#AIS: Palmer Luckey on Anduril

This talk was recorded LIVE at the All-In Summit in Miami and included slides. To watch on YouTube, check out our All-In Summit playlist: https://bit.ly/aisytplaylist 0:00 Jason intros today's episode 2:31 Palmer Luckey on Anduril, national defense & the current thing 25:24 Bestie Q&A with Palmer 53:13 Jason gives closing thoughts Follow Palmer: https://twitter.com/PalmerLuckey Follow the besties: https://twitter.com/chamath https://linktr.ee/calacanis https://twitter.com/DavidSacks https://twitter.com/friedberg Follow the pod: https://twitter.com/theallinpod https://linktr.ee/allinpodcast Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://twitter.com/yung_spielburg Intro Video Credit: https://twitter.com/TheZachEffect Links referenced in the show: https://www.thedailybeast.com/palmer-luckey-the-facebook-near-billionaire-secretly-funding-trumps-meme-machine

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jason Calacanis?

  Hey everybody. Hey everybody. We have an exciting show for you today. This is the 15th and the final episode from the All In Summit 2022. I wanted to take a quick moment to thank my team. They worked tirelessly over 100 days to make the event magical for everybody who was able to make it. Thanks to the audience for coming. Next year, we'll try to have twice as many of you there. Just a quick thank you to Amber, Ashley, Jackie, Nick, Fresh, Maureen, Molly, Big Mike, Andre Times 2, Rachel Reporting, Producer Justin, Jamie, Jimmy D, my brother Josh, everybody who came and supported the event. We had an incredible crew. We had an incredible

• 0:40Jason Calacanis?

  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 insightful. My pal Bill Gurley, Brad Gersner, Adina, Mar, Tandas, Tim, Elon, Antonio, Nate, Ryan, Claire, my boy, Raboy, Antonio Garcia Martinez, John Lonsdale, James, Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald, and of course, today's guest, the one and the only Mr. Palmer Lucky. And most of all, I'd like to thank my besties, Chamath Sax and Friedberg, who did an amazing job of hosting the event. Now, a little preamble here before we start this episode. Many of you have heard that this is a controversial

• 1:23Jason Calacanis?

  episode. It is a little controversial. There may be a little twist in it. So I will be coming back after Palmer Lucky's talk to give you a little context because it might get a little confusing. I don't want to spoil the surprise for you. So enjoy this episode. But before we go to this episode, a lot of you have questions. You have questions about the future of the All In Podcast. And those questions are important. And they're never going to be 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.

• 2:03Jason Calacanis?

  The show goes on. This is my home. They're gonna need a [bleep] wrecking ball to take me out of here. They're gonna need to send in the National Guard, because I ain't going nowhere. The show goes on.

• 2:32Palmer Luckey?

  So my name is Palmer Lucky. I founded two companies. My first was a company called Oculus VR that I founded when I was 19 years old and living in a camper trailer. Thank you, thank you.

• 2:44Palmer Luckey?

  Sold that for a few billion dollars to Facebook, and then got fired a few years later, and then started Anduril, because I wanted to work in the national security space for a variety of reasons. And I'll get into 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 our strategic adversaries, it was one of the last industries to realize where things were going, due to a variety of ideological reasons, but also business reasons. Now Silicon Valley didn't just predict the importance of defense in the 2020s. It largely took the exact wrong position, the opposite position.

• 3:24Palmer Luckey?

  First of all, you have the obvious examples, like big technology companies explicitly refusing to do work with the Department of Defense. 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, lest it ruin their careers.

• 3:41Palmer Luckey?

  You know, when I started Anduril, 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 venture capitalists. And none of the conversations with VCs that I had were about my ability to hire or execute or build products. Everyone believed that I could do those things, even the ones who didn't like me much. The vast majority of conversations that we had were about whether or not it was even ethically okay to ever build a company that would build weapons. The ones who decided not to invest in Anduril actually believed that we had a good team and good people and good product market fit. The issue is that they thought that it was inherently wrong to build tools capable of being used for violence because they believed that the idea of deterring violence through

• 4:26Palmer Luckey?

  having a strong arsenal was fundamentally obsolete and itself wrong. Imagine how hard it would have been to raise money if I hadn't founded Oculus. Would have been impossible. Even after we raised money and got traction, the negativity continued. There was a really interesting story in Bloomberg in 2019 that called us "tech's most controversial startup." This was a year where TikTok was banning users for calling attention to the Uyghur genocide in China and banning users for posting homosexual content. This is a year in which Adam Newman paid himself tens of millions of dollars for the right to use the word "we." 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.

• 5:10Palmer Luckey?

  It's a time where Facebook was getting hauled in front of Congress to testify. But of course, as a tiny defense company making a handful of purely defensive-based security systems that committed the crime of building technology for the military, Anduril was the one that claimed the belt for the world's most controversial technology company. I'd say that the war in 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 every few decades, we're reminded that this isn't true. That's a very popular idea, especially in DC, that we live at what they call "the end of history." It's this idea that economic ties and interconnections make the prospect of conflict fundamentally

• 5:53Palmer Luckey?

  unthinkable, ignoring the fact that many people see this as a matter of destiny in economics. In 1909, English economist and politician Norman Angel published an entire book called "The Great Illusion," and it was entirely about how war in Europe was impossible and that spending money on building militaries that could deter conflict was a waste of time that could be better spent building Utopia. He specifically argued that any European country annexing another would be as absurd as London annexing Hertford, and the book was actually the number-one bestseller in 1909.

• 6:27Palmer Luckey?

  Now, we've had some version of this argument for a few decades now, ever since the Cold War started. And luckily, a lot of people are waking up. But unfortunately, it's not because they've come to a reasoned decision based on the fundamental principles at play. It's because right now, supporting the military, supporting defense, and supporting Ukraine in particular, has become the current thing. And in current year, current thing is the thing that you have to support regardless of what you think of the underpinnings. Unfortunately, for issues like defense and national security, the stakes are too high and the relevant timelines 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 started Anduril and why you should all think exactly the same way that I do.

• 7:15Palmer Luckey?

