Oculus Rift Creator's Mysterious Defense Technology Start-Up Is Now Hiring

In one of the stranger career changes from a video game personality, Oculus Rift creator Palmer Luckey is helping lead a new defense company--and it's now hiring.

Anduril Industries, named after Aragorn's reforged sword from The Lord of the Rings, is a military technology startup looking to disrupt the defense world. Luckey and the company assert that the defense industry has stagnated, and there's not enough innovation happening at the moment. So Anduril aims to help develop new technology quickly, focusing on the possibilities of augmented and virtual reality.

It's pretty bizarre to see Luckey jump to military tech from a games-focused approach, especially since his time at Oculus produced some distinctly unserious, non-militaristic moments. However, toward the end of his involvement of the company, Luckey courted quite a bit of controversy, such as when he helped fund an anti-Clinton meme campaign. As a result, I'd guess that Anduril probably gives him a way to stay out of the public spotlight.

It's unclear what, exactly, Anduril is making at the moment, but we do know that it's full of people from the more militaristic side of Silicon Valley. A couple of former Palantir engineers have come on as CEO and COO, while another Palantir engineer--Trae Stephens--co-founded the company and worked on the Trump administration's transition team for the Department of Defense. We also know that they're interested in surveillance technology to be deployed for border defense.

We'll likely have to wait to see what sort of dystopian military tech Anduril comes up with. In the meantime, you can read more about the company's philosophy and its goals at its website.