Palmer Luckey, founder of American defense technology company Anduril, recently appeared on Australian news program "60 Minutes." When asked about China's threat to the region, he said that Western countries ultimately aim to raise the cost for China should it attempt to seize Taiwan, making Taiwan an unattractive target. Luckey emphasized that Anduril's weapons make it more difficult for China to cross the Taiwan Strait.
The weapons Anduril is currently delivering to Taiwan include missiles, loitering munitions, and air defense systems.
Luckey revealed that Anduril now has satellites operating in space, and Anduril’s software is also running on other companies’ satellites—"meaning, we deploy and operate our (Anduril’s) AI brain on other vendors’ satellites."
He believes that the goal for most Western countries, including the United States and Australia, is to make Taiwan an unattractive target, to ensure China sees the cost of launching such a conflict as prohibitively high. The best outcome is for China to be convinced that it is not worth taking action at all.
Luckey further pointed out that the "Ghost Shark" system is an important part of this effort. "Ghost Shark" is a large unmanned submarine developed jointly by Anduril's Australian branch and Australia’s defense system.
Luckey also believes that robotic warfare is inevitable in the future, because many tasks are especially well-suited for robots. He explained that many combat missions are essentially suicide missions, and it is best to replace those with robots.
He pointed out that this is not something ten years away—there are already robots capable of fully operating existing weapon systems.