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- [00:00]
Alex Osila
Why do over 50% of the Fortune 500 use elastic? Because Elastic has done the hard work of making it easier for companies to do generative AI. Right. Elastic's search AI helps them make insightful and impactful decisions at speed across search, observability and security. Elastic has the power to take your data into the future. Explore the possibilities of AI with your data at Explore Elastic Code elastic, the search AI company. Hey, what's News Listeners? It's Sunday, March 16th. I'm Alex Osila for the Wall Street Journal. This is what's New Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's happening in our world. This week we're bringing you an episode of our sister podcast Bold Names, featuring Palmer Luckey, veteran entrepreneur and founder of weapons manufacturer Andrill. During President Trump's first run for the Lucky was part of a minority in the tech sector that supported him. Now he's wielding his influence to remake the government's approach to national security. On Bold Names, hosts Tim Higgins and Christopher mims speak to CEOs and business leaders to take you inside the decisions being made in C Suite and beyond. Tim is here with me now. Tim, what makes Lucky such a unique voice in this moment?
- [01:23]
Tim Higgins
He's one of the perhaps brightest examples of a new wave of entrepreneurs out there who in a lot of ways are abandoning what has made Silicon Valley so powerful, whether it's personal gadgets or ad tech, and pouring themselves into super hard and sometimes controversial science and engineering. Lucky is working on weapons, AI, weapons, drones, high tech operating systems, kind of the stuff of sci fi nightmares. And he is even more influential now because he thinks that his company can help the US Government become more efficient. And as you know, everything in D.C. right now is about becoming more efficient.
- [02:01]
Alex Osila
Thanks, Tim. Now let's hear what Lucky had to say in her interview for Bold Names.
- [02:07]
Tim Higgins
Out of the Silicon Valley tech leaders now supporting President Trump. One you may not have heard of is Palmer Luckey, an eccentric entrepreneur who made his billions by selling his virtual reality company, Oculus VR to Facebook. Now Meta Oculus laid the foundations of the tech behind Meta's popular Quest headsets, but it's Lucky's current venture in the world of web weapons that gives him influence in the US Defense industry. Lucky isn't your typical defense contractor. He's got a mullet and a goatee. He sports Hawaiian shirts instead of business suits. And while his company, Anduril is named after Sword in the Lord of the Rings. Its business designing and manufacturing high tech weapons is deadly serious. Drones, artificial intelligence, cutting edge operating systems, the stuff of sci fi armories coming to life.
- [02:57]
Palmer Luckey
The United States should not be the world police, we should be the world gun store. We need to stop sending our people overseas to die for other people's sovereignty and we need to be willing to sell them the weapons they need to make themselves into prickly porcupines that nobody wants to step on, nobody wants to bite, nobody wants to take a bite of them.
- [03:14]
Christopher Mims
Anduril's latest deal is taking over a massive contract Microsoft had with the army to create what's called the Integrated Visual Augmentation System System, or ivas. It's a virtual reality headset designed for the battlefield that could give soldiers direct information from sensors and control of unmanned weaponry. This brings Lucky full circle to how he got his start years earlier with Oculus VR. His relationship with Facebook didn't last long. His support of Trump's first presidential run in 2016 didn't go over well in Silicon Valley. He was ousted after a donation he made to an anti Hillary Clinton group sparked backlash among his colleagues, though his boss at the time, Mark Zuckerberg, would later tell Congress his departure didn't have anything to do with politics. Now Zuckerberg is among the tech moguls hanging around President Trump and Lucky feels vindicated.
- [04:07]
Palmer Luckey
I've been calling it the Palmer Lucky, I told you so tour. All these people who said that we lived at the end of history, that new weapons were either evil at worst and irrelevant at best have realized no, actually you do need to have a backstop to the threats that you make.
- [04:25]
Tim Higgins
From the Wall Street Journal, I'm Tim Higgins.
