#AIS: Palmer Luckey on Anduril
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Hey, everybody, hey everybody, we have an exciting show for you today. This is the fifteen and the final episode from the all in summit twenty twenty two. I wanted to take a quick moment to thank my team.

They worked tirelessly over a hundred days to make the event magical for everybody who is able to make IT, thanks to the audience for coming next year, will try to have twice as many of you there. Just a quick thank you to Amber ashly, jackie, nick, fresh marine mali, big mike hundred times to Rachel reporting producer, just then, James, Jimmy day, my brother josh, everybody who came and supported the event. We had an incredible crew.

me. We had an incredible time. And of course, I would be remiss if I didn't thank the amazing speakers who joined us from all around the world, so candid, so insight for my power.

Bill, girly breakfast, sor eda, marr, candis, tim elon and tony or nate ryan, clare, my boy, a boy and tony ogc, m. Martis, your one sale, James, my tie bike and Green wolf. And of course, today's guest, the one and the only to palmer lucky.

And most of all, i'd like to like my best, these treats, sacks and freeburg, who did an amazing job of hosting the event. Now, a little preambles here before we start this episode. Many of you have heard, uh, that this is a controversial episode.

IT is a little controversial. There maybe a little twist in IT. So I will be coming back after palmer lucky talk to give you a little context because I might get a little confusing.

I don't want spoil this Price for you, so enjoy this episode. But before we go to this episode a lot, you have questions. You have questions about the future of the all in the cast.

And those questions are important, and they're never gonna answered. They're never going to be answered. But just so you know, i'm not leaving.

I'm not leaving. I'm not leaving. The show goes on, this is my home. They're gona need a writing ball to take me out of here.

They are going to need to send in the national government because I am going and nowhere. The show goes on. We, man, give.

We open sources to the fans .

and just got.

So my name is palmer Lucy. I ve found in two companies. My first was a couple to called oculus VR that I found IT when I was nineteen years old and living in a cpa trailer. Thank you. Thank you.

Sold that too for a few billion dollars to facebook and then got fired few years later and then started Andrew, because I wanted to work in the national security space for variety of reasons, and i'll get some of those reasons today. So the technology industry for many years has prided itself on being the first to understand where things are heading so that they can build the things that are going to be relevant for the future. On national security, though, and on the rise of austerity.

To add series, IT was one of the last industries to realize where things were going due to a variety of ideological reasons, but also business reasons. So I didn't just predict the importance of defense in the twenty twenty IT largely took the exact wrong position, the opposite position first, all you have obvious examples like big technology companies is explicitly refusing to do work with an apartment advance. Google is one big example.

But the worst examples are really in the startups that don't exist because people didn't want to even get into such a controversial space, less IT ruin their careers. You know, when I started andal, I had already sold the company for billions of dollars, and investors still didn't want to invest. I still had a tough time in a lot of meetings with ventura capital alist.

And none of the conversations with VS that I had were about my ability to hire executor, build products everyone believed could do those things, even the ones who didn't like me much. The vast majority of conversations that we had, we're about whether or not he was even ethically okay to ever build the company that would build weapons. And the people who turned us down, the ones who decided not to investing, and all actually believe that we had a good team and good people and good product market fit.

The issue is that they thought that I was inherently wrong to build tools capable of being used for violence, because they believe that the idea of deterrent violence through having a strong arsenal was fundamentally obsolete and itself wrong. Even you imagine how hard that would have been to raise money if I hadn't found a oculus, would have been impossible. Even after we raise money and got traction, the negativity continued.

There were there was a really interesting cover story in bloomberg in twenty twenty that called us text most controversial. This was a year where tiktok was banning users for calling attention to the weaker genocide in china and banning users for posting homosexual content. This is a year in which adam newman paid himself tens millions of dollars for the right to use the word wee.

It's a year that uber was under a federal investigation for its workplace culture immediately after a board coup that ejected much of the leadership. The time where facebook was getting hold in front of congress to testify. But of course, as a tiny defense company making a handful of purely defensive base security systems that committed the crime of building technology for a military, Andrea was the one that claimed the built belt for the world's most controversial technology company.

I'd say that the warring europe has totally shattered the idea that we live at the end of history. Every few decades we start to believe that economic ties have ended all prospect of war, and in every few decades were minded. This isn't true.

That's not just a very popular idea, especially in dc, that we live. And what they call the end of history is this idea that economic ties and interconnections make the prospect of conflict fundamentally unthinkable, ignoring the fact that many people see this is a matter of destiny. Economics in ninety nine nine english conomo st.

And politician Norman Angel publish an entire book called the great illusion. And IT was entirely about how Warren europe was impossible, and that spending money on building military that could deter conflict was a waste of time that could Better spent building utopia. He is visually argued that any european country annexing another would be as absurd as london, anything hertford.

And the book was actually the number one best seller in nineteen nine, nine. Now we've had some version of this argument that for a few decades now, ever since the cold, we're started, and luckily a lot of people are waking up. But unfortunately, not because they've come to a reasoned decision based on the fundamental principles to play.

It's because right now, supporting the military, supporting defense and supporting ukraine in a particular has become the correct thing. And in current year, current thing is the thing that you have to support regardless of what you think of the underpinnings. Unfortunate issues like defense in national security, the stakes are too high, and the relevant taiwan's far too long for people to start caring about things at the moment that they need to start caring about them.

So today, I want to talk a little bit about why I start an animal and why you should all think exactly the same way that I do. So why found IT andero? I thought that I would work on virtual reality for my entire life.

I had no plans on leaving oculus at all. I love virtually reality. I love virtually reality. I started occur s as a teenager, and I went, have been there for another fifty years, I said as much less than thirty days before I was fired.

And there's a lot, a lot of reasons for that, some of which i'll get into later. But the decision was made for me. I gave nine thousand dollars against the wrong political. Canada was pretty unpopular. And silicon valley.

Before I work in oculus, I actually work in army, especially research center, on a program called brave mind, which was an army project to treat veterans with post romaic stress disorder using virtual exposure therapy basic, putting them into virtuality environments that would set off their systems. And then on the guidance of a sn therapist, who was also in this simulation, that we talk coping skills that would reduce their dependency on medication and medical land. I was a really fantastic programme.

