The New Generation of Defense Wizards

By Luther Ray Abel

Thursday, August 20, 2026

 

Naval Base Coronado, San Diego — A robo-dog was doing donuts with an M240 machine gun on its back, while Jeff Gordon explained a successful NASCAR pit stop operation. Days earlier, in June, a tenpenny sea drone, launched from the West Coast, had moseyed past a Chinese destroyer in the Philippine Sea and a corvette in the Taiwan Strait while taking pictures of these warships as if it was fleet week. The defense industry, long maligned for its bespoke, broke equipment, is, with the Pentagon’s blessing, looking back to the successes of its supersonic Muroc days — when, at what is now Edwards Air Force Base, the military and firms with names such as Bell, Douglas, and Northrop developed the first generations of supersonic fighter jets. The industry is now combining Silicon Valley nerd money with Dukes of Hazzard derring-do, selling defense as the place for those with the “right stuff,” be they veterans, AI developers, or drone operators. Nowhere was this more apparent than at the Anduril 250 NASCAR race, hosted on Naval Base Coronado.

 

The Daisy Dukes were abundant, the weather certifiably SoCal, and the race wild. The egg-yolk-yellow caution flag meant another crash on one of the most technical (which is to say cattywampus) tracks that NASCAR drivers had ever seen. The liveried stock cars slowed to legibility so that recovery teams could scavenge the erupted bits of plastic and fluids that fell from the pulverized road rockets. Once satisfied that the track was de-mined, officials gave the okay, the drivers accelerated, and their pushrod V-8 engines began again their combustive caterwauling, which echoed from the haze-gray steel of the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and carried into Coronado’s sleepy bungalow-lined streets.

 

Preceding the green “go-like-hell” flag, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth addressed the throng. While political appointees and captive audiences have long found themselves together, to the delight of the former and impatience of the latter, this race was an exhibition of a new generation of American defense tech.

 

The fighter pilots, who passed overhead with 44,000 pounds of thrust, and the drivers in their 700-horse chariots, had more in common with Apollo than with us mortals, who gawped at their fiery vectors while crushed together on the aluminum Pnyx. While Michael McDowell’s No. 71 crew and I entrenched ourselves in the pits, the flyboys and racers appeared as automata, with reflective-glass faces and fire-retardant skin, while we were fleshy and fried — pinked by the sun and emotion.

 

The race and its component parts were a bacchanal for a writer, but my interest in the Anduril 250 was one of altogether different pyrotechnics. To look around the track, one could well say that, according to its organizers, the future is promised not to gods or men but to machines. The sponsor of this first-of-its-kind race on a military base was Anduril, the brainchild of wunderkind Palmer Luckey.

 

Famous for his iconoclastic appearance in a field where anonymity has long been the uniform, Luckey’s soul patch anchors his bottom lip while a mullet shreds the gnar over the collar of his Hawaiian shirt. To those I spoke with on background, Luckey is an enigma, either studious in his affect — an amalgam of the devil-may-care first-generation Silicon Valley founders — or, according to those who knew him early on, “just that kinda guy.” Whatever he is, the status associated with working in defense has seemingly never been greater, at least not since the Daedalian days of experimental aircraft in the Mojave that culminated in the Space Race.

 

While Anduril might not be the progenitor of the new-gen defense contractors (that title arguably belongs to Palantir, which continues to be a revelation for special-warfare and intel units and has disrupted the Pentagon’s monopsony), Luckey is, with every NASCAR, UFC, and The Ohio State Athletics partnership, promoting Anduril as the avatar of military-industrial futurism.

 

***

 

Descending from the clouds above John Wayne Airport four days earlier, I was skeptical of Anduril as a weapons manufacturer. Its advertisements are too slick — especially in an industry where the state-appointed major players (primes) almost never advertise to the general public. Anduril products, whether they fly, swim, or slog, share the same design language: bathypelagic gray exteriors sexed up with bioluminescent highlights and Apple-esque countersunk screws stippling their shells rather than the carbuncular mess of rivets and hex bolts that are industry standard.

 

A temperamental blue steed awaited me outside John Wayne. In place of Dollor was a Dodge: the new generation of Charger with the Scat Pack fixings and 550 hp provided by a twin-turbo inline six. Dodge had generously offered it for my use, as one simply cannot attend a festival of tintinnabulation in a Kia Soul from Budget. It proved to be inspired policy, especially when one’s ride follows high-desert switchbacks like the Road Runner two strides ahead of Wile E. Coyote and his Acme rocket. I went up into the mountains to the mining town of Julian, Calif., to make a home base for unearthing leads and on-the-record quotes.