- [04:27]
Christopher Mims
And I'm Christopher Mims. This is Bold Names, where you'll hear from the leaders of the bold named companies featured in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.
- [04:38]
Tim Higgins
Today we ask, how does Palmer Luckey want to remake the US Government's approach to national security and go from being the world's top cop to its gun store? Palmer Luckey, welcome. Lots to get into today. What you think about Trump 2.0. You've got great insight, I bet, from your time hanging around Mar? A Lago to your thoughts on Elon Musk's government efficiency efforts with Doge as a guy who himself has spent a lot of time trying to navigate the bureaucracy of government. But first, let's talk about your company. Anduril recently announcing that you're taking over the VR headset development for the Army. A $22 billion contract previously held by Microsoft. And on that you posted on social media platform X the following and I quote, we don't have time for business as usual. Whatever you are imagining, however crazy you imagine I am, multiply it by 10, then do it again. I am back. I am only getting started. Dang, man, that sounds crazy. What does it actually mean?
- [05:44]
Palmer Luckey
Well, I think that, you know, the point that I'm trying to get across is, is that a lot of people have been watching the IVAS program, which the idea of the IVAS program for people who aren't familiar, is to augment the vision of soldiers, to give them superhuman vision that allows them to see heat vision, night vision, day vision, hyperspectral vision, and to also be able to seamlessly share a view of the battlefield with a lot of advanced sensors, robots, drones, so that you can kind of see, in your view, highlighted where all the good guys are, where all the bad guys are, what the incoming threats are, where you're safe, where you're not, and then also seamlessly command and control large numbers of autonomous weapons. The program's had a lot of challenges over the last eight years. It was kicked off during, it was kind of conceived before Trump, but it was actually awarded during the early days of the first Trump administration. It's had a variety of different problems and there's a lot of people who are seeing Anduril and me come in and take over this contract saying, oh, good, they're going to fix the problems. You know, they're going to make it where it doesn't make people dizzy, they're going to make it where it's lighter, they're going to make it where it's cheaper. And what I'm trying to get across to people is, look, that is not where my ambition ends. I truly believe that IVAS is just the beginning of a long path towards better human augmentation. Augmenting our senses, augmenting our cognition, tighter, more seamless integration between robotic and biologic teammates.
- [07:15]
Unnamed Colleague
So Microsoft's been, hi, by the way. Palmer, it's been a minute. It's been like five years.
- [07:20]
Palmer Luckey
How's it going?
- [07:21]
Unnamed Colleague
But, yeah, hey, so they've been leading this effort for a while. Right. And I think they're going to stay on as a cloud providing partner.
- [07:29]
Palmer Luckey
That's right.
- [07:30]
Unnamed Colleague
But why, why you and not them?
- [07:32]
Palmer Luckey
Anduril, I think, has a lot of, a lot of weight to bring and areas like mass scale manufacturing, like, we know how to make things at scale for the United States military. We've done that in a way that Microsoft has never really had to do. I'd also say, purely egotistically, that I am the world's best head mounted display designer. And so having me on the problem is going to make a really big difference. And it's not just me. I shipped millions of virtual reality headsets to millions of people and I worked at Facebook for a few years before they fired me. But for me, this is a little bit of a return to form. And I got to admit, I have spent the last decade since getting fired thinking very carefully about what I would build if I was building again and how I would do it and how I could achieve kind of a similar gain in performance but for a different customer. In this case, the customer I've been focused on for the last eight years with Anduril, which is the United States military and our allies and partners around the world.
- [08:32]
Tim Higgins
I think, you know, there's, it's. You are clearly a true believer in augmented reality. You've been doing it for a lot of years. Last time we talked a few years ago, Apple was coming out with its own augmented reality goggles. And you were a fan, huge fan. And I wonder if that's still the case. And I asked because there's been some disappointment among kind of the general observer that this new device hasn't taken over the world yet, just like the iPhone. And perhaps this kind of feeling that the Metaverse isn't on the precipice that we all kind of thought a few years ago. Where are you on this? It's almost as if you're looking at a different use case than a few years ago that the general public was talking about.