I was not doing anything important on IT. I was just a lab technician, a cable monkey, but I got alarm exposure to both the viral reality technology side, but also how broken defense for current was, how slow IT was, how all the lot of the technology was, how the incentives were totally missing, and every sense that I always wanted to make contribution and national security, if I could just took a few years for the for the right set of circumstances to come up. The defense industry in amErica is fundamental broken.

You before even getting into the specific problems of our defense industry, the united states has the strongest commercial artificial intelligence industry in the world called closely by china, but at the same time, the united states military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industry complex have none of the right tools, talent or incentives to apply autonomy to the system. Today, there's no reason to save cost because they don't get paid for making things at work. They get paid for doing work.

And in a world where you get more prestige, more money by having more people working on bigger things, there's no reason to use autonomy to reduce costs and increase capability. The U. S.

Military is well behind the chinese people people's liberation army in the implementation of artificial intelligence. There's more Better AI in john, your tractors than there is in any U. S.

Military vehicle. There's Better computer vision in the snapshot APP on your phone than any system that the us. Department of the defense has deployed.

And other countries are taking notice of death. Countries like russia and china do not want to compete with us toe to toe with the tools that we have. People will make fun of china and say, oh, they they don't have a blue water navy.

They only have one aircraft Carrier coming up onto. They could never fight us. The reality is that that's not where they're going to fight us.

They're going to ARM proxies or they engage directly. They're to use technologies that give them an asem trc advances in the areas where we are the least competitive. These are the areas where they are putting a lot of their resources. The reason of lot of my hutton is saying that the ruler of the world is going to be the country that master is artificial intelligence is not because he thinks that they're going to lose at this, because he thinks that that is one of the only ways that they were going to be able to get the best of us. Now, the people who are building technology for our military, the large defense primes, I want name any names, because I, I don't want, I don't want to rustle too many fethers in that area, never knew who's in the room.

But the people who are building the technology for the united states military, the people who spend all their time do not have access to the best talent, they do not have access to the people of the technology industry has largely had a monopoly, and areas like autonomy, artificial intelligence, sensor fusion, high and networking, and then at the same time that people who can build, who can build good software, the ones who do work in these technology companies, are largely prohibited from doing so. And even if they are working on something in the military buys, let's say, all the people, apple, who are working on an iphone that can be sold to the U. S.

Air force, that same iphone is also being sold to russian intelligence, that same iphone is being sold. The chinese navy, working on technologies that help the united states, don't give us such a strategic and competitive advantage of everyone else, is getting the exact same thing. The other problem to consider is that a metro technologies like artificial intelligence are almost certainly going to empower nations that we aren't thinking about today.

Some of them were a little more obvious is like iran, IT was a close us. Ally until the late one thousand nine hundred seventies. And today, obviously very different position. There's about a dozen countries in africa, south amErica and asia that were they too, acquire extremely advances. Artificial intelligence, either through coincidence or by proxy arming, would almost certainly start to wage war on their neighbors in a very destabilizing way. You would have been a much sure bet for me to found a second unique in a different industry that wasn't so fundamentally broken, gaming, vast casual dining, fin tech economy, tes of eight coins. But there have actually been more mattress unordained defensive in unicorns in the last thirty five years.

But I decided the best thing that I could do to try and solve this problem was to use the fact that I had a bunch of money and I had a match credit to do something that was hugely unpopular, push to ignore that the fact that people were believing me for IT and try to convince a bunch of brilliant people to come along with me so that they ouldn't waste their lives spending augmented reality must ash ogiek. Instead, they could do some work for our armed forces. But it's worth looking at the past and realizing that this is a recent problem.

It's not something that has been the case for a very long time. Silicon delay was largely built on the back of defense. In nineteen forty seven, half of stanford engineering budget came from the department of the fence for a terminal stamping.

Dean brought dod contracts and interest to the west coast in a way that had fundamental limit almost entirely to the east coast. And silicon valley helped power a lot of the things that are powering the modern military machine. In the one thousand nine hundred and fifties alone, we built the pagan and wealth.

Sorry, I have an error in my notes. This is wrong. In the lead up to the fifties and the early fifties, we built to the pentagon in sixteen months, we complete with the manhattan project. In three years we're put a man on the moon.

And under a decade, and just between one thousand nine hundred and fifty one, one thousand nine hundred and fifty nine, we built five generations of fighter jets, three generations of bombers, two classes of Carriers, nuclear powered submarines and bullish missiles to go on top of them. If you look at the current state of the industry, we're luckily ily to do even one of these things in a decade. And I can't really blame the the defense industry for not working with the duty entirely.

It's not just an ideological problem, also an economic problem. When the cold war ended, the government really became a prety terrible customer. The technology industry drifted away.

Most engineers and silicon valley do not remember a great power conflict because they haven't lived in a world where a great power was an existent al threat in united states. And so you have a lot of people who are ideologically opposed to working with military. Now we can spend an entire talk.

I only have a few minutes to talk today. We need to talk, spend a whole talk talking about the ethics of defense and what the reasonable critique of the military are and how you can change what you've build for them in a good way. But i'll grow out a factor that I think most people don't think about enough, even the people who do agree on working with military.

There's a lot of companies in silicon valley and and and elsewhere who look at those employees who are ideologically opposed to working with the military, and they use them as a smoke screen, pretending that is principled opposition that drives a decision when in reality, they want access to chinese markets, they want access to chinese investment. They want access to other countries that are tied into these things. And so they're able to use these people who are ideologically opposed to work with the military, which I actually make up a pretty small fraction of the U.

S. Population, as a smokescreen for their real intention, which is to preserve access to those markets, preserve access to those capital. Our largest companies are not making these decisions based on what is best for the united states, certainly not what is best for united states in the long term.