  So why I founded Anduril. I thought that I would work on virtual reality for my entire life. I had no plans on leaving Oculus at all. And I love virtual reality. I loved virtual reality. I started Oculus as a teenager, and I would have been there for another 50 years. I said as much less than 30 days before I was fired. And there's a lot of reasons for that, some of which I'll get into later. But the decision was made for me. I gave $9,000 against the wrong political candidate, and it was pretty unpopular in Silicon Valley. Before I worked on Oculus, I actually worked in an Army affiliate research center on a program called Brave Mind, which was an Army project to treat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder using virtual reality exposure therapy. Basically, putting them into virtual reality environments that would set off their symptoms. And then, under the guidance of a licensed therapist,

• 8:00Palmer Luckey?

  who's also in the simulation, they can be taught coping skills that would reduce their dependency on medication and medical aid. It was a really fantastic program. I wasn't doing anything important on it. I was just a lab technician, a cable monkey. But I got a lot of exposure to both the virtual reality technology side, but also how broken defense procurement was, how slow it was, how old a lot of the technology was, how the incentives were totally misaligned. And ever since then, I'd always wanted to make a contribution to national security. If I could, just took a few years for the right set of circumstances to come up. The defense industry in America is fundamentally broken. Before even getting into the specific problems of our defense industry, the United States has the strongest commercial artificial intelligence industry in the world, followed

• 8:45Palmer Luckey?

  closely by China. But at the same time, the United States military and the prime contractors that dominate the military industrial complex have none of the right tools, talent, or incentives to apply autonomy to the systems they do. There's no reason to save costs because they don't get paid for making things that work. They get paid for doing work. And in a world where you get more prestige and more money by having more people working on bigger things, there's no reason to use autonomy to reduce costs and increase capability. The US military is well behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army in the implementation of artificial intelligence. There's better AI in John Deere tractors than there is in any US military vehicle. There's better computer vision in the Snapchat app on your phone than any system that the US Department of Defense has deployed.

• 9:30Palmer Luckey?

  And other countries are taking notice of this. 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 don't have a blue-water navy. They only have one aircraft carrier coming up on two. 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 if they engage directly, they're going to use technologies that give them an asymmetrical advantage in the areas where we are the least competent. These are the areas where they are putting a lot of their resources. The reason Vladimir Putin is saying that the ruler of the world is going to be the country that masters artificial intelligence is not because he thinks that they are going to lose at this. It's because he thinks that that is one of the only ways that they're going to be able to get the best of us.

• 10:12Palmer Luckey?

  Now, the people who are building technology for our military, the large defense primes, I won't name any names because I don't want to rustle too many feathers in that area. You never know 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 that the technology industry has largely had a monopoly on in areas like autonomy, artificial intelligence. Sensor fusion, high-end networking. And then, at the same time, the people who can build good software, the ones who do work in these technology companies, are largely prohibited from doing so. And even if they're working on something that the military buys, let's say, all the people at Apple who are working on an iPhone that can be sold to the US Air Force, that

• 10:54Palmer Luckey?

  same iPhone is also being sold to Russian intelligence, that same iPhone is being sold to the Chinese Navy. Working on technologies that help the United States don't give us a strategic or competitive advantage if everyone else is getting the exact same thing. The other problem to consider is that asymmetric technologies like artificial intelligence are almost certainly going to empower nations that we aren't thinking about today. Some of them are a little more obvious, like Iran. It was a close US ally until the late 1970s, and today, obviously, is in a very different position. There's about a dozen countries in Africa, South America, and Asia that, were they to acquire extremely advanced artificial intelligence, either through coincidence or by proxy arming, would almost certainly start to wage war on their neighbors in a very destabilizing way. It would have been a much sur bet for me to found a second unicorn in a different industry

• 11:39Palmer Luckey?

  that wasn't so fundamentally broken. Gaming, fast casual dining, fintech, I could have made some ape coins. But there have actually been more mattress unicorns than defense unicorns in the last 35 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 bunch of credibility to do something that was hugely unpopular, to ignore the fact that people were belittling me for it, and try to convince a bunch of brilliant people to come along with me, so that they wouldn't waste their lives spending augmented reality mustache emojis, and 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.

• 12:23Palmer Luckey?

  It's not something that has been the case for a very long time. Silicon Valley was largely built on the back of defense. In 1947, half of Stanford's engineering budget came from the Department of Defense. Fred Terman, Stanford dean, brought DoD contracts and interest to the West Coast in a way that had fundamentally been limited 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 1950s alone, we built the Pentagon and—well, sorry. I have an error in my notes. This is wrong.

• 12:58Palmer Luckey?

  In the lead up to the 50s, in the early 50s. We built the Pentagon in 16 months. We completed the Manhattan Project in three years. We put a man on the moon in under a decade. And just between 1951 and 1959, we built five generations of fighter jets, three generations of bombers, two classes of carriers, nuclear-powered submarines, and ballistic missiles to go on top of them. If you look at the current state of the industry, we're lucky to do even one of these things in a decade. And I can't really blame the defense industry for not working with the DOD entirely. It's not just an ideological problem, it's also an economic problem. When the Cold War ended, the government really became a pretty terrible customer. The technology industry drifted away. Most engineers in Silicon Valley do not remember a great power conflict because they haven't

• 13:41Palmer Luckey?

  lived in a world where a great power was an existential threat to the United States. And so you have a lot of people who are ideologically opposed to working with the military. Now, we could spend an entire talk, I only have a few minutes to talk today. We could spend a whole talk talking about the ethics of defense and what the reasonable critiques of the military are and how you can change what you build for them in a good way. But I'll throw out a factor that I think most people don't think about enough, even the people who do agree on working with the military. There's a lot of companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere who look at those employees who are ideologically opposed to working with the military, and they use them as a smokescreen, pretending that it's principled opposition that drives their decision, when

• 14:23Palmer Luckey?

  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 working with the military, which actually make up a pretty small fraction of the US 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 the 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 CHIPS bill that Congress passed, saying that the United States government is going to put $52 billion into building semiconductor

• 15:08Palmer Luckey?

  You have to compare that with the recent news that, well, it leaked. It wasn't news on purpose. But Apple has pledged to put $275 billion as one company into Chinese manufacturing. You have one company putting in more than five times as much money into manufacturing advanced technology as what is supposed to be a landmark piece of US legislation. The situation that we're in is pretty weird. This is going to sound hyperbolic, but bear with me. The situation we are in right now would be like if, in the buildup to World War II, General Electric had said, "You know what? We really like the United States, but we're actually very bullish on Imperial Japan. We think it's going to be a huge growth opportunity for us, and our metrics just aren't going to look the same if we wipe those off of our roadmap."

• 15:53Palmer Luckey?

  Imagine if in the buildup to the Cold War, if you had had Westinghouse and other major US technology companies say, "Ah, you know, 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, you know, we're not sure that we really want to take a side on this." The situation that we are in today is as dire or worse. The only reason that it seems ridiculous and the only reason it seems hyperbolic is 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 at the highest levels of our technology industry and government on an adversary that is literally committing genocide and slaving millions of people. We're going to look back on ourselves and feel really stupid.

