Anduril founder Palmer Luckey: US universities are falling behind China in training engineers

Palmer Luckey, founder of defense technology company Anduril, says American universities have stopped producing engineers who can actually build hardware with their own hands. In his view, that gives China an advantage far more serious than cheap labor.

What's the complaint about universities

Luckey made the remarks in a conversation with the Hoover Institution, which Fortune was the first to highlight. He argues that American higher technical education has shifted its focus away from practical engineering skills — the ability to design, assemble, and debug hardware until it actually works — toward less applied disciplines. That, he says, is why the engineering advantage is gradually moving to China, where in his view students are still taught to build things with their hands rather than just theorize.

Luckey argues the trend isn't limited to particular schools or majors. He describes it as a systemic shift in what future engineers are taught at all: away from the practice of designing and building real devices and toward more abstract, theoretical forms of training.

Why it's not just about wages

Luckey says explicitly that the gap can't be written off as a product of lower labor costs in China — the usual explanation for Chinese industry's competitiveness. The issue, he says, is a more fundamental skill: the ability to take an engineering idea all the way to a working physical product, not just a theoretical model, a slide deck, or a simulation. According to the Anduril founder, that applied skill is exactly what American universities no longer systematically instill in their students.

• The statement comes from Palmer Luckey, founder of defense technology company Anduril
• The comments were made in a conversation with the Hoover Institution; Fortune highlighted them
• The core claim: US universities no longer teach students practical engineering
• According to Luckey, the gap with China can't be explained by cheaper labor alone

Why the statement carries weight

This isn't an outside commentator talking. Luckey founded a company that builds complex high-tech hardware itself and competes directly for engineering talent with the biggest players in defense and tech. For Anduril, hiring engineers ready for hands-on work, not just theory, isn't an abstract education-policy question but a direct business necessity: the company needs exactly these people to actually design and build its products.

What it means

Luckey's comments are best read as a signal of a broader debate in the US tech industry. Competition with China is increasingly framed not in terms of wages or production volume, but in terms of whom the education system trains and how — and whether it can supply industry with engineers who can not only write code and presentations but physically build hardware. If Luckey is right, the long-term consequences go beyond a single industry dispute: a country's ability to produce complex hardware depends not only on how much it invests in R&D, but also on whether its engineers are trained to turn blueprints and ideas into working devices.

Who Palmer Luckey is in this context

It matters that this assessment comes not from an outside analyst but from a working entrepreneur whose business, Anduril, depends directly on a supply of engineers who can not only design but also physically assemble complex hardware. That's why his comments about the US-China gap in engineering training read less like abstract political rhetoric and more like a direct reflection of the hiring challenges the company is already facing today.