They're largely making the decisions based on short term ideas that are not based in any kind of long term thinking. If you look at the recent trip, well, that congress passed saying that they're that the united states government is going to put fifty billion, fifty two billion dollars into building 3 ty conductors in the united states。 You have to compare that with the recent news that well IT elite IT wasn't what on purpose, but apple has pledge to put two hundred and seventy five billion dollars as one company into chinese manufacturing.

You have one company putting in more than five times as much money into manufacturing advances. Technology as what is supposed to be a landmark piece of us legislation. The situation that we're in is pretty weird.

There is going to sound hyperbolic. But bear with me, the situation we are in right now would be like if, in the build up to world war ii, general electrical said, you know what we really like the united states. Or actually very bullish, ed, on imperial japan.

We think it's going to be a huge growth opportunity for us. Our metrics just aren't going to look the same if we wipe those off of our road map. Imagine if build up to the cold war, if you had had westing house, another major us.

Technologic say, we love manufacturing in the united states, but we actually think communist manufacturing is a really interesting experiment that we need to see through. And we're not sure that we really want to take aside on this the situation that we are in today is as dire or worse. The only reason that, that seems ridiculous and the only reason that seems type robotic because because conflict has not actually broken out yet.

If a conflict does break out, we're going to look at the current situation where we are hugely strategically and economically dependent on the highest levels, our technology, industry and government, on an adversary that is literally committing genocide and slaving millions of people. We are going to look back on ourselves and feel really stupid. Now the good news is that because of russian invasion of ukraine, defense is now the current thing in the united states.

There is this idea that any problem can be fixed at the last second was just a really incredible twist if we're just come up with the right thing. But there's a lot of problems out there that cannot be solved that way. National security, economic policy, environmental policy, these are things that require non political bipartisan agreement on the problem decades before IT becomes a really big problem.

Those are not things that are acceptable current things shape rotation. This is an acceptable current thing to debate whether or not we'll Smith was wrong to wrong to take the slap or if he's just a representative of warrior culture hope that's that's that's a fair debate to have the idea of the united states having a military that is strong enough to take conflict should not be in that category. So why is IT? Why is IT too late to care about defense now at this exact moment in time? Why is IT too late for everybody to suddenly change their minds? Well, a few things.

When you go to war with the tools that you have, not the tools that you wish you had, and the tools that you start working on when things become a problem, if you look at the weapons that were giving ukraine, they were built in the eighties and nineties and two thousands, forty billion dollars plus worth of them. There are all their differences, defences. One of the few things that republicans and democrats are like have realized, transcend parties and divide and wonderful.

It's obviously very bad that we don't have more modern weapons to give to ukraine. But on the other IT shows a level of four sight and planning that we've been stock piling in building these legacy weapons systems for decades, explicitly for a situation like today which AR war gamed out to the end th degree. Imagine that the department defense had done nothing to prepare for war for forty years.

And then as soon as we broke out and started tween a lot and change their profile pictures to ukraine flag and then started saying, we we ve stand with ukraine. The people who are actually task with solving these problems are they generally good planning, but there's only so much they can do without good technology. Um so I want to reiterate, if you only start building now, you've lost the chance to deter war from happening.

That's the real purpose of the defense industry. It's not to fight wars. It's not to win wars. It's to prevent war from happening. Wars happen when one or both sides this estimate their probability of winning.

If both sides agreed that one side or the others is going to win, typically you end up with diplomatic resolution is when both sides disagree about the ability of winning, that conflict actually, actually breaks out. And so if you actually want to prevent conflict from helping in the first place, you have to get involved well ahead of time. If you get involved after conflict break out breaks out like so many companies, you're ensuring that you're only gonna a part of the killing.

You're only gonna a part of the blood dyed. You're only gonna a part of the war. You're not going to be a part preventing the war from a happening in the first place. So I would argue that people in technology industry need to work on defense, not because the current thing, but because it's the right thing. I have one more thing that I want to say.

Thank you. I talked earlier about NPC thinking that prioritized popularity over principles. What i'm about to do is in very, very bad taste, but i'm going to do IT anyway. Yeah, we see.

One of the people who I think in bodies, this type of NPC, thinking of going with what's popular and not being willing to to ever reverse their position even when they are prevent wrong, is Jason calcine us. Let me read about some of the things he said about me over the years. Just a small sample ing.

Palmer lucky hit dius, what an idiot, moron, this guy. Parker, lucky. Parker lucky, a complete and other moron.

Jesus, this kid is in idio. Palmer, lucky is just an idiot in a roll. He is done so, so, so.

I don't know. We ve got to keep going for him to pull the plug. E in the palmer Lucy experience was brilliant.

kudos. Zuker berg, a complete lack of moral character and leadership. Palmer lucky, a complete moron.

Palmer doesn't care about any of his employees, family members or team members. Now this doesn't include any of the lies that he's told about me. This doesn't include the lies he's told about my businesses.

This doesn't include any of the terrible things that is cohousing guest and set about me over the years that went unchAllenged in egdon. If i'm a hyda st stupid person with no morals who doesn't care about my family, who are I am place, I shouldn't be invited care. No matter how relevant ukraine is, he's that many chances to attract to apologize statements, rather than taking any of them.

He gives telling people that the reason I won't be on the show is because i'm too thin skin, because I disagree with him on some of the things he said about oculus. This is not the case. I exist.

Sly told him why have refused to be on a show? So because he and his crew of bullies have been vicious liars who have attacked me for years and bearded me for years, inspired lies about me for years, years. In a way that i've been able to overcome that very few entrepreneurs would have the money or the resources of the credibility do.

And being nice to a few people, like i'm sure, is being nice to you, does not excuse this. This isn't debated whether IT happened or not. That clearly happened. These are all direct quotes from things that he said over the years, both while I was adopted ous and during my time after oculus. And Jason, like many influential people, some of them even in this room, who have treats me like shit for years, suddenly changed their tune.

As soon as andero was on the upswing, as soon as we were doing good things, they started to invited on their podcast, liking on my social media, putting me on their innovator lists, all without any acknowledge at whatsoever ver that they were the ones they were attacking me when I was popular, kicking me while I was in the ground and treating me like garbage. It's really pathetic because a lot of my remaining critics, at least, are basing their opinions on some kind of consistent world. Bill, a lot of other people are attacking me.