• 16:35Palmer Luckey?

  Now, the good news is that because of Russia's 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 with just a really incredible twist if we 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 Will Smith...

• 17:18Palmer Luckey?

  ...was wrong to take the slap, or if he's just a representative of warrior culture, that's a fair debate to have. The idea of the United States having a military that is strong enough to deter conflict should not be in that category. So, 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. One, you go to war with the tools that you have, not the tools that you wish you had, or the tools that you start working on when things become a problem. If you look at the weapons that were given to Ukraine, they were built in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, $40 billion plus worth of them. And for all their differences, defense is one of the few things that Republicans and Democrats alike have realized transcends the partisan divide.

• 18:00Palmer Luckey?

  On one level, 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 foresight and planning that we've been stockpiling and building these legacy weapon systems for decades explicitly for a situation like today, which has been war-gamed out to the nth degree. Imagine if the Department of Defense had done nothing to prepare for war for 40 years, and then as soon as war broke out, they started tweeting a lot and changed their profile pictures to Ukraine flag, and then started saying, "We stand with Ukraine." The people who are actually tasked with solving these problems are, they generally have good planning, but there's only so much they can do without good technology. 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.

• 18:44Palmer Luckey?

  It's not to fight wars, it's not to win wars, it's to prevent wars from happening. Wars happen when one or both sides misestimate their probability of winning. If both sides agree that one side or the other is going to win, typically you end up with diplomatic resolution. It's when both sides disagree about the possibility of winning that conflict actually breaks out. And so, if you actually want to prevent conflict from happening in the first place, you have to get involved well ahead of time. If you get involved after conflict breaks out, like so many companies have, you're ensuring that you're only going to be a part of the killing, you're only going to be a part of the bloodshed, you're only going to be a part of the war, you're not going to be a part of preventing the war from happening in the first place.

• 19:26Palmer Luckey?

  So, I would argue that people in the technology industry need to work on defense, not because it's the current thing, but because it's the right thing. I have one more thing that I want to say.

• 19:43Palmer Luckey?

  Thank you.

• 19:46Palmer Luckey?

  I talked earlier about NPC thinking that prioritizes popularity over principles. What I'm about to do is in very, very bad taste, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

• 19:56Palmer Luckey?

  Yeah, we'll see.

• 20:01Palmer Luckey?

  One of the people who I think embodies this type of NPC thinking, of going with what's popular and not being willing to to ever reverse their position even when they're proven wrong, is Jason Calacanis. Let me read about some of the things he's said about me over the years. Just a small sampling.

• 20:21Palmer Luckey?

  Palmer Lucky: hideous.

• 20:25Palmer Luckey?

  What an idiot. A moron. This guy Parker Lucky? A complete and utter moron. Jesus, this kid is an idiot. Palmer Lucky is just an idiot and a troll. He is dumb, so, so, so dumb.

• 20:45Palmer Luckey?

  Oh no, we gotta keep going. For him to pull the plug on the Palmer Lucky experience was brilliant. Kudos Zuckerberg. A complete lack of moral character and leadership. Palmer Lucky: a complete moron.

• 21:00Palmer Luckey?

  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 any of the lies he's told about my businesses. This doesn't include any of the terrible things that his co-hosts and guests have said about me over the years that went unchallenged and egged on. If I'm a hideous, stupid person, with no morals, who doesn't care about my family or my employees, I shouldn't be invited here, no matter how relevant Ukraine is. He's had many chances to retract or apologize to these statements, and rather than taking any of them, he keeps telling people that the reason I won't be on his show is because I'm too thin-skinned, because I disagree with him on some of the things he said about Oculus. That is not the case. I've explicitly told him why I've refused to be on his show.

• 21:44Palmer Luckey?

  It's because he and his crew of bullies have been vicious liars who have attacked me for years and berated me. ...for years, and spread lies about me for years, in a way that I've been able to overcome, that very few entrepreneurs would have the money, or the resources, or the credibility to do. And being nice to a few people, like I'm sure he's being nice to you, does not excuse this. This isn't debatable whether it happened or not. It clearly happened. These are all direct quotes from things that he's said over the years, both while I was at Oculus, and during my time after Oculus. And Jason, like many influential people, some of them even in this room, who have treated me like shit for years, suddenly changed their tune as soon as Andro was on the upswing, as soon as we were doing good things. They started inviting me on their podcasts, liking all my social media posts, putting

• 22:29Palmer Luckey?

  me on their innovator lists, all without any acknowledgement whatsoever that they were the ones that were attacking me when it was popular, kicking me while I was on 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 worldview. A lot of other people are attacking me and the work that I do, because it's popular. When it's popular to attack me, they attack me. When it's unpopular to attack me, when Ukraine is being attacked, they are suddenly friends. And those are the same people that I know are going to go back to shitting on me the second that it becomes popular again. I'm coming to the end of this, and I know that you guys are probably thinking, "Wow, this guy's pretty thin-skinned for a billionaire." That's fair.

• 23:22Palmer Luckey?

  But, I want to remind you of something. Jason and the people like him are the reason I was fired from Oculus, my own company. The company, it was my heart and my soul for my entire teenage and adult life. For him, it was a game, it was his show, and for me, it was everything, and I lost everything. It almost destroyed me. I'm still filled with rage about it. I always will be. I'll end with this. I was able to create Anduril 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 that was being constantly berated 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. Thank God he failed.

• 24:06Palmer Luckey?

  Thank God for investors who ignore him and people like him. The market conditions suggest there are going to be a lot of founders. Hopefully, none of the people in this room losing their startups over the next year or so. 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 they will successfully claw their way back to success. That they aren't deterred from working on things that really matter. I pray that they manage to do this despite the inevitably stupid and hot takes. Sorry, inevitably stupid and spiteful hot takes. That Jason, his associates, and the many people like him who make money spewing bullshit are certainly going to be putting out there. Amen. Thank you.

• 25:20David Friedberg?

  Nice talk.

• 25:24David Friedberg?

  Great to meet you in person.

• 25:29David Friedberg?

  Jason, what lessons have we learned here today?

• 25:33David Friedberg?

  Well, I mean, I guess... We were talking backstage and Jason's like, "Oh, you know, I had to do so much to get this guy here because I think he hates me." And this was before this shit happened. And I was like, "Well, maybe you shouldn't talk shit about people."

• 25:45Palmer Luckey?

  Well, the good thing is 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 claw my way back. And remember, this is personal, because it's not just you. It's you, you're one of the most influential, certainly. But it's you and really a small cadre of people that by attacking me ceaselessly made it impossible for me to continue my tenure at Oculus. I'm really lucky I clawed my way back, because that's exceedingly rare for a company to do, a person to do that.

