Anduril founder and CEO Palmer Luckey told an audience in Washington on Wednesday night that he sees his defense firm “as kind of the gun store of our allies and partners around the world,” a nod to the rapidly expanding role the company is playing in the global defense space.

The 33-year-old entrepreneur quickly capitalized on his boyish charm and pop culture references before a friendly audience as he sat for a live-audience interview with the newly minted editor-in-chief of CBS News, Bari Weiss.

Wearing flip-flops and a suit jacket on stage, he also sported a shoulder-length mullet and a soul patch, striking a figure most wouldn’t associate with the billionaire CEO of an up-and-coming weapons company that designs and produces drones, missiles, and sensors with AI autonomous integration. Wednesday’s event was a paid opportunity for subscribers of The Free Press, an outlet Ms. Weiss founded, to see Mr. Luckey in person.

The California executive, an early Trump supporter, is still seen as an outlier by many of his liberal Silicon Valley peers — but he says that’s changing. He told attendees there was a time when it seemed that he and fellow billionaire Peter Thiel were the only Silicon Valley executives he knew backing Donald Trump.

But more and more tech titans, like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, are open to working with the administration.

“I think Zuckerberg is a real changed mind,” he said. “There’s probably some real change of heart.”

With his ties to the Trump administration and his outspoken willingness to build what he calls “killer robots,” Mr. Luckey himself has cultivated a reputation as a brilliant, creative disruptor. In 2012 at the ripe age of 20, he created the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset. Two years later, he sold his company and the technology to Facebook for an undisclosed multibillion-dollar figure.

Despite his laid-back style, Mr. Luckey has been embraced by the Republican establishment.

Sen. John Cornyn considers himself a fan.

“He’s an innovator,” the Texas Republican said. “After seeing him and Elon Musk, the folks at Palantir and elsewhere — you know, you gotta start with a billion dollars before you can actually break in to doing business with the federal government — it just shows how slow and ossified our Department of Defense is in providing the latest and greatest weapons to the warfighter.”

Anduril — named after Aragon’s sword in “Lord of the Rings” — is taking on some of its founder’s heritage in that sense, continually positioning itself as an upstart underdog among a growing number of “hybrid” firms looking to deliver products for sale, not just decades-long contract bids.

Key to the company’s ethos, though, is the idea that its weapons should be manufactured “by the same robot arms, the same plasma cutters, the same laser cutters, the same milling machines, the same staff and personnel that are currently making Ford F-150s and washers and dryers,” according to Mr. Luckey.

He wants to see the defense innovation business moving more quickly, smoothly turning out products with the same efficiency and speed he saw in mass-scale consumer manufacturing.

There will always be skeptics, he said.

“’Oh, that makes it a little bit too short. You wish that you could have double the pressure,’” he said. “Too f——— bad. This is the machine they have, they have 10,000 of them, and you’re going to make it so that we can do it on that machine.”

It’s working. Since 2020, Anduril has earned over $1.5 billion in government contracts and obligations and is poised ot be awarded more. The firm is positioned to take advantage of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, as both the House and the Senate push the piece of must-pass legislation to include benefits for newer defense technology firms.

Anduril isn’t just focused on U.S. defense. Mr. Luckey is a supporter of Ukraine and has made sure that the company is learning lessons on that battlefield while supplying the Ukrainian war effort.

While more establishment Republicans may like the self-described “libertarian-minded guy,” Mr. Luckey is worried about the party’s more isolationist views.

He pointed to former president George W. Bush and the era of the “compassionate conservative” willing to engage abroad as a view that might see him left behind by the Republican Party.

While infuriated by the abuse of foreign aid, Mr. Luckey still wants to see the United States engage geopolitically following the nation’s “moral compass.”

He told a story to illustrate, recalling that he once asked his mother: “Why do we even care about all these sand people out in the desert, what do we care about what they’re doing?”

“As explained by [my] mom to her six-year-old kid, it is important the people who you like, the people who you love, people that you want to maintain relationships with, you can’t just watch them get beat up and be OK with it,” Mr. Luckey said. “You have some moral obligation to be involved.”

That Tony-Stark-like personality, combined with a deep sense that the world needs a strong United States, has won him fans on Capitol Hill.

North Dakota Republican Kevin Cramer, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, calls Mr. Luckey a technology and defense “rock star.”

“I love Palmer,” Mr. Cramer said. “To me he illustrates what we need in our industrial base, and that is creativity, flexibility and a fast turnaround.”

• John T. Seward can be reached at jseward@washingtontimes.com.