This is the Interceptor.
It's the creation of Palmer Luckey,
who might be the world's most unlikely weapons mogul.
He's the founder of a multibillion dollar,
virtual reality company.
He's also a polarizing figure in Silicon Valley.
My name is Palmer Luckey, and I'm the founder of Anduril.
I wanna build a big company.
I wanna build a company that's worth billions of dollars.
I wanna become one of the major defense contractors,
that's building technology for the United States government.
And I'm proud to say that, I'm happy to say that,
and I hope we get there.
At his previous company,
the virtual reality headset maker, Oculus Rift,
Luckey had the idea to build a futuristic consumer device,
combining low cost components with sophisticated software.
He sold Oculus to Facebook for about $2 billion in 2014.
Two years later,
just a month before the 2016 presidential election,
The Daily Beast reported he'd given $10,000
to a group of Trump supporters,
to fund billboards featuring insulting messages
about Hillary Clinton.
In 2017, Facebook announced that Luckey
was no longer an employee.
I was fired.
We can all be honest about it.
It became the rare HR decision
to make it into a congressional hearing.
CEO, have you ever made hiring
or firing decisions based on political positions,
or what candidates they supported?
No
Why was Palmer Luckey fired?
That is a specific personnel matter
that seems like it would be inappropriate to speak--
You just made a specific representation
that you didn't make decisions based on political views.
Is that accurate? Well, I can commit
that it was not because of a political view.
Anduril has followed Luckey's Oculus playbook,
using off-the-shelf components,
in an industry much more suited to his politics.
Over the course of a few months, earlier this year,
the company built a cheap version of its drone,
made a smartphone video,
and started showing it to people at the Pentagon.
It's a little crazy,
but I think that is definitely the way that it's going.
I mean, all these other systems, like, where they,
there are people who propose shooting drones
out of the sky with a laser, or with a missile,
or you know, that's not really a good way to take out,
let's say, a hundred drones
that are attacking you from all different directions.
The only thing that can take out a swarm of fast drones,
is a bigger swarm of faster drones,
and that's exactly what we're building.
Here's some Interceptors.
This one has a experimental parachute release mechanism.
So that the idea is, after it runs into something,
if it really destroys it drive train,
rather than falling to the ground,
it can pop a parachute and fall to the ground safely.
Pops this thing, pops open, and there's the parachute.
I think that's one of the reasons
that our customers like us so much.
I mean, they're used to going to people who have like,
here's this white paper.
Here's this idea that we have.
We want you to pay us by the hour,
so that we can research it,
and figure out if it makes sense.
And if it does, you'll pay us by the hour to make it.
And then, if it doesn't, you'll pay us until it does work.
And we're going to them and saying
"We do this ourselves, we used our own money,
"we got it done in a matter of weeks, and here it is."
Anduril has shipped
several hundred Interceptors to military bases.
It also has contracts with
the US Customs and Border Protection agency,
to provide surveillance equipment to use
at the border with Mexico.
Workers at other tech companies,
such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Palantir,
have all objected to doing similar work,
leading to protests by the employees and activists.
Luckey insists that Anduril's work isn't partisan.
There's a lot of people who,
I think, falsely conflate border security
with immigration policy.
And, I don't care what you believe on immigration policy,
even if you want to have totally open immigration.
Anyone can come into the United States
and instantly become a citizen.
You should still want to have strong border security.
The company's surveillance technology
consists of large towers, packed with sensors,
and small surveillance drones that can be set up along
the border, or at military bases, to guard the perimeter.
So, this is one of our sentry towers,
it is a totally autonomous, solar powered infrastructure,
independent security tower.
So, by placing these towers every few miles,
you can end up with a nearly perfect picture
of everything that's going on in a really large area.
And then that is very easy for an operator to read.
These are being used right now by the DOD,
by the Department of Homeland Security,
along military bases, the border,
and a lot of other critical infrastructure.
Anduril's future success relies largely
on the military's continued concern
that the US could lose to China in an arms race
based on artificial intelligence.
Our technology is far behind
the consumer area in many places.
And we're also far behind our adversaries
in a lot of places.
People should be more worried than they are,
about falling behind,
'cause it's not something that's gonna happen someday.
It's already happened.
Critics say, technologists, like Luckey,
have an ethical duty to stay out of the weapons business.
But neither the military, nor Anduril's investors
share their concerns.
The company recently raised a $120 million investment round,
valuing it at about $1 billion.