A few days ago, I introduced you to Palmer Luckey.
I called him the Big Tech anti-hero.
In case you missed that, you can catch up right here (well worth your time)”:
Now I want to advance the story a little bit.
Because the more I learn about this guy, the more impressed I continue to be!
Nobody is perfect and I'm not saying that, but I am saying our country would be a whole lot better off if we had 10 or 100 more people like this guy working this hard to save it!
You really need to read the article above if you don't know who he is because I can't recap that all here, but the new thing I wanted to show you was this interview where he talks about why he's doing what he's doing....why he's building a MASSIVE new manufacturing plant in Ohio, and why he's working with President Trump!
Trust me, I think you're going to like this one.
Enjoy:
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Palmer: It's incredibly aggressive, the timeline to manufacture the first phase of this site and then start production mid-2026. How big a factor was that timeline in this selection?
It has to be this fast because we don't have time for business as usual. The types of threats that the United States and our allies around the world are facing demand rapid action. The fact that we are predicted to run out of munitions within the first eight days of a potential conflict with China means that we need to hyper-scale our manufacturing of these weapons. Was this the only state that could guarantee that timeline?
I think that they were the state that gave us the best shot of hitting that timeline. Look, we've really engaged well with JobsOhio and a lot of the politicians here—not just at the state level, but at the local level as well. You know, like you said, we're hiring 4,000 people here in direct jobs, and many more indirectly. It's the largest single job creation event in Ohio history.
ADVERTISEMENTIt was a state that told us we have the workforce—we have a million people who are capable of working in this facility within a 45-minute drive. We're willing to work with you on higher education to help train people so they can come in and work with you. Our customer, in the form of the United States Air Force at the former Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, is a huge presence here. So really, all the stars aligned to make Ohio a great place for us to do it—and to do it fast.
And speaking candidly as someone from California, there are some states that are really good at pushing you out and slowing you down, and there are others that are great at pulling you in and speeding you up. And that's what Ohio was.
Let's go there. Was California at any point a likely candidate? And if not, why?
There was a 0% chance at any point of Arsenal One being located in California. There are a lot of reasons for that—you can go through them. It's the high cost of living, the very high energy cost, and in some cases, the unreliability of the energy systems. It's the unreliability of the state politics and the worry on the regulatory side.
And just, you know, the reality is California has enough money and enough really successful companies that they don't really have to worry about issues like this. A company like mine—and all the jobs that we were bringing here to Ohio—are material, and they are something that the state really, really cares about. And it doesn't hurt that one of our co-founders, Trey Stephens, is a native-born Ohioan. I won't say that's why we made the final decision, but it definitely ensured that Ohio was at the top of the list from the beginning.
What you did say as a company is that it had nothing to do with Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. No, that was not a factor. This decision has been going on a lot longer than that. We're finally able to talk about it today.
But, I mean, you saw the renders, you saw the site, the site plans—things like that take a long time to put together. We raised our $1.5 billion round of financing last year specifically to build this facility. One of the questions from our audience on social media was about the jobs. You have 4,000 over ten years.
There must be a mix of those originating from Ohio, but you must also be trying to attract talent from out of state to move here. And I know you'll be spending a lot of time here as well. Well, I'm definitely going to be buying a house out here. I'm blessed with financial success from my first company, Oculus VR, which allows me to get a place so I don't have to resort to a hotel room when I'm spending time here.
ADVERTISEMENTThe thing is, yes—we're going to hire a lot of native Ohioans. I think we're also going to have a lot of people coming in from outside who will add to the economy here. Look at our headquarters in California—we import about 80% of our employees from outside of the state. And I think we're going to bring a lot of people here as well.
Maybe not 80%, but there will be many people moving to the area. Building up the supply chain in Ohio is actually very interesting. So you will have the use of two runways where we are now, at Rickenbacker Airport. That's right.
But my understanding is that, for example, with the theory behind us, in some cases you will be able to literally take off from the runway—which is just a few feet from where we're sitting—and deliver that technology directly to the customer or straight to the action.
