Anduril Founder Luckey: Every Country Needs a 'Warrior Class' Excited To Enact 'Violence on Others in Pursuit of Good Aims' 102
Anduril founder Palmer Luckey advocated for a "warrior class" and autonomous weapons during a talk at Pepperdine University. The defense tech entrepreneur, known for his Hawaiian shirts and mullet, argued that societies need people "excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims."
Luckey revealed that Anduril supplied weapons to Ukraine two weeks into the Russian invasion, lamenting that earlier involvement could have made "a really big difference." He criticized Western hesitancy on AI development, claiming adversaries are waging a "shadow campaign" against it in the United Nations. Contradicting his co-founder's stance, Luckey endorsed fully autonomous weapons, comparing them favorably to indiscriminate landmines.
Luckey revealed that Anduril supplied weapons to Ukraine two weeks into the Russian invasion, lamenting that earlier involvement could have made "a really big difference." He criticized Western hesitancy on AI development, claiming adversaries are waging a "shadow campaign" against it in the United Nations. Contradicting his co-founder's stance, Luckey endorsed fully autonomous weapons, comparing them favorably to indiscriminate landmines.
For Every Swole Jeff Bezos (Score:3)
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And you're saying these pale VR-besotted couch worms are this warrior caste?
I mean, yeah.
What are you imagining it would be? An ancient Greek hoplite phalanx, full of ripped dudes obsessed with honor, yet harbouring a gentle disposition for their family back home?
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No, I was thinking more of Brown Shirts.
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Considering position of women and children in Ancient Greek civilizations, "gentle disposition at home" is highly unlikely.
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Maybe this turning point was reached way back with artillery in WWI.
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They're Russian. They're invading someone else's country. Does it matter how they're killed?
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Yes, who can forget when the US's dictator, who gained power by staging the bombing of apartment buildings and assassinating journalists and his foes, launched a series of war of conquest against Canada, flattened Canadian cities to the ground, kidnapped a bunch of Canadian children for reeducation, annexed one province after the next, used widespread torture to suppress dissent, and worked to ethnically cleanse Canadian English, Canadian culture, and Canadian identity from the face of the Earth.
Man, those
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They're Russian. They're invading someone else's country. Does it matter how they're killed?
Yes, it does.
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And you're saying these pale VR-besotted couch worms are this warrior caste?
Uh, yes. With appropriate amounts of focus on those autonomous solutions. Fire, forget, and order pizza. All right from the comfort of a basement couch.
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With a datalink, not only would a weapon be able to find and engage targets, but report targets in excess of what it can engage to other weapons systems. Which in turn might find *more* targets en route, and so forth. Of course, a datalink significantly increases cost and complexity.
Seems you'll need a mix of prop-propelled (long loiter time) and rocket-propelled (rapid response time), but should probably be able to use the same seeker system for both types.
Free open source multimodal models like Molmo alre
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Yes, and that's extra frightening because they're divorced from the killing. If you don't have to deal with the consequences and you're distanced from the experience of your actions by telepresence, it's a LOT easier to do monstrous things.
On the other hand, I guess they're less likely to snap in the heat of combat and do monstrous things, so there's that.
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Yeah, honestly, I'm a lot more worried about soldiers on the ground in the heat of battle doing monstrous things than drones.
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Yes. They're the ones with by far the highest success rate at destroying enemy men and materiel in Ukraine war right now. A very large percentage, probably a significant majority of FPV pilots are nerds.
let's play global thermonuclear war (Score:5, Insightful)
let's play global thermonuclear war
What side do you want?
Define "Good Aims" (Score:5, Insightful)
The defense tech entrepreneur, known for his Hawaiian shirts and mullet, argued that societies need people "excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims."
So, for example, if the "wrong candidate" wins the U.S. 2024 presidential election, it's OK for the losing side to enact "violence on others in pursuit of good aims"?
movie (Score:2)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1... [imdb.com]
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You can't be arsed to protest, but expect us to believe you'll sign up for a civil war?
Re:Define "Good Aims" (Score:4, Informative)
Funny tho, when that violence in the US happens, it's always one side committing it. Never the other.
If my candidate loses there will be much grumbling and bitching and flipped fingers from my side. There will be no riots from our side.
Conservatives lost that moral high ground on January 6th, 2021. Whether or not you believe it rises to the level of "insurrection" or no matter how many people were non-violent, that does not change the objective fact that there was a fucking riot at and in the Capitol building and that those engaging in said rioting were supporters of the alleged conservative candidate.
