In one of the stranger career changes from a video game personality, Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey is helping lead a new defense company--and it`s now hiring.Anduril Industries, named after Aragorn`s reforged sword from The Lord of the Rings, is a military technology startup looking to disrupt the defense world. Luckey and the company assert that the defense industry has stagnated, and there`s not enough innovation happening at the moment. So Anduril aims to help develop new technology quickly, focusing on the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality.It`s pretty bizarre to see Luckey jump to military tech from a games-focused approach, especially since his time at Oculus produced some distinctly unserious, non-militaristic moments. However, toward the end of his involvement of the company, Luckey courted quite a bit of controversy, such as when he helped fund an anti-Clinton meme campaign. As a result, I`d guess that Anduril probably gives him a way to stay out of the public spotlight.It`s unclear what, exactly, Anduril is making at the moment, but we do know that it`s full of people from the more militaristic side of Silicon Valley. A couple of former Palantir engineers have come on as CEO and COO, while another Palantir engineer--Trae Stephens--co-founded the company and worked on the Trump administration`s transition team for the Department of Defense. We also know that they`re interested in surveillance technology to be deployed for border defense.We`ll likely have to wait to see what sort of dystopian military tech Anduril comes up with. In the meantime, you can read more about the company`s philosophy and its goals at its website.
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