Founder of $30 billion defense tech company Anduril embraces Trump’s threat to crack down: It’s ‘good to scare people sometimes’

While some companies and analysts fret about President Donald Trump’s threat to crack down on the defense industry, the founder of a $30 billion defense tech company has emerged as an unlikely supporter of his massive overhaul.

Palmer Luckey, who founded defense tech company Anduril in 2017, came out in nearly full support of Trump’s policies. While he noted without elaborating that all the changes “might not necessarily help the defense space,” he stood by Trump’s policy changes despite the president’s rebuke of defense companies as well as their CEOs.

“I think it’s even good maybe to scare people sometimes,” Luckey said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

A spokesperson for Anduril declined to comment beyond Luckey’s public comments.

The reforms, which the White House outlined in a Wednesday executive order caps defense company CEO’s salaries at $5 million annually until certain conditions are met. As of around 2021, Luckey, who is not the CEO but the founder of Anduril, reportedly earned $10.9 million in compensation from the Company, TechCrunch reported. Luckey tol...