• 26:20Jason Calacanis?

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

• 26:34Palmer Luckey?

  Well, it's not just what's wrong. This is actually why I went out of my way. There's actually a lot of lies you told in Spread, and your co-hosts, and your guests. But I'm not even talking about those. 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 just things you've said about me personally as a founder and entrepreneur. Vicious, personal attacks. Separately, there's all of the lies that 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 spend all day talking 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 lies and then being

• 27:17Palmer Luckey?

  vicious about it, and attacking me personally. It became clear I couldn't be a representative in an industry where people are going to treat me like that, fairly or not.

• 27:24David Friedberg?

  Imagine doing a podcast with them.

• 27:26Palmer Luckey?

  What's that?

• 27:27David Friedberg?

  Imagine doing a podcast with them.

• 27:34Jason Calacanis?

  I guess if you have no choice but to keep, I'll just ask you the same question.

• 27:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Do you want us to just describe what Palmer's talking about? Can I try my best?

• 27:40Jason Calacanis?

  No, no, no, hold on. What, what, because my memory of the events...

• 27:45David Friedberg?

  You just read all the things he said.

• 27:49Jason Calacanis?

  Right, but what were we talking about at the time? There was a lot of controversy at Facebook about some donations, anonymous accounts, things you said.

• 27:57Palmer Luckey?

  Well, that wasn't one thing. That was over the course of years. So that was just a small sampling. I had to really find a small sample. You know, you can't have a do- but I'll tell you what basically happened.

• 28:06Jason Calacanis?

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

• 28:11Palmer Luckey?

  Well, no, some of those were after I was fired and you were saying it was great that I was fired. And actually, by the way, it's like one of your co-hosts said on your show that they're glad I got fired for my politics. And that line is mysteriously missing from your transcripts, by the way.

• 28:25Jason Calacanis?

  We never have edit- we don't edit any of the things. And I didn't have a co-host at the time. It's probably just one of the news reporters who came on. We would interview them. But there was a lot of controversy.

• 28:33Palmer Luckey?

  You're right. I could decide the wrong there. Here's what happened. I gave $9,000 to a group that ran a single anti-Hillary Clinton billboard. That was actually the 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 this terrible person who's funding all of these-

• 28:50Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, just to be clear. So you made a donation and it was on an FEC filing somewhere? Somebody pulled it out and then basically said-

• 28:56Palmer Luckey?

  Like to a PAC or something? So it was to a 501(c)(4), I believe, who used that for their political harm. But it was public. This was-

• 29:05Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It was a public filing, yeah.

• 29:06Palmer Luckey?

  Yeah, and I actually ended up giving a quote to a reporter about it. So, you know, it wasn't something that people understood what it was.

• 29:14Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 29:14Palmer Luckey?

  But then a bunch of people just lied. They said Palmer Lucky was funding people who are attacking Hillary Clinton supporters online. There were a lot of people who I think were looking for a scapegoat to kind of be the right-wing reaction to correct the record, which actually was paying people to attack Trump supporters online.

• 29:32Jason Calacanis?

  Why did Zuck fire you?

• 29:33Palmer Luckey?

  What's that?

• 29:34Jason Calacanis?

  Why did Zuck fire you?

• 29:35Palmer Luckey?

  Oh, no, Zuck didn't fire me. He's way above all of that stuff.

• 29:38Jason Calacanis?

  Why did Face- I'll just ask it a third time. Why did Facebook fire you?

• 29:43Palmer Luckey?

  There's a lot of reasons.

• 29:46Palmer Luckey?

  I always had good performance reviews.

• 29:54Palmer Luckey?

  What it really boiled down to was this.

• 29:56David Friedberg?

  This is my favorite talk, by far.

• 30:00Palmer Luckey?

  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 hoped it would blow over, but they kept attacking me for months and months and months and months. I was put on leave for six months. I don't know if you know that.

• 30:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Sorry, but this is all on the heels of this one political donation.

• 30:18Palmer Luckey?

  Correct.

• 30:19Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Nine thousand dollars.

• 30:19Palmer Luckey?

  Yes. And so, on the heels of that, the hope was that it would go away. Now, I think, here's the real problem. I think if Trump had lost, people could have said, "Oh, well, you know, he's just one of those eccentrics. Impact, no impact."

• 30:31Chamath Palihapitiya?

  He's a loser.

• 30:32Palmer Luckey?

  He's a loser, but whatever. Trump winning is, I think, what made it untenable. Because people continued to attack me, not for the controversy.

• 30:40David Friedberg?

  The nine thousand dollar donation was the reason you were fired? Just for supporting Trump?

• 30:47Palmer Luckey?

  As you know, these things are very complex. But more or less, yes. I mean, there's a direct causal line from that to me being put on leave, to me not being allowed to come back, and then pushed out.

• 30:56David Friedberg?

  We talk a lot about this on the pod, on mob behavior. And I think Marc Andreessen said the smartest thing I've read on Twitter in the year. I retweeted it and I took it away. And I think he pointed out that it feels safer to be in the mob than to not be in the mob.

• 31:12Palmer Luckey?

  Well, it always is.

• 31:13David Friedberg?

  Because 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.

• 31:20Palmer Luckey?

  Right.

• 31:21David Friedberg?

  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 nowadays.

• 31:33David Friedberg?

  And I don't mean that, honestly, I don't mean that to disparage 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 piss off an entire room is something that we don't see a lot of. And I think that that level of bravery is also what's missing going back to the mid 20th 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.

• 31:59Palmer Luckey?

  Thank you.

• 32:03David Friedberg?

  But, look, I don't know about the specifics with J Cal, but it certainly seems that there's a lot of this. We talked about this with Brian Armstrong standing up at Coinbase, and all the stuff that's gone on that we think, I would argue, has probably made Twitter a highly complacent place. 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 crowd attacking the right.

• 32:28Palmer Luckey?

  Well, people see what happens. What happened to me has, like, this is, I can't back this up, obviously, this is getting into a personal anecdote, which is never a good way to support any idea, but, you know, I know a lot of people who remain at Facebook, and they will not say anything, and they will not donate to any politician

• 32:47David Friedberg?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 32:48Palmer Luckey?

  who's left of Bernie. Because they saw what happened to me, and they've explicitly said, "I saw what happened to you." Because 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 ads at Facebook for 14 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 Hillary Clinton, you are a shitty human being." And he's the person who's allowed to lead Oculus now. So it's not a problem of being aggressive

• 33:25David Friedberg?

  It's being on the right side.

