A Scottish firm has given financial backing to an AI weapons start-up founded by a US tech billionaire who has links to Donald Trump.
Edinburgh-based investment firm, Baillie Gifford, was one of a group of new investors who took part in a fundraising round for Anduril Industries over the summer which brought in around £1.2bn for the company.
Anduril has pledged to use the money to “hyperscale” its manufacturing to produce “tens of thousands of autonomous weapons systems”.
The company’s products include unmanned drones which can be loaded with explosives and are equipped with technology which allows them to identify targets on their own and a single person to control numerous drones at once.
Anduril is the brainchild of American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey, who made his fortune in virtual reality headsets and has been dubbed Silicon Valley’s answer to Robert Oppenheimer – the physicist who led efforts to develop the atomic bomb.
Luckey, who founded Anduril in 2017, is a vocal supporter of Donald Trump and says he has been “in touch” with Trump’s transition team. He reportedly donated $100,000 to the president elect’s inauguration for his first term and his brother-in-law is Trump ally, Matt Gaetz.
The 31-year-old entrepreneur has said that societies need 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, Luckey has claimed.
The wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Lebanon have shown the horrors which automated weapons are bringing to warfare.
Peter Burt, Drone Wars
Campaigners have criticised Baillie Gifford’s investment and said Anduril’s links to the US right could have “frightening implications”. New technology has the potential to “make it even easier for states to become involved in conflict and commit even greater atrocities with even less accountability”, one activist opposed to the arms trade argued to The Ferret.
However Anduril has said that weaponry equipped with AI and other technology “can make warfare more proportional, more precise, and less indiscriminate than it has ever been before”. It claims its weapons are “engineered to the highest ethical and legal standards” and that the West’s adversaries are “not likely to stop building” similar technologies.
Baillie Gifford declined to comment or confirm how much its investment in Anduril is worth. The Scottish firm – which manages £230bn of money for clients – has a policy in place that excludes any investments in other controversial arms including anti-personnel landmines, biological, chemical and nuclear weapons, and cluster munitions.
Baillie Gifford has previously defended investment in another US company that manufactures unmanned drones, AeroVironment, claiming that while the impacts of war are “devastating”, there is a “technological upgrade cycle at play as governments look to upgrade their military inventories”.
In a leaked report sent to local authority pension funds about the Aerovironment investment, seen by The Ferret, Baillie Gifford said it had discussed the ethics of these weapons “at length internally”.
“Whilst we absolutely recognise that the impact of war and conflict on a human level is devastating, we also feel that it is important to recognise the moral responsibility incumbent upon governments to invest sufficiently in defence to protect their own people,” the company wrote.
Drones, towers and submarines
Baillie Gifford was one of a number of new investors in Anduril which also included some US financial heavyweights.
The success of Anduril’s fundraising has been viewed as proof that the wider venture capital industry is reversing its previous well-documented opposition to financing the weapons sector in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Anduril has signed deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds to deliver its technologies to the US military and has also worked with UK forces. Sentry towers built by the company and equipped with AI technology are also located along the US-Mexico border to detect attempted migrant crossings into the US.
Anduril’s Altius autonomous drones have been used by Ukraine in the war with Russia. These unmanned drones can carry out both reconnaissance missions and be configured as a kamikaze munition to attack high value targets.
One operator can control numerous drones at a single time and they are capable of identifying targets on their own, although a human still makes the decision about whether to strike. Taiwan has also reportedly signed a deal with the US Government to buy hundreds of the Altius drones.
Other products Anduril produces or is developing include the Roadrunner, which is designed to intercept enemy drones and missiles, and the Ghost Shark, an autonomous submarine.
Luckey said in October 2023, in the aftermath of the Hamas attacks on 7 October, that Israel had his “unqualified support” and the backing of Anduril in a “moral sense”.
There is no evidence that Anduril weapons are currently being used by Israel’s military.
Luckey told the Wall Street Journal on October 17 2023: “I obviously can’t talk about what we’re doing over there specifically, that would be a question for a different day and a different group of people.”
