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Peter Thiel, Cofounder of PayPal and Palantir, prominent libertarian

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Palmer Luckey, Founder of Oculus and Anduril

Peter Thiel sometimes seems bored by mainstream tech. “You have as much computing power in your iPhone as was available at the time of the Apollo missions,” he said during a debate in 2013. “But what is it being used for? It’s being used to throw angry birds at pigs.”

It was perhaps this sense of unfulfilled potential that drew him to Palmer Luckey, the never boring inventor who made the first prototypes of the Oculus Rift as a home-schooled 17-year-old. Luckey has since created Anduril, a military tech company also funded by one of Thiel’s VC firms. He talked with WIRED about his visions of the future.

October 2018. Subscribe to WIRED. Plunkett + Kuhr Designers

I was looking at one of the photos from WIRED’s recent story about Anduril, and I noticed a red rotary phone on your desk. What’s that? I ask because my grandfather, who served in the Defense Department, also had one of those phones.

Ah, the red phone! I’ve been experimenting a lot with vestibular implants for virtual reality—being able to stimulate the inner ear in a way that allows you to feel a sense of motion. You can use the same hardware to pipe sounds right into your skull. As we were playing around with this stuff, we threw together a quick project. We called it the Palmer Phone. The idea was we’d set up the red phone in our office and link it to my vestibular implants. You wouldn’t need to call me; I wouldn’t need to answer; there wouldn’t be any ring. You’d just pick up that phone and start talking, straight into my head.

And is it working?

Uh, parts of it are working. My journey with implants is far from done.

When did you meet Peter Thiel?

I was 19 years old, maybe 20. Founders Fund was one of the first investors in Oculus. VR was kind of a dead technology then, so it was reasonable for them to ask, “Why are you guys different?”

What was your answer?

Times had changed. We had better computers, better displays, better sensors. In the old days of VR hype, many of the people who were most excited about VR hadn’t actually tried it. You told them about the content and, because they hadn’t seen the reality of what the technology was in the 1980s and ’90s, they assumed it was incredible—that it was like The Matrix or The Lawnmower Man. Today, the people who are most excited about VR are the ones who have tried it.

What will it take for VR to reach mass adoption?

A lot of people insist on price, but if the VR available today were as good as The Matrix, price wouldn’t be the issue. It’s going to be a combination of better software and better hardware. Right now free isn’t cheap enough for most people.

Do you regret selling Oculus to Facebook?

It was the best thing that’s ever happened to the VR industry. It drove billions of dollars in investment into other startups.

But do you wish Palmer Luckey still ran it?

I want what’s best for virtual reality.

After Oculus, you started Anduril. Why get into defense tech?

The US is really good at spending money on aircraft carriers and manned fighter planes, but those probably aren’t going to win the next major conflict. I was concerned that we were falling behind in technology.