I ate a fuckton of crow after the 2020 election because I said the exact same thing you did above (well, not the "my candidate" part because I'd never vote for Darth Cheeto, but certainly that there wouldn't be rioting if he lost).
Re: Define "Good Aims" (Score:2)
And the person was acting as what? As a Fed, stirring up the riot for the right amount of backlash or asa a rioter believing in his own (and Trumpâ(TM)s) ideas?
Re: Define "Good Aims" (Score:2)
There will be no riots from our side.
"Your side" burns, loots and murders indiscriminately. The others, whether they are morally justified or not, go after what they percieve to be the root of the problem. If you can explain how smashing the windows of a few Starbucks or robbing pot shops will advance the welfare of mankind, I'm sure many here would be interested.
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There will be no riots from our side.
"Your side" burns, loots and murders indiscriminately. The others, whether they are morally justified or not, go after what they percieve to be the root of the problem. If you can explain how smashing the windows of a few Starbucks or robbing pot shops will advance the welfare of mankind, I'm sure many here would be interested.
Civilians on his side not only drove into crowds of protestors, they tried to make it LEGAL to do so
Re: Define "Good Aims" (Score:1)
Are you okay
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So Jan 6, 2021 never happened? Or it was secretly the Democrats?
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Was the BLM protests secretly the Republicans?
Oh Jan 6th happened, zero doubt there were a few idiots (~150) that stormed the capital and cost upwards 1.5 million in property damage.
But we also haven't forgotten the "mostly peaceful protests" that lasted for most of 2020 and the first half of 2021 - that cost the US 1-2 Billion dollars in damage.
I'm sorry, but Jan 6th is a micro-event compared to the BLM protests; 150 arrested vs over 10,000 arrests with BLM protests.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda... [weforum.org]
Re: Define "Good Aims" (Score:3)
"Funny tho, when that violence in the US happens, it's always one side committing it. Never the other."
True. Only the Republicans have mounted a violent coup and invaded the halls of government trying to kidnap and/or murder government officials including the vice president.
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Up until Jan 6th, 2021, it was common to hear from a particular political faction just how dangerous someone could be without guns or without any kind of weapon & that shooting them was justified.
What happened to change that?
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So, for example, if the "wrong candidate" wins the U.S. 2024 presidential election, it's OK for the losing side to enact "violence on others in pursuit of good aims"?
It already happened. The huuuuge loser of the 2020 election fomented an insurrection and still gets to run again.
If that isn't a shining example of America's first amendment rights, I don't know what is. Any other democratic country, like Brazil, would boot his ass to the curb.
Hell, being 3 years older than the loser of the 2020 election is reason enough to get booted in a democracy.
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Which guy is that?
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all his "red lines" have been crossed yet no nukes have flown.
why is that?
Great idea (Score:3)
It would be good to eliminate psychopaths from society, so let's send the first warrior to this guy.
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is just another chickenhawk. Lots of them around.
You rarely hear someone who actually saw combat who talks like this.
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This guy is just another chickenhawk. Lots of them around.
You rarely hear someone who actually saw combat who talks like this.
Yup. There's always someone who is willing to shed someone else's blood ...
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Yup. There's always someone who is willing to shed someone else's blood ...
Bush and Cheney are the most recent examples.
Re: Great idea (Score:2)
Biden is a pretty great example too.
Let's face it, we are not permitted to have decent candidates.
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Re: Great idea (Score:2)
In my discussions with military members who served in wars I have learned that there are plenty of shit stacks among them. The army ranger I talked about Vietnam with told me that he was outnumbered by child rapists, for example.
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Yes, there are thieves and shitbags in the service. Just like in any other large group of people. The Army for instance, did a lot of recruiting of PTI people who were facing convictions and took enlistment as an alternative during the recent endless wars.
There are a lot of great people also. It's a mixed bag.
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The problem is that it's a mixed bag armed with howitzers.
(I definitely don't want to single out the US military in specific here for criticism, BTW - far from it.)
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Iraq 07/08 didn't turn me into a pacifist but certainly convinced me that acting as global police is horrific. Being a colonial warrior sucks. Fighting for the defense of your own home is not comparable.
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Competition (Score:3)
He's... not wrong.
We should be really scared of people who are excited about finding ways to kill people we (or our allies) are in conflict with, but they're a necessary evil as those people exist on the other side of the conflict.
They are weapons, ideally to be controlled by more measured and compassionate people, and deployed in self-defense against people who aren't quite so restrained.
