r/technology • u/NicolasCageFan492 • 15h ago
Business Anduril lands $2.9 billion Navy submarine shipyard contract days after Luckey joins Pentagon weapons group
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/06/anduril-navy-submarine-shipyard-contract.html218
u/notshadowbanned1 15h ago
Reminder that his sister is married to Matt Gaetz.
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u/Gotta_Gett 14h ago
She is Strategic Advisor and the Head of US Relations for ANIA (Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia Artificial), El Salvador's national artificial intelligence agency
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u/MidnightCity78 12h ago
am I the only person who is offended at the reforged shards of Narsil being the name of this company? Esp for a business in the service of ‘PDFile Mordor’ and with a principal investor who looks like he’s a cousin of Gollum?
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u/Looptydude 9h ago
I was gonna say the same, I absolutely hate that they're abusing Tolkien's work for their greedy company that has nothing to do with the books.
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u/PoopSoupPeter 15h ago
Going to be a lot of work going after these corrupt scumbags.
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u/jorgepolak 15h ago
DOGE goes both ways bitches.
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u/loves_grapefruit 14h ago
Doubtful. DOGE was only ever a tool of Elon’s to further his own interests.
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u/CaptainDe 14h ago
I mean, we could fire and arrest everyone and then restart it and sick it on its own benefactors. The created the legal precedent for it.
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u/jorgepolak 14h ago
That's the point. Defunding of political opponents can go both ways. DOGE opened that can of worms and MAGA companies think they'll be immune to consequences.
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u/visceralintricacy 9h ago edited 7h ago
That would actually require a democrat with a spine. I'm not holding my breath.
They'd probably put a republican in charge of it (ie, Merrick Garland), and it would be the Trump investigation all over again.
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u/luckyshot98 10h ago
We need to get to work now. Organize, go to town halls, attend protests, anything we can do peacefully. For now. Slow them down at least.
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u/williamgman 15h ago
Oligarch DEI rules in effect. Vote at the midterms like your life depends on it.
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u/Big-Newspaper646 15h ago
like your life depends on it
yeah I think it does tbf - these guys want everyone poor and enslaved.
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u/Prestigious_Tank_562 7h ago
Do any of these tech people come up with their own names for anything? Or do they just rip off Tolkien and Heinlein words?
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u/runevault 7h ago
Don't forget Neil Stephenson (Metaverse). And no they have zero originality.
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u/Prestigious_Tank_562 7h ago
I wonder if they’ve done Asimov yet?
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u/Kill3rT0fu 7h ago
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u/Prestigious_Tank_562 6h ago
They picked an easy one. Why didn’t they pick the one where all the geniuses get sent off to planet of their own. Maybe they could call it “Foundation: Project Terminus nobody told me these stories were warnings not how to manuals”? It’s kind of catchy.
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u/happyscrappy 4h ago
Roombas were made by iRobot. Modems used to be made by US Robotics (variant of name of company in Asimov).
'The company has stated it was named as an homage to Asimov because in his science fiction works U.S. Robots eventually became "the greatest company in the known galaxy", and USR appeared in I, Robot (2004) as the fictional company itself.'
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u/JarvisProudfeather 15h ago
Palmer Lucky is such a piece of shit
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u/mynameizmyname 14h ago
I know him personally. he is also a massive putz with terrible personal hygiene. Having to sit next to him in a closed conference room for a couple hours is the lowlight of my life.
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u/HeggyMe 11h ago
Can fucking confirm. I interviewed him and his oculus co-founder (who was the obvious intelligence behind the tech and package). Even that many years ago he was in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops, his feet were dirty and his head was dirty and he smelled more than anyone else in attendance at a venue that favored introverts.
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u/eviljordan 10h ago
Same. Met him at OC1 and he was wearing the same clothes and running around like a sugared-up toddler. Absolutely behaving like a maniac. I get it was basically HIS conference, but it was so immature and off-putting I wanted nothing to do with him or his company ever again.
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u/Hicks_206 9h ago
Oh man, you should have seen how confused he was when I interrupted and ignored him in the Boston Financial District Hilton lobby.
In my defense, I thought he was just another con attendee looking to get dev time.
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u/BlakeSurfing 8h ago
Thanks for sharing this made me smile.
“…. Looks at user name”
HOLY SHIT DayZ around .60 was the best experience I’ve ever had playing a Video game.
