Anduril Unveils American-Made Laptop

Defense technology company Anduril and semiconductor firm Qualcomm launched an initiative to produce 100% made-in-America computers.

Today, the companies announced BlueChip, a product line “dedicated to rebuilding American computer manufacturing” and reducing dependency on foreign manufacturers, according to a press release, beginning with a laptop set for release next year.

“This laptop is the first American-made computer in about 20 years,” said Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Anduril, a company typically known for its autonomous weapons and related software. While America invented the computer and American companies like Apple, HP, and Dell design some of the world’s leading laptops, much of the supply chains and manufacturing processes have been offshored to Asia, especially China. That is a problem “for a combination of national security reasons, but also national pride reasons,” Luckey said during a press briefing yesterday.

The laptop itself is not particularly groundbreaking. It is built for customers in the military, defense, and other “critical industries,” designed to withstand rugged conditions and features Qualcomm chips optimized for on-device AI processing.

What’s truly notable is the vision of American industry that the success of BlueChip would represent — namely, the belief that we can and should develop total self-sufficiency for important technologies.

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That is a harder and more complex goal than it sounds like on paper. Laptops typically contain thousands of parts sourced from around the world. For some of them, American options simply do not exist.

“For example, there’s certain power management integrated circuits that aren’t made currently anywhere but China because there’s no market for them to be made anywhere [else],” Luckey said.

The laptop’s display is another challenge. “There are no U.S. options, literally none. I couldn’t do it even if I wanted to. The only companies in the United States making displays are basically refurbishing old CRTs [cathode ray tubes, a technology first developed in 1897] for radar equipment and naval destroyers by hand to keep those certified systems going.” (Anduril therefore made a plan with an American company to incorporate domestically produced glass into the display assembly.)

The lack of domestic manufacturing is so bad that Congress has had to issue waivers to laws requiring the government to buy American because there are no compliant products available, Luckey said during the briefing.

Much of the project’s significance lies in its goal of being “100% domestic” — meaning literally every material, part, and process, from beginning to end. Even 95% is not good enough, Luckey said, because “you have to get to the point where you can always make computers no matter what,” without banking on another country’s industrial policy remaining the same forever.

The current BlueChip laptop prototype is about 90% domestic and allied sources with a “technical roadmap” to get to 100% domestic. (Even so, the initial product will “most likely” not be 100% American, he said.)

You likely won’t be getting your hands on an Anduril laptop anytime soon, as Luckey says the product will “absolutely” more expensive than a laptop made in China, a premium that companies and agencies with stringent supply chain requirements may have no choice but to pay.

But the supply chain that BlueChip spurs may be even more important than the laptop itself.

“Nobody’s going to naturally just say, ‘Oh, well what if I just set up shop in America?’ And that’s what all of this is about — creating a channel for American made components to flow into. That’s the only way we get to 100% American in the long run,” Luckey said.

Cristiano Amon, the CEO of Qualcomm, likened the situation to semiconductors. “There’s nobody that will argue that it’s important to have a geographically diversified supply chain. Nobody will argue that, but you have to take the first step,” he said, such as the 2022 CHIPS Act, which poured federal money into domestic semiconductor manufacturing. (For example, Amon said they’re working to get chips for the BlueChip program from TSMC Arizona, which received billions in CHIPS Act funding.)

It is pretty much obligatory at this point that some contingent of the tech-skeptical legacy press will cast doubt on the plausibility and efficacy of projects like BlueChip, especially given how Anduril and Luckey are perceived as right-wing war profiteers by much of the left. Luckey attributed some of the cynicism to a reliance on the expert class, not unlike, in 1903, when

The

New York Times

published an editorial predicting it would take at least one million years to invent a working flying machine, just nine weeks before the Wright brothers’ flight. The modern equivalent could be

stories

that claim a made-in-America iPhone will cost $30,000.

“I think your average crazy schizo poster on 4chan actually has an easier time telling the truth about this stuff than most ‘experts’ because he has nothing to gain by tricking you and nothing to lose by telling the truth,” Luckey said during the briefing.

Making a 100% domestic laptop is both harder than it sounds, but also easier than what those who do not believe reindustrialization is a worthy goal may suggest. BlueChip is a noteworthy step in revealing just how arduous it is.

“I know more than you guys, and I know that this is possible,” Luckey said to the room of journalists.

—Jonas Du