Costa Mesa, California: “You want China to know that these types of things exist,” says Palmer Luckey, the sandal-wearing tech entrepreneur who co-founded a cutting-edge weapons company.

His defence tech firm, Anduril Industries, makes the autonomous underwater Ghost Shark vehicle, a weapon designed and built in Australia relying on local supply chains.

For defence, local production capabilities are everything, says Anduril Industries founder Palmer Luckey.Credit: Bloomberg

Luckey’s talking about cruise missiles, saying how in a conflict with China, Taiwan needs to be able to continue to build cruise missiles so it can fight an occupation.

A similar sovereign capability underscores the Ghost Shark. Should Australia’s sea lanes be cut off in a crisis, localised production gives it the chance to fight back.

Luckey comes across as pure Californian. In his trademark Hawaiian shirt, shorts and thongs, he evokes a strong beach vibe, with a boyish enthusiasm for his main jam: software-led defence technology. He, like many of the minds at Anduril, sees a world of security problems that can be addressed, if not solved, with innovative engineering solutions.

We – a bunch of journalists – are visiting Anduril’s Southern California headquarters. Its foyer doubles as a showroom of drones – aerial, naval and uncrewed mini-subs. We’re heading for a conference room with a huge video screen and the chance to get a front-row glimpse of a company building the toolkit of future warfare.

Anduril Industries’ headquarters in Costa Mesa, California. Credit: Chris Zappone

When we reach the room, Luckey speaks across a massive wooden conference table we’re gathered around: telling us how localised weapons production will be key to winning a future war.

By way of analogy for Taiwan, he asks us to imagine what the US occupation of Afghanistan would have looked like “if Afghanistan was a global tech powerhouse filled with top engineers?”

Luckey at the company headquarters.Credit: Chris Zappone

“It would........

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