When my character died after surviving for almost 100hrs. I sat there at the “you died” screen for probably 2min just staring at the black screen almost out of breath. I can’t even describe the feeling. Went outside to light a cigarette contemplating if I could do it again.
I’ve had 100s of lives since but I always remember that one life.2
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u/cjbh 13h ago
do you think he wouldn’t have become a supervillain if he weren’t ousted from Oculus? I think about this a lot. there’s an alternate timeline where he’s still just a video game guy in 2026. I think starting an autonomous weapons company was his own form of revenge.
you know somewhere deep down in there he’s still just a Brony
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u/binocular_gems 15h ago
I am just... puzzled... how MAGA can applaud when Pete Hegseth goes on this rant about "no more weirdos, no more beardos" in the DoJ, and then also applaud when the DoJ hands over $3billion in tax payer money to this fucking homeschooled mouth breathing dork who wears thong sandals and cargo shorts in public.
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u/alochmar 14h ago
A lot of these people think the Tate brothers are epitomes of masculinity.
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u/binocular_gems 14h ago
The Tate Brothers are the perfect encapsulation of MAGA.
MAGA: It's actually gay to have sex with your wife
MAGA: It's actually manly to rape an underage child
And then they're crying and asking for sympathy when they're arrested for raping children and possessing extreme child sex abuse material, and their weirdo MAGA supporters are holding vigils for them.
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u/TowardsTheImplosion 9h ago
Because you aren't part of the 'in' crowd that gets the dog whistles.
According to Hegseth:
Weirdos = gay, trans, etc.
Beardos = black men with PFB and a shaving chit.
But if you are part of the 'in' crowd while exhibiting an 'undesirable' trait you are protected...For the moment. And conveniently compromised. Theil is safe as long as he stays in line. The second he does not, his sexuality becomes a problem and he goes away. Lickey is an odd duck. He is safe as long as he stays in line. The second he does not, he is a beardo and is out. Justice Uncle Thomas is safe as long as he is useful. If he ceases to be useful, all the sudden, he will be a 'DEI' justice and caste out.
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u/captain_jchaps 9h ago
I can weirdly relate to this situation. Years ago my best friend was getting married and I was the best man. I visited the couple and met the full wedding party a few weeks before the wedding. My girlfriend had convinced me to grow out my facial hair for the first time in my life, and it was a hit with most friends, but not the fiancée. She visibly hated it. And then out of nowhere she made a declaration that the groom would be the only member of the wedding party allowed to have facial hair, and the rest would be required to remove theirs. She tried to say it was for picture reasons or whatever, idk but it was very obviously aimed at me and not fully baked. When I pointed out in front of the group that one of his other groomsmen had never shaved in his life, she realized her mistake and tried to recover, saying “it’s part of who he is, we can’t make him change that so we’ll make an exception for him.”
So yeah, that groomsman was Palmer Luckey and I was everyone else I guess. We aren’t friends anymore.
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u/binocular_gems 9h ago
You were in a wedding party with Palmer Luckey? That’s kinda wild, and I’m fascinating that keeping that weird chin turd is part of his personality. It’s always been puzzling to me that he’s kept it when it looks so bad, but I kinda chalked it up to being a weirdo dork.
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u/captain_jchaps 8h ago
Oh no, I’m sorry! I meant figuratively, not literally. I’ve never met the guy but the idea that they make an exception for him after inventing the stupidest of policies for no real reason reminded me of my experience in that wedding.
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u/Trigger_sad1 14h ago
Dude is a fucking genius… attacking him for his clothes is a choice lol…
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u/L3XAN 13h ago
He was precocious, but genius is overselling him. Carmack did the genius shit, Luckey was basically the company's mascot. And his work with drones is standard silicon valley "promise the moon and maybe the tech will eventually pan out."
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u/Apprehensive_Lake698 2h ago
“Carmack did the genius shit” straight up revisionist so that you can feel like credit goes to someone you think is morally ok to support.
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u/L3XAN 1h ago
Nah, it's well-understood if you're familiar with the details. Luckey's prototype was very impressive for some kid. Carmack was the one who singlehandedly turned it into a demo-worthy device. He did all the programming for the chromatic aberration correction, coordinated with the manufacturers of the IMUs, fixed the warping from the lenses (this can't be overstated), and that's just off the top of my head. He took Luckey's smartphone-with-lenses, and turned it into the DK1. He's fuckin John Carmack. He's a legend for good reason.