Luckey has described himself as a “big league” supporter of Donald Trump and bankrolled a group of pro-Trump “shitposting” internet trolls in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election – a practice of posting deliberately provocative comments to upset or distract.
His sister, Ginger, is married to former US Republican representative Matt Gaetz, who was nominated for the powerful role of Attorney General in the new administration before withdrawing with allegations of sexual misconduct hanging over him.
You need people like me who are sick in that way and who don’t lose any sleep making tools of violence.
Palmer Luckey
One of Anduril’s high profile financial backers is Peter Thiel, a right-wing donor who has given money to both Trump and his vice-president elect, JD Vance. Thiel’s company, Founders Fund, was one of the organisers of the fundraising round that Baillie Gifford invested in.
A partner at Founders Fund and Anduril co-founder, Trae Stephens, is reportedly being considered for a senior position at the US defense department.
‘Flame of the West’
Anduril is named after a mythical sword in JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy of books and translates to “Flame of the West” in the fictional elvish language.
The name is a nod to the company’s proclaimed mission to “rebuild the arsenal of democracy” and the US military industry which, Anduril says, has “helped to deter war and maintain peace for decades” but is now being left behind by new technology.
That is not a view shared by the campaign group, Drone Wars, which opposes the use of armed drones and other new lethal military technology. “The wars in Gaza, Ukraine and Lebanon have shown the horrors which automated weapons are bringing to warfare”, Drone Wars’ Peter Burt told The Ferret.
He continued: “There’s no question that Anduril is a scary company run by a bunch of hard line right wing warmongers. It’s hard to see how anyone can even pretend that investment in such a company is ethical.
“The hard right have always taken the view that use of force is the only way to maintain peace, by which they mean their own position. It’s childishly naïve to believe that the way to peace is by arming yourself to the teeth. The only thing violence begets is violence.”
Emily Apple, an activist with the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), said Baillie Gifford’s investment in Anduril was “deeply disturbing and grotesquely unethical with frightening implications given the links to Trump and the far right”.
“New technology has the potential of making it even easier for states to become involved in conflict and commit even greater atrocities with even less accountability”, Apple argued.
“The notion that weapons can ‘deter war and maintain peace for decades’ is ludicrous. Arms companies have no interest in peace. War is good business for these merchants of death, pushing up share prices and increasing profits.”
Anduril was approached for comment but did not respond.
Where’s the moral high ground in a landmine that can’t tell the difference between a school bus full of kids and a Russian tank?
Palmer Luckey
Palmer Luckey has previously defended the use of AI in weapons systems. “What is the moral victory in being forced to use larger bombs with more collateral damage because we are not allowed to use systems that can penetrate past Russian or Chinese jamming systems and strike precisely,” he said during a conversation at Pepperdine University last month.
Luckey added: “Where’s the moral high ground in a landmine that can’t tell the difference between a school bus full of kids and a Russian tank?”
In written evidence to the UK parliament Anduril director, David Allen, said in April 2023 that its products are “engineered to the highest ethical and legal standards”.
Allen wrote: “It speaks volumes that Western societies put so much careful thought into these important ethical debates, and we should challenge states like China and Russia to be as transparent as we are on such questions.
“But our adversaries are not likely to stop building such technologies.
“There is no moral high ground when the most moral nations have the least effective weaponry. And so, we build weapons not because we want to, but because we believe we have to – in order to secure a future that is safe, prosperous and free.”
Last month, author Richard Flanagan declined to accept his £50,000 prize for winning the prestigious Baillie Gifford prize for nonfiction until the firm sold its shares in fossil fuel companies.
Flanagan’s move followed Baillie Gifford’s sponsorship of a number of UK literary festivals ending following protests over its holdings in fossil fuels.
Baillie Gifford has pointed out that its total shares in fossil fuel companies are lower than most of its competitors and says it has provided significant support to companies “at the vanguard of the energy transition”.
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Main image: A U.S. Marine with Black Sea Rotational Force 17.1 launches an unmanned aerial vehicle during exercise Sea Breeze 2017 in Mykolayivka.
