Palmer Luckey: The Rebel Engineer Behind America’s AI Army.
Podcast:Great Business Stories Published On: Wed Jul 02 2025 Description: This is the story of Palmer Luckey the guy who single handedly kickstarted modern virtual reality barefoot, in a garage, surrounded by a Frankenstein mess of hacked GameCubes and government-surplus headsets. He then sold his 2 year old company to facebook for $2 billion and was then controversially kicked out of Facebook. But he bounced back by founding a defense tech company named after Aragorn’s sword in Lord of the Rings—a startup now worth $28 billion, quietly rewriting the rules of modern warfare with AI-powered drones and virtual border walls.This is the fascinating story of a flip-flop-wearing, conspiracy-loving massively controversial tech disruptor who also happens to have the world’s largest video game collection in a missile silo 200 feet underground. Enjoy—it’s a cracker.