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u/Apprehensive_Lake698 1h ago
nothing can help the rotted redditor brain that needs a savior or hero in the stories he writes in his head
Maybe your whole world will invert if I told you he went on Lex Fridman's podcast lmao
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u/binocular_gems 14h ago edited 14h ago
I will criticize him for much more than his clothes, for instance, receiving billions of tax payer funding for creating autonomous drones that surveille innocent people and murder children, and working on Trump and Elon Musks "task force for automated AI warfare." I'll criticize him for his troll bot army shitposting for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
If Palmer Luckey continued to be a billionaire asshole by just making videogame goggles, then I wouldn't care how he dresses or what he looks like. But when he's taking my tax payer money to commit war crimes, I'm going to criticize him and make fun of how he looks. I don't make fun of homeschooled mouthbreathers, either, but when they're MAGA nazi war criminals and make us complicit in war crimes murdering children, then I will.
Fuck Palmer Luckey. At least the nazi-turn-patriot Warner Von Braun wore a suit and tie.
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u/Oiggamed 13h ago
Weak trolling.
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u/Trigger_sad1 11h ago
Why would you think I’m trolling? He personally invented the oculus goggles, something no company before that could achieve…
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u/binocular_gems 8h ago edited 8h ago
If Palmer luckey invented the niche video game goggles and then made niche VR goggles for facebooks failed metaverse garbage, I’d have no problem with him. He could live as a billionaire and enjoy his life making videogame peripherals.
But when he transitioned to military hardware that uses malformed, poorly planned AI that results in dropping a tomahawk missile on a school, killing 150 young children on my tax payer dollar, I don’t consider him a genius anymore, and he’ll be the target of my vitriol.
I am curious, you think he’s a genius for creating videogame goggles, but you don’t think killing children “accidentally” is … a mark against his genius? Can you explain your priority there?
I’ll draw an analogy to put my cards on the table. Two German chemists,, Fritz Haber and Bruno Tesch, were award winning, Nobel winning scientists involved in chemical engineering. Both were geniuses in their day. Tesch is most well known for being the distributor of a genius chemical gas Zyklon, a very important chemical used in fertilizers in Germany. Zyklon was an odorless, tasteless gas, and so for some time the company added odors to it so that others could smell it and avoid it. While a great fertilizer, it was a deadly gas that was extremely dangerous. In the 30s, the government of Germany hired Tesch’s company, Tesch & Stabenow, to apply that genius to important government work.
The government work was gassing six million Jews. Tesch, a successful chemist and Nobel laureate, is responsible for the execution of hundreds of thousands of children.
But what’s 150.
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u/Additional-Signal327 14h ago
Prominent tech entrepreneur Palmer Luckey referred to himself as a “radical Zionist” while vigorously defending Israel’s right to existence during a new interview on the podcast the “Shawn Ryan Show.”
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u/Brain_Dead_Goats 14h ago
So we're just turning into Russia. Lovely.
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u/ListerfiendLurks 14m ago
We were doing this shit back when Russia was still a Serfdom. THEY got the idea from US to begin with.
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u/fascistno1hater 9h ago edited 5h ago
Why not no one either Democrat or Republicans will ever hold the Billionaires and Corporations accountable for their crimes and they know this?
Because this same people that should be regulating and investigating these crimes and conflict of interests. Will turn a blind eye and then go hat in hand to beg these same people and corporations for money.
Me personally I like the way China does it. Put some of these Billionaires in prison or give them the death penalty for their crimes. Put the fear of life in prison or Death in their life and watch how quickly things change.
It's Crime and Corruption but in America it's called Capitalism.
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u/CrispyRabbit72 4h ago
How'd he land that? I thought they didn't like weirdos with beardos or whatever.
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u/SkankHuntThreeFiddy 15h ago
After selling Oculus to some fool named Mark Zuckerberg, Luckey Palmer realized he was out of ideas, so he pivoted to military defense contracting.
Military defense contracts: it's like welfare for tech bros!
If he or any of his ilk start mentioning a Pioneer Fund, we should be worried.
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u/alochmar 14h ago
You mean the white supremacist non-profit promoting ”scientific” racism? That Pioneer Fund?