• 33:26Palmer Luckey?

  It's being on the right side of the politics. And so there's a lot of people where they're not going to say anything because they see what happens to me.

• 33:33David Friedberg?

  Now, Sax is loving this.

• 33:34David Sacks?

  When I hear somebody to disagree with, I'll let you guys know.

• 33:46Palmer Luckey?

  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 leanings, because you won't 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 them to the curb and do something else.

• 34:08Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How do you implement that philosophy differently now at Anduril? 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?

• 34:28Palmer Luckey?

  There's a few things. One, I think that working in national security has been a great filter where people aren't going to come work for you unless they're OK working in a bit of a controversial field. I'm actually somewhat concerned about the Ukraine conflict in that regard, in that 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 attack people for their views." But I think when you run a company that is inherently working on something that's controversial, people on the right and on the left both feel like they're on the side of this important bipartisan issue and all of these other policy differences can kind of go to the side. And the culture at Anduril is everyone is free to have whatever politics they want. Like, I'm a Republican, our CEO, Brian Shimp, is a Democrat. We both make significant contributions to our respective sizes and we have employees across the country.

• 35:12Palmer Luckey?

  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 it early and saying, "Hey, that's not OK at this company. We're here to work on a common mission." For example, if we had a manager who then publicly went and said, "The half of my employees who support this political candidate, they're terrible people, they're shitty humans." They'd be fired.

• 35:36Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Yeah. I'll give you a counterfactual to what this is, which is very aspirational, which is seven or eight years ago, we funded a business that actually makes seafaring drones. And the whole point was to actually measure the surface flux in the oceans, which you can use to get a really good sense of climate change. And somewhere along the way, we had the chance to do a contract with the DOD. But invariably, there's 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 a three-year detour trying to build a weather app. Which turned out to not be the right thing.

• 36:14Palmer Luckey?

  Of course not.

• 36:15Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And three years later, you know, they're doing a bunch of stuff now with these government agencies. And it turns out that's the right thing to do because now they're that much closer to actually mapping the world's oceans, which creates a repository 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, it's what Elon said yesterday, you know, companies are there to make products that people and organizations want and need, not necessarily to fight over political ideals.

• 36:44Palmer Luckey?

  I think one of the interesting things in the example you just gave, like I mentioned earlier, I have some empathy for people who work in companies who don't want to work in defense. I think broadly, the technology industry needs to support the military. And I'm glad that the conflict in Ukraine has changed 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. And so the Google example was interesting because it was Google employees saying, hey, I didn't sign up to work on weapons. And I can understand that, maybe they're pacifist and they say, you know, for religious reasons, for philosophical reasons, I cannot work on this. And they were upset that their work was put to work on defense without it being clear. And I suspect that in the situation you're talking about, similar objections were raised. Hey, this isn't what I joined the company to do. This isn't what I signed up for. And so at Andro, one of the ways that we've been able to get around this is just being very clear, like you are signing up to work with the Department of Defense.

• 37:28Palmer Luckey?

  That is, that is the mission that you're signing up for. I mean, we're about a third US service veterans at Andro, which is higher than any company that I'm aware of, and we're about 1,000 people now. And so these are people who, they understand the importance of the mission.

• 37:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Right.

• 37:45David Sacks?

  Just shifting gears for a second, I want to ask you about drone. First, I want to say that the first time I tried VR, which was Oculus, I thought it was one of the most magical computing experiences I've ever had. So I don't know, have you guys tried it? You put the goggles on?

• 38:00Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I did the thing-

• 38:00David Sacks?

  And you're in the Oculus trailer and it's like, it was amazing.

• 38:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  I did the thing where you show like a big hole, like Facebook had this demo for a while or whatever, and I thought I was going to fall into the hole. And then I fell forward and I fell on-

• 38:13David Sacks?

  You're on the ledge of the cliff. And I didn't, I didn't want to like tiptoe beyond it. I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, wait, I know this is not real, but anyway.

• 38:21Palmer Luckey?

  VR is the, it's so funny, I feel these mental circuits that haven't activated for years activating, so I've got my talking points, but VR is the final computing platform. It's not the next one, it's the final one. And people talk about augmented reality, and it's very interesting, I love AR, we did a lot of great AR 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 gonna be the final thing. Why hasn't it caught on? Wait, Zach had a question, go ahead.

• 38:50David Sacks?

  Well, I was gonna ask you, ask about drones.

• 38:53Palmer Luckey?

  Well, maybe I should answer, why hasn't it caught on? It's not good enough yet. People ask, I'll have this debate, people are like, oh, I'm not sure VR is ever really gonna be a thing. But explain the dimension when you say it's not good enough. Is it weight, is it physical interface? It's a whole bunch of things. It's content being available, you need a self-sustaining ecosystem of a broad enough variety of content, that enough people can use it to create further network effects. So that's part of it, it's just a content thing. You have to build a self-sustaining flywheel, until you have that. Yeah, apps aren't good enough yet to draw people in. They're not good enough, and they don't have broad enough appeal. There's a particular niche where we have a flywheel. There's dozens of developers that are making many millions of dollars, making games for Quest 2, but that's its own little niche. The other thing is quality, it's weight and it's cost. Like, the example that I like to use, when arguing with people who say that VR is not

• 39:36Palmer Luckey?

  going to be a thing that they spend their whole life in, say, okay, wait, wait, imagine this, what if for $99, you could buy a pair of sunglasses, and it gives you an experience, the quality of the Matrix, or Sword of Online, or whatever your sci-fi pick is, and you can do anything, and there's endless content. It'll get there. And it's, people are like, oh, well, of course, I would use that, but that's not what VR is. I say, well, then that's just a tech disagreement. Philosophically, we agree, how fast will it get there? So, I mean, listen, you created the category, how far away are we? It depends on the experience. So, the hardest things to simulate are gonna be the ones that are kinda like these multi-haptic, multi-element things that rely on scent and motion, like surfing is gonna be really, really hard. On the other hand, being able to perfectly simulate the experience of being in a brightly

• 40:19Palmer Luckey?

  lit fluorescent fluorescent conference room, that's going to happen within 10 years. Like the resolution will be there, the weight will be there, you will be able to perfectly simulate that experience. And you know how much of my life I've spent flying to the other side of the world to sit in fluorescent lit 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, you don't need tons of haptics, and then it's going to go from there.

• 40:41David Friedberg?

  Zach's going to talk about drones.

• 40:43David Sacks?