- [09:13]
Palmer Luckey
Well, I've been looking at the military side of things for a very long time. On the Apple Vision Pro side, I've been pretty consistent about this. Even before it was announced, I was telling people, listen, you have to realize that what Apple's doing here is not trying to, with their first release, try to make something that is for everybody. They are trying to set a very high standard. They are trying to drag something out of the future that really shouldn't exist till 2026, 2027, and drag it into the present by making it ludicrously expensive. It's a thirty five hundred dollar product. They never thought that that was actually going to be the thing that everybody buy, that everybody used. You're going to see major players launching productivity applications, gaming applications, entertainment applications. Are we on the precipice of the Metaverse? I don't know. I Never really bought into that particular buzzword. Turn of phrase. Although the day that Meta changed their name from Facebook to Meta, I did take literally all of my liquid cash and use it to buy Meta shares.
- [10:11]
Unnamed Colleague
So you're clearly very bullish on Meta. Are you still bullish on their potential in terms of the Metaverse? I mean, just to put this in context, I was saying something jokey on threads, and Andrew Bosworth got mad at me for saying, like, oh, like they've pivoted to AI. It seems like they're no longer the Metaverse company for my mother.
- [10:32]
Tim Higgins
My mother's listening.
- [10:33]
Palmer Luckey
Who's Andrew currently the CTO of Meta. But there was a time where he was. Where he was leading, you know, all of their mixed reality VR AR efforts.
- [10:43]
Unnamed Colleague
Right. So. So they. They're clearly still invested. I mean, do you kind of. Are you still bullish on their vision? Because now they're really emphasizing AI. It does seem like a shift, I.
- [10:57]
Palmer Luckey
Think, that they are a publicly traded company, and it would be crazy if they did not publicize their AI efforts to the same extent that their competition is. Remember that Meta is in a competition not just for hiring the best people or building the best technology, but for keeping investors aligned with their vision. There's been a lot more talk of AI, but that's what you have to do when you're a publicly traded company and investors are comparing you with your peers and they see that their peers are heavily investing in AI. It would be kind of crazy if Meta were to just keep it on the back. Like, just keep. Keep it in the background, not really talk about it, and instead focus on. On Metaverse. I'd say, basically, public communications are very rarely an indicator of where strategic priorities truly are in someone's brain. I mean, I'll give you another example. The priorities that I'm most focused on for the next year, I've literally never talked about publicly. Actually, that's.
- [11:50]
Tim Higgins
Now's the time. Now's the time.
- [11:52]
Palmer Luckey
Well, I was. IVAS was one of them. And I actually said, when we teamed up with Microsoft just a couple months ago and that became public, I said, this is my top priority. It has been for a long time. And, you know, you could have very easily said a year ago with me, well, sure seems like Palmer's given up on the Metaverse. Seems like he's not really working on AR and VR anymore. He's all about AI now. And that comes back to what I publicly say. And you're right, I'm one of those crazy AR VR people. I truly believe that we are someday going to spend most of our lives viewing the world in some kind of augmented way, whether it's AR VR.
- [12:30]
Tim Higgins
So we've heard how Lucky sees the worlds of VR and war coming together. But next we explore how his views match up with the current efforts by Doge.
- [12:38]
Palmer Luckey
You can't say, oh, defense is off limits. We don't need to be more efficient there. I got into this because I wanted to make the defense industry more efficient. And I think we got a lot of other people who are finally in office who agree.
- [12:52]
Tim Higgins
Stay with us.
- [12:58]
Palmer Luckey
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- [13:35]
Tim Higgins
Well, let's talk about, I mean, maybe something you don't want to talk about, but you're out there raising more money, something like $2.5 billion according to reports, which I think would value you at allegedly $28 billion. But. Okay, so you don't want to talk about if that's true, but what do you need this kind of capital for?
