Tech talk: Luckey discusses Ghost Shark, artificial intelligence and facial recognition in defence

“I’d say we’ve been very effective in the Middle East right now. We’ve also had challenges in the past, and then we’ve surged resources to get that fixed, which is one of the reasons that things are working now,” Luckey said.

“I think we’ve been effective in Ukraine. Australia, we’re really just beginning to deliver there. We’ve built a factory there. We’ve hired a large team there.

“We’ve developed this Ghost Shark program with them building robotic submarines at a very large scale, very quickly. We delivered the first submarine a year ahead of schedule. I don’t know if I would say that’s like effective yet, because Australia’s not fighting anybody right now and I think they hope to keep it that way.

“So, it’s hard to prove, but I think Ukraine, Taiwan, certainly the United States, Anduril’s work in the Middle East we’ve proven that we are effective a number of times.”

Luckey was forthright in “common sense solutions” when pushed about the possibilities of developing contentious nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

“So (nuclear) fission or fusion weapons, absolutely I would build them. I would probably not build biological weapons. Chemical weapons I would build, but in a very specific circumstances and this is a very controversial thing,” he said.

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“I want to be very, very specific about this … I’ll give you an example: pepper spray is illegal for most non-military police units to use in the military. We are not able to use pepper spray, tear gas as part of our conventional offensive military tactics. I think that’s a huge mistake. It falls under a lot of these chemical weapon prohibitions.

“And I understand the worries about fear of escalation or a slippery slope. I think we understand chemical weapons enough to know there’s no real slippery slope from literally hot pepper juice to, you know, nerve, nerve agents that are going to kill you. There is no slope.

“Another example: you have a bunch of soldiers. They’re at a checkpoint. You have a guy who’s approaching towards the checkpoint. Something occurs that makes you think that this person is a threat and you need to be able to subdue him, that you need to be able to get them out of the car.

“Right now, you have one option, you shoot the guy and you kill him. There is no escalation of force between like waving a flashlight at a guy and yelling him and shooting at him. You could take warning shots at him, but like now you’re creating problems with shrapnel, with ricochets, with civilian damage. I think it is unarguably a moral win for us to be able to have a continuum of force that does not have a gap between shouting at people and shooting them. And I think pepper spray is right in that continuum.

“I would never build large-scale, strategic-level chemical weapons versus very, very focused tactical. Like biological weapons, I would not build.”

Luckey also drew on previous conversations around the emerging use of facial recognition in military situations.

“Facial recognition is actually another one. I’m not saying facial recognition has no uses. However, we’ve had a kind of internal policy, me and Brian Schimpf (Anduril Industries CEO) that facial recognition is probably the wrong tool to use as part of the kind of final-stage targeting of kinetic weapons,” he said.

“Facial recognition and targeting. It’s just still a very fraught technology. There’s a lot of ways to spoof it. There’s a lot of ways that it can be wrong. There’s a lot of ways that people can go out of their way to affirmatively trick a system that is built on facial recognition.

“It’s a great tool for law enforcement to perform investigative activity. It is not a good tool to use when you’re deciding who lives and who dies in a split-second decision.

“We’ve never integrated facial recognition in any of our systems because we don’t think the gains are even close to the negatives.”

Anduril Industries has previously launched its own artificial intelligence-driven command, control and mission autonomy software platform, called “Lattice”, for connecting military networks between drones, sensors and uncrewed vehicles.

Addressing the global race for superior artificial intelligence, Luckey speculated that the US is ahead slightly with the People’s Republic of China closing fast.

“The United States is ahead in the AI race … (but the gap is) extremely small, because China’s been doing a very good job of distilling our models, copying a lot of our technology, leveraging open-source AI advancements and getting those advancements into fielding, not just with the military, but also their police state, their surveillance apparatus much, much faster than the United States has,” he said.

“I’m not saying we need to build a police state or a surveillance apparatus. I’m just recognising that China has the will at the top to push these things out much faster than the United States.

“And you can criticise authoritarian regimes while still recognising that certain structural advantages exist and China is maximising those structural advantages to push AI into their entire government and its fingers faster than the United States.

“(For the US) I would say the Department of War is the furthest along in pushing AI into a lot of these. They’re using AI right now in this Iran operation to great effect. Try to name another part of government China, surveillance and AI deployment that is leveraging AI that effectively.

“In the bureaucracies particularly, you are not seeing Department of Agriculture using AI as effectively as the Department of War. You’re certainly not seeing the Department of Education using it as effectively as they could. It’s probably like Department of War then maybe Department of Energy are probably the two that I would say are in the lead.”

Robert Dougherty

Robert is a senior journalist who has previously worked for Seven West Media in Western Australia, as well as Fairfax Media and Australian Community Media in New South Wales. He has produced national headlines, photography and videography of emergency services, business, community, defence and government news across Australia. Robert graduated with a Bachelor of Arts, Majoring in Public Relations and Journalism at Curtin University, attended student exchange program with Fudan University and holds Tier 1 General Advice certification for Kaplan Professional. Reach out via email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via LinkedIn.