For instance, the people finding new ways to kill Russian troops in Ukraine. They're getting lots of people killed, but it's justified because Russia invaded and started indiscriminately killing a lot of innocent people.
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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You can try to be the mournful moral guy who regrets firing every round, but you'll go nuts faster than the guy propagandized into hating the enemy as subhuman and enthusiastic about shooting 'monsters'.
People (surprisingly) really don't like killing people. You will not have an effective military if they're worried about the people they're supposed to be killing.
What you want them to do is to care about collateral damage and avoid conflating enemy combatants and civilians and compartmentalize their motiva
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A lot of people would agree with "necessary evil." Being "excited about enacting violence" though...? No, that's no good. Even in military units, the dutiful warriors recognize a distinction between themselves and the psychos.
Warriors have to have a warrior ethos, and they have to be motivated to be better warriors than the ones on the other side that want to kill you and yours. They have to like what they do. This isn't hard to understand. I don't want soldiers and Marines that hate being soldiers and Marines. They wouldn't be very good at their duties.
Writers from George Orwell to Rudyard Kipling were quick to point out the hypocrisy of people that condemned the warrior class:
“Those who ‘abjure’ violence can do so only because others are committing violence on their behalf.” - Orwell, 1945, from Notes on Nationalism
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He's... not wrong.
We should be really scared of people who are excited about finding ways to kill people we (or our allies) are in conflict with, but they're a necessary evil as those people exist on the other side of the conflict.
They are weapons, ideally to be controlled by more measured and compassionate people, and deployed in self-defense against people who aren't quite so restrained.
For instance, the people finding new ways to kill Russian troops in Ukraine. They're getting lots of people killed, but it's justified because Russia invaded and started indiscriminately killing a lot of innocent people.
Like the Training Day [imdb.com] quote...
"To protect the sheep you gotta catch the wolf, and it takes a wolf to catch a wolf."
Re: Competition (Score:2)
It takes a man with a couple of dogs to catch a wolf. Wolves don't take orders as well, they have their own shit to do.
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No, he's wrong, you just don't think so because you can only think of yourself. "More measured and compassionate people" don't view others as "weapons" to be "deployed", though clearly you do.
"For instance, the people finding new ways to kill Russian troops in Ukraine. They're getting lots of people killed, but it's justified because Russia invaded and started indiscriminately killing a lot of innocent people."
Where in that example is there a "warrior class" that is "excited to enact ‘violence on oth
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He's... not wrong.
We should be really scared of people who are excited about finding ways to kill people ...
I have to think that armies are a good way to keep thugs off the street: think mafia, hoods, etc. Give them a home that keeps them away from the rest of society.
Re: Competition (Score:2)
Unfortunately they get trained to do violence and then eventually released, and they become more of a problem. Unless of course you get them killed first, how moral.
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It's sad and unfortunate... (Score:4, Insightful)
...that barbaric people like that exist
Hopefully, someday, we will evolve beyond violence and war
Nope, just evolution, thank the US military (Score:2)
...that barbaric people like that exist Hopefully, someday, we will evolve beyond violence and war
Ukraine seemed pretty peaceful. I don't think the occupants of the World Trade Center in 2001 "deserved" violence. The shitty fact about life is you have to be ready to enact violence or else you will have violence enacted on you. I don't fear for my safety and have been able to live in peace and prosperity because my country has a long history attacking people when provoked.
/. will point out a list of all the terrible things the US military has done, but on balance,
Of course, every contrarian POS on
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"Thanks to the US Navy, the world has been prosperous and piracy is barely a thing. If we weren't patrolling the ocean, you know countries would "seize" civilian ships all the time."
Seizing ships, who would do such a thing! oh wait, the US does that.
https://www.ft.com/content/878... [ft.com]
Ukraine was more peaceful before the 2014 Maidan coup backed by the US. It's not the only one the US has done in the last 20 years, either. The above post is peak American mind state: fat, happy and 100% ignorant of what your cou
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The military doesn't do coups... (Score:2)
So you think China is keeping out of Taiwan out of the goodness of their heart?...same with North Korea staying out of South Korea? What about the disputed islands in the Philippines? China hasn't seized them because they're kind people only concerned with peace and prosperity?
You
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...that barbaric people like that exist Hopefully, someday, we will evolve beyond violence and war
Right now we lift people like this up. Deranged psychopath? Promote that motherfucker to the C-Suites, or better yet, have him run for office!
We're headed the wrong direction to move beyond violence. We've let ourselves be led down a path where hate is our prime motivation, and violence is the end-result of hate as an ethos.