 

The first few panfuls were, while on background, helpful in understanding the genealogy of these defense-manufacturing firms and the squad-level demand for their tools that forced the Pentagon to take notice. Elements of Palantir begat Onodrim in Europe and Anduril in California, which in turn begat Saronic in Austin. As each company reached adulthood, elements of its leadership would launch another start-up. In this way, the friction of acquiring venture liquidity and integrating with the Pentagon was reduced from a decade, in Palantir’s case, to three years for Saronic.

 

Time-to-sale acceleration is vital, as Mike Gallagher, former chairman of the U.S. House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party — and now Palantir’s defense head — explained to me. “I understand now why it’s so hard for a company to cross the valley of death. . . . The top-line numbers are important, but just as important is the velocity of money on a timeline that matters.” Gallagher noted that much of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s funds had yet to be released a year after its passage: “That’s life-or-death if you’re an early-stage company trying to bet everything on a $15 million award.” For special warfare units a decade ago, the trial run of Palantir intelligence tech was such an improvement that even the brass had to pay attention. An example then of what can be: new firms supplying rank-and-file demand quickly enough to keep the firms afloat and U.S. forces armed with non-adversarial tech.

 

Among those familiar with J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium, names like Palantir (far-seer), Anduril (Sword of the West), Dunedain (Men of the West), Onodrim (tree-men), Mithril (precious metal), and Valinor (the undying lands) raise an eyebrow. Tolkien’s love of the quiet life and his disdain for industrialization seem to be at odds with defense-tech’s adoption of his work. Further, Anduril’s rapid growth via venture capital and hype in an industry used to cost-plus compensation models required examination.

 

My two warring outlooks are not easily reconciled: in one corner is the Pollyanna who believes improvement is possible even within the Pentagon, and in the other is the cynic who’s been promised reform since enlisting in the Navy in 2012. If Palantir, Anduril, and their like have cracked the code to rapid armament and resupply, what a godsend for those deployed. But if these firms are nothing but next-gen vaporware, a siphon for public and private investment, that would be this generation’s squandered shot at reform. The best-case scenario would ensure continued American military superiority. The worst case would get Americans killed, further embarrass the Pentagon, send venture capital skedaddling into feathered Palo Alto and Austin pillboxes, and jeopardize the Navy’s nascent ship buildup. All the while, public opinion, and therefore congressional opinion, would turn against venture-capital-backed defense firms for providing so much as 30-pound drones, to say nothing of the idea of building a fleet of 50 surface combatants.

 

A former enlisted snipe in the U.S. Navy, I spent more time in a day foraging for, ordering, and “tactically acquiring” parts and tools for auxiliary systems than I did working on the equipment in a week. Missiles weren’t a going concern for those of us below. But a three-inch socket launched by a frustrated engineman — when he realized that Supply had given him the wrong part, or that the six-months back-ordered 10mm he needed still hadn’t arrived — was a daily threat. Especially to those of us tasked with keeping our HVAC, electrical, cryogenic, or hydraulic equipment functional. Without these systems, aircraft don’t fly, weapons and guidance systems overheat, and munitions fail to reach the flight deck. A real-world example: My first ship, the USS Rodney M. Davis, with its nonexistent offensive armament, among other problems, was outclassed in the South China Sea by Chinese warships. Our best hope was that, when the Chinese went radio silent, their anti-ship missiles would punch through our hull and out the other side after meeting no more resistance than some paint-welded rust flake. It was an unacceptable mismatch, and the U.S. government’s shortsightedness two decades before was entirely to blame.

 

American defense procurement is a command economy. The sole customer is the U.S. government, which exercises absolute control over the form, function, and dissemination of military equipment. Some argue that broader market conditions would have forced the consolidation of the defense industry after the fall of the Soviet empire. But it cannot be denied that the Last Supper, a 1993 meeting between President Bill Clinton’s Pentagon and defense industry heads, made explicit the government’s expectation that the 51 prime defense contractors would consolidate, ultimately numbering just five, because redundancy and contract competition were burdensome and expensive.