- [13:52]
Palmer Luckey
So the last round that we raised, we were pretty clear about what we were doing with it. We were raising money so that we could build this new manufacturing facility in Ohio. In Ohio? Yep. Arsenal 1.
- [14:04]
Tim Higgins
A billion dollars. Almost a billion dollars. I mean, this is a massive, the plans for this. It's a massive facility. We've already talked about 4,000 jobs.
- [14:11]
Palmer Luckey
Yep.
- [14:11]
Tim Higgins
You're a wildly ambitious timeline. You want to start production mid-2026.
- [14:16]
Palmer Luckey
That's right.
- [14:16]
Tim Higgins
What are you building there?
- [14:18]
Palmer Luckey
So we're building a lot of different things, but I'd say the thing that is going to dominate capacity is going to be autonomous fighter jets. We are building a autonomous fighter jet for the United States Air Force called Fury, for the CCA program, Collaborative combat aircraft program. This is a really big win that Anduril had last year where we were competing against a number of different companies, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing. We beat the big guys and managed to, and managed to convince the Air Force that we were the ones who are going to be able to build the best autonomous fighter jet and that we were going to be able to build them At a scale of thousands of units on a timeline that is relevant to a potential fight in the Pacific with China.
- [15:00]
Unnamed Colleague
Is that what is that going to replace? Or the F35 for example, replace the Top Gun?
- [15:06]
Tim Higgins
I mean the movie is going to go away.
- [15:08]
Palmer Luckey
I do think that over the last few years that actually is where people have come around to what we're building. Like the name of CCA Collaborative Combat Aircraft used to be Loyal Wingman. The idea being you're building these robotic systems that fight alongside manned aircraft. I think everyone agrees that at some point someday we're going to have few to no manned fighters. Just in terms of the risk that you're taking, the cost that you have to carry when you're keeping a person alive, the fact that you have to always return from your mission versus having the ability to just send things on one way trips. It's really just a question of when. You know, is it this year, is it 10 years, is it 50 years? I think it's going to be somewhere in between the F35. We probably need to keep that program going, if only because we've made our allies so dependent on it. We've sold a lot of F35. There's a lot of people who've built their entire air defense strategy around F35. And so we probably can't just shut down that program.
- [16:05]
Unnamed Colleague
So while we're talking about these autonomous, you know, flying drones essentially, obviously those have been hugely important in Ukraine. I mean a lot of these still are built in China. The US has had trouble, you know, maintaining market share there. You know, the Pentagon's trying to encourage us manufacturing of these really low cost autonomous munitions. In a way. Where are we at? Why can't we maintain any market share there in the U.S. you know, I.
- [16:38]
Palmer Luckey
Actually think we, we're doing pretty good on that front in terms of the technology and the companies. It's not an area that Andrew is in. We're not building kind of these small, low cost tactical quadcopters. Part of that is because company philosophy wise, I believe that Anduril should be building things that would not exist if we were not building them. I'm not really in the headspace to use my mega billions that I raise from venture capitalists to crush other competent American companies who are already doing a great job in their given area. So there's about a half dozen small drone makers in the US that are building really powerful tools in, in, in that category. I think that the problem is that the United States has not really made it Part of our procurement strategy to actually use tools like that. Yet, like, the reason you see Ukraine using small quadcopters is because they're in a war. They're using whatever they can get their hands on, whatever they can build in country, whatever they can buy from China. And they're strapping grenades to, to drones and flying them around and blowing them up. The United States, like we don't have a program of record for armed quadcopters. There's earlier research and development going on. There are early prototypes of things going on. We're building a small, sorry, a larger attack, attack, attack quadcopter that is fitting into a Marine Corps program organic, for organic precision fires. But again, like that's early stages. They're basically at the stage where they're buying hundreds of them to try out with the intent of getting into it later. So I'm actually not too worried on the, on the small quadcopter side. I think the United States is actually doing fine there. Where we really get screwed is on munitions that are a bit harder to build, things like cruise missiles, things like surface to air interceptors in that case. I mean, you've probably read all the stories. US War gaming results.
