This Is Anduril's Attempt To Fix The US Navy

The US Navy is in deep trouble. China builds 200 ships for every one America makes, and the shipyards that used to power this country's maritime dominance are rusting relics of a previous era. Anduril, the defense tech company founded by Palmer Luckey, thinks it has an answer, albeit one without any sailors.

We got on a boat in Quincy, Massachusetts to watch the Dive LD, Anduril's autonomous submarine, slip beneath the surface of Massachusetts Bay and map the ocean floor entirely on its own. No crew. No remote control. Just a robot doing its thing while we watched on a screen.

This is a story about what it looks like when a Silicon Valley-style startup tries to rebuild American military hardware from scratch. We go inside Anduril's maritime operation, see the Lattice software that ties all of their autonomous systems together, and learn about the Dive XL, the larger, more secretive sibling developed alongside the Royal Australian Navy for missions nobody will fully describe to us.

This is Part Two of our tech journey through New England. Catch the first episode here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxD4xZo5oTY

Our host Ashlee Vance is a journalist, author, and filmmaker best known for his New York Times bestselling books, including the biography of Elon Musk and When The Heavens Went on Sale. He spent years at Bloomberg Businessweek covering Silicon Valley, space, and the people building the future, where he also created and hosted the Emmy-nominated series Hello World. His documentary work includes Wild Wild Space for HBO and Don't Die for Netflix.

Now he runs Core Memory, a media company telling stories about scientists, inventors, and startups changing the world—from biotech labs to factory floors to the edge of space.

Mentioned in this episode

Dive-LD - https://www.anduril.com/dive-ld
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Chapters
00:00 Intro The Multimillionaire Behind America's New Arsenal
01:31 Why the US Can’t Build Ships Anymore
02:54 Inside the Dive LD: A Submarine Built to Sink
03:49 Underwater X-Ray: How Anduril Sees the Sea Floor
05:47 Lattice: The Software Key
08:09 Ghost Shark vs. China’s 200:1 Naval Advantage