Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Well, Cesday two is well underway, and with that in mind,
Speaker 2: let's go to Bloomberg Tech co hosts Caroline Hyde and
Speaker 2: Ed Ludlow, who are on the ground in Las Vegas
Speaker 2: with Palmer Lucky he is the founder of and Duryll
Speaker 2: over to you guys.
Speaker 1: Thank Katie, thank you very much. Indeed, and we are
Speaker 1: on the floor of CS. But we got some serious
Speaker 1: conversations to have, not just about retro technology that has
Speaker 1: been brought back by Palme Lucky in one of his startups,
Speaker 1: but we also want to talk about ANDREIL because very
Speaker 1: much defense SEC is in the IVS storm.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 1: We have two truth social posts coming out from the
Speaker 1: President talking about the publicly traded defense companies shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing stop buybacks, shouldn't be paying dividends, and need to
Speaker 1: focus on investing in America.
Speaker 3: Where do you think that.
Speaker 1: Is being pointed at and why do you think it's
Speaker 1: being announced now?
Speaker 3: Well, you can probably guess I fall on this issue.
Speaker 4: President Trump is saying that he wants to see defence
Speaker 4: companies building new plants, building new factories, delivering on time,
Speaker 4: and then maintaining systems cost effectively, and that's I mean,
Speaker 4: trying to do more. That is why I started in
Speaker 4: early years ago, because I looked at the United States
Speaker 4: and defense industrial base and realized we weren't moving fast enough,
Speaker 4: weren't building new plants, we weren't building the new technologies.
Speaker 3: That we needed.
Speaker 4: And so I'd say I'm I'm broadly aligned. Personally speaking,
Speaker 4: I think dividends and buybacks are actually very very different
Speaker 4: in their tenor, and I think probably I'm much more
Speaker 4: on the sides of not allowing these companies to do dividends,
Speaker 4: certainly not when they're years behind on critical programs where
Speaker 4: they are failing.
Speaker 3: To invest in new things.
Speaker 4: Stock buybacks are a little different because you're investing in yourself.
Speaker 4: You're racing I believe that my future is better than
Speaker 4: my past. That's different than a dividend, which effectively ends
Speaker 4: up just being a tax on tax payers to pay
Speaker 4: for defense, straight into the pockets of public market investors.
Speaker 3: So I look at these those things a little differently.
Speaker 4: Big picture, if these companies were doing really well, and
Speaker 4: if they were living up to their end of the bargain,
Speaker 4: I don't think you would see any action from Trump
Speaker 4: or others on this. It's really a reflection of how
Speaker 4: many problems we have with our defense industrial bases.
Speaker 5: These are you'll compare to this, right, Parma, You compete
Speaker 5: against them for contracts.
Speaker 3: That's the same pot of money. That's right, and you know,
Speaker 3: to be fair.
Speaker 5: In the time that you and I have been doing interviews,
Speaker 5: you are typically transparent. One of the provisions that the
Speaker 5: president proposes is a salary cap of five million dollars.
Speaker 5: In the Bloomberg story outline some of the comp of
Speaker 5: those CEOs. Would you be willing to say what you
Speaker 5: pay yourself to Anderill and if you would abide by I.
Speaker 3: Pay myself one hundred thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 5: So significantly less than a five million dollar cap.
Speaker 4: True, But I also own a lot of my company,
Speaker 4: and so so you know this this measure is not
Speaker 4: really written in a way where it's intended to hit
Speaker 4: new companies starting new things.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: Act like if Kelly Johnson were alive today and he
Speaker 4: owned a bunch of you know, Lockheed Martin or north
Speaker 4: from Grummer or Raytheon, I don't think that anyone would
Speaker 4: have nearly much of a problem with him. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: pay myself a hund one thousand dollars a year. That's
Speaker 4: my compensation package. I own a bunch of ander all
Speaker 4: because I started the company. That's so my motivation is
Speaker 4: to try and build in the biggest thing possible. I
Speaker 4: will say people are fairly critigue and said, but Palmer,
Speaker 4: you know, are you really a neutral party here? Are
Speaker 4: you really in a position to comment given you're competing
Speaker 4: with these companies? And I'd say two things. One, these
Speaker 4: measures do apply an equal measure to me. I now
Speaker 4: cannot pay dividends. I now cannot be stock buive acts
Speaker 4: if I'm not investing in new plants, if I'm not
Speaker 4: doing these two things. The other thing is it's always
Speaker 4: tricky when you want to I'm in defense because I
Speaker 4: wanted to help solve these problems.