- [18:23]
Unnamed Colleague
We run out in two weeks in a fight with China.
- [18:26]
Palmer Luckey
Yeah, it depends on who you ask. There's people who say a day, there's people who say eight days, people say two weeks. But you can see the tenor of it is all the same. And let's say that it is two weeks. Two weeks of pain doesn't mean much to a dictator who thinks in terms of centuries. Right. Like if China believes that we can put up a good fight for a week or two, and then it's going to take us years to rebuild our industrial capacity. On the weapons side, I mean, I mean that's, that's an easy trade for someone like him to make. Just get through the pain and come out the other side with the world's largest military by far standing unopposed and a US arsenal that is empty.
- [19:07]
Unnamed Colleague
Okay, but. And we have a new Secretary of Defense and Pete Hegseth, he recently said, I'm quoting here, we have some really fast moving newer contractors that are willing to work that have already put a lot of money into R and D, that want to help us rapidly field these new systems that we're going to need for fights in the future. Defense spending is, you know, at this point, given the push toward efficiency at zero sum game. It feels like he's talking about you, some of these other drone makers. You just mentioned. I mean, do you see this as a good sign for Anduril, number one? And number two, how can we realize the dream that you just articulated in a world where we're trying to shrink budgets, even the defense budget, it sounds like, or they're looking for efficiencies.
- [19:52]
Palmer Luckey
So to be honest, it's not that hard. We spend so much on so little. We spend so much money on capabilities that are of very little consequence to deterring a conflict with China. Legacy. Things that made sense when we were investing very heavily in counterterrorism made a lot of sense when we were imagining that we were going to get into a large scale land war in Europe. You know, I actually think that in a lot of ways Anduril will do better in a world where defense budgets are going down because that's when you have to tighten your belt. When your budget is stable or going up, it's easier for people to just keep spending on everything they're already spending on because nobody will complain. And then add even more. On top of that, when you're forced to tighten your belt, that's when you start to make trade offs and say, you know, do I really need to keep for like, you know, one example is the Marine Corps getting rid of their tanks. And they said, you know what, that's not the future of the Marine Corps island hopping in the Pacific. Tanks are not going to be part of that. So you know what? We're going to get rid of them. You know, that sent a shockwave through the DOD to have the commandant make that decision. We probably need to make 100 decisions that are just like that, fundamentally recomposing the force, their mission, how we think about deterrence. My ideological view is that the United States should not be the world police, we should be the world gun store. We need to stop sending our people overseas to die for other people's sovereignty. And we need to be willing to sell them the weapons they need to make themselves into prickly porcupines that nobody wants to step on, nobody wants to bite, nobody wants to take a bite of them. That's how I think we're going to help our allies. Not just like Ukraine or Israel, but looking at other places that China has on their roadmap, like the Philippines, like South Korea, like Japan. We need to sell them the tools that they need to defend themselves. When you rethink things that way, you say, well, wait, maybe we don't need to budget to have, you know, hundreds of thousands of troops that are ready to go fight for this particular country. Maybe we can actually put that money into advanced munitions production of things that are, you know, 90% fewer parts, much easier to make, where we can make large quantities of them sufficient to deter a conflict. Maybe we actually can cut defense spending and also get more capability. I'll finish this grant by saying this, which is, I'm actually probably a little bit at odds with some of my Republican colleagues where, you know, they're saying, hey, we're at 2.9% of GDP on defense spending. If we're telling the rest of the world that we need to, they need to be at 5%, you know, shouldn't. Shouldn't we be at 5% too? I lean. I lean more towards. I think we can do it with what we're already spending or less.
- [22:27]
Tim Higgins
I mean, this vision that you put forward comes at a good time, right? I mean, at a period of time when President Trump is trying to reimagine how the federal government works, has his team of Elon Musk and Doge out there talking about government efficiency. You spent time at the President's Club in Florida. Mar A Lago. What are they thinking about? What are you hearing about what they want to do with the Pentagon? Is it this vision? Do you see this potential? Or what are you hearing?
