THE GEEK WHO BUILDS LETHAL AI WEAPONS

He likes to dress up as his favourite Dungeons & Dragons character every Wednesday and had a huge aquarium built at his home for his pet shark. Meet Palmer Luckey, the eccentric billionaire engineer who has a hotline to US president Donald Trump

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HE’S the kind of guy who buys decommissioned nuclear missile silos buried 60 metres underground across America just because he can.

He has six helicopters – including a Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk – a couple of diesel-electric submarines and a boat designed for inserting Navy Seals into enemy territory.

Given this, it’s hardly surprising that Palmer Luckey’s waterfront home on the tip of Lido Isle at Newport Beach, south of Los Angeles, is far from ordinary.

It boasts a 30 000-litre saltwater aquarium built into his white and teal living room. His pet shark, Bonk – aptly named because he used to knock into things – once lived there, but was killed by his lobster, Mr Lobster.

“He’s gone now. He got into a King Kong versus Godzilla kind of fight with the lobster,” Palmer says mournfully, while barefoot and wearing an embroidered floral T-shirt given to him by his grandma.

Sometimes our conversation is so wild it’s hard to know if he is being serious.

He is, it turns out. As he talks about the cut-throat world that is his personal kelp forest, it’s hard not to be distracted by his mullet and uneven goatee.

On Wednesdays, he likes to dress up as his favourite Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game character.

It’s the type of uniquely bizarre lifestyle you can afford to have when you are 32 years old and have a net worth of $2,5 billion (R47,5bn).

“There are certain hobbies you can have when you have lots of time and certain hobbies you can have when you have lots of money,” the inventor says.

Palmer’s start-up defence technology company, Anduril Industries, wants to develop tens of thousands of autonomous weapons a year from its sleek Arsenal-1 factory in an undisclosed location in Ohio.