@hyperbolic.ai: Asked what "subterranean" was doing on Anduril's website, Palmer Luckey didn't hedge. The company has working prototypes, and he thinks the next warfighting domain, before the moon, is underground. The idea isn't new. Both the US and the Soviet Union spent the Cold War believing the crust of the earth would become a battlespace, with machines moving through rock the way submarines move through water. Luckey's point is that nobody abandoned it because it was impossible. The Cold War ended and the funding stopped. What changed is autonomy, and the reason is pure economics. Luckey explained it elsewhere: with digging, diameter is expensive and length is basically free. A wide tunnel costs enormously more than a narrow one, but once it's bored, extending it costs almost nothing. Take out the human who needs room to sit, and the machine shrinks from feet across to inches. The whole thing becomes affordable. Scale of the problem: the US Army's own manual on underground operations counts more than 10,000 known deeply buried military facilities worldwide. Researchers have mapped thousands of kilometres of missile tunnels in China alone. Same old idea, new math. Follow @hyperbolic.ai for more content on AI and technology. Media: Axios #ai #anduril #palmerluckey #defensetech #technology

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Thursday 01 October 2026 21:47:04 GMT