- [22:57]
Palmer Luckey
Well, I'll start by saying it's really easy to say that my vision comes at a convenient time and then point to Trump eight years after I started the company, back when everyone said that AI was bunk, that I was evil for starting a weapons company.
- [23:08]
Tim Higgins
You were not the coolest kid in Silicon Valley at the time, as you are perhaps now.
- [23:12]
Palmer Luckey
Well, you know, and you know, like our CEO Brian Schimpf is a Democrat, I'm a Republican. The good news is I think defense is pretty nonpartisan, or at least bipartisan.
- [23:21]
Tim Higgins
But I didn't, you know, during Inauguration Day, I didn't see you on stage behind the president. How much voice are you going to have in this new administration?
- [23:29]
Palmer Luckey
Look, you know, I've been to Mar a Lago, but who hasn't?
- [23:33]
Tim Higgins
Yeah, I will say, the last year, Mims hasn't.
- [23:37]
Palmer Luckey
It feels like the. I've been calling it the Palmer Lucky I told you so tour. All these people who said that we lived at the end of history, that new weapons were either evil at worst and irrelevant at best, have realized, no, actually, you do need to have a backstop to the threats that you make. You cannot ensure peace if there's no credible threat of violence underpinning it. And that's been the United States strategy For a very, very long time. I think that this new administration is very aligned with my vision. Not so much, because I have convinced them. And I know everyone says this. I think it's where common sense leads, and I think everyone understands that you have to look everywhere. You can't say defense is off limits. We don't need to be more efficient. There's. I got into this because I wanted to make the defense industry more efficient, and I think we got a lot of other people who are finally in office who agree.
- [24:31]
Unnamed Colleague
Do you think that means that Doge is going to go into the DoD like they have with other agencies and.
- [24:39]
Palmer Luckey
Oh, I don't think. I think the DoD is going to be a lot more cooperative. I don't.
- [24:43]
Unnamed Colleague
Oh, so you think they'll let them in and just kind of immediately give them root?
- [24:48]
Palmer Luckey
Put another way, there's a very different flavor to a bunch of office goons refusing to open the door on foreign aid to Mozambique versus a bunch of Pentagon officials and troops barricading the door to the designees of the president. Like, that's actually, like. That's like military revolution, coup type of stuff. So I just. I just. I just don't see it. I don't think you're going to see a standoff. I think they're going to say, can I see your badge? Can I see your papers? Okay. Yep, Right this way. I think you're going to see less of this irrational, I can resist by just not opening the door mentality.
- [25:32]
Christopher Mims
Lucky sounds like he's on the same page as Elon Musk when it comes to cutting government spending and doing things differently. But how close are they?
- [25:40]
Tim Higgins
What's your last text message?
- [25:42]
Palmer Luckey
Let me see. Let me check. What did I last say?
- [25:45]
Christopher Mims
Just ahead, more about that Chad and what Lucky says his Silicon Valley colleagues changing their views on Trump has in common with songstress Patti LaBelle. Stay with us.
- [26:08]
Tim Higgins
Let's go back to Musk, and I'm just curious, how much are you in contact with him? What are you telling him? Anything specific?
- [26:16]
Palmer Luckey
What am I telling him?
- [26:17]
Tim Higgins
What's your last text message?
- [26:19]
Palmer Luckey
Let me see. Let me check. What did I last say? Sorry.
- [26:24]
Tim Higgins
Pull it out.
- [26:25]
Palmer Luckey
Yeah. No, let me see. What is my last message?
- [26:31]
Tim Higgins
Emmy, how often do you text with him?
- [26:34]
Palmer Luckey
Oh, you know, fairly regularly. I mean, we're also. We're also in. We also are in a bunch of group chats together.