 

Since then, the rate of cost overruns has doubled for shipbuilding, while the number of hulls has halved, and the Navy hasn’t produced a surface combatant at scale since the Arleigh Burke of the 1980s. Similarly, the Army relies on a tank (M1 Abrams) that first rolled out in 1980, the Air Force flies a 70-year-old bomber (B-52 Stratofortress), and the Marines waited 20 years for the M27 rifle to supplant the M4A1. Each branch’s tool of identity has seen delays, cost increases, and waffling far beyond what was observed before 1993. Tongue in cheek, Palantir now offers “First Breakfast,” a consultancy service to speed-run Pentagon acquisition barriers.

 

***

 

One morning of exploration took me to the perimeter of Petco Park, home of the San Diego Padres. Defense Unicorns, a software company looking to standardize and augment AI needs across the military, was hosting a “Warhacker” event. My expectation was a basement LAN party illuminated only by the green glow of CRT monitors. Instead, it was a Department of War triage event for Navy suppliers to overcome hurdles both bureaucratic and technical. Defense Unicorns, a Texas company, had brought its entire team into town and asked that participants volunteer an issue they were having with implementation or development. The pitch was that they could get their problems resolved in hours, if not minutes — an impossibility to those who had brushes with the Pentagon. The CEO, Rob Slaughter, was an Air Force physicist when the brass assigned him to figure out AI applications. Now, his and his fellow Air Force vets’ AI stack is in submarines, fighters, and naval warfare. Similarly for the Army, Dunedain and its founder, Mack Ohlinger, look to provide battlefield commanders with the AI necessary to take in what a 300-man command center normally would while reducing communication delays.

 

Consider: What could have happened if the Korean Military Advisory Group in Seoul had been afforded a distillation of intel in the first hours of the Korean War? Because of conflicting reports, well-intentioned junior officers’ not waking their superiors, and breakdowns in U.S.-Korean communication, Republic of Korea forces suffered a loss of three-quarters of their men in five days. Many were abandoned on the north side of bridges blown prematurely. More than 100,000 Americans would become casualties of a war that could have been stymied if the ROK Army had known to either fight or retreat as a unit. As Ohlinger put it, Napoleon’s genius was, more than anything else, his surmounting of Carl von Clausewitz’s “battlefield friction” — the many unknowable unknowns that a commander must navigate. The French commander in chief “got information and acted on it faster than his foe.” This is what AI and its integrated machines offer: reduced friction against a new foe, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, which, unlike the byzantine Soviets, is using the same technology.

 

This is where Tolkien, venture capitalists, top engineering graduates, and the Pentagon make an alliance. The defense contractors in this new generation conceive of themselves as defenders of the West, a fellowship that can do what the ossified powers of the past few decades cannot. The venture capitalists provide the funding to produce the weapons of tomorrow — sold, stripped down, as commercial platforms today — without the government’s acquisitions process aborting and bowdlerizing their projects. Buoying this private surge, the Pentagon, led by Secretary Hegseth and Deputy Secretary Steve Feinberg, has demanded that the branches consider commercial solutions before making custom requisition requests.

 

This reform could still fail spectacularly. Some, maybe many, defense-tech firms will not survive the decade or a new administration. But what I saw at an Anduril all-hands event (populated by hundreds of twentysomethings) and heard from many who wear or wore the uniform makes me optimistic: A cohort of America’s brightest young people want to deny Ukraine to Russia (Palantir intel), counter proxy and drone warfare in the Middle East (Anduril counter-drone tech), and confound China’s expansionist vision in the South China Sea and beyond (Seasats autonomous vessels). How they advance that mission may change as we proceed, but the fact remains that the hottest place in tech for graduates of Stanford’s, Georgia Tech’s, or the University of Michigan’s Hacking for Defense courses isn’t Meta or Alphabet; it’s hungry, agile defense companies. So why sponsor a NASCAR event at Maverick’s airfield? Because, as Anduril’s marketing head Jeff Miller put it during our sit-down at Anduril HQ, “We all have a responsibility to understand what is happening [in defense], where the defense budget gets spent, and ultimately why those decisions are made.” Miller advertises Anduril because “it’s the right thing to do” and because the start-up’s staff is proud of its work.

 

Ultimately, Anduril’s greatest contribution might be as a defense-marketing company that packages AI into gear that the average person can get excited about. Not everyone has the grit to be a Marine or the brainpower to develop autonomous gunships and vessels to supplement our squadrons and fleets. Anduril and its fellowship are pitching each role as a worthy contribution. From the pit bleachers on Naval Base Coronado, that looks more than good enough for government work.