below is one of the many YouTube interviews with Mr. Luckey.  It was made at Pepperdine University’s Campus in Malibu, CA on October 3, 2024. It is 57.47 long and well worth that amount of time.  We suggest you view this video here, rather than on YouTube, so that ads do not become as distracting. The video’s description follows:

Palmer Luckey, a Hawaiian shirt-wearing, inventor, innovator, and polarizing entrepreneur promises to disrupt the US defense industry. In 2017 Mr. Luckey, designer of the Oculus Rift VR (virtual reality) head-mounted display, founded Anduril Industries, an autonomous weapons startup, intended to radically transform the defense capabilities of the United States and its allies by fusing artificial intelligence with the latest hardware advancements. 

At Anduril Palmer integrates a consumer technology business model with mission-driven objectives, enabling rapid product development and deployment, setting the company apart from other players in the defense industry. The company’s software is so unique that it is being used across multiple branches of the U.S. military and in both the Russia-Ukraine War and the Israel-Hamas War. 

His deep interest in defense technology was driven by his time at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies Mixed Reality Lab, where he built hardware used to research immersive treatment for US military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. 

He continued to support various military applications of virtual reality during his time at Oculus, enhancing his belief that radical modernization of US military technology is a prerequisite for preserving our way of life. 

Palmer began attending Golden West College and Long Beach City College at the age of 14 and studied at California State University, Long Beach, before leaving the school to build Oculus VR. Palmer will discuss his story, how the technology industry should ethically participate in the defense sector, ethical applications of AI in defense, and more:

Let’s listen to Palmer’s story as he is first interviewed by Bloomberg Originals’ Emily Chang. This video is 29:12 in length:

In case you’re interested in seeing more about young Palmer, here are 3 more links to this self-made billionaire’s activities – and philosophy (these are very short (5 minutes or less) videos:

1. Can Palmer Luckey Reinvent the U.S. Defense Industry? | WSJ

2. Palmer Luckey explains how he built the first Oculus VR headset at 16 years old.

3. Palmer Luckey, Oculus VR, Anduril Industries, AI, National Defense & Education