And the words that I do because it's popular, what is popular to attack me, they attacked me when it's unpopular, to attack me when you crayon is being attacked, they are suddenly friends. And those are the same people I know are going to go back to shooting on me. The second that IT becomes popular again, i'm coming to the end of this, and I know that you s are probably thinking, wow, this guy is pretty thin skin for a billionaire. That's fair. That's fair.

But I want to remind you of something Jason and the people like him are the reason I was fired from my, from oculus, my own company, the company that was my heart and my soul for my entire teenager and adult life. For me, IT was a game that was his show, and for me, that was everything. And I lost everything.

IT almost destroyed me. I'm still filled with rage about IT. I always will be alone with this. I was able to create, and all because a small group of people were willing to give me a second chance to let me build something great in an important but controversial industry. There was being constantly beijing by people who thought we lived at the end of history.

They invested in me while Jason was trying to poison my career and keep me on the ground. Then god failed. Thank god for investors who ignore him and people like him.

The marking conditions suggest are going to be a lot of founders, hopefully one of the people in this room losing their startups over the next year or and I pray that they get a second chance like I did. I pray they aren't deterred from working on important but unpopular problems. I pray that he was successfully close their way back to success, that they aren't returned from working on things that really matter.

I pray that they managed to do this despite the inevitably stupid and hot takes, sorry, inevitably stupid and spiteful hot takes that Jason is associated. And many people like him who make money spewing bulk shit are certainly going to be putting out there. amman. Thank you.

Great to meet you in person, jin.

What lessons have we learned here today?

Well, I mean, I guess we were talking .

back stage and Jasons like, you know, I had to do so much to get the sky here because I think he hates to me. And this was before that should happen. And maybe you couldn't talk about .

about people. Well, the good thing, as I was able to make IT to this stage to say this, most of the people that you've gone after this way will never have that opportunity because they won't start a second unicorn. I'm only here because I managed to clam my way back. And remember, this is personal because it's not just you as you, you're one of most influential, certainly, but it's you really a small code rate of people that by attacking me, ceaseless sly, made IT impossible for me to continue my tenure adoption. S, i'm really lucky, I claude ed, my way back because that's succeedin ly rare for a company to do, the person to do that OK.

what? I was hoping to talk about your new thing, but I guess since we have no choice to go here, what happened at facebook? And maybe you just explain that and what I got wrong about what happened?

Well, it's touch. Just what's wrong. This is actually, I went out of my way.

There's actually a lot of lies you told in spread and your coasts and your guests, but i've not even talked about that the things that I listed, you'll notice these aren't material accusations. These are just personal attacks you've made on my character. These are things you've said about me personally as a founder and entrepreneur.

Vicious personal attacks separately. There's all of the lives you've said about how oculus didn't have any differentiated technology. IT was totally commoditized anybody could have done IT. IT really was just the right thing at the right time. We could could spend all day talk about why these aren't true. But the real reason that IT became untenable for me, and the real reason that i'm not in the VR industry, is because people like you were enabling those lives and then being vicious about IT and attacking me personally. IT became clear I couldn't be a representative in an industry where people going to dream like.

like fairly or not, and not the pocket with them. What's that? The pocket?

I guess if you have no choice but .

to keep to just describe what palis talking about.

try because my memory of of the events, just read all the things he said. right? What is what were we talking about at the time?

There was a lot of .

controversial facebook about some donations. Anonymous counts things.

he said, the thing of years. So that was just a small sapling. I I had to really find a small sample you you can never do. But i'll tell you .

what this ever fired from facebook. What was the controversy there? Because that's what I was commenting on in this.

though some of those were after I was fired in. Your saying was great that I was fired. And actually, by the way, is one of of your cohoes said on your show they are glad I got fired from my politics and that blind is mysteriously missing from your transcripts, by the way.

And we would never we don't added any of the bag and I didn't have a coast in the time, is probably one of the news reporters who came on. We would have interview them.

But there was a letter that happened. I gave nine thousand dollars to a group that ran a single anti hilary clinton bill board that was actually extent of IT. And then a huge number of people in the tech influencer space, the social media, talking heads and media, they started saying, palmer lucky is a terrible person who is funding just to be cleared.

So you made a donation and he was on an fpc filing somewhere. Somebody pull that out and .

then basically to .

package or something IT was was a one, see four, I believe, who use that for their political ARM. So but was he was public like this was five. Yeah, yeah.

So and I actually end up giving a quote to reporter about IT. So you IT wasit was in IT wasn't something that people understood what right? But then about people just lie. They said palm of lucky was funding people who are attacking Hillary clinton supporters online. There are a lot of people who I think we're looking for a scape go to kind of be the right wing, the right wing action to correct the record, which actually was paying people to attack.

Why did that furry? what's? Why did that furry?

Those that didn't fire me his way?

Why did face? Why did I just have that their time? Why did facebook fire you?

There's a lot of reasons. I always have good performance reviews, but. Here's IT really boil down to.

was this my favorite talk by far?

What IT really boils down to is this IT was clear that there were a lot of people in the media and in the tech industry who were going to continue attacking me. We hold that would blow over, but they kept attacking me for months and months and months and months. I was put leave for six. I don't know. You know that, right?

This is all on the heels of this one political donation. correct? Nine thousand dollars, yes.

And so on the hill at the hope was that I would go away. Now I think here's here's the real problem. Think if trump had lost, people could have said, oh, well, you know, he's just one of those actually trix impact. No, imp, a loser, loser. But whatever trump winning is, I think, what made IT on, because people continued to .

attack me the thousand thousand dollars with the reason you were fired just for, just for supporting truck.

As know, these things are very complex. But more or less, yes, I mean, a great caul line from that to me being put on leave, to me not being allowed to come back .

and then pushed out. We talk a lot about this on the part mob behavior. And and I I think mark and reason said the smartest thing i've read on twitter in the year, I retweet IT and I took away and I think he pointed out that it's IT feel safer to be in the mob then to not be in the mob. But always when you're in the mob, you're part of the group, but you also get to attack and it's safe to attack when you're in the group, right? And I think, by the way, what you did there, one of the things I will highlight, irregardless of the content and the thing that was very brave and we don't see a lot of bravery, noa date and.