  Yeah, let's just shift gears for a second to drones. So, obviously, in Ukraine right now, the Russian military, and specifically their armors, has been pulverized by the combination of the Javelin plus this Turkish drone, this I guess, the Vraktor. Yeah. So, I guess this has raised the profile, I would imagine it's raised the profile of drones and the use of drones in the military. Also, it points out the weakness of having kind of a large platform strategy. In the case of the Russian military, their platform is this Russian tank, but so is our military. We're built around aircraft carriers and the F-35 and the Abrams tank.

• 41:25David Sacks?

  All these things, I would imagine, are susceptible to drones. And the thing that's destroying the Russians is their tank costs a couple million bucks and it can be destroyed by a drone that costs 200,000.

• 41:37Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Oh, many more than a million. Tens of millions.

• 41:40Palmer Luckey?

  EMP. So, I mean, we just won a billion dollar contract with US SOCOM, Special Operations Command, to do counter drone work. And so, to a certain extent, what you have to do is then say, okay, we're going to have these armored systems, we're going to have these vessels, and then we need to have technology that allows us to counter drones. And it is possible to counter drones. What's going on with Russia is they don't have the technology to counter drones, and so they're largely just totally...

• 42:01Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Can I ask you something about this contract? Just general terms. You said something very important before, which is, the military industrial complex today is basically paid to do work, not to get to a result.

• 42:11Palmer Luckey?

  Yes.

• 42:12Chamath Palihapitiya?

  How do you fight that when you're, like, when you hear a billion dollar contract? Is that cost plus that DOD just is willing to give you?

• 42:18Palmer Luckey?

  So, this is, I mean, we could have you a whole talk on this, but fundamentally, for people who don't know, a cost plus contract structure is the way that most... work for the Department of Defense is done. That means you get paid for your time, your materials, your people, and then a fixed percentage of profit on top, even if you're way, way, way, way, way over your budget, until Congress eventually takes some money away.

• 42:34David Friedberg?

  And then there's layers of subcontractors, so the costs all add up.

• 42:36Palmer Luckey?

  Exactly. And so, the bad, the bad thing about this is that not only the prime contractor owns the contract, but everyone under them is incentivized to come up with the most expensive way of solving a problem that they can convince the government to fund. So they wanted to build the most expensive system with the most expensive parts, with as many hours as possible.

• 42:53David Friedberg?

  And the bids are so complex that you're only gonna have one or two real bids.

• 42:56Palmer Luckey?

  Yep.

• 42:56David Friedberg?

  And they're all, and they're basically gonna be the same price.

• 42:58Palmer Luckey?

  And those top bids, the worst part is, they're not just trying to come up with the most expensive solution. They're even encouraging the subcontractors under them.

• 43:04David Friedberg?

  Right, because they get a percent of, yeah.

• 43:05Palmer Luckey?

  Because they get a percent of that. And so if I'm getting, let's say, 6% profit margin, I wanna make it. As big a number as possible. And I wanna drag it out like.

• 43:12David Friedberg?

  And that's why this budget's ballooned like crazy despite the lack of results.

• 43:14Palmer Luckey?

  And they make more money when they do poorly, because they're not being paid to make things that work. They're being paid to do work. That's what I said. It's just the act of the doing is what gets them. Okay, but I'm saying, now, for you, what do you do differently? 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. Like, first of all, I can't just build whatever I want. I can't build a Batmobile and then try to sell it to the army. But I, I, we, we talk to them about their problems. They understand their problems.

• 43:39David Friedberg?

  That'd be cool.

• 43:40Palmer Luckey?

  They don't, it would be cool. He's so bitchin'. But, but. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Would you build someone in this room a Batmobile if he could come up with the money? Look, if, if it's, if it solved a real problem, I mean, if, if that was the right way to solve a problem. Going to my office. All right. Probably not. But, but the, the nice thing about this is that when we go to customers, we're not going to them with a white paper saying, "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 a boondoggle for you. It will work." We go to them with a working system with a full technical.

• 44:11David Friedberg?

  Delivering goods and services already de-risked.

• 44:13Palmer Luckey?

  Exactly. And, and the thing is, this is popular with the customers and politicians alike, because it removes the risk of them getting into political boondoggles, like the F-35 program being a trillion dollars over budget.

• 44:23David Friedberg?

  So this creates, this creates new budget line items, because now folks are saying, "I can actually get shit out of this. I'm gonna move money from whatever bullshit pot of money I'm spending over here, move it into this sort of a structure." And then that creates competitive dynamics.

• 44:34Chamath Palihapitiya?

  Palmer, yeah, so how does it, how does it actually close the loop? So for example, you deliver a drone to the DOD. It costs $10,000, I'm making up a number. It costs $10,000 and it works on ABC dimension. And then there's whoever makes General Dynamics makes the Hellfire drone. Again, I don't know the specifics.

• 44:51Palmer Luckey?

  Of course.

• 44:52Chamath Palihapitiya?

  And they want to charge 90,000 or 110,000. How do they still not get picked? Because it seems if you look at their performance as public companies.

• 45:03Palmer Luckey?

  Yep.

• 45:04Chamath Palihapitiya?

  It's an incredibly steady, it's almost like an inflationary line item. You know, that you can predict 6, 8, 9, 10% growth consistently every year.

• 45:13Palmer Luckey?

  Correct. It is, I mean, the defense companies are not high growth, high margin companies. They're extraordinarily predictable. People basically see them as an extension of the US government. It's like buying bonds.

• 45:22David Friedberg?

  The US federal budget.

• 45:23Palmer Luckey?

  Yes, exactly. And when the budget goes up, you see a direct proportional and linear increase.

• 45:28Jason Calacanis?

  Palmer, let me ask you, hold on, hold on. Palmer, let me ask you a question about something very pragmatic. Knowing what you know in the, in the Tujor building. And I do appreciate the work you're doing defending the country. I think it's important work. And I told you that. And I lobbied you to be here, to have your platform and to have your voice. And I've probably sent you no less than 30 or 40 invites to come on the pods. Can't deny that. And so I told you, I'm willing 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?

• 46:10Jason Calacanis?

  And would we be able to, would Taiwan be able to defend itself? What would that look like? Because that seems to be the next hotspot that we may have to do.

• 46:19David Friedberg?

  Will weapons get shipped in there like they were in the Ukraine?

• 46:21Palmer Luckey?

  No, we were able to ship weapons in the Ukraine because we had countries like Poland that were willing to, at massive existential risk to themselves, step forward. Yeah, Poland has been an unsung hero in this and getting weapons through. But Taiwan, what's going to happen is there's a few ways this could go. It could either be just a blitzkrieg where they go in, destroy the ports, destroy the airports, immediately occupy. That's, that could happen. The other way this could happen could be a more drawn-out blockade, where they blockade the island. 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 that we or anyone else will be able to do that. No, there's different opinions on how things are gonna go. I can't pretend that I know exactly what it is.

