- Palmer Luckey has asked: Would you buy a ‘Made in America’ laptop from his company Anduril for 20% more than a MacBook?
- The results of this vote on X are currently showing nearly two -thirds of the respondents would
- However, how such a notebook can be realized at this cost level is far from clear – and there are plenty of questions here
Would you buy a laptop that was fully made in America if it cost 20% more than an Apple Notebook made in China?
Toms Hardware reports that this is a question that Palmer Luckey has asked on X (and elsewhere, such as the Reindustralize summit), complete with a vote to test the water.
Would you buy one made in the America computer from Anduril for 20% more than Chinese-made options from Apple?July 20, 2025
If you scrape around in the corners of your brain trying to remember what Luckey was famous for in the tech world, of course, it was the creation of Oculus Rift – though his company was eventually extinguished by Facebook.
Since then, Luckey has deep in a few things, including crypto and military tech, the latter of which are the said Anduril industries in the above posts. So, given the vote, how many people on X would buy a ‘Made in America computer from Anduril’ if it was a fifth more expensive than one (presumably about equivalent spec) MacBook?
At the time of writing, with almost 77,000 votes registered on X, almost two-thirds of respondents (63.5%) would buy such an Anduril-laptop.
The response was apparently not so enthusiastic at the aforementioned Summit for Reindustralize, based on the clip below, also posted on X (where Luckey seems to talk through a robot, yes, don’t ask).
Here’s the moment when @palmerluckey interrupted @ashleevance at Reindustralize to ask, “How many people in the audience would buy an American -made computer if it was 20% more expensive?” The full clip is a great distillation of his thinking about the opportunity. pic.twitter.com/77Qsvbj52dJuly 20, 2025
However, commentators claim that the rough number of raised hands were underestimated (which the audience was difficult to see due to spotlights shining on stage, making sense to be fair). According to the report, it was reportedly more than half that match Luckey’s voting result.
Analysis: A laptop to rule us?
As Tom’s hardware points out, there is an important distinction here. Luckey is talking about a laptop ‘made’ in the US, and it’s very different from a notebook that is only ‘gathered’ in America – with components such as the most important chips coming from elsewhere (like China).
Our sister website points to the definition of ‘Made in USA’ as put forward by the FTC, and this not only includes the assembly that happens at a factory in the United States, but also ‘virtually all components of the product are made and picked up in the US’.
It may be different in the future, but at this point it seems unlikely that Anduril could buy completely us-made components for the potential laptop. In fact, it seems very unlikely that this could only be realized with a 20% price increase above what Apple is charging. (What about MacBook Maker’s very geared appointments with the Asian supply chain, of course, not to mention anyone who would be would have to compete with the now impressively refined M-Series Silicon Apple has in his Armory).
Hardware complications aside, the second battle of X is what this hypothetical laptop would run using an operating system – Windows or Linux? Honestly, too many elements are in the air with this idea right now, and too many questions – although there is clearly a basic level of desire for such a product in the United States.
Will it force Luckey to reveal more about how he can achieve this business? Or is this vague portable concept just a bit of media hype? As mentioned, there are certainly more questions than answers, and it will certainly be interesting to see if something more is coming in terms of the latter.
What Luckey has recently done (on X) is to shoot back on ‘cynics’ who criticize the idea as “some crosses between impossible and naked political opportunism driven by current American tariffs,” it adds: “Don’t miss the point. This problem exceeds the administrations. Even and others have said it for years.”
