The Arsenal for World War III: Autonomy, AI, and the Fight We Cannot Afford to Lose
Palmer Luckey and Bilawal Sidhu in Conversation at the TED 2025 Conference, Vancouver
The Arsenal for World War III: Autonomy, AI, and the Fight We Cannot Afford to Lose
Very few people today genuinely believe that World War III will never happen. Whether it's the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the Gaza conflagration potentially pulling Iran into direct conflict with Israel, or even the ominous clouds gathering over the Indian subcontinent in the aftermath of the Pahalgam massacre of April 22, 2025, the signs are impossible to ignore. These are not isolated regional tensions—they are sparks brushing against a dry, global powder keg. The First World War, after all, was ignited by an assassination that, by today’s standards, might be considered a bilateral matter.
The real question is no longer if such a global war could erupt—but whether the world’s militaries, political leadership, and bureaucracies are even remotely prepared to deter it, contain it, or, should deterrence fail, to fight and win it with the least possible human cost. And that’s where visionaries like Palmer Luckey, and conversations like the one he had with Bilawal Sidhu, provide both urgency—and a sliver of hope.
Palmer Luckey and the Future of Victory in World War III
“Victory in the next war won’t go to the biggest army. It will go to the fastest innovator. We need weapons that update at the speed of code.”
— Palmer Luckey
In a riveting, high-stakes conversation, Palmer Luckey, the rebellious founder of Oculus VR and now CEO of Anduril Industries, paints a chilling portrait of how World War III might begin. A surprise Chinese invasion of Taiwan triggers a chain of events so fast, so technologically overwhelming, that American forces never even make it into the fight. Our arsenals are exhausted in eight days. Taiwan is lost. The global semiconductor industry collapses. Democracies reel from the shock.
Luckey’s message is unequivocal: the United States and its allies are woefully underprepared to fight the next war—not because they lack courage, but because they lack capacity. We’re still building 20th-century weapons in a world that demands AI-driven, autonomous, scalable systems.
Bilawal Sidhu: From Google to the Geopolitical Frontlines
At the heart of this conversation is Bilawal Sidhu, who not long ago served as Senior Product Manager at Google. He left the tech giant to forge his own path, founding a next-gen tech enterprise out of Austin, Texas, where he now engages with global thinkers at the intersection of AI, defense, and human ethics. Sidhu’s questions press into the murky dilemmas of autonomy, morality, and the future of the military-industrial complex.
His calm, probing presence grounds the conversation—and makes the urgency of Luckey’s call-to-action impossible to dismiss.
The Defense Crisis No One Wants to Admit
Luckey’s argument is as sobering as it is clear: the United States cannot match China ship-for-ship, missile-for-missile, or drone-for-drone by traditional means. China already fields:
The world’s largest navy
232 times more shipbuilding capacity than the U.S.
The largest missile arsenal on the planet
In contrast, the U.S. military is caught in a web of slow procurement cycles and bloated bureaucracies. The result: we’re outnumbered and outbuilt before the war even begins.
That’s where Anduril’s model breaks the mold. Unlike legacy contractors, Anduril uses its own capital to rapidly develop and deploy autonomous systems, then sells them to the military. Their AI operating system, Lattice, powers everything from drone swarms to smart submarines—and can be updated like a smartphone app.
“Your Roomba has better autonomy than most Pentagon weapons,” Luckey notes. “That’s a failure of will, not of technology.”
Why AI Will Win—or Prevent—World War III
Sidhu raises the inevitable ethical question: Should AI ever be allowed to decide who lives or dies? Luckey doesn’t equivocate.
“I love killer robots,” he jokes, before getting serious. “The truth is, we’ve used autonomous weapons for decades—mines, missile defense, radar-guided guns. AI just makes them smarter.”
And smarter means safer. AI can detect enemy armor and distinguish it from civilian buses. It can strike with precision. It can reduce friendly fire and collateral damage. Far from dehumanizing war, Luckey argues, AI can make war more humane—and perhaps, less frequent.
The goal isn’t machines replacing humans. It’s humans and machines working together, sharing a real-time picture of the battlefield, operating with superhuman speed and clarity. That’s what the IVAS headsets Anduril now builds for the U.S. Army are designed to deliver.
A Different Kind of Deterrence
Luckey’s vision is not about launching pre-emptive wars or flexing military muscle. It’s about restoring deterrence—the credible capability to make any act of aggression immediately and obviously futile.
Imagine a scenario where Chinese missiles streak toward Taiwan, only to be intercepted by AI-powered drone swarms in seconds. Autonomous submarines retaliate from the depths. Stealth drone ships strike from unpredictable zones. Ground-based robotic sentries halt an amphibious landing before the first enemy soldier steps ashore.
This is what Luckey calls “deterrence through autonomy”. It doesn’t require a draft or trillion-dollar weapons programs. It requires speed, scalability, and a willingness to innovate.
If You Want Peace, Prepare for War
As the old Latin maxim goes: “Si vis pacem, para bellum”—“If you want peace, prepare for war.” Attributed to the Roman author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in his 4th-century work De Re Militari, the phrase is more relevant now than ever before.
But preparing for war in the 21st century doesn’t mean building more tanks, or more brave and well-equipped soldiers. It means rethinking the entire concept of force—from analog to autonomous, from slow to software-driven, from bureaucratic to battlefield-ready.
In Summary: Cautious Optimism and the Path Forward
There is reason to hope. The technologies exist. The talent exists. The clarity of vision—when voices like Palmer Luckey and Bilawal Sidhu bring it to the fore—is beginning to take hold. But this can’t remain a conversation confined to TED talks, tech conferences, or defense expos.
This needs to become a coherent national strategy—championed not just by generals and politicians in TV interviews or ceremonial speeches, but by governments willing to invest, militaries willing to adapt, and societies willing to accept that peace today demands innovation—not complacency.
If World War III is to be prevented—or won—it will be by those who saw it coming and prepared accordingly.