[JDulin]

Awesome!

Anduril is one of the few startups today I believe is solving a core problem in the United States' institutions - Defense industry dysfunction. It costs American taxpayers billions of dollars on weapons that under-perform at best and endanger American lives at worst.

Palmer correctly identifies some of the incentive issues with current defense contracts. Rather than working on contracts pre-defined by the DoD, which puts the US Treasury on the line for all cost over-runs and entangles project planning in Pentagon political intrigue, Anduril R&Ds technologies on their own dime, to their own specs, before trying to make a sale. High-risk, but one way to do it right today. He explains his vision more in this interview: https://twitter.com/micsolana/status/1087803794266550272

[jvanderbot]

Anduril has a nice model. It's not unique to Anduril, but it is nice. Most R&D places with eventual infusion / sale to acquisition partners start with IRaD funding and move on to small scale demos and sales.

I can't comment on the major acquisitions like fighter jets and aircraft carriers, but this feels natural and familiar when it comes to these advanced, small-scale, systems-level engineering projects.

[auslander]

> core problem in the United States' institutions - Defense industry dysfunction.

Not Super PACs? "they can raise funds from individuals, corporations, unions, and other groups without any legal limit on donation size." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_action_committee

[JDulin]

> a core problem in the United States' institutions - Defense industry dysfunction.

You missed a word.

But to answer your specific suggestion for No. 1: No, I don't think Super PACs are near the Top 10 issues facing the United States' institutions. They might be in the Top 100.

[remarkEon]

There’s a lot of conflicting incentives here, and PACs are definitely part of the problem. Luckey is, in my view, helping with just one of those issues (stagnation of innovation in the defense industry). Unfortunately I don’t see how he avoids employing, you guessed it, PACs to break the mold.