Speaker 3: Right. It's actually the same thing with like mod Retro
Speaker 3: in the gaming.
Speaker 4: Space, like, oh, of course Palmer would criticize these other
Speaker 4: game companies, after all, he's in the gaming space. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: but I'm in the gaming space because I want to
Speaker 4: solve these problems. It's kind of this like catch twenty two,
Speaker 4: like like if you're outside it, they'll say, well, why
Speaker 4: don't you do something about it then and you do
Speaker 4: something like who cares what you're doing, You're just part
Speaker 4: of the problem. It's always been emotionally difficult for me.
Speaker 1: We also have posts that President Trump is thinking more
Speaker 1: than a trillion should be invested in the area of
Speaker 1: defense budget budget not an.
Speaker 3: Anti defense or anti defense company. That's not for sure.
Speaker 3: That's for sure.
Speaker 1: What's interesting is your company is Dare I say it
Speaker 1: considering going public?
Speaker 3: Yes? Would your CEO?
Speaker 1: Do you think the CEO that needs the business when
Speaker 1: it's com public should be under these sorts of restrictions
Speaker 1: from an executive order? Do you think that that's going
Speaker 1: to be an ish?
Speaker 4: I think that when you are on the doll and
Speaker 4: when you're effectively run on the public's wallet, that the
Speaker 4: public should be able to impose whatever restrictions they want
Speaker 4: on you. I like, you're not asked whether it should
Speaker 4: be like, if I am getting paid by taxpayers, they
Speaker 4: should have the ability to elect people, elect representatives, elect
Speaker 4: who will then nominate people who can hold me to
Speaker 4: account in any way they wish. If they want to
Speaker 4: say that I only pay myself five million dollars until
Speaker 4: I'm caught up with my schedules, they should be allowed
Speaker 4: to do that.
Speaker 3: If they say that I'm not allowed to pay myself one.
Speaker 4: Dollar until I get caught up, I think they should
Speaker 4: be allowed to do that. When you are working on
Speaker 4: the PU, when you are working on taxpayer NIME, there
Speaker 4: is no level of oversight or intervention that I am against. Conceptually, now,
Speaker 4: I think some of these might be bad moves, they
Speaker 4: might not necessarily help the defense spase, But in concept
Speaker 4: I think everything should be on the table, and I
Speaker 4: think it's even good.
Speaker 3: Maybe there scarce of people.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you don't necessarily go to people and say this
Speaker 4: is the way it's going to be forever. You say
Speaker 4: this is how it's going to be until you get
Speaker 4: your act together. You remember being a teenager and your
Speaker 4: parents say you're grounded until X, Y and Z bring
Speaker 4: up your grades, solve your problems.
Speaker 3: And then we will talk about altering the deal. You say,
Speaker 3: but this deal has so many problems. If it's life,
Speaker 3: this my whole life.
Speaker 4: If I'm grounded for the rest of my life, that
Speaker 4: means I'll have no social life. And your parents are
Speaker 4: not necessarily looking at ground you for life. They're saying,
Speaker 4: right now, you're grounded. And I think that that's what
Speaker 4: you're seeing right now. It's not necessarily a lifetime.
Speaker 3: Let me jump in here.
Speaker 5: I want to bring the Bloomberg television audience the reporting
Speaker 5: because these are two truth social posts by the president.
Speaker 3: That's right, their proposals.
Speaker 5: But what Bloomberg's reporting in their last hour is that
Speaker 5: he is considering an EO according to sources, to make
Speaker 5: this happen. Answer this derail on track with the pledges
Speaker 5: and commitments it's made in Ohio, the projects that it
Speaker 5: is contractually obliged to the military on, not just in
Speaker 5: this country but around the world.