I don't mean that I want to say I don't mean that to despite Jason, but like that sort of behavior where you stand up and you say something that will be highly controversial and go against the mob and against the tide and maybe pissed off an entire room is something that we don't see a and I think that level of braveries is also what's missing going back to the mid twenty of century, which allowed us to do all the things you highlighted as a country last century that we're not doing anymore. I appreciate your bravery more than anything. Thank you.

But but look, I don't know about the specifics with J L. But IT certainly seems that there's a lot of this. We talk about this like with bright and starts standing up the coin days and all the stuff that's gone on that we think, I would argue, probably made twitter a highly complacent place is everyone wants to be, you know, you don't want to stand up and you don't want to make that change, and you don't want to be brave and you want to be part of the mob of the of the crowd attacking the right people.

See what happens. I mean, what happened to me is like, this is, this is I can't I can't back this APP. Obviously, this is getting into personally to which is never a good way to support any idea. But I know a lot of people who remain at facebook and they will not say anything and they will not donate any politician and .

crazy who's .

left a berny because they saw what happened to me, and y've explicit said, I saw what happened to you. Remember, IT wasn't just the public IT was the internal reaction where people were saying, oh my god, like I will not work for a trump supporter. This is terrible. I mean, actually one great example, Andrew bosworth, he ran, adds a facebook for fourteen years.

He was put in after my departure as the head of oculus and he was the guy who was putting things on social media like I think the exact wording was, if you support Donald trump because you don't like hillery clinton, you are a shady human being and he's the person who's allowed to lead oculus now. So it's it's not a problem of being agreed the right it's being on the right side of politics. And so there's a lot of people where there's they're not going to say anything because they see what happens to me.

Now i've tracked of love in this.

and I told and I here .

fully disagree with all let you guys know.

The real irony here is my contributions have been very open, but my advice to founders who are on the right has actually been, don't be public about your political leaning ing ing. So you want to accomplish anything, you will just, you will be terminated by the mob. You should focus on building. You should focus on creating value. And then after you don't need the rest of the industry.

you can kick him to the curb and do something. How do how do you implement that philosophy differently now at Andrea, so that you have a more inclusive place where folks on the left and folks on the right come together, work on things that really matter? I mean, I think everybody agrees you're building really important things in the world. So how do you do that this time around? That's different from the facebook experience.

A few things. One, I think that build IT working in national security has been a great filter where people aren't going to come for you unless they are OK working in a bit of a controversial field. I'm actually somewhat concerned about the ukraine and conflict in that regard, in that in the making in in making defense mainstream, IT makes IT possible for people to potentially say, oh, that isn't controversial now i'm going to go to this place and then i'm going to potentially attacked people with with their views.

But I think when you run a company that is inherently working on something this controversial, people on the right and on the left both feel like there on the side of this important bipartisan issue, and all of these other policy different can kind of go to the side and the culture and and is everyone is free to have whatever politics they want like i'm we're republican. Our CEO brian chimp is a democrats. We both make significant contributions to our respective sizes that we have employees.

And I think also, it's nipping IT in the bud. It's about when somebody says something that is out of line, it's about getting in early, say, hey, that's not okay. This company to a common mission. For example, if we had a manager then publicly, when said the half of my employees who support this planet, they're terrible people, they're shitty humans.

maybe fire. Yeah, yeah. I'll give you a counterfactual to what this is, which is very aspirational, which is seven, eight years ago, we funded a business that actually makes sea faring drones.

And the whole point was to actually measure the surface flux in the oceans at which you can use to get a really good sense of climate change. And some are along the way. We have the chance to do a contract with the dud. Um but invariably there is a faction of folks inside this company that said, under no circumstances are we going to put our efforts towards that and as a result then the company spent three year did or trying to build a weather APP um which turned out to not be the right thing and and three years later um you know they are doing a bunch of stuff now with these government agencies um and IT turns out that the right thing to do because now they are much closer to actually mapping the world oceans which creates a position of data there's all these positive knock on effects that sometimes folks don't see and you need strong leadership to kind of say so what he also said yesterday, you know, companies are there to make products that people and organizations want to need, not necessarily to fight over political ideas.

I think one of the interesting things in the example use game I mentioned nearly, I have some empathy for people who work in companies who don't want to work in defence, like I think broadly the technology industry needs to support the military and i'm light of the conflict in ukraine. Change at least the thinking around that. But at the individual level, people should have the right to choose to work on what they think is important.

So the google example is interesting because I was google employees saying, hey, I didn't sign up to work on weapons. I cannot understand that maybe y're passive st. And they say for religious reasons for pills, because I I cannot work on this and they were upset, was put to work on defense without IT being clear.

And I suspect that in the situation you're talk king about, its similar objections are raised. Hey, this isn't what I doing the company to do, this isn't what I signed up for. And so IT enter all one of the ways that we have been able to get around this is being very clear, like you are signing up to work with the department defence, that is that is the mission that you're signing up for.

And I mean, we're about a third U. S. Service veterans and Andrea, which is higher than any company that i'm aware of and about a thousand people now. And so these are people who are they understand the importance of the nation, just shifting years for second.

I want to asked you about, first of me to say that the first time I tried VR, which was oculus, I thought I was one of the most magical computing experiences I ve ever had. So I don't have you guys trying to you put the gog's on.

I did the .

tenure in the oculus trailer and it's like IT was amazing.

I did the thing where you show like a big hole like facebook at this demo for a while, whatever. And I thought I was .

going to fall before, and then I felt forward, and I could, I didn't want to like to beyond IT on my way. I know this is not real, but it's so funny.

These, I feel these mental circuits that haven't activated for years, activating. So i've got my talking points, but yeah, VR is the final computing platform. It's not the next one is the final one.

And people talk about augmented reality. And the very interesting I love are we did a lot of great our foundational work. But at the end of the day, if you can make a tool that allows you to experience anything .

and in any way that can emulate .

every .

other medium, IT is ones.

