While much has been made of tech’s unwillingness to work with the Pentagon, startups are still plumbing the industry’s ties to the military.

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif. — Over the rolling, scrub-spotted hills of the Southern California coast, where defense contractors once tested rockets and lasers for President Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” missile defense program, what looked like a big, mechanical insect stalked a white pickup truck. Half a mile away, 28-year-old Palmer Luckey, one of the tech industry’s proudest iconoclasts, talked excitedly about the military potential of the flying machine — a self-piloting drone, called Ghost, that his startup company Anduril built.

“You can just set it up and then go do something else while it maneuvers,” he said.