This is a joint investigation by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism and POLITICO.

LONDON — “We find ourselves locked in a critical race – a race for upholding democratic values,” urged Paul Hollingshead, then a senior figure at the weapons tech company Anduril. “We need a fresh blueprint for how advanced industrialized democracies cohere military capability and technology.”

Hollingshead was speaking in May 2023 to the London Defence Conference at Bush House, a towering neoclassical venue once declared the most expensive building in the world. The annual gathering offers a chance for leading politicians to mingle with defense industry executives, military grandees and academics. Among the guests that year was then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Joining Hollingshead on his panel was Lord Dominic Johnson, then minister for investment and now chair of the Conservative party. It was not the first time the two had met. 

Four months earlier, Johnson had been invited to Anduril’s California HQ, where the company had sought the minister’s advice on its U.K. expansion plans, and specifically on how an American firm could be seen as “sufficiently British” to land U.K. government contracts. The meeting was promising — Johnson said he was “keen to help Anduril’s growth into the U.K.,” according to minutes obtained by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ).

Now, a TBIJ and POLITICO investigation can chart how Anduril achieved its expansion into the U.K. with a massive PR operation, winning influential supporters and government contracts worth tens of millions. There is no allegation of wrongdoing by Anduril or any person involved, and the company’s growth only looks set to continue with the government’s emphasis on AI in its Strategic Defence Review.

Founded just eight years ago, the company’s growth in the U.S. has already been remarkable. Backed by conservative billionaire Peter Thiel, Anduril has supplied the U.S. government with AI-powered weapons and autonomous sentry towers used to police the country’s borders. Anduril said the company is also backed by Democrat supporters and its CEO, Brian Schrimpf, has donated to Democrat presidential campaigns.

Since the meeting with Johnson, the company has made extensive behind-the-scenes efforts to curry favor in Westminster — including an aggressive lobbying blitz. It has hired a specialist London PR firm, joined various trade associations and sponsored industry events. It has also launched a charm offensive towards government officials and recruited numerous former Ministry of Defence (MoD) staff.

Anduril’s efforts are already paying off. In this time, the company has won at least £48 million in new contracts. More than that, it has firmly established itself as a central part of the U.K.’s plans for security. And with Keir Starmer last month vowing to make security and defense “the central organizing principle” of his government, it seems likely that Anduril is here to stay. 

Defense disruptor

Anduril, which was founded in 2017 and positions itself as the ultimate defense industry disruptor, has secured over $2 billion worth of contracts with the U.S. government and was recently valued at $30 billion in its latest funding round, led by Palantir founder Thiel’s Founders Fund. 

Thiel is a longtime supporter of Anduril’s co-founder Palmer Luckey, a Californian former child prodigy who shuns the traditional tech executive uniform in favour of Hawaiian shirts and flip flops. Luckey rose to prominence when he founded Oculus VR, which made pioneering virtual reality headsets, aged 19. 

Like Thiel, Luckey has consistently supported Donald Trump and the Republican party, donating to dozens of its candidates. 

Anduril is best known for its relatively cheap drones and autonomous lookout towers that track targets using radar and cameras. Its flagship software product, Lattice, integrates multiple data sources into a single point of view and can be used to “accelerate the closing of complex kill chains,” according to the company’s website.

Noah Sylvia, research analyst at defense think tank RUSI, said modern militaries are increasingly seeking out products like Lattice. “Every physical item along the frontline is collecting some type of data, whether that is acoustic data for shooting down drones, or electromagnetic emissions … [or] radio frequencies.” 

“You’re getting all types of data, and it is simply too much for anyone to be able to handle … human analysts and commanders are unable to make sense of it on their own, and so you need automated systems that are able to sort through this data,” Sylvia said. 

Anduril holds major contracts with various U.S. military agencies, including a $640 million contract with the Marine Corps to protect its bases. Its surveillance towers are used extensively by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, with at least 300 stationed along the southern border. And this year, Anduril announced it will be collaborating with the tech giant Meta on VR products for the military.

Luckey had left Meta in acrimony in 2016, three years after it bought out Oculus, his first company. But when the project was unveiled in May, he seemed willing to put the past behind him. “This is way too important a capability for the United States military to let the last vestiges of a decade-old pissing contest get in the way,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

Now Anduril’s sights are set on a European expansion, and at a moment of historic rearmament for the continent following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In the U.K. at least, Anduril has already built up a powerful network and won lucrative contracts thanks to the seasoned lobbyists and PR experts it has recruited.

On the attack

The day after his panel at the London Defence Conference, Hollingshead followed up with an email to the Department for International Trade. “I had the privilege of sitting on the same panel as Lord Johnson,” he wrote. “He kindly indicated that [Anduril’s]… approach was interesting. I would be happy to discuss further.” 

Lord Johnson and Hollingshead met again the following month at the imposing Old Admiralty Building in the heart of Whitehall, which once served as headquarters of the Royal Navy. 

A Conservative party spokesman told us: “AI technology is an essential part of strengthening the United Kingdom’s defense capacity.”

Since January 2023 Anduril has met with nine senior MoD officials, paying for meals on three occasions, according to transparency data. At a meeting with Paul Lincoln, then a permanent secretary, the company presented him with two copies of a book by an Anduril executive called “The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare.”

