It’s not just about better drones or smarter software. It’s about rewriting the operating system of war to solve a problem that broke the US military in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
Inspiration: The speeches of Sarah Paine and Palmer Luckey, and the timeless strategies of Sun Tzu and Miyamoto Musashi.
We tend to look at defense tech companies like they are consumer brands.
Anduril is the “hardware company” (drones, subs, Roadrunner). Palantir is the “software company” (data, Gotham, AIP). We treat them like Apple and Microsoft.
But this isn’t just a tech stack; it’s a strategic doctrine.
Anduril solves the production bottleneck (building cheap, modular weapons fast). Palantir solves the information bottleneck (connecting every sensor to every shooter instantly).
Together, they create a military that is hardware-agnostic and software-defined.
This is the only way to beat a near-peer adversary like China.
The Game Theory Trap
Game theory works great when both sides are rational actors playing by similar rules. This was the Cold War (Mutually Assured Destruction).
It falls apart against asymmetrical adversaries who don’t care about your rules.
Look at Vietnam. We had better planes, better bombs, and better logistics. They had tunnels and patience. We couldn’t bomb an ideology.
Look at Afghanistan. You can’t use “rational deterrence” against a fighter who wants to die. Their payoff matrix is fundamentally different.
The US military machine was built for the “Big War” (WWII style). It is slow, expensive, and predictable. It relies on overwhelming force, not adaptability.
The Element of Surprise (Japan & Vietnam)
The US has a history of getting sucker-punched because of rigidity.
Pearl Harbor: We couldn’t imagine an attack that far from Japan. Tet Offensive: We couldn’t imagine a coordinated strike during a holiday.
Sun Tzu warned us 2,500 years ago: “All warfare is based on deception.”
We forgot this. We became predictable. We built massive aircraft carriers (floating targets) that take 10 years to build and cost $13 billion. We lost the element of surprise because our logistics were too heavy to hide.
Anduril: Fixing the Hardware Loop (Musashi’s Water)
This is where Anduril changes the game. Their approach is modular.
Instead of a $100M jet that takes 5 years to update, you have a $50k drone you can update over the air in 5 minutes. This breaks the “sunk cost” fallacy. If the enemy changes tactics, you change the drone. You don’t need a congressional hearing to build a new weapon.
Miyamoto Musashi wrote in The Book of Five Rings: “Water adopts the shape of its container.”
Anduril allows the US military to be like water—adapting instantly to the battlefield rather than trying to force the battlefield to fit its expensive toys.
Palantir: The Panopticon (Preventing Surprise)
Surprise happens when you have data but no intelligence. At Pearl Harbor, we saw radar blips. We just didn’t know what they meant.
Palantir builds the “Meta-Constellation.” It connects everything.
A commercial satellite sees a tank -> Palantir identifies it -> an Anduril drone kills it. This happens in seconds, not hours.
By integrating all data sources (satellites, social media, logistics, thermal), Palantir moves the US from reacting to surprise to predicting it. It turns the “Fog of War” into a transparent map.
Conclusion: Total Dominance
It’s not just about having more nukes. It’s about having a “Kill Web” that is faster, cheaper, and smarter than the enemy.
Anduril and Palantir aren’t just contractors; they are the architects of US Hegemony 2.0. They are building a war machine that learns faster than humans can think.
In the next conflict, the US won’t just have better weapons. It will have a better operating system.
And as any tech founder knows, the better OS always wins.