I mean, so this is Fury—this is our R-K collaborative combat aircraft. It's basically an autonomous, loyal wingman fighter jet that can fight alongside the F-35 and other fighters of the United States and our allies. But you're right that the goal here is that we can manufacture these aircraft at scale—thousands of these fighter jets here— and then we can either fly them directly to the customer or, in some cases, directly to the theater (of course, probably with refueling stops along the way).
But that's what we did during World War II, and that's what we plan on doing again. A high is quite busy—Intel has a fab going up nearby. That's right—quite nearby. Do you see that as a sort of competition for talent, or do you see it as a value-add to being here?
It's both. There's a value add, and of course, I'm going to hire some of their people while they're going to hire some of ours. That's just the way that these things always go. What you want to do is make the area more attractive overall.
I like the idea that if Andrew were here and we were the only company in the area, it would be harder to attract world-class people to stay or move here, because there would be no healthy ecosystem of career choices. It's a lot easier to get people to come if there's an established career ecosystem—even if you can manage to keep them around. Parmar, when I spoke to Ohio Governor Mike DeWine earlier, I asked him what the single biggest factor was that gave him conviction about you meeting your timelines—not just manufacturing, but your commitment to this state. In my career, I've respected every industrial technology company I've covered, no matter how many billions they've raised from private sources, but they've never met their manufacturing timelines.
There's always slippage, granted the pandemic has been a factor. Yeah, he said that the factor was you and your colleagues—just from meeting you all the points of difference. What can you tell me about how the team guarantees that 2026 timeline? I think, as I said earlier, we don't have time for business as usual.
Right now, people are predicting that there's going to be a window of opportunity for G.E. in China that opens in 2027. That means you necessarily need to be ready for a potential great power conflict with China in 2027—and for at least a few years after that. So we have to be ready. Right—there's no other option.
The whole point here—the reason we raised that $1.5 billion round, the reason we've been accelerating this process, and the reason we're investing in building this factory ahead of the customer actually paying us to do it—is because we believe in that timeline. It is critical that we hit it, and I think we will. Are you getting some financial incentives from the state of Ohio? Absolutely.
They gave us a great incentive package, and that was definitely part of our decision. What's the value, and what does it look like? What is its composition? I'm going to let somebody else tackle that because I can tell you it's in the hundreds of millions, versus the billions that we're putting out. Got 2.1 billion.
Yeah, I think they did a better job negotiating than I did—maybe. I don't know. But I'm really glad that Intel is here. They're a great partner—making a lot of semiconductors that are competitive with what’s being done in other countries.
ADVERTISEMENTIt's critical for our products to have advanced semiconductors made in the United States. So I'm really glad they're down the road from us. PALMER: It's important to have some extended time with you to talk about Arsenal One. I think one of the most common questions I get from the audience, even if they're familiar with Andrew, is: What does Andrew actually do?
They might know you as a weapons manufacturer, or if they're more versed in autonomous defense systems. But could we simply talk about what Arsenal One is going to manufacture—and where that technology will be sold and deployed? The way we view ourselves is as a defense product company, not a contractor, but a product company. That means we decide what to build, how to build it, when it's done, and we invest our own money into making that happen.
Then we sell products to the customer. We work hand in hand with our customers throughout that process. It's not like I can just go off and build a Batmobile because I think it's cool. I'm sorry—what was the second part of the question?
The question is: What specifically? The things that we're building are driven by what our customers need, but we are also investing a lot of our own money. So obviously, we're building Fury and our autonomous fighter jets behind you. You see all three of the different Barracuda cruise missile families: the Barracuda 100, Barracuda 250, and Barracuda 500—autonomous, swimming cruise missiles.
We're also going to be building a lot of our ESR drones. We're going to be building many of our mobile command and control systems here, and some combat heads-up displays as well. I think you're going to be hearing some news about that soon. There is a timeline—it doesn't all happen at once.
Initially, the first phase of the facility is about five acres. That's right—going up to 500 acres. What does that process look like—building out what you call hyperscale defense or weapons manufacturing? The process is building this place up in a way that only a madman would.
