How Silicon Valley’s ‘Oppenheimer’ found lucrative trade in AI weapons

From below, the ALTIUS-600M looks like a black cross sailing through the sky. It has a slender fuselage and a stretched wingspan that makes it twice as wide as it is long. Up close, it’s a blend of metal and circuitry, a sleek and ominous testament to human ambition. It is also one of the first artificially intelligent weapons to be deployed by the US in a real war. Shot from a tube like a missile, first its wings telescope outwards, then it identifies its target, flying for up to 280 miles. It circles high in the sky, for as long as four hours, and then strikes on the ground. The “M” is for munitions; on impact it explodes in a ball of flames. The attack drone is made by Anduril Industries, a defence company founded by a 31-year-old Californian inventor called Palmer Luckey. The US government has bought hundreds of ALTIUS-600Ms as part of its military aid packages to Ukraine. It is one of more than a dozen autonomous defence and weapons systems Anduril has built and sold to the Pentag

From below, the ALTIUS-600M looks like a black cross sailing through the sky. It has a slender fuselage and a stretched wingspan that makes it twice as wide as it is long. Up close, it’s a blend of metal and circuitry, a sleek and ominous testament to human ambition. It is also one of the first artificially intelligent weapons to be deployed by the US in a real war. Shot from a tube like a missile, first its wings telescope outwards, then it identifies its target, flying for up to 280 miles. It circles high in the sky, for as long as four hours, and then strikes on the ground. The “M” is for m