- [26:41]
Tim Higgins
So, you know, it's video game group chats, perhaps.
- [26:46]
Palmer Luckey
Let's see.
- [26:48]
Tim Higgins
You consider him a friend, though, A mentor, I would say.
- [26:51]
Palmer Luckey
We are. I'd say we're associates or colleagues. I don't know if I deserve the title, title of a friend. If Elon says that I'm his friend, then I'll gladly accept. So. But, you know, like, we definitely get along. Let's see. No. Oh, no. Here's what it was. The last thing we were talking about was the fact that the Black Eyed Peas, Grammy winning, Grammy winning song, let's Get Retarded has been taken off every single music platform and replaced with the child safe version that was for children's sports games. Let's get it started. So that was the last thing that we were talking about and how it's an example of memory holing that, that nobody even really talks about, despite everyone agreeing that it has happened.
- [27:36]
Tim Higgins
I guess I was wondering, I mean, You've partnered with OpenAI to use their AI tech and drone defense systems. Their CEO, Sam Altman, is almost Musk's nemesis at this point. Did you get any grief from him for that?
- [27:51]
Palmer Luckey
I think that there's a lot of fair criticism that people make in Silicon Valley. There's also a lot of interpersonal dynamics and there are people that I work with that Elon doesn't like. There's people that Elon works with that I don't like. There's people that Elon works with who fired me and who ripped away my company from me. And guess what, my president does the same thing. And yet I still vote for him and support him.
- [28:19]
Unnamed Colleague
Let me ask you a question about the so called tech. Right, because, you know, mentioning Musk, I feel like, you know, y'all are sort of all members or honorary members. It does feel, especially in light of what you just said, like that is maybe a bigger tent in some ways than kind of other political subgroups in Silicon Valley have been in the past. I mean, do you agree with that? Do you think that there's kind of a loose camaraderie there that keeps it together or.
- [28:49]
Palmer Luckey
I think the tent is legitimately getting bigger and that everyone wants it to be. The people outside the tent wanted it to be bigger and the people inside it wanted it to be the tent. I mean, you see a lot of, you know, and I, you know, for people who aren't familiar, I, you know, I was a Trump supporter even before 2016.
- [29:06]
Tim Higgins
So you're okay seeing Mark Zuckerberg hang out at Mar a Lago?
- [29:10]
Palmer Luckey
Absolutely. And it's one of those things where it doesn't really matter whether it's fair or not. It's definitely good for the rights to become a bigger tent and to bring more people into it. I think it is just a good thing. And so you have a lot of people. It's like Patti LaBelle said, I've tidied up my point of view. I've got a new attitude. All these people have tidied up all of their inconvenient beliefs, all of their things that maybe don't align with the current zeitgeist, and they've decided that they're going to follow a different path. I'm not going to throw it back in their face and say, oh, yeah, but what about this thing that you did? What about this thing you did eight years ago? It's just not productive.
- [29:51]
Tim Higgins
Well, I think that's probably a good place for us to tie it off at Homer. Lucky, thank you for coming on.
- [29:59]
Palmer Luckey
Always fun.
- [30:01]
Tim Higgins
Before we go, we reached out to Apple to get its response to Lucky's thoughts on its Vision Pro headset, and the company didn't respond. We also reached out to the US Department of Defense and the State Department to ask what those agencies thought of his comments about the country's national security policy. The State Department referred us to a fact sheet on US arms sales and defense policy, and the DoD did not respond.
- [30:28]
Unnamed Colleague
And that's bold.
- [30:29]
Christopher Mims
Names for this week. Michael Lavalle and Jessica Fenton are our sound designers. Jessica also wrote our theme music.
- [30:36]
Tim Higgins
Our producer is Danny Lewis. We got help this week from Kathryn Millsop, Scott Salloway, and Falana Patterson. For even more, check out our columns on WSJ.com I'm Tim Higgins.
- [30:47]
Christopher Mims
And I'm Christopher Mims. Thanks for listening.