Maybe why is he called on it's it's good enough. People ask good all this a lot. I'm not sure if you are never really going to be a thing.

but explain the dimension when you say it's not good enough. What is IT weight is IT physical interface.

It's a whole bunch, the latest. It's content being available. You need to self sustaining q system of a broad enough variety content that enough people can use IT to create further network effects. So that's part of IT. It's just a content that you have to build the self sustaining fly vial until you have .

that yeah aren't get enough yet to draw p people.

They are not enough and they don't have brought enough appeal. There's a particular nh where we have a fly. Well, there's a dozens of developers that are making many millions of dollars making games request too, but that's its own little nation.

The other thing is quality is waiting with cost. The example that I like to use when arguing the people who says that VR is not going to be a thing that they spend their whole life. And so okay, imagine that.

What if from ninety nine dollars, you can pair by a pair of sun glasses and IT gives you an experience, ed, the quality of the matrix are sort your side, I pick is and you can do anything that there's any less content get there. And it's people like, oh, of course I would. Use that you so I mean this that you created .

the category half far away are we IT depends on the experience.

So the hardest things to simulate or are going to be the ones that are kind of like these multi haptic, multi element things that rely on sent and emotionally surfing, is going to be really, really hard. On the other hand, being able to perfectly simulate the experience of being in a brightly lit forensic, forensic conference room that's going to happen within ten years, like the resolution will be there the way, be there you will, the perfectly effects. And you know how much of my life I spent flying to the other side of the world to sit in for recently conference rooms and then flying back, if I can just eliminate that part of my life, it's way Better for me. But it's going to start by simulating that experience where it's low dynamic range, don't need to pac and then it's going to go from there.

It's actually, you know.

about drones. Yeah, this is just a second to drones. So obviously in ukraine right now, the the russian military, specifically, the armor has been pulverized by the combination of the davin, plus this turkish drawn, this I director.

So I guess this is raise to the profile, I would imagine, to raise the profile of drones and use of drones to the military. Also IT points out the weakness of having kind of a large platform strategy in the case that russian and military at their platforms, this russian take. But so is our military. We're built .

around interventional .

big and the f thirty five. yes. And you know the abrams. All these things, I would imagine, are acceptable to drones. And the thing that's destroying the russians is their tancock. A couple million box and IT can be destroyed by a drone that cost two .

hundred or thousand or many more than a million. p.

We just want a billion dollar contract with U. S. So come special Operations to to do countered drone work.

And so to a certain extent that what you have to do is then say, well, we're going to have these these armored systems going to have these vessels and then we need our technology, that laws, to counter drones and is possible to counter drones. What's wearing with russia. They don't have the technology to countered drones. And so they're largely .

just totally can ask you something about this contract, just general terms. You set something very important before, which is the military industrial complex today is basically paid to do work, not to get to a result. Yes, how do you fight that when you're when you hear a billion dollar contract? Is that cost plus that D O D just is willing .

to give you? So this, but fundamentally, for people don't know, a cost plus contract structures is the way that most work for the government of defenses done. That means you get paid for your time, your materials for people and then a fixed percentage of profit on top, even if you're way, way, way, way, way over your budget until congress .

and actually takes the layers of subcontractors to the cost.

exactly. The bad thing about this is that not only a prime contract or oes the contract, but everyone under them is incentivised to come up with the most expensive way of solving a problem that they can convince the government of fund. So if they wanted to build the most expensive system with the most expensive parts with as many hours as possible.

and they are so complex that you're only going to have one or two real bids and are basically going to be the same Price and those top bids.

the they're not just trying to come for the most, and they're even encouraging the .

subcontractors and a percent .

because they get a percent of that. And so if i'm meeting, let's take six percent profit margin.

I want to make IT bigger .

numbers possible, I to do. And that's why this bug is crazy spite that makes more money when they do poorly tly. Because they are not being paid to make things that work. They are being paid to do work that I said just act of the doing is what is going to big for you?

What do you do different. So we use our own money to decide .

what to build how to build IT. When it's done, we're using building our own products. And when we're going to the customer, we're not going to them.

But first, all I can build whatever I want, I can build the back will be, then try to sell IT to the army. But we talk to them about their problems. They understand their problems. They don't IT would be cool, be so big, so 了。

But would you build someone in this room a bad mobile.

if he could come up with the money, if, if, if IT solved the real problem? But if was the right way to solve my problem? All right, I probably not.

The nice thing about this is when we go to customers, we're not going to, of the White paper, say, hey, let the taxpayers pay for us to try this out for years and years. We say we've already proven that this works. IT will not be on dog for you. IT will work. We go to them with a working system .

with a full liberals and services already exactly here.

And the thing is, this is popular with the customers and politicians alike because IT removes the risk of them getting into a political boom dog was like the thirty five program being .

a trillion creates new budget line items. Because now folks are saying, I can actually get shit out of this. I want to move money from whatever bulls shit part of money i'm spending over here, move IT into this sort of the structure. And then that creates competitive dynamics market.

So how does that actually close the loop? Of example, you deliver a drawn to the dod IT costs ten thousand on making up a number, IT cost ten thousand dollars and IT works on abc mention. And then there's whoever makes general dynamics makes the health fire done up again.

I don't know this special. And they want to charge ninety thousand or one hundred and ten thousand. How do they still not get picked? Because IT seems if you look at their um performance as public companies, you it's an incredibly steady it's almost like an inflationary line item that you can predict six, eight, nine, ten percent growth consistently every year. correct?

The defense companies are not high growth, high margin parties. They are extra ordinary, arly, predictable. People basically see them as an extension of the U.

S. Government is like a bug. yes. And and when the budget goes up, you proportional and leaving your increase.

And let me ask you hold that let me you questioned about something very pragmatic tic, knowing what you know in the two, your building. And I do appreciate the work you're doing defending the country. I think it's import more.

And I told you that and I love you to be here to have your platform, to have your voice, and i've probably sent you no less than thirty or forty invites to come on. The pods can't deny that. And so I told you I wanted to have any debate anytime.