Speaker 4: There are a handful of things where we are not,
Speaker 4: but in most cases we are. So like you brought
Speaker 4: up Ohio, we're building this is a huge plant arsenal
Speaker 4: one in Columbus, Ohio, where we're building autonomous spider jets
Speaker 4: and a bunch of other things, building about six million
Speaker 4: square feet there. We're actually ahead of schedule on that.
Speaker 4: We had a bunch of people from Ohio that we
Speaker 4: hired the first round of factory workers.
Speaker 3: We've brought them out to.
Speaker 4: California on our dime, so we were housing them, we're
Speaker 4: paying them, and we brought them so that we can
Speaker 4: put them into our existing factory, teach them how ANDRO works,
Speaker 4: you know in doctrinate them into our way of manufacturing,
Speaker 4: our way of thinking.
Speaker 3: And we've actually already finished that training.
Speaker 4: Process and we've already sent them back to Ohio where
Speaker 4: they're helping stand up the factory. We're going into production
Speaker 4: this summer and we have a new batch of people
Speaker 4: that have already been sent back. So on Arsenal one,
Speaker 4: we are ahead of schedule. We are hitting our commitments.
Speaker 4: I think we're building a new plant to build new things,
Speaker 4: and we're doing it on our own dime. We're spending
Speaker 4: nine hundred million dollars of our own money to build
Speaker 4: this plan.
Speaker 1: Where aren't you are very transparent? In some places you're not?
Speaker 1: Are the weapons working is you want them to? Are
Speaker 1: they performing in the field?
Speaker 4: So some of these things I can talk about, some
Speaker 4: that I can't talk about. But like, for example, I
Speaker 4: have a project that is a man portable counter UAS
Speaker 4: system and oh Androl sorry I am Androl in my perspective, Yeah,
Speaker 4: sorry about that. Androl has a project building a man
Speaker 4: portable counter UAS system. We really wanted to have that
Speaker 4: actually fielded right about now, and instead, because of a
Speaker 4: variety of research. Look, we're developing basically a thing that
Speaker 4: goes on a person and it shoots down drones that
Speaker 4: are trying to attack you.
Speaker 3: It's turned out to be a more technically challenging problem
Speaker 3: than we thought.
Speaker 4: Now in that case, it's not a failure of you know,
Speaker 4: like we're not building a factory or we don't want
Speaker 4: to invest. It's just it's a harder technical problem than
Speaker 4: we thought. I suspect that we're going to continue to
Speaker 4: run too those if you if you only build things
Speaker 4: with no technical risk, you're not trying hard enough. I think,
Speaker 4: androle will continue to do things that from time to
Speaker 4: time will turn out to be harder than we thought.
Speaker 4: But you know, I just need to flip more heads
Speaker 4: than tails.
Speaker 1: When we're thinking about where you stand, where US stands
Speaker 1: versus China, yep, where does it intens of drone technology?
Speaker 1: We're in this context of a geopolitical strain that started
Speaker 1: this year off with Venezuela. We look now to Russia.
Speaker 1: How do you see China and the Taiwan question.
Speaker 4: China has an incredibly strong drone industry. It is largely
Speaker 4: a result of state intervention. It's largely a result of
Speaker 4: industrial policy, of supply chain investments that the government has made,
Speaker 4: and even trade deals that China has made around the
Speaker 4: world to allow for these drones to freely flow out
Speaker 4: in other marketplaces. Yeah, China has the best rone industry
Speaker 4: in the world. It's not even close. It's definitely a
Speaker 4: weakness that the United States has. Now you saw recently
Speaker 4: this ban on Dji drones. The intention there is to
Speaker 4: try and fix that. You can fix these things. The
Speaker 4: US is capable of building drones, it's just we aren't
Speaker 4: capable of competing with the labor laws, emissions laws, and
Speaker 4: prices from coal plants, et cetera that you see in China.
