Palmer Luckey's Next Venture Could Build Trump's Wall

Palmer Luckey's name will always exist associated with virtual reality, his $two billion fortune from selling Oculus Rift to Facebook, and subsequent departure following the controversy surrounding secretly bankrolling a group circulating anti-Hillary Clinton propaganda. But that'due south all backside him at present, and his new focus is on technology for defense.

Having $2 billion to play with ways you can do whatever yous similar, or nothing at all. We haven't heard much about Luckey since March, but The New York Times discovered what he is spending his fourth dimension doing, and information technology's sure to be of interest to President Trump.

Rather than finding a way back into virtual reality, Luckey has instead decided to focus on surveillance technology for defense, with a particular focus on LiDAR (light detection and ranging). Today, LiDAR is the method by which self-driving cars sense their surroundings. Luckey's new starting time-upward wants to accept LiDAR and tweak it to human activity equally a new form of surveillance device.

Luckey confirmed his new focus in an email to The New York Times, which stated, "We are spending more ever on defense technology, withal the footstep of innovation has been slowing for decades ... We need a new kind of defense company, one that volition save taxpayer dollars while creating superior applied science to keep our troops and citizens safer."

Protecting a border or military base of operations requires the power to react to a range of threats. Luckey believes LiDAR can be enhanced to discover what is and isn't a threat, and exist setup as a defensive wall without actually having to build a wall. A real wall may terminate a person or vehicle, but information technology won't stop a drone, for instance. But how do you lot tell if it's a drone or just a bird?

LiDAR devices mounted on phone poles will be able to intelligently detect what is and isn't a threat, be information technology on the ground or in the air. Setup a concatenation of these sensors and you stop upward with a line of defence that tin can report back in real-time to a defensive HQ, be that a border guard, military installation, or authorities role.

For now, Luckey's company is self-funded, employs a handful of people, and works out of a warehouse in Southern California. Patently Peter Thiel is preparing to invest in the visitor through his investment visitor Founders Fund. If the funding is there and the thought is sound, Luckey and Thiel may end up giving President Trump the wall he promised, only in a form no one expected.