61October 7, 2019raise ethical questions, especially
amid a larger backlash against over-
reach by tech companies. The
Interceptor in its current form
doesn’t target humans and requires
explicit permission from a human
operator before each attack, but it’s
conceivable that those controls could
be changed in the future. “You’ve
already developed this technol-
ogy, opened the so-called Pandora’s
box,” argues Marta Kosmyna of the
Campaign to Stop Killer Robots,
a group opposed to autonomous
weaponry. Technologies such as the
Interceptor are “very rarely used as
intended,” she says.T
he day after Levin’s Interceptor
demonstration, employees,
their families, investors, and other VIPs filtered in for an
office-warming party at Anduril’s new headquarters. Luckey
sat with his wife, Nicole, in a booth in the cafeteria. The cou-
ple had gotten married a few weeks earlier, and the Anduril
event felt almost like a second reception. Sun filled the room,
and Dave Brubeck’s Take Five played on the speakers. The
crowd sipped cocktails with ice cubes that had Anduril’s logo
frozen into them.
Luckey had spent the afternoon across town at a polit-
ical fundraiser with Donald Trump Jr. Anduril’s founder
hasdonated about $1.3 million to GOP-
connected groups since 2017, according to
Federal Election Commission disclosures,
making him an important young donor in
Republican circles. One of the first people
to approach the cafeteria booth was Hal
Lambert, an early Anduril investor and fel-
low GOP fundraiser, followed by a young man
wearing a MAGA hat.
Guests wandered through the cavernous
space under a huge American flag, check-
ing out Anduril’s milling machines, 3D print-
ers, and green-screen studio. The walls of
every conference room were covered in
complicated-looking equations. Grimm con-
fessed he’d told employees to scrawl math-
ematical things to impress people without
advanced degrees.
Later, Stephens and Luckey gave speeches
mocking Silicon Valley’s caution about mili-
tary contracts. “I’m so happy to come back
down here to a place full of wonderful peo-
ple who are also sane and support national
security,” Luckey said, to loud applause.
Stephens thanked employees for choosing
Anduril over the big software companies,
even though it had meant sacrificing dream careers in digital
advertising optimization.
Not on hand for the event was Thiel, who’d told Stephens
in a one-word text message that he wouldn’t make it. Thiel
declined an interview request for this story; a Founders Fund
spokeswoman, Erin Gleason, says he has “no involvement in
the company,” despite his firm’s ownership stake.
Anduril’s founders present themselves as an alternative to
a defense industry gone soft after decades of fat contracts.
But it’s hard not to notice how deftly the company has insin-
uated itself into Washington circles in its short history, with
prominent allies in both chambers of Congress. Tom Cotton,
a Republican senator from Arkansas, says he sees the emer-
gence of defense startups as an encouraging development.
“It would be healthier if we had more defense companies to
compete on Pentagon contracts,” he says.
Cotton was one of a half-dozen members of Congress
who an Anduril spokesman suggested would vouch for it for
this story. Another was Will Hurd, a Republican congress-
man who represents a Texas district along the border with
Mexico. Before an interview could be arranged, though, Hurd
announced his retirement, saying he was leaving the House
of Representatives “to help our country in a different way.”
Rumors emerged that he’d be joining Anduril. It isn’t clear
how seriously anyone took the possibility, but Luckey was
deluged with questions about it. “It was nice that everyone
thought of us,” he says, clarifying that, though he’s talked
to Hurd since the announcement, he doesn’t expect to hire
him. But, Luckey adds, “I’m glad they weren’t thinking, Oh,
Will Hurd is going to work for Lockheed Martin.” <BW>An engineer works on the Interceptor