I'm going to put aside the personal stuff, but knowing what you know, doing this very good work, the situation in taiwan, if IT does materialize, what would IT look like today given the tools we have? And would we be able to I won't be able to defend itself. What would that look like? That seems to be the next house spot that we may have to do. Weapons get shipped in.

They are in the ukraine. No, that we were able to ship weapons in the ukraine because we had countries like poland that we're willing to massive existential risk to themselves step forward. Ln on slow and getting weapons through.

But taiwan, what's going to happen? There was a few ways this could go IT. Could either be just a blitz crew where they go in, destroy the ports, stroll the airports, immediately occupy that's, that could happen.

The other way this could happen could be a more drawn out, blocky, where they blocked the isle. Like is the us willing to pull the trigger on a blockade? It's unclear.

But if you can stop trade, if you can economically strangle them, make sure new weapons don't get to them, they can be in a very, very bad position. It's not clear we are anyone else able to do that, that there's different opinions on how things are going to go. I can't pretend that I know exactly what IT is.

I can't say thwing does not have the tools today that they need to deter chinese aggression. They might have had the tools they needed to deter IT adequate. But but chinese, chinese military has been ascended.

They have been investing so heavily. And new technology distributor bute swarms, high electronic warfare systems and all of the invidious landing craft they're going to need to perform an invasion. They ve just they've built the capability that they need is just .

how ulna able our aircraft Carriers. Second, how vulnerable our aircraft Carriers.

They are extremely vulnerable to the point where we feel like we can use the problems. The aircraft carres were not designed to be a peer to peer, appear to peer great power's tool for us to go toe to toe with the services or the chinese like. The reality is, if each side launches two hundred missiles, one of them going to get through, and it's going to a pitting thing.

And this is especially through with satellite argee systems. They were designed in the motor day to project power to places where you have air superiority uncontested. So there gets great to have a base that can go somewhere and project power, but you cannot stop the chinese that way. And also, if we set a Carrier out there and they managed to sink IT at five thousand lives lost in one head.

hey, former, we got a rap. But what say this?

I got ta say one more thing .

on taiwan about me. great.

Not this time. Not this time.

I was bracing for impact. I don't have any anti palmer drone systems.

but I will be working on I, about j, if you did that to care, switch, pull you off.

Keep more so right here.

And I will play and J K L. J K, L is he's an incredibly loyal friend. He's got an incredibly good heart.

And I think that you, whatever he said or did, he was really brave of him to come out here and also have the conversation, and he wants to have the conversation and wants to have a dialogue. He always want to do that with all of us. Sometimes he conflicts a bit, and he any bud's heads. But I will say this about J, K, L. He means, well, and I I want to kind .

say her beauty .

support about taiwan. Let's talk about the importance .

of kerri says, i'm a dushin man boy and a fourth rig, bro, not say so.

Not that you remembered .

a lot memory. I think your cosplay stuff is cool. I was brave enough to do cosplay. I'm a little jealous of that. I'll be, be honest. And I would love to go cosplay with you sometime to tell us to find a boy done in taiwan.

Not the way to.

I want use point to taiwan.

alright. Yes, the big difference between taiwan and ukraine is that we still have a chance to make a difference. So what I am so terrified of is that all these people who say, are we stand for ukraine? We have to do this.

This is the fight of fight of, fight of our generation. And then they're not going to do anything. And then immediately after taiwan is invaded, they're going to change our profile pictures to a time and flag and say, omit, we stand with taiwan. No, that's not good in that. If you care about this issue, there's things you can do right now.

And then what's really amazing to me is you have people who are saying, like all man I say with ukraine, we're cutting off all of a russian business and like, oh well, so brave, you cut off an entire country that's a regulatory has an economy smaller than most U. S. States sorry, not most many yeah isn't like, oh, wow, you're so so brain for any of original and then at the same time they say, oh, but all of our expansion is in china and and i'm not to say anything about that.

I think the worse than the people who changed their profile pictures are going to be the people who are rain silent when taiwan n is invaded, ed, and they said they just can't say thing because their business interest are so interacted and so intertangled. And that like that, china has been finding a strategic economic war against us for a long time. And this is a really good the last thing you'll say this, I talk about IT earlier, and there's a uniquely american delusion, probably from our own hollywood films, that we can solve any problem.

The last second that will come in and we can be boom days, are we that isn't how taiwan is gonna. There is no dix ma. We know exactly what's going to happen.

The war planes had figured exactly span of several scenario is going to go. And when it's happened, we can't pretend like we didn't know. And and there isn't gonna anything that flies at the safe.

So OK so that I to think, let you close you and I can debate antia illi adds the Donald trump subway at all of those things. What we cannot debate is how important IT is that the united states win and that democracy wins and that freedom comes to all of these countries. You and I are one hundred percent of line on that, even if we disagree about the anti Hillary .

as or that stuff. I appreciate you coming.

and i'll debate you on anything, anytime, anywhere.

I do care about my family. By the way, that was the worst thing you ve said.

Okay, and turn up. I will apologize for that. Say that if I did say, check out letter, letter I just said if I said something matter, heard you're feelings about that and I was at line, I apologize.

But what's more important right now is that you're here talking about the work you're doing. And you and I will debate to the cows. Come home.

This other stuff. I can stop you. I can stop. You're here. No commentator, no journalists can stop a found or I disagree with that. Ah.

I just see you. You can stop a lot of people. They were over restivo my .

influence in the world. You're in force of nature. The work you do is undeniable.

We can debate politics as much as we want. This country needs to be protected. The people that google are cowards for not doing dod contracts.

You are not a coward. You came out here going to take me on straight up as a man. I appreciate IT was a little bit a blind side, but I could take IT.

What's most important is the work you're doing. That's what's most important. I mean, is a socket punch.

But I was A K I from work because we appreciate you coming. We appreciate you coming. Bottom line.

卡 啊 卡。

your.

One, hey, every party, that was pretty crazy. What an amazing moment. I think we all learned a lot, but I actually want to show you the clip of the comments that palmer referenced, just to provide some context.

