Yesterday Donald Trump came to the Baltimore area to announce that Andruil, a drone manufacturer, would be getting a $6.6 billion check to set up a factory and build parts for nuclear subs. Trump said the facility would be part of the new “golden age” of shipbuilding, and rambled about football players making a lot of money.
The facility, named Arsenal-2, is being funded with $2.9 billion from the US Navy and another $3.7 billion from private backers. Trump said US taxpayers would “receive a 40 percent stake,” but it’s not clear what that actually means. The facility is supposed to start churning out these mysterious robo-kill-boats sometime in 2030.
Trump was joined by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao.
“You can run, but you only die tired,” Cao said. “And you know what? You piss us off, we're going to sneak into your country in the middle of the night and snatch you and your wife while you sleep in your beds.” No, he really said that.
It was an interesting distraction from Trump’s war(s) in the Middle East, and the prices of food; and gas; and electricity; and the record number of Americans starting to wonder if maybe this loudmouthed 80-year-old New York slumlord and Page Six publicity hound might be be a terrible leader.
Andruil is headed up by Palmer Luckey. When he was a child prodigy, Facebook sank a billion dollars into his homebrew virtual reality headset and gave him a job. But Luckey developed a reputation as someone who did not play well with the other children in Silicon Valley. He drove his Hummer with orange toy machine gun mounts to work, and had a libertarian ethos — then he was accused of funding an online smear campaign against 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
The Daily Beast later reported Luckey was You’re Fired for his deep-pocketed political shitposting. After it became impossible to deny, Luckey admitted he was behind the scheme. Unofficially, however, Luckey was fired because he was skipping out on work and nobody wanted to work with him (or vice-versa) … and/or because his billion dollar baby, now known as Oculus Rift, was found to use tech ripped off from another company to the tune of $500 million. Facebook appealed the ruling, both companies settled for an undisclosed amount, and Luckey scampered off to continue cosplaying as a half-naked anime girl. Ten years later, in a New York Times profile, Luckey still comes across as an arrogant child who’s “infamously good at holding grudges” (with his giant pile of money).
Now, using his love of Robert Heinlein’s bug-stomping fascist fantasy Starship Troopers, Luckey builds killer robots for Customs and Border Patrol and and the US Department of Defense.
Andruil is already building autonomous aerial drones at its shiny new Ohio facility, Arsenal-1, which comes complete with its own hyperscaling data center and truckload of cash for Ohio state’s football program. The facility in Baltimore would dramatically expand Andruil’s autonomous sea capabilities, and potentially allow them to start playing with Coast Guard vessels.
But Andruil’s failures outweigh their success. Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported multiple instances of Andruil’s drones failing at trials, and on the battlefield in Ukraine. During an exercise with autonomous boat swarms, sailors warned about “continuous operational security violations, safety violations, and contracting performer misguidances (Anduril Industries),” adding that Andruil needed to immediately fix its toys (and have someone vet their work) to avoid “extreme risk to force and potential for loss of life.”
Like any arms dealer whose gizmos don’t do what it says on the box, Andruil says its failures are all part of the creative process. Like when a counterdrone system crashed and started a 22-acre fire near Oregon’s Pendleton Airport. Or when its Altius drone 8,000 ft. whoopsie-doodled outside Elgin Air Force Base. Or when the Russians kept jamming their drones’ GPS in Ukraine.
Good thing Luckey’s a vocal Trump supporter, and a prolific Republican donor. In August, The Guardian reported Luckey had personally given $5.9 million to Republicans since 2017. He’s also a valued bundler, known for holding fancy money begging parties for Republican candidates at the top and bottom of the ballot.
It’s not exactly clear to anyone why a company like Andruil is building drone boats at Sparrows Point. The area is already home to another sea drone manufacturing facility. BlackSea recently opened a factory that’s been pushing out autonomous boats to refuel US Navy vessels. But BlackSea is only a couple hundred employees, Andruil is calling for thousands of jobs, and even more that will support those jobs.
It’s also not clear why the White House didn’t even mention the Francis Scott Key Bridge. Or why it (allegedly) barred Maryland Gov. Wes Moore from the event. The White House claims they did no such thing, and implied that Moore was grandstanding for his own 2026 reelection campaign and potential 2028 run for the White House.
In a statement, Ammar Moussa, a spox for Moore, said, “Governor Moore has always said he will work with anyone when it comes to delivering for Marylanders but bow to no one when it comes to standing up for them,”
Before Trump even arrived, there were already two or three dozen Trump supporters standing on the side of the road waving signs and desperate for a glimpse of the presidential limo known as “The Beast.” It was only 2 p.m., and Trump wasn’t expected to arrive until 4 p.m. And while the Beast never showed up (Trump flew in and out on Marine One), today’s press pool did get a lot of friendly waves from Trump supporters who think all big black cars look alike.
Eventually, a group of counter-protesters showed up. They stood on the other side of the street separated by a median and several police officers who were trying not to look bored. Out-numbered two-to-one, some of the counter protesters laughed at the elderly MAGA yelling at them to get a job.
The joke, as it was explained to me, is that all the good union jobs that used to be staples of the ports, and the old Bethlhem Steel plant — where Andruil will build their factory — were long gone. Amazon and other big box retailers slapped massive distribution centers in Sparrows to fill the space left by the steel plant, but they don’t play with unions. And neither does Andruil.
In fact, a number of Amazon workers were forced to walk at least a mile to their warehouse(s) as police had shut down all the roads in and out of Sparrows while Trump was speaking. Normally, they’d just be able to take a bus around the Point. Now, they’d have to explain to a robot butler that they were late for work because Trump was yammering on about Super Intelligence.
What the fuck is it with all of these lib-bro-tarian CHUDs who somehow read The Lord of the Rings without realizing that the environment destroying industrial war machine assholes with the magic spying glasses who wanted to reorder the world to their liking were THE BAD GUYS?
Jeff Tiedrich today:
Seriously, if Donny can’t eat it, or fuck it, or make money off of it, he has no use for it — and there’s nothing in the world that’s going to make him care about it.