• 47:06Palmer Luckey?

  I can say Taiwan does not have the tools today that they need to deter Chinese aggression. They might have had the tools they needed to deter it a decade ago, but Chinese military has been ascendant. They've been investing so heavily in new technology, distributed swarms, high-end electronic warfare systems, and all of the amphibious landing craft that they're going to need to perform an invasion. They've just, they've built the capability that they need. It's just... How vulnerable are our aircraft carriers? Sorry, say again? How vulnerable are our aircraft carriers? They are extremely vulnerable to the point where we feel like we can't use them. The problem is aircraft carriers were not designed to be a peer-to-peer, a peer-to-peer great powers tool for us to go toe-to-toe with the Soviets or the Chinese. The reality is, if each side launches 200 missiles, one of them's gonna get through and it's going to end up hitting them.

• 47:51Palmer Luckey?

  And this is especially true with satellite targeting systems. They were designed, in the modern day, to project power to places where you have air superiority uncontested. So it's great to have a mobile base that can go somewhere and project power, but you cannot stop the Chinese that way. And also, if we send a carrier out there and they manage to sink it, that's 5,000 lives lost in one hit.

• 48:10Jason Calacanis?

  Hey, Palmer, we gotta wrap, but I'll say this.

• 48:13Palmer Luckey?

  Wait, I gotta say one more thing on Taiwan.

• 48:15Jason Calacanis?

  Well, hold on a second. Oh, not about me. Great, go.

• 48:18Palmer Luckey?

  No, no, no. Not this time. Not this time.

• 48:21Jason Calacanis?

  I was bracing for impact. I don't have any anti-Palmer drone systems, but I will be working on them next week.

• 48:30David Friedberg?

  I will say this about J Cal: If you did that to Kara Swisher, she would've, like, not, she would've pulled you offgate.

• 48:35Palmer Luckey?

  Keep going. You're so right.

• 48:38David Friedberg?

  Yeah. And I think, I think, I will say...

• 48:43Palmer Luckey?

  That is so fair.

• 48:44David Friedberg?

  And J Cal, J Cal is, he's an incredibly loyal friend. He's got an incredibly good heart, and I think that, you know, whatever he said or did, it was really brave of him to come out here and also have the conversation. And he wants to have the conversation, wants to have a dialogue, and he always wants to do that with all of us. Sometimes he conflicts a bit and he butts heads, but I will say this about J Cal: He means well, and I wanna kinda say that for him.

• 49:08Jason Calacanis?

  But anyway, finish your point about Taiwan. Let's talk about the important stuff.

• 49:14Palmer Luckey?

  Kara says I'm a douchey man-boy and a Fourth Reich bro-Nazi.

• 49:17Jason Calacanis?

  Not that you remembered. I got a little memory. I think your cosplay stuff is cool.

• 49:23Palmer Luckey?

  Thank you.

• 49:24Jason Calacanis?

  I was brave enough to do cosplay. I'm a little jealous of that, I'll be honest. And I would love to go cosplay with you sometime. Tell us your final point on Taiwan. Not the way to wrap the... I want to hear his point on Taiwan!

• 49:36Palmer Luckey?

  Alright, yes. The big difference between Taiwan and Ukraine is that we still have a chance to make a difference. So, what I'm so terrified of is that all these people who say, "Oh, we stand for Ukraine, we have to do this, this is the fight of our generation", and then they're not gonna do anything, and then immediately after Taiwan is invaded, they're gonna change their profile pictures to a Taiwanese flag and say, "Oh, man, we stand with Taiwan", it's like, no, that's not good enough. If you care about this issue, there's things you can do right now. And what's really amazing to me is you have people who are saying like, "Oh, man, I stand with Ukraine, we're cutting off all of our Russian business", I'm like, "Oh, wow, so brave. You cut off an entire country that's a regulatory nightmare, has an economy smaller than most US states", sorry, not most, many.

• 50:18Jason Calacanis?

  Many.

• 50:19Palmer Luckey?

  Yeah. It's just like, "Oh, wow, you're so brave for cutting off Russians", and then at the same time, they say, "Oh, but all of our expansion is in China", and I'm not gonna say anything about that. I think that worse than the people who change their profile pictures are gonna be the people who remain silent when Taiwan is invaded. And they just can't say anything because their business interests are so intermeshed and so intertangled. And China has been fighting a strategic and economic war against us for a long time, and it is extraordinarily good. The last thing I'll say on this, I talked about it earlier, there's a uniquely American delusion, probably from our own Hollywood films, that we can solve any problem the last second. They will come in and we just think, "Boom! Deus ex machina, we win!" That isn't how Taiwan is gonna go. There is no Deus ex machina. We know exactly what's gonna happen. The war planners have figured out exactly

• 51:03Palmer Luckey?

  one of several scenarios that's going to go. And when it's happened, we can't pretend like we didn't know. And there isn't gonna be anything that flies in to save it.

• 51:12Jason Calacanis?

  So, okay, so... Hold on, I just want to say one more thing and then I'll let you close. You and I can debate anti-Hillary ads, the Donald Trump subreddit, 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 100% aligned on that, even if we disagree about the anti-Hillary ads or any of that stuff.

• 51:34Palmer Luckey?

  Amen.

• 51:34Jason Calacanis?

  I appreciate you coming. And I'll debate you on anything, anytime, anywhere.

• 51:40Palmer Luckey?

  I do care about my family, by the way. That was the worst thing you said.

• 51:43Jason Calacanis?

  Okay, and fair enough. I will apologize for that statement if I did say it.

• 51:48David Friedberg?

  Wait, Jay Cal, say it louder, say it louder.

• 51:51Jason Calacanis?

  I just said, if I said something that hurt your feelings about that, and it was out of 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't stop you, I can't stop your career. No commentator, no journalist can stop a founder, I disagree with that.

• 52:11Palmer Luckey?

  Oh, I disagree. You can stop a lot of people.

• 52:14Jason Calacanis?

  I think we're overestimating my influence in the world. You're a 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 at Google are cowards for not doing DOD contracts. You're not a coward. You came out here, you take me on, straight up as a man, I appreciate it. It was a little bit of a blind side, but I can take it. What's most important is the work you're doing. That's what's most important. I mean, it's a sucker punch, but it's a pay. I'm from Brooklyn.

• 52:46David Friedberg?

  Thank you.

• 52:47Jason Calacanis?

  We appreciate you coming. We appreciate you coming. Bottom line.

• 53:13Jason Calacanis?

