Palmer Luckey wants to know if you'd buy a 'Made in America' computer for 20% more than 'Chinese-manufactured options from Apple'

Palmer Luckey, the previous founder of Oculus VR and co-founder of defence tech firm Anduril Industries, has a question for you: Would you buy an all-American computer from the latter for 20% more than an equivalent Apple machine?

Luckey took to X to poll the community at large on their opinions of his hypothetical eaglebox (via Tom's Hardware). At the time of writing, the split is currently 63.5% yes and 36.5% no, with nearly 80,000 respondents giving their opinion on Luckey's potential next venture.

It's not the first time Luckey has posited the idea, either, as he mentioned it previously at the Reindustrialise summit earlier this month. Responding to the question of "who is going to make an American computer again," Luckey said:

"This is one of those things where I started talking to companies years ago about this... I think there's a chance that it's going to be Anduril, unless someone else does it first, which I'd be perfectly happy with."

I suppose the follow up question would be, "how do you plan on making one?" The Federal Trade Commission defines the criteria for a product being identified as "Made in USA" as:

"The product must be 'all or virtually all' made in the U.S. [which] means that the final assembly or processing of the product occurs in the United States, all significant processing that goes into the product occurs in the United States, and all or virtually all ingredients or components of the product are made and sourced in the United States. That is, the product should contain no — or negligible — foreign content."

Which strikes as a touch difficult, given that the vast, vast majority of components involved in a something as complicated as a computer are not currently made in America, or at the very least, cost much more to obtain from US manufacturers. A mere 20% premium over a machine manufactured outside of the US strikes as more than a little optimistic to me.

PCMag attempted to catalogue US-based companies making "high-quality tech products" in 2023, and determined that while some computers and components are produced stateside, they're usually assembled in the US, rather than actually manufactured there.

Still, Palmer Luckey has a storied history of making things happen. He began designing his own VR headsets at the age of 16, going on to co-found Oculus VR before selling the company to Facebook for $3 billion, according to now-Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Luckey left Facebook in 2017—before co-founding defence technology company Anduril Industries, which has since provided US Border Patrol with over 300 autonomous surveillance towers.

The company has since taken over Microsoft's previous role of providing augmented reality headsets to the US Army, among other military-related US government contracts, and last year announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies to "ensure that the US government leads the world in artificial intelligence."

Luckey was also the brain behind the NerveGear, a VR headset art project that purported to use three explosive charges to kill the user when they died in a game. He never finished it, you'll be pleased to hear, and left it to remain as "office art."

Anyway, this new potential "Made in America" PC seems like a better use of his talents, but presumably won't make much headway without an appropriate amount of interest. Hence the poll, which you too can now participate in. Or to put it more accurately—do you feel Luckey?

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