Uh, for those of you who are unaware, the clip was from a show um in march of twenty seventeen and episodes seven twenty one of my other podcast this week start ups. And i'm super aware that this could come across as defensive, but I think some people might not know what palmer was talking about. So i'll let you decide for yourself.

We recorded um uh that episode episode seven twenty one the day palmer lucky was fired from facebook and IT was a news round table of the pocket. I'm talking to Austin Peter Smith who worked at inside of the time, and ian Thompson of the register. He's a great journalist.

Uh and just to clarify some uh, facts here in the time, these are from the delhi historical which palmer was interviewed. You can go read that it's in the show notes um and the facts are pretty basic. Palmer lucky donated some amount of money to approach political organization was called in amErica before the twenty sixteen election.

And as you just heard during the all in summer talk, palmer said I was like nine thousand dollars nib amErica was part of the infamous sub redit page, the Donald, if you remember that nigh america, they basically made anti Hillary and protruding p means and they were self proclaim shit posters. As we now talk about on the internet, the organization said he was dedicated to proving, quote, should posting powerful in the magic is real? Uh, palmer was posting to the r.

Donald under the anonymous ready account called nimbyism man. Here was one post which palmer confirmed writing that was referenced in the clip you are about to see. The american revolution was funded by wealthy individuals.

The same has been true of many movements for freedom in history. You can find, uh, the american elite without serious firepower, they will outspend you and destroy by any and all means. And here is what palmer told the delhi beast in twenty sixteen, when asked about supporting nito america, i've got plenty of money.

Money is not the issue. I thought IT sounds like like a really joy. Good time again, if you're listings, you might hear some other voice is talking. Those are the two guests that I mentioned before.

You can watch just the three men in twenty two second clip, uh, which is this, the matchup of my calm ontario? Ca, another side of three minutes he was supporting, like when was a violent trolling? But extreme troy would be the way to do IT.

that's right. And his comment about IT was really insensitive of that. IT was IT was almost maybe not super ideologically driven as much as I was like fun for him.

what I idiots.

well, does. He lost a lost in a paramount of business, about three, four game studios. That said, right, we're no longer developing for the oculus on this one.

He came and said, basically world to overturn on a trench delete, then you need to be able to fund IT fight back. And you're like, that's not you're not a revolutionary. This is just tried posting about politicians.

This is not constructive dialogue. This is not an attempt to get reform. The american political scene. This is just, oh, that's been atrocity.

yeah. If you want to see like a person's true k character, give them a pile of money or a bunch of power, and then you will see two .

bottles of voice works very well.

That as well, like the sort of quick way of being a billionaire, whatever. But I mean, can you imagine I just want to stop for a second and just give everybody in my portfolio or the people I work with, just a public service announcement. If you are looking enough to hit the jackpot and make hundreds of millions of dollars, behave yourself, you more on you hit the jackpot.

It's like somebody winning the mega all lottery and then just going on the street and randomly punching people on the face like this guy Parker lucky is a complete and utter moron. So for somebody to be a visionary to create something like oculus and make VR I bought the oculus is pretty impressive. I have to say, I believe that VR is at least two years away from being a meaningful business opportunity, but that's about the window where I like to invest.

So it's kind of all my radar. Now in fact, we have one company in our incubator. But jesus, this kids in idiot.

But this case.

palmer lucky, is just an idiot and a troll. So dumb. Here's the other thing.

I think on a leadership basis, if you represent the company, so you represent your company first, oculus in your vision of the world, behaving yourself number two, if you represent the company that's worth a couple a hundred billion dollars that made you a billionaire, and you represent mark and 追 son who invest in your company and and represent horwitz， and you represent all the employees and all their families and everybody who's entire network they are locked up this, you have a higher a duty of service. And this is a complete lack of moral character leadership for someone like power. Lucky to be doing this.

Should posting if that i'm going to say so, let's move on to the next facebook story now that we got over the palmer lucky just to complete more on who doesn't appreciate his sex success or care about any of his employee's family members, team members, if you're going to do that condition and agence, if you know, here's a clue. I hate to get totally crazy. You're doing something like this anonymously.

You might want to think that the anonymity plus read IT plus you would be ashamed about IT. Like think about what you're doing of its anonymous. In other words, if you have to put a mask on and then you throw the breakthrough the window, you may not want to throw the breakthrough the window because you weren't willing to do with your mask off.

okay. So closing that. I respect palmer lucky, uh, for his incredible innovations, both of oculus and his new company.

We actually agree on many things, which actually people in the tech industry might not, which is hate producing weapons systems to protect amErica and democracy. A around the world is a beautiful and important thing. I respect palmer for what he's doing there.

And we have a disagreement about, you know, this meme action that he did. But as well, that ends well. I was an interesting moment in time. I don't regret exactly what I said. I think what I said I was fair.

And when I talked about an in context, I was not coming from a place that if you're gonna post stuff posted on your real name, not anonymous ly, and so they have to focus that the entire controversy uh, thank you to palmer. Lucky for coming. Thanks to my best teeth for having my back.

Now there was a big question of if I would go out and engage the discussion. Of course, I want to go out and engage discussion. I want to talk.

I don't mind a hard discussion. And in fact, that's what this podcast is about, having hard discussions and then keeping our friendships and keeping IT moving forward. I'll look forward to hosting this powders ast forever. They are gonna to take drag me out here and I hope we can uh host another all in summer and all of you can attend either uh virtual or in person. It's great to uh have had farmer at the event and actually I hope becomes next year and and shares more of the exciting work .

he's doing at Andrew and I wish him best .

your winners right rainman.

We open source IT to the fans and they .

ve just got crazy with.

We should all just get a room, just have one big huge org because your.

Sexual and to .

release .

we .

we .

get 终于 到。

I, J, K.

L, I, can you cue the? Can you cue the photo?

What photo?

Oh, act age. Is that what happened to the last break?

I think we got there. Well, this is what I said. I said, you don't have drones over my house, right? Just to confirm. And he said.

cannot someone that said cannot confirm or deny.