  Hey, everybody, that was pretty crazy. What an amazing moment. I think we all learned a lot. But I actually wanted to show you the clip of the comments that Palmer referenced, just to provide some context for those of you who are unaware. The clip was from a show in March of 2017, episode 721 of my other podcast, This Week in Startups. And listen, 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 that episode, episode 721.

• 53:44Jason Calacanis?

  The day Palmer Lucky was fired from Facebook. And it was a news roundtable of the podcast. I'm talking to Austin Petersmith, who worked at Inside at the time. And Ian Thompson of The Register, he's a great journalist. And just to clarify some facts here in the timeline. These are from the Daily Beast article in which Palmer was interviewed. You can go read that. It's in the show notes. And the facts are pretty basic. Palmer Lucky donated some amount of money to a pro-Trump political organization. It was called Nimble America, right before the 2016 election. And as you just heard, during the All In Summit talk, Palmer said it was like $9,000. Nimble America was part of the infamous subreddit page, The Donald, if you remember that. Nimble America, they basically made anti-Hillary and pro-Trump memes, and they were self-proclaimed

• 54:29Jason Calacanis?

  shit posters, as we now talk about on the internet. The organization said it was dedicated to proving, quote, "shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real." Palmer was posting to the R Donald under the anonymous Reddit account called Nimble Rich 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't fight the American elite without serious firepower. They will outspend you and destroy you by any and all means." And here is what Palmer told the Daily Beast in 2016 when asked about supporting Nimble America. "I've got plenty of money. Money's not my issue. I thought it sounded like a really jolly good time." Again, if you're listening, you might hear some other voices talking.

• 55:12Jason Calacanis?

  Those are the two guests that I mentioned before. You can watch this three-minute and 22-second clip, which is just a mashup of my commentary I'll see on the other side in three minutes.

• 55:23Jason Calacanis?

  He was supporting, like, I wouldn't say violent trolling, but extreme trolling would be the way to do it.

• 55:32Speaker 05

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

• 55:43Jason Calacanis?

  What an idiot.

• 55:45Speaker 06

  Well, it actually lost them a fair amount of business. There are about three or four game studios that said, "Right, we're no longer developing for the Oculus on this one." Because you came out and said, "Basically, well, to overturn a entrenched elite, then you need to be able to fund it and fight back." And you're like, "That's not... You're not a revolutionary. This is just HIT posting about politicians. This is not constructive dialogue. This is not an attempt to reform the American political scene. This is just, 'Oh, let's be a troll.'"

• 56:11Jason Calacanis?

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

• 56:18Speaker 06

  Two bottles of vodka works very well on that.

• 56:19Jason Calacanis?

  That as well. It's like the sort of quick way of being a billionaire or 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 lucky enough to hit the jackpot and make hundreds of millions of dollars, behave yourself. You moron. You hit the jackpot. It's like somebody winning the Mega Ball lottery and then just going on the street and randomly punching people in the face. Like, this guy Parker Lucky is a complete and utter moron. For somebody to be a visionary, to create something like Oculus and make VR... I bought the Oculus. It's pretty impressive, I have to say.

• 57:04Jason Calacanis?

  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 on my radar now. In fact, we have one company in our incubator. But, Jesus, this kid's an idiot. But this case, Palmer Lucky's 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 and your vision of the world. Behave yourself. Number two, if you represent the company that's worth a couple of hundred billion dollars that made you a billionaire, and you represent Mark Andreessen, who invested in your company, and Andreessen Horowitz, and you represent all the employees and all their families

• 57:48Jason Calacanis?

  and everybody whose entire net worth is locked up in this... You have a higher... Duty of service. And this is a complete lack of moral character and leadership for someone like Palmer Lucky to be doing this shitposting. F it, I'm gonna say it. Let's move on to the next Facebook story. Now that we got over the Palmer Lucky is just a complete moron who doesn't appreciate his success or care about any of his employees, family members, team members. If you're gonna do that kind of shenanigans. If you don't, here's a clue. I hate to get totally crazy. If you're doing something like this anonymously, you might want to think that the anonymity plus Reddit, plus you would be ashamed about it.

• 58:33Jason Calacanis?

  Like, think about what you're doing if it's anonymous. In other words, if you have to put a mask on and then you throw the brick through the window, you may not want to throw the brick through the window because you weren't willing to do it with your mask off. Okay, so closing thoughts. I respect Palmer Lucky for his incredible innovations, both with Oculus and his new company. We actually agree on many things, which actually people in the tech industry might not, which is, hey, producing weapon systems to protect America and democracy 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 yeah, all's well that ends well.

• 59:18Jason Calacanis?

  It was an interesting moment in time. I don't regret exactly what I said. I think what I said was fair. And when I talked about it in context, I was, you know, coming from a place that if you're gonna post stuff, post it under your real name, not anonymously. And so, there you have it, folks. That's the entire controversy. Thank you to Palmer Lucky for coming. Thanks to my besties for having my back. There was this big question of if I would go out and engage the discussion. Of course I want to go out and engage the 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 look forward to hosting this podcast forever. They're gonna have to take, drag me out of here, and I hope we can host another All-In

• 59:59Jason Calacanis?

  Summit and all of you can attend, either virtually or in person. It's great to have had Palmer at the event. And actually, I hope he comes next year and shares more of the exciting work he's doing at Andro, and I wish him the best.

• 1:00:20Speaker 07

  And instead, we open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, S.A. I'm the queen of Kenwa.

• 1:00:33Speaker 07

  Besties are gone. That is my dog taking a notice in your driveway.

• 1:00:44Chamath Palihapitiya?

  They should all just get a room and just have one big huge orgy because they're all just pissed with us. It's like this sexual tension that we just need to release somehow.

• 1:00:52Speaker 07

  What, you're the bee? What, you're a bee? Bee? What? We need to get merge.

• 1:01:11David Friedberg?

  Okay, wait, J Cal.

• 1:01:12Jason Calacanis?

  Yeah, sir.

• 1:01:12David Friedberg?

  J Cal, stay out here. Hey, Nick. Nick, can you cue the, uh, can you cue the photo?

• 1:01:18Jason Calacanis?

  What photo?

• 1:01:19David Friedberg?

  Oh, no. Backstage. This is what happened at the last break.

• 1:01:27David Friedberg?

  I think we got there.

• 1:01:28Jason Calacanis?

  Well, this is what I said. I said, "You're, you don't have drones over my house, right?" Just to confirm. And he said, uh, "Cannot..."

• 1:01:36David Friedberg?

  Someone tagline that.

• 1:01:37Jason Calacanis?

  Said, "Cannot confirm or deny."