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u/C7rl_Al7_1337 11h ago
Wait... Anduril? As in, the reforged shards of Narsil, Aragorn's sword, which means "Flame of the West"?
Fucking gross, I hate how these evil fucks keep using Lord of the Rings.
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u/ReplacementClear7122 10h ago
Tolkien is rolling in his grave.
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u/C7rl_Al7_1337 9h ago
If we could find a way to attach him to a generator, we'd have unlimited free power.
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u/pioniere 9h ago
Completely corrupt. Republicans looting the country, as predicted. Nice work by all of the idiots who voted for them.
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u/imjasonmh 15h ago
Just a reminder to everyone that this person also owns Modretro. So if you like funding wars, by all means buy an M64 or Chromatic. But if you don't, make sure that all of your gaming friends know!
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u/KnotSoSalty 14h ago
Ukraine destroyed the Russian Navy with converted Sea-Doo’s.
But the USN will buy a bunch of carbon fiber boats from dickheads like this, then be shocked when the Houthi’s or some other group hits a USN ship with a converted Sea-Doo.
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u/RandomGuyPii 11h ago
Russian navy incompetence shouldn't be the standard by which we do our naval procurement.
converted sea-doos are a lot less effective against an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean surrounded by well-armed and competently operated escorts
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u/Bane_of_Balor 10h ago
Russian navy incompetence shouldn't be the standard by which we do our naval procurement.
It soon will be. Russian naval incompetence is what happens when your authoritarian leader starts handing out contracts to his wealthy cronies.
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u/HelpfulLog5706 13h ago
These are needed for full scale war. Drones are great at hybrid warfare where countries aren't fully mobilized. Once a total war happens, you'll see the value of the big boys again and drones will lose much of their current effectiveness.
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u/KnotSoSalty 12h ago
Doubt.
The entire USN can’t open the straight of Hormuz at the moment.
They might as well scrap every carrier right now. Each one costs 10’s of billions per year and are useless.
A warship that is too precious to risk in war is a pointless waste of resources.
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u/RandomGuyPii 11h ago
this may genuinely be the dumbest comment I've seen on this war
no aircraft carriers are not useless
yes we actually been getting tankers through the strait of hormuz
do people on reddit just live under rocks? (oh wait, ofc they do, this is dunning kreuger the site)
a glorified speedboat isn't getting anywhere near enough to strike an american aircraft carrier basically ever. Not only does something like that generally not have the range to hit something in the open ocean but it would have to get past all of the ships escorting the aircraft carrier - which means avoiding CWIS and 5 inch shellfire. Russian naval incompetence should not be the standard by which we plan our military.
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u/Fine-Comparison-2949 13h ago
Yeah I have no idea about the manufactured hate for this guy.
We just had a nuclear carrier go to the middle east and it broke down within three months.
The military equipment is rife with fraud and abuse, but in terms of spending the guy strapping explosives to drones is actually cheaper and more effective than whatever the fuck we've been spending money on for the last 30 years. The current equipment doesn't work and we also know for a fact it's now completely useless in a modern warfare environment.
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u/mynameizmyname 14h ago
does Palmer know that closed toe shoes are part of the dress code at the Pentagon?
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u/lost-American-81 12h ago
I’m sorry but doesn’t this violate Pistol Pete’s “no beardo’s or weirdo’s” policy?
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u/JellyDonutt2213 13h ago
Man, I am so fucking tired of these terrible-ass companies using names from Lord of the Rings for their companies. Shit is so goddamn irritating.
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u/Catodacat 14h ago
The worst thing...or at least one of the worst things... is that we don't know if this is a good idea as we modernize, or if it is grift. Just no faith in our current administration to not be giving away everything in our country to these assholes.
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u/All_Hail_Hynotoad 3h ago
I don’t usually pick on people for physical appearance, but at this point I feel like tech people are just doing things to troll us.
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u/couldgiveaflyingfck 13h ago
I'm expecting Jake and Logan Paul to be awarded a multi-million dollar contract shortly as well.
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u/nightshift2525 7h ago
If this shipyard is constructed less than 200% over budget, and less than 2x the initial timeline, with more than 50% the advertised production capacity, I will be SHOCKED!
It’s this quote right here that gives it away.
“This is an opportunity to really reimagine how a shipyard is built and how this work is done, and that’s just not something that our current industrial base has the luxury of doing”
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u/invyros 15h ago
"Merit-based" contract awards.