On the Core Memory podcast, billionaire Palmer Luckey, co-founder of defense technology company Anduril Industries, criticized American companies in China.
He said: “I don’t have a lot of sympathy for people who pretend that manufacturing in the U.S. is this impossible, order-of-magnitude problem. A lot of it is very self-serving. They want to justify why they’re in China. They want to justify why it’s OK for them to stay in China. They know that when sanctions hit as a result of a potential Taiwan conflict, they want to say, ‘Nobody could’ve predicted this, and I had no choice anyway.’ They don’t want to admit that it is a choice.”
[NOTE: Luckey is one of three Trump supporters selected by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon’s Project Meridian, an initiative launched “to study future warfare, identify critical technologies, and draft a 120-day assessment due on January 28, 2027.” The other two are fellow billionaire Elon Musk, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.]
Luckey added, “If Chinese subsidized steel is a third of the price of American unsubsidized steel, a tariff isn’t going to work. But if the price difference really is 30%, then a tariff could bring the American steel industry back. It’s critically important to get this question right, and there aren’t enough people talking about it.”
Luckey followed-up, writing: “American-made products are not impossible. Stories about iPhones costing $37,000 or laptops costing $100,000 are psy-ops, sometimes pushed by foreign adversaries but more commonly by American corporations that want anything but an upset to the status quo.”
It’s really simple. Our Robots and AI vs their Robots and AI. If we can catch up on robotics/software , and can stay ahead on AI, there is zero reason manufacturing won’t come back, or initiate here.
At Cost Plus Drugs, the only thing holding us back from making generic drugs cheaper in Dallas than we can buy from Asia, are the fees we have to pay.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) October 18, 2026
Billionaire Mark Cuban replied to Luckey: “It’s really simple. Our Robots and AI vs their Robots and AI. If we can catch up on robotics/software, and can stay ahead on AI, there is zero reason manufacturing won’t come back, or initiate here. At Cost Plus Drugs, the only thing holding us back from making generic drugs cheaper in Dallas than we can buy from Asia, are the fees we have to pay.”
Cuban added, “I wrote this 10 years ago. Only the numbers have changed,” and provided a link to a blog post he wrote in December 2016 titled, ‘Dear Mr. President, My Suggestion for Infrastructure Spending.’