- Palmer Luckey has asked: Would you buy a laptop ‘made in America’ of his firm Anduril for 20% more than a MacBook?
- The results of that survey in X currently show that almost two thirds of respondents
- However, how this type could be made at this level of costs is far from being clear, and there are many question signs here
Would you buy a laptop that was completely made in the United States if it cost 20% more than an Apple notebook made in China?
Tom Hardware informs that this is a question that Palmer Lukey has raised in X (and in other places, such as the reindustrialization summit), completed with a survey to test the waters.
Would you buy a Made in America from Anduril for 20% more than the options made in Apple Chinese?July 20, 2025
If you are scratching in the corners of your brain trying to remember for what Lukey was famous in the technological world, it was, of course, the creation of Oculus Rift, although Facebook finally swallowed his company.
Since then, Luckey has been entering some things, including cryptography and military technology, the last of which are the Anduril industries mentioned in the previous publication. Then, given the survey, how many people in X would buy a computer ‘made in Anduril’ America if it were a fifth more expensive than a MacBook (presumably approximately equivalent)?
At the time of writing, with almost 77,000 votes recorded in X, almost two thirds of respondents (63.5%) would buy said Anduril laptop.
Apparently, the answer was not so enthusiastic at the aforementioned reindustrialization summit, based on the clip below also published in X (where Lukey is apparently talking through a robot, yes, do not ask).
This is the time when @Palmerluckey interrupted @ashleevance in Reindustrialize to ask: “How many people at the audience would buy a computer made by Americans if it were 20% more expensive?” The complete clip is a great distillation of your thinking about the opportunity. pic.twitter.com/77qSVBJ52DJuly 20, 2025
However, the commentators claim that the count of the raised hands was underestimated (since the audience was difficult to see because the spotlights shine on stage, which makes sense to be fair). According to the report, I was supposedly more than half in favor, which aligns more closely with the result of Luckey’s survey.
Analysis: A laptop to govern us?
As Tom hardware points out, there is an important distinction here. Luckey talks about a laptop ‘made’ in the United States, and that is very different from a notebook that is simply ‘assembly’ in the United States, with components such as key chips that come from other places (such as China).
Our brother site points to the definition of ‘Made in USA’ presented by the FTC, and that includes not only the assembly that occurs in a factory in the United States, but also “practically all the components of the product are made and obtained in the United States.”
It may be different in the future, but at this point, it seems unlikely that Anduril can obtain components fully made in the United States for the potential laptop. In fact, it seems highly unlikely that this can be done with only a 20% price increase on what Apple charges. (With the highly used of the Asian supply agreements of the MacBook manufacturer with the Asian supply chain, of course, not to mention that any possible rival would have to compete with the now impressively refined M-Series Silicon Apple has in its arsenal).
Leaving aside the complications of the hardware, the other bone of the discussion in X is what this hypothetical portable computer would be executed through an operating system: Windows or Linux? Frankly, there are too many elements in the air with this idea at this time, and too many questions, although there is clearly some basic level of desire for such a product in the United States.
Will that force Luckey to reveal more about how this feat could achieve? Or is this veil concept of laptop just a bit of media exaggeration? As mentioned, there are definitely more questions than answers, and it will certainly be interesting to see if something else will be presented in terms of the latter.
What Lukey has done more recently (in X) is to shoot ‘Cynics’ criticizing the idea as “some crusaders between the impossible and political opportunism promoted by the current tariffs of the United States”, and added that: “Do not miss the point. This problem transcends the administrations. I and others have said it for years.”
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