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No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.
Heraclitus
October 6, 2026

Forget Elon, the real Tony Stark is Palmer Luckey
A billionaire in a sharp suit stands in the Afghan desert with a drink in his hand and a row of generals waiting on him.
He pushes a button and a missile called Jericho flattens a hillside behind him. The US military gets its chequebook out.
Today, that could be Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth. Or it could be Elon Musk.
But in 2008, it was the fictional comic book character, Tony Stark in the first act of blockbuster movie, Iron Man.
Tony Stark in the Afghan desert, Iron Man (2008)
Source: Screenrant
It’s funny how life imitates art...
And many suggest that today, Elon Musk is the real Stark. Robert Downey Jr even toured SpaceX with Musk while he got ready for the role. And Elon did cameo in Iron Man 2...
But Elon isn’t the modern iteration of Tony Stark. They’ve got the wrong guy.

From garage VR to battlefield AR
At 17, Palmer Luckey built his first virtual reality headset in his parents’ garage in Long Beach, California.
He founded Oculus in April 2012 and raised $2.4 million on Kickstarter. Two years later, Mark Zuckerberg came knocking and Facebook bought it in 2014 for $2 billion, when Luckey was just 21.
Less than three years later Luckey got pushed out, some say because of his pretty staunch Republican views and fondness of newly elected President Trump.
So, what do you do when you’re in your 20s, a few billion to your name, and some mates deeply entrenched in the US administration?
Build a next-generation military tech company of course.
And that’s exactly what Luckey did.
By June 2017, months after his Facebook exit, he’d started Anduril, which builds drones, sensor towers, battlefield augmented reality, autonomous submarines, mass production missiles, and the AI-based software that ties them together...
And then, fortunately his favourite President gets a second term, and he suddenly at the top of the pecking order, his military tech companies is growing and developing new tech at an exponential rate, and even old pal Zuck who pushed you out almost a decade earlier is now one of the President’s new best mates.
While I’m sure there will be a documentary or streaming series in the works, the wild thing about all this is that now, at the ripe old age of 34, Luckey is sat at the head of a new US Department of War project, codenamed Meridan to lead the development of the next generation of US advanced military technology.
Talk about a fun ride!
Last Wednesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Secretary Hegseth named three people to co-lead Project Meridian, a 120-day study of what the Pentagon needs to win the next war.
Musk was one and Newt Gingrich was another.
The third, the most important and sat right between the others, was Luckey.
Hegseth announcing the Project Meridian co-leads
Source: US Department of War via X.com
So, is he more important to the war machine than Musk?
For what comes next, yes, because SpaceX has its place in battlefield communications with its Starshield version of Starlink, but it’s Luckey’s Anduril that’s leading the world when it comes to next-gen battlefield weaponry and technologies.
Anduril Fury autonomous air strike vehicle
Anduril’s autonomous air strike vehicle, Fury. Source: Anduril
In March the Army signed a 10-year deal with Anduril worth up to $20 billion.
In July the Department of War announced a framework agreement with them to rapidly scale mass-production capabilities, specifically the Barracuda ground-launched missiles Anduril is developing.
In September, the Army awarded then a $65 million order in support of the Army’s TITAN program.
Along with deals with NATO, and an AU$1.7 billion deal with the Australian Navy, Anduril is the West’s great military hope.
In May it raised $5 billion at a $61 billion valuation. And in July, Reuters reported talks for a round near $100 billion. Not bad for a nine year old company.
For comparison, Lockheed turns 100 years old this December and has a market cap of $116 billion.

The listing that matters most
Anduril is private for now, but Luckey told CNBC in June last year what he expects,
“We are definitely going to be a publicly traded company.”
He said there’s no real path to winning a trillion-dollar programme like the F-35 while you’re private. He’s also said he wants Anduril profitable before it lists.
Anduril is loss making for now. But that will change. The US and NATO and other Allied nations are all in the process of ramping military spending and going through a mass rearmament phase to level up all military systems.
It’s going to cost a heck of a lot of money, and Anduril is going to find a heck of a lot of it channelled towards their bottom line.
So why care about a company you can’t buy yet?
Because outsiders building defence technology that are this entrenched in the war machine rarely list. When they do, you get one shot at the start.
Palantir (Nasdaq: PLTR) began trading on 30 September 2020 at $10. It closed Friday at $188.75, worth $453.6 billion, nearly four times Lockheed.
I’m expecting Anduril to file within 12 to 18 months. It may list anywhere from $60 to $100 billion. It’ll be huge. But I see it as another Palantir in terms of where it goes.
In Iron Man, Stark walked out of the cave in the desert and shut down his weapons business.
Luckey walked out of Facebook and started one.
I’m a little surprised it’s not called “Luckey Industries” but I’m absolutely certain Anduril is the most important military company in the world right now.
More soon,
Lewis Maguire

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