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American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey has shared his thoughts on how the United States can best rebuild its defence industry and contend with the expansionist aspirations of the People’s Republic of China.
The virtual reality developer and founder of military contractor Anduril Industries made the comments during an in-depth interview with former US Navy Seal and US Central Intelligence Agency contractor Shawn Ryan, earlier this month.
Luckey outlined his ideas to revive American defence industry production and prepare for future conflict.
“My belief is that the United States should stop being the world police. We need to stop sending our people all over the world to fight everyone’s wars for them. And we need to become the world’s gun store. We need to just sell them the guns that they need to defend themselves. And we need to make sure that we actually keep those shelves stocked,” he said.
“We have to get back to where things are actually manufacturable. As a country, we’ve slipped into this problem where we build so few arms that we build really expensive, really exquisite things that take years to complete.
“We need to get back into more of a World War II mentality where we can build weapons faster than we can use them.
“Look at what we did when we transformed this country during World War II. We went from basically being a mercantilist, quasi agrarian society to being the world’s most powerful manufacturing hub in like a year and a half, two years. Are you really telling me we couldn’t do it again if it wasn’t a priority? I just don’t believe it.
“It’s easier than ever to set up a factory. I’ve done it in China. It is easier than ever to set up advanced manufacturing. It’s just a matter of will.”
Luckey, who is listed as sanctioned alongside his company Anduril by both the People’s Republic of China and Russia, affirms that China acts both as a direct competitor to the US for global leadership and as an expansionism threat.
“Taiwan is not the end state for China. And all the people who think that this fight over Taiwan is the real fight are missing the point,” he said on the podcast.
“(China) They believe that the Philippines is their territory. They believe that Korea is their territory.
“They also believe that North Korea is their territory. But they like them as a buffer state with South Korea. But that would change the moment they could actually capture South Korea.
“They even think that most of Japan belongs to them … Even today, even publicly, they won’t say they own all of Japan, but they do maintain they own part of Japan … It is really dangerous to let people with millennia-long ambitions of ruling those areas go unchecked.
“Even if you don’t give a shit about Taiwan, which you should, because our whole modern economy runs on chips from them. Until we figure out how to make them (computer chips) better or as good ourselves, we have to keep them around.”
Detailing his own thoughts on military innovation and structure, Luckey further alleged that the Chinese government would, in the event of a conflict, mobilise and repurpose entire industries of civilian labour and equipment for war.
“China definitely has the technology in terms of manufacturing prowess. They know how to make stuff fast (and) they know how to make it cheap. They have automated cruise missile production facilities that are capable of turning out more cruise missiles in a week than the entire United States turns out in a year.
“China has more shipbuilding capacity than us. They could build ships a lot faster than us. If we start blowing up boats in the Pacific, they’re going to be able to build more … They have 350 times more shipbuilding capacity than the United States.
“People will try to argue with me and sometimes they’ll say, ‘But Palmer, all of that is commercial shipbuilding capacity’ … But you know why it’s fair? Because in China, the law says that all commercial vessels have to meet military standards.
“If you are building a roll-on roll-off passenger ferry for transporting people in cars (in China), you have to have deck plate supports that are strong enough to transport tanks and armoured vehicles. They are requiring even their civilian vessels to all be military standards compliant because they foresee a world where they’re going to nationalise their entire domestic fleet and use it in a whole of China fight against the West.
“China understands how much more it costs for every single ferry to support military operations. They are taking that cost on because they expect to do it. They’re not going to basically spend billions of dollars for absolutely no reason in an economy that knows how to cut corners like no other … They are doing this because they believe it’s a core part of their strategy.
“Anything that is civilian is inherently military as well. And if the military wants to use it, they have all rights to it. You cannot deny it to them. You cannot tell them ‘no’, you cannot refuse to sell it to them. They are basically saying the military apparatus and the civilian apparatus are one and the same.”
Luckey also raised the concept of a weaponised “defector visa” system to recruit key personnel for Western benefit and adversary detriment.
“We can build the factories quickly. But the hardest part is going to be training the kids. Like, we’re going to need to basically get serious about training people to run factories well efficiently using modern techniques. And we do have a lack of those,” he added.
“During the Cold War, we gave a lot of visas to people to come to the United States to immigrate here from hostile powers like the Soviet Union if they were in a critical role in those countries.
“You basically said you’re important over there. You are one of the puzzle pieces that keeps everything held together for their missile program. ‘Come over to the United States, we’ll give you a job at NASA’ … I think we need to start doing that again. I think that that’s one of the ways that we can beat China.
“There’s a lot of people who hate what China has become … To be clear, I’m not saying we need to import people because we can’t survive without immigration. But if we can steal their very best manufacturing engineers, deprive China of those people and then put them to work here helping us catch up with China on manufacturing, that’s a great trade.
“We’re trying to steal the very best people from our greatest foe. Surely, we can agree that that’s usually worth doing … It’s not just that there’s a need for them here, it’s that it’s going to hurt China by taking them.
“China’s got plenty of rice pickers. Taking a rice picker is not going to hurt. Taking the head of an advanced silicon manufacturing facility that can make cutting edge computer graphics chips, that is going to really, really hurt them.
“Look at Venezuela. Let’s take whoever’s running their oil and gas machinery over there. Imagine what would happen if we identified their top 10 most competent people who are running their oil and gas organisations and we gave them all defector visas… You would destroy the whole Venezuelan economy overnight.
