Palmer Luckey, founder of defense tech firm Anduril Industries, said in an Axios Show interview this week that the US lead in the AI race is 'extremely small' — far less secure than many believe. Luckey warned that China is 'doing a very good job' distilling US AI models and leveraging open-source achievements, and is deploying AI technology across government and industry at a pace far exceeding the US. He argued China holds a 'structural advantage' in pushing AI into real-world applications and is maximizing it.
Pentagon Leads, Other Agencies Lag
Luckey highlighted a massive gap within the US federal government. The Pentagon is the most advanced in AI adoption, currently using AI 'at scale and effectively' in operations in Iran, but agencies like the Agriculture and Education departments are far behind — still at the starting line. This 'defense runs fastest, others stand still' scenario, in Luckey's view, is a concrete illustration of why US AI deployment speed lags behind China's.
On hardware, Anduril's Arsenal-1 weapons manufacturing plant in Ohio — spanning 5 million square feet — is set to begin production within weeks, ahead of schedule. The factory marks Anduril's transformation from a software company into a integrated hardware-software defense contractor.
Backs Pentagon's Ban on Anthropic: No Private Company Should Control Military Decisions
When asked about the Pentagon labeling Anthropic a supply chain risk, Luckey firmly supported the Defense Department's tough stance. 'You cannot let private company executives have more military decision-making power than the President of the United States,' he said. He directly addressed Anthropic's earlier refusal to lift restrictions on using its Claude model in military scenarios, arguing that national security cannot be held hostage by any tech company's policies.
As for future battlefields, Luckey gave an unexpected answer: underground. He believes subsurface warfare will become a focus before space, and then the moon. This hints Anduril may already be positioning itself in underground reconnaissance and autonomous combat systems. Luckey's high-profile interview comes as Anduril just secured a $20 billion enterprise-level procurement framework contract with the US Army, covering Anduril's AI command-and-control platform Lattice, along with hardware, data infrastructure and technical support. The first $87 million order has been confirmed for counter-drone command and control.