Anduril Co-Founder Warns: U.S. Munitions Stockpile Would Last One Week In Hot Conflict

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The United States would deplete its munitions stockpile if it entered into genetic warfare against a global superpower, Anduril co-founder Trae Stephens warns.

Stephens, who co-founded of the cutting-edge defense startup alongside Palmer Luckey, dropped the chilling warning on Auren Hoffman’s World of DaaS podcast.

“The reality is, if we got into a hot conflict with a great power, we would run out of munitions in a week,” Stephens told Hoffman. “We’ve built these capabilities that are incredibly exquisite, incredibly custom, with really complicated supply chains.”

Anduril co-founder @traestephens to @auren: “If the U.S. got into a hot conflict with a great power, we would run out of munitions in a week.”

“You see situations like Ukraine where we deplete not only available inventory, we also deplete our own inventory.” pic.twitter.com/DD3mz7H04j

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) April 22, 2025

Stephens, who is also a partner at Peter Thiel’s venture capital fund Founders Fund, pointed out that the U.S. is struggling to supply Saudi Arabia with enough Patriot missiles to counter daily Houthi attacks, leaving the the Middle East Kingdom to seek out additional inventories from other nations due to limited availability.

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“What that means is, our partner nations, like Saudi Arabia, for example, which is fighting this ongoing conflict with the Houthis—they’ve got stuff being shot into their sovereign territory, creating havoc on a daily basis,” Stephens explained. “We cannot sell them enough Patriot missiles. They literally have to go to other partner nations and try to buy their inventory of Patriot missiles”

Stephens also highlighted that in cases like Ukraine, the U.S. is rapidly depleting both its own and available inventories of military capabilities to support the war effort, with limited resupply options, as manufacturers resort to calling retirees back to rebuild assembly lines.

“Then you see situations like Ukraine, where we deplete not only the available inventory but also our own inventory of the capabilities we’re sending to support the war effort, with no ability to actually resupply,” the technology executive said. “The Primes are literally calling people out of retirement to rebuild assembly lines to make some of these capabilities.”

The AP reported back in November 2024:

The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are eating away at critical U.S. weapons stockpiles and could hamper the military’s ability to respond to China should a conflict arise in the Indo-Pacific, the top U.S. commander for that region said Tuesday. Head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Adm. Samuel Paparo cautioned Tuesday that the U.S. providing or selling billions of dollars worth of air defenses to both Ukraine and Israel is now impeding his ability to respond in the Indo-Pacific, such as if China invades Taiwan.

“It’s now eating into stocks, and to say otherwise would be dishonest,” Paparo told the Brookings Institution last year.

Stephens’ stark warning echoes a recent interview with Luckey, who stressed that rebuilding the U.S. manufacturing base is not only feasible but critical to counter rising global volatility.

“If we can’t make the things that we need to maintain our quality of life, then we are actually just subservient to our adversaries,” Luckey, who leads Anduril as CEO, told legendary music producer Rick Rubin on his Tetragrammaton podcast.

.@PalmerLuckey supports tariffs on China, affirming that reindustrialization is both “absolutely” possible and necessary.

“If we can’t make the things that we need to maintain our quality of life, then we are actually subservient to our adversaries.” pic.twitter.com/x4LwS5T8t1

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) April 18, 2025

“Is there a possibility that over time America could get back its manufacturing base? Absolutely,” Luckey told Rubin. “The problem that we did, I mean there’s a million problems, but what we did is hollowed out our country by allowing China into the World Trade Organization and allowing American companies to outsource manufacturing to China without penalty, without import tariffs, without any reason to not do it.”

“Why wouldn’t you, if you’re allowed to just send it to another country where everything’s cheap, where it’s dirt cheap and there’s no environmental regulations and no labor laws, why wouldn’t you do that? And we’ve been able to get a bunch of cheap shit over the last 50 years as a result,” the startup billionaire added. “That has helped the United States. Everyone’s able to buy cheap TVs and cheap cars and cheap stuff because of China’s rise. The flip side of that is that there’s no more manufacturing in the United States.”