Overall, Anduril has met with government officials 19 times since January 2023 (having done so just twice prior to that). Of these, 11 were with the MoD, where much of its government relations push has been focused.

Anduril has also been on a drive to recruit from within the ministry, hiring at least 11 former MoD staff. It has also brought in Iain McLennan, former operations director of British Army helicopter units, as a program manager.

And while Johnson left office after last year’s election, the change of government does not seem to have affected Anduril’s business relationship with the U.K., where the company reportedly plans to build a factory to serve as its European base. In March, Defense Secretary John Healey visited its Washington office to announce a deal to supply Anduril drones to Ukraine worth £30 million (a figure that includes contributions from the U.K. and other allied countries).

RUSI’s Sylvia said Anduril has benefitted from the military tactics deployed in Ukraine, where drones have accounted for more than two thirds of battlefield casualties. “Ukraine is key because not only is it contributing to all of Europe doubling down on defense, but drone companies, software companies… they’re testing their equipment in Ukraine.”

“There’s a term used colloquially: ‘cheap mass.’ It’s [the] ability to field a bunch of stuff that doesn’t cost very much. So instead of a very expensive tank, it’s a bunch of very inexpensive drones … instead of launching very expensive ballistic or cruise missiles, I’m able to create an economy of scale with these very cheap yet precise small munitions.”

Seeking counsel

Though it has stepped up its efforts more recently, Anduril’s first deal with the U.K. government came in 2021. The contract, worth £3.8 million, was to develop an “advanced base protection system” for MoD sites.

Four more MoD contracts have since followed, according to procurement platform Tussell, as well as one for the Home Office, which in 2022 enlisted Anduril to deploy its AI-powered sentry towers — which were recently mapped by Migrants’ Rights Network — reportedly to monitor migrants crossing the Channel in small boats.

An MoD spokesperson told us: “All contracts are awarded in line with fair procurement regulations, with a robust tender process and evaluation.”

To help continue its headway in the U.K., Anduril has recently secured the services of two reputable advisers. In July 2024 it hired VRM Advisory, a boutique firm founded by Victoria Mackarness, who has done PR for the radar company Blighter, which supplies U.K. and U.S. militaries, and the Israeli defense giant Elbit Systems. 

The same month, Anduril made Maury Shenk a director of its U.K. division. A former classmate of Thiel’s from Stanford, Shenk is listed as a technology adviser to the consultancy firm Z/Yen Group, which according to its website counts IBM U.K., Shell, BP and McKinsey as clients. He also advises Steptoe LLP, which until 2024 lobbied for sanctioned Israeli spyware firm NSO Group in the U.S., according to data from the OpenSecrets platform.

Friends in Westminster

As well as engaging in its own lobbying in the U.K., Anduril has joined three industry lobby groups: ADS UK, which specializes in defense sector lobbying; TechUK, the most important trade association for the tech industry; and Make UK Defence, which it joined in May.

The third of those is a trade association that organizes events, flags contract opportunities and meets with politicians on behalf of its more than 600 members. It recently hired Chris Hague, a former researcher for Defense Minister Healey, to its senior staff.

“Glad to see Anduril join [Make UK Defence] because the defense industry needs to tap into manufacturing capacity,” tweeted Fred Thomas, Labour MP for Plymouth Moor View, after the company signed up to the association in May. “This is very much a theme we find ourselves discussing in the APPG for Defence Technology quite frequently.”

That all-party parliamentary group, which Thomas co-founded, was registered in late 2024 in order to “promote engagement with the U.K.’s defense technology sector.” Various companies have contributed £60,000 to its running costs, according to parliamentary records, including the multinational defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Leonardo.

Fred Thomas told us that he champions investment in defense tech as a means “to protect our democracy, to deter our adversaries, and therefore to avoid the sad horror of war.”

He added: “Defence investment also means jobs and growth for communities, like the one I represent in Plymouth.”

Thomas is also a member of parliament’s influential Defence Committee, which in June discussed the success of the U.S. Defence Innovation Unit in bringing emerging technologies to the military.

“The [unit] helped companies like Anduril scale up to the point that they’re now making some of the most advanced uncrewed underwater vessels in the world,” Thomas wrote on LinkedIn after the session. “Yes, The APPG for Defence Technology is helping shift the dial here. But the gap remains stark between how the U.K. and U.S. bring new, disruptive companies into defense.”  

The APPG convenes regular meetings attended by defense industry figures, MPs and their staff. It has welcomed the government’s historic increase in defense spending as well as its recent Strategic Defence Review, which examined the threats faced by Britain and the state of its armed forces. 

The review, published in June, emphasized the importance of technology for the future of defense and cited “a shift towards greater use of autonomy and artificial intelligence.” 

Anduril’s management was “very much happy” with the direction of the review, according to an interview with the company’s U.K. chief Richard Drake by Politics Home.

The government has also this month established a £400 million innovation body within the MoD, apparently modeled on the U.S. innovation unit, to deliver “cutting-edge” military tech to British troops.

The potential benefits for Anduril are obvious, not least because the government also wants to boost its defense spending by 20 percent in the next parliament. Speaking from Bush House at this year’s London Defence Conference — sponsored by Anduril — Keir Starmer outlined his ambitions for “the largest sustained increase since the cold war.”

It was yet another welcome development for the weapons-tech giant that has quietly situated itself at the heart of the U.K.’s defense plans.