# Palmer Luckey — "a warrior class… excited about enacting violence on others" > [!quote] "Societies have always needed a warrior class that is enthused and excited about enacting violence on others in pursuit of good aims. You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don't lose any sleep making tools of violence in order to preserve freedom." > — Palmer Luckey, Pepperdine University speaker series, October 1, 2024 ## Context [[Palmer Luckey]] — Oculus founder turned [[Anduril]] CEO — delivered this during an hour-long onstage conversation with Pepperdine University president Jim Gash in Malibu on October 1, 2024. In the same appearance he endorsed fully autonomous weapons, raged against America's adversaries, and hinted at an Anduril IPO. The "warrior class" line was his answer to the moral discomfort many in tech express about building weapons: rather than deflect it, he embraced the role, casting himself as one of the few willing to be "sick in that way." ## Why this matters Most defense contractors launder lethality through euphemism — "deterrence," "systems," "dual-use." Luckey does the opposite: he names the violence and valorizes the appetite for it. That candor is the point. It reframes the manufacture of [[Autonomous Weapons]] not as a regrettable necessity but as a civic virtue requiring a special caste of men who relish it. The framing — strength as its own justification, violence "in pursuit of good aims" — is why this receipt belongs alongside the broader [[Might Makes Right Doctrine]] running through the contemporary right, even though Luckey arrives at it from Silicon Valley rather than from MAGA populism or neoreaction. ## Verification - **Primary reporting:** [TechCrunch, October 1, 2024](https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/01/palmer-luckey-every-country-needs-a-warrior-class-excited-to-enact-violence-on-others-in-pursuit-of-good-aims/), whose headline quotes the line directly. - **Secondary:** [Slashdot](https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/02/1423221/anduril-founder-luckey-every-country-needs-a-warrior-class-excited-to-enact-violence-on-others-in-pursuit-of-good-aims); [Gizmodo's "I'm a Propagandist" write-up](https://gizmodo.com/im-a-propagandist-palmer-luckey-on-the-future-of-warfare-2000506276) of the same event. - **Status:** Verbatim, undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Palmer Luckey - world police to world gun store]] — his foreign-policy doctrine. - [[Palmer Luckey - propagandist who twists the truth]] — from the same Pepperdine event. - Thematically adjacent to [[Might Makes Right Doctrine]].