Spending four years to build a laptop that’s obsolete by the time it’s finished is basically what the current acquisition system delivers at scale. It’s broken.
The defense industry is a bloated relic wheezing in the corner, too fat on government contracts to notice it’s being outpaced by leaner, smarter predators. L3, Lockheed, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and the rest, are still duct-taping Vietnam-era fossils and parading them around as “cutting-edge,” completely oblivious to the tech tsunami crashing down on them.
They don’t innovate—they iterate. Case in point: Boeing’s recent NASA disaster, where their overpriced capsule couldn’t even make the trip to the ISS without SpaceX stepping in like a clean-up crew for government incompetence. It’s legacy arrogance. And it’s exactly why the disruptors are winning and legacy companies are about to go bust.
Palmer Luckey—the guy who built Oculus and sold it to Facebook before most of these defense CEOs learned how to log in to Windows—is busy dragging national defense kicking and screaming into the future with Anduril Industries.
And he’s doing it with a vengeance.
Silicon Valley Swagger Meets Special Operations Smarts
Anduril isn’t your granddaddy’s defense contractor. It’s a high-speed, low-drag tech company weaponized with the mindset of a startup and the mission focus of a Tier One unit. They’re not building weapons for PowerPoint slides or D.C. glad-handers—they’re building gear that works, that learns, and that fights smarter. Then they present a built product for purchase. Game changer…
We’re talking autonomous drones that don’t need a joystick cowboy in a trailer in Nevada. Surveillance systems that fuse data faster than a SEAL team clears a building. All powered by AI that’s actually being used on the battlefield—not beta-tested to death in some 5-year Pentagon boondoggle.
Palmer took the entire broken procurement process, like Elon did with NASA and SpaceX, then poured gasoline on it and lit a match. And defense contractors are still staring at the fire, confused.
The Arrogance of the Old Guard
Meanwhile, Lockheed, Raytheon, and the rest of the MIC mafia are sitting fat and comfortable—just like Blockbuster Video in 2007. Remember them? They laughed at Netflix. “Streaming is a fad,” they said. “People like physical media.”
Anduril is that Netflix moment—except instead of streaming movies, it’s rewriting the rules of modern warfare. The big boys in the defense space are too arrogant, too slow, and too addicted to fat-margin legacy systems to notice the ground shifting under their orthopedic dress shoes.
By the time they realize what’s happening, they’ll be out of the game, standing in an empty parking lot, wondering where their F-35 contracts went.
Adapt or Die
The Pentagon better take notes—and fast. The world isn’t waiting. China’s building, Russia’s plotting, and if the U.S. wants to stay ahead, it needs defense partners who move like Anduril. Agile. Relentless. Unafraid to break the rules if the rules are holding us back.
We’re not in the Cold War anymore. This is AI warfare, autonomous everything, and decision loops measured in milliseconds, not months. Anduril knows that. And they’re not asking for permission—they’re executing.
The message to the defense industry is clear: evolve or go extinct. Innovate or get out of the way. Because the next war won’t be won with overpriced jets and retired generals on retainer—it’ll be won with code, edge processing, and battlefield systems that think faster than the enemy can blink.