Speaker 3: So I'm hoping that this band on Dji.
Speaker 4: Drones results in a strong US drone market popping up
Speaker 4: to take its place over the next one two three years.
Speaker 4: Androl actually as a drone that we were showing off
Speaker 4: in Japan recently that's made with one hundred percent Japanese parts.
Speaker 4: Japan is another nation that can build their own drones.
Speaker 4: They don't need Dji, but it's hard for that to
Speaker 4: make economic sense when China's allowed to flow the market.
Speaker 5: Let's pivot and talk about modern retro sure for the
Speaker 5: lay person, No, I got to do it. That's why
Speaker 5: you're here right. Your background's in virtual rally and you've
Speaker 5: basically rebirthed the game Boy. I don't know if there's
Speaker 5: some IP we'll issue on that.
Speaker 4: So mod Retro is actually a company I started when
Speaker 4: I was about fourteen years old, combining retro technology and
Speaker 4: modern technology to build these kind of tributes that bring
Speaker 4: the best of both worlds. So like we make, for example,
Speaker 4: something called the mod Retrochromatic. Think of it as like
Speaker 4: the ultimate tribute to the Nintendo game Boy. It's a
Speaker 4: game Boy cartridge compatible.
Speaker 3: Console that has an illumin magnesium shell.
Speaker 4: Instead of a plastic window over the screen, it has
Speaker 4: a lab grown sapphire crystal window. It's the largest sapphire
Speaker 4: crystal window of any product ever, way bigger than you
Speaker 4: would typically see on like a rolex or something, because
Speaker 4: I've got to cover an entire screen. We're also building
Speaker 4: a new console called the mod Retro M sixty four,
Speaker 4: which plays Nintendo sixty four games. I think of it
Speaker 4: again as like the ultimate Nintendo sixty four. What would
Speaker 4: it look like if the Nintendo sixty four were built
Speaker 4: with no with you know, money, is no object, the
Speaker 4: ultimate thing, and we've got some other new stuff coming
Speaker 4: down the pipe as well. But you know, I've been
Speaker 4: coming to cees for seventeen years now. First year I
Speaker 4: came with twenty ten. I think it was sixteen or
Speaker 4: seventeen years. All the time, I had to use a
Speaker 4: fake ID to get into the show because you had
Speaker 4: to be an adult and you had to be industry.
Speaker 3: So I just had a fake.
Speaker 4: Business card and a fake ID, and I pretended to
Speaker 4: be from a different company. Now I'm coming with a
Speaker 4: real ID and with a real company, and I'm seeing
Speaker 4: all my friends from the VR days, all my friends
Speaker 4: from the Retro days, and of course a lot of
Speaker 4: defense presence here too.
Speaker 1: Can mod Retro be?
Speaker 4: Mod Retro is never going to be as big as
Speaker 4: It's never going to be as big as it pardly currently. Look,
Speaker 4: you've got a couple dozen people building things for people
Speaker 4: who really really care about this stuff. I think that
Speaker 4: there's some things we have coming down the line that
Speaker 4: are going to be more broadly interesting. For example, we're
Speaker 4: working on something I won't get into the details because
Speaker 4: I'm not supposed to talk about it. It's a TV
Speaker 4: that works, so you know, if you've ever bought a
Speaker 4: smart TV and had problems, imagine a TV then instead
Speaker 4: it just did what it was supposed to.
Speaker 1: I guess he was complaining about is TV today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 4: Look, there's a lot of things that we're working on
Speaker 4: that are kind of learning from the lessons of the
Speaker 4: past and trying.
Speaker 3: To just bring them into the future.
Speaker 4: Like what would you rather have a smart TV or
Speaker 4: a TV that shows what you plug into it? I
Speaker 4: think I know what most people would want, but that's
Speaker 4: a pretty retro idea.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, now to a television that works.
Speaker 5: Pa Ma Lucky, founder of Anderrail, founder of mod Retro,
Speaker 5: also cto andeil I would say, frankly, could not have
Speaker 5: had a more timely conversation given the headlines of the day,