Our CEO, Matt Grimm, has been the hero of the day in figuring out how we're going to go from a very minimal footprint today to, you know, 90 football fields in a very short period of time. It wouldn't be possible without really close cooperation with local authorities on permitting, on the power and utility side, and on logistics—for example, rail, air, and road logistics—to move things in and out of this facility very quickly. If everyone wasn't on board and moving lockstep together, this timeline would be absolutely unreasonable. And you keep hitting it.
But I will note we have competitors telling us that we are not going to hit these timelines, that we are madmen. Look, anyone can be wrong, but I would love to do a follow-up piece in maybe 24 months to see if we're madmen or not—or if we pull off this seemingly impossible task. Four months from now, you and I will sit down again, and an operational facility is what we're predicting. We'll sit down at Arsenal One, and fighter jets will be coming off the line—that's my prediction.
The other big question I get directly from the audience is: How can retail investors participate in this? Well, why? As you know, the United States government has taken a very un-American position by saying that you generally need to be an accredited investor to invest in companies like ours. I think that's totally bogus.
It's anti-American in a way, because being an accredited investor simply means you already have money. I know a lot of people who have money who you would never label as accredited, and vice versa. That said, we are on a path to being a publicly traded company. I think that's important—I want us to be accessible to the American public.
I think it's good for people to be able to invest in American defense companies rather than having them remain private forever. I'm not taking an ideological stand here—it's just good for the country, good for us, and good for our customer. As for when that happens, it's hard to say; we don't need to IPO because we're doing really well. We were winning a lot of contracts and making quite a bit of money—we doubled last year to about a billion.
That's the rumor—things are doing really, really well. So we don't have to IPO just to raise money to keep the company going. I want to do it when the markets are favorable, when people understand what we're doing. And I also want to prove out some of these big bets.
ADVERTISEMENTI don't really want to IPO when people are saying we're madmen and trying to do the impossible—I want to do the impossible and then say, "Look, we did it." All you have to do is bet that we can do it again. You will be doing business with somebody new in the Department of Defense. President-elect Trump's pick is Mr. Hanks.
That's right. You know, he was not one of the names that I had in my head when we last spoke a few months ago. That's right—you asked me about it. And I said that I knew the names—I heard a lot of names coming around—and I was a big fan of all of them.
You're right—he wasn't one of the names I had heard rattling around. May I just make the point that, you know, looking at his CV, he doesn't have experience running an organization of that size. You want change and improvement in how America does business with the private sector in defense. So what was your approach with, potentially, Mr. BE—and what do you make of him?
I think there's a lot of credentialism being levied against him that is totally unfair, and I personally empathize with him a lot. I started Oculus VR when I was 19 years old, living in a camper trailer and putting myself through school, and I didn't have the experience to run that company. And I grew it to thousands of people and shipped millions of virtual reality headsets all over the world. I didn't have the experience to run Android either.
I had absolutely no business experience running that company. People made the exact same criticisms—"What does Partner know about the military? What the hell does he know about national security?" Yeah, his heart's in the right place, but he's just not qualified. The leap from where people say his credentials are and what he needs to do is much smaller than the best leaps I've seen in my career.
So, I'm never going to be the guy to say, "Oh, I don't think he's qualified." No, he's way more qualified than I've ever been for any job I've done—and I'm doing a pretty good job of it. So, I mean, God bless him—I think he's a great pick. I read his book, The War on Warrior, so I was familiar with him, though not his name being in the arena.
I think he's going to kick ass. HAMMER: Let's end on President-elect Trump. But in the context of Arsenal One, you still believe change is needed in the military-industrial complex procurement process? Absolutely.
What specifically needs to change over the next four years to allow Arsenal One to be a success? I think Arsenal One is going to be a success. The amount of change we've already seen in the system will allow that. I don't think we actually need radical changes in the system for Arsenal One to do very well.
But for our country to do well, for us to build the national security apparatus, we need to move quickly. We need to take targeted risks. We need to get more companies into defense manufacturing. That includes companies that are not currently defense companies, bringing in big tech, little tech, and many of our industrial providers.
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