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Yes, it would be nice if we evolved beyond violence. But consider this analogy...
Ralph sees a $250 pair of heavy selvedge denim jeans that he absolutely loves, and he thinks is worth every penny. The store has all sizes in stock. He has a size 44 waist right now, but has been trying to lose weight for the last two decades, and doesn't want to buy a size 44 because then if he loses weight, he'll have a useless pair of jeans.
So he buys a size 36, all excited about how his new jeans are going to look on him.
Is
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...that barbaric people like that exist
Hopefully, someday, we will evolve beyond violence and war
We're humans, and thus, have Human Nature. There is no "evolving" out of it. This is real life, not a shitty Star Trek script. Humans are not programmable blank slates that can be written and re-written as politics sees fit. The impulse and instinct for violence and self preservation is built into us at our deepest level, and will always be with us.
So? (Score:4, Informative)
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If you haven't yet, read TimeOday's comment above.
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Ignorant and wrong, your country was founded by the right of the people to use violence against an oppressor
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What you are saying is basically true, but is not the argument he put forth. You are saying violence may at times be needed to run a country. He is saying we need people "excited about enacting violence on others". That is a world of difference. A police officer may need to shoot someone at times, they should not be excited about getting to shoot someone. Violence should be looked at as a last resort. If they people able to do violence are excited by being able to violence, you have the wrong people allowed
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only state can do violence?
Ignorant, wrong, un american and against our rights
Is perfidy against machines legal? (Score:2)
Lately I've been pondering the question of perfidy in relation to autonomous weapons. Is fooling a machine into thinking you are a friend the same as wearing your opponents uniform? Or is it perfectly acceptable like a decoy used to distract seekers?
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A few years back, I was writing a term paper about autonomous weaponry (more from a legal viewpoint), but I really hate the concept of them in general. I'm going to have to go dredge it up and reread it.
What a tool. (Score:4, Informative)
Is this guy an idiot? (Score:2)
Incentives, incentives... (Score:2)
The old "when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail" issue is bad enough; but if all you have is a hammer and you really enjoy hammering it will be a full time job keeping you from finding nails everywhere and getting out of hand.
Not really the violent type (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy looks like he's an 18 year old programmer with chin pubes. Probably never been in a fight in his life.
This pampered rich guy is advocating for warfare because *he is going to profit off it*, and because *he likes it*. Is that a good reason to commit violence? Because it'll make you money and you like it?
For most of the development of "civilized" culture, there has been a focus on warfare as a means of _survival_, in addition to increasing personal and national wealth. Western Europe (and probably Asia as well) developed civilization further in the middle ages mostly in order to fund warfare (paying for professional soldiers, weapons, food and supplies is expensive, so you have to start taxing and developing your civilization more in order to better organize your expensive complicated wars).
It's only in the the last 50 years that the idea of obligatory military service and drafts have begun to end. It's mostly through the expansion of global trade and intwining of global markets that global war has become less feasible (you hurt other countries and you end up hurting yourself). We don't need to wage war to survive anymore, and we don't need to increase our borders to increase our profits. Capitalism is the new battlefield. It's not without its victims, but we don't have to bomb hundreds of thousands of people anymore.
We should invest ourselves more into stopping the war in Ukraine. But moreover, we should focus on preventing the next one. Not building bigger bombs and more vicious killing machines.
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This is correct (Score:2)
Luckey lives in the real world (Score:2)
AI and robotics are coming with or without your approval. It will be better if the US is at the forefront
We will need it given what Biden/Harris has unleashed on America [x.com].
What a naive idiot (Score:1)
Another warmongering POS (Score:1)
We don't need that, we need less of people like him.
Nominations (Score:2)
I hereby nominate fucktard Palmer Luckey to be the first recipient of this "enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims."
Let him have a taste of his own medicine and see how it goes down.
"Rough Men" (Score:2)
"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
Maybe someday that will no longer be true--we can only hope. But that day is not today.
Military contractor advocates for more war (Score:4, Insightful)
We don't need a gods-be-damned fuckin' """warrior class""". We should be working towards acting like a real grown-up sentient species that doesn't make war on themselves anymore.
Seriously, we're an embarassment as a species right now, positively cringeworthy, claiming we're 'civilized'.
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All species compete at every level. That is a norm in nature. And humans are a part of nature. War is simply an extension of this competition to larger social structures.
The only exceptional thing is just how soft Pax Americana has made a good chunk of men in the West. That is indeed embarrassing.
Psychopaths everywhere (Score:1)