Ties between Silicon Valley and the military industrial complex are not new. But the alliance of tech billionaires and venture capital titans working together to turn the Pentagon into a money spigot to fund far-future military gear is a novel conspiracy.
Their uniquely deranged rhetoric hits all the high notes: the revolutionizing power of unbridled capitalism, tech as a panacea for all social ills, the absolute necessity of U.S. military hegemony, and (as prime mover) our precarious position on the cusp of the Chinese century.
Like all conspiracies against decency, common sense, and restraint, this one has lots of speaker tours and expos. Here are some of the craziest things I remember hearing as I wandered around the recent Artificial Intelligence Expo for National Competitiveness in Washington, D.C., and my attempts at translation:
“The Pentagon can now lend money directly to companies — that’s a great deal for American taxpayers.”
Translation: You thought the previous six audits we failed were bad, wait until we have a loan portfolio to manage.
“Pentagon contracting needs a fundamental redesign — we can’t just tweak it anymore.”
Translation: We’ve been slowly eating away at DOD’s annoying oversight and regulatory units over the last 50 years but if you could just finally get rid of those people we’d appreciate it.
“Microsoft is part of the industrial base — but if we are to bring the full enterprise suite into classified government work this will require massive amounts of investment capital.”
Translation: The best things in life are free but operating any of our products is going to be like so expensive.
“A decade ago Silicon Valley didn’t agree with the DOD mission — they’ve done a complete 180.”
Translation: Retaliating against all those tech worker sit-ins and union organizing was really effective.
“The [pro-Palestine] peace activists are war activists — we are the peace activists!”
Translation: I couldn’t translate this one because I blacked out and hit my head on the Palantir-sponsored mocktail bar.
“China isn’t this compartmentalized.”
Translation: Watch as American corporate executives discover the benefits of central planning!
“Edge computing is the future.”
Translation: If you want to have 800 military installations all over the world you’ll need a lot of distributed computing sites, we’d like to introduce you to our new product line: “forward operating servers.”
“In terms of AI-driven weapons accuracy, there’s too much superfluous data that isn’t necessary for targeting.”
Translation: At least this is what the Israelis are telling us.
“Too much data used for AI targeting comes from open source intelligence.”
Translation: Give us direct unhindered access to all your classified databases forever until we’re all dead.
“Are we close to having ‘Google-fired missiles’?”
Translation: Google executives’ search for ad revenue destroyed your primary product so have you considered pivoting from building browsers to blowing stuff up?
“Quantum computing can overcome the military’s GPS denial issue in Ukraine.”
Translation: If you buy our really expensive autonomous systems that can’t function without GPS right now we promise they’ll work in 5 years, or maybe 10 — okay definitely no more than 20 years.
“We need to eliminate dis-synergy.”
Translation: Creating meaningless corporate neologisms makes me sound innovative and disruptive.
“The Replicator drone initiative can put thousands of attritable systems in place in 18-24 months, but what they need is to break down barriers so they can do this over and over and over again.”
Translation: Save 10% on weaponized drones when you sign up for our subscribe and save option!
“Watch as I remote pilot this new drone that uses automated sensors to avoid obstacles. It can even run on a cell phone hotspot in the middle of Riyadh!”
Translation: This demo worked great when [please wait….system loading] I was in the middle of the desert [please wait….system loading] but apparently the high speed internet here at [please wait….system loading] the convention center in Washington DC [please wait…]. Oh well, never mind.
“Lockheed Martin is building an AI factory.”
Translation: Our excellent staff of quality control agents are literally strapped to their cubicles with their eyelids pinned open to issue recalls for any product that is definitely being built by an AI and not some guy in a robotic exoskeleton playing Operation! using a closed circuit TV.
“These partnerships aren’t just about building a defense industrial base, they’re about building an American industrial base.”
Translation: About half of the supply chain parts are coming from China but it will still feel very American because you’ll be paying for it.
“The venture capital sector enables DOD to leverage tens of billions of dollars of VC money, which generates more money to invest in defense tech.”
Translation: We, the super rich, are the only thing standing between you and Red Dawn. I’ll soon be rendering your fat to make human candles for my apocalypse bunker but for now let’s make some great memories.
“But, if VCs keep losing on defense tech when firms and investors washout, that leveraging I just mentioned won’t happen.”
Translation: Remember when we all soiled our collective pants and you bailed out our investment accounts in Silicon Valley Bank even though they technically weren’t FDIC insured? Yeah we’d like to scale that up to infinity.
“Government needs to focus on capitalizing underlying industries (semiconductors, biochem) because VC can’t do that — it takes too much capital and the timeline is too long.”
Translation: Can the taxpayer front the money for the really big expensive hardware stuff so VCs can just invest in the more short-term profitable stuff? I single-handedly employ an entire firm of asset managers to oversee my Belgian Malinois’s stock portfolio so if you don’t do this you’re destroying American jobs.
“VCs focus on the really hard things (quantum computing, advanced materials) because they only want the big wins.”
Translation: None of this stuff will ever perform the operations we’re talking about but that’s okay because we create enough hype around it and get in early enough that we can cash out before that becomes a problem — for us. It’s still a big problem for you because you listened to us and now you’re broke.
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Shana Marshall is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and associate director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at the George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
Any effort to suggest what Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s Department of Government Efficiency should put forward for cuts must begin with a rather large caveat: should a major government contractor with billions riding on government spending priorities be in charge of setting the tone for the debate on federal budget priorities?
Musk’s SpaceX earns substantial sums from launching U.S. government military satellites, and his company stands to make billions producing military versions of his Starlink communications system. He is a sworn opponent of government regulation, and is likely, among other things, to recommend reductions of government oversight of emerging military technologies.
Then there is the scale of Musk’s ambitions. He suggested in a press interview that he could cut $2 trillion in federal spending — nearly one-third of the entire federal budget. If his proposal were to be implemented, it would dismantle large parts of the federal government, including agencies that provide essential services that are not being supplied by the private sector.
In short, I hesitate to endorse Musk’s initiative in any way, shape or form. But his recommendations will not be the last word; there is room for Congress and the White House to make reductions in federal spending. This is especially true at the Pentagon, which accounts for more than half of federal discretionary spending. The discretionary budget includes virtually everything the federal government does except for payments under entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Musk is onto at least one of the Pentagon’s major boondoggles, the F-35 combat aircraft. If carried to completion, the F-35 will be the most expensive weapons program in history, at a cost of $1.7 trillion over its lifetime. Yet 23 years into the program, the F-35 still has major flaws in its software and hardware — over 800 unresolved defects according to one Pentagon analysis. And it spends inordinate amounts of time out of action for maintenance. Versions of the plane for the Air Force, Navy, and Marines were designed to carry out multiple functions — aerial dogfights, bombing targets on the ground, close air support for troops, landing on both airstrips on land and the decks of aircraft carriers — and it does none of them particularly well.
For his part, Musk has referred to the F-35 as “jack of all trades, master of none” and “the worst military value for money in history.” His critique is right on target. It is long past time to cut the F-35 program short in favor of cheaper, more reliable alternatives.
There are plenty of other big ticket, current generation systems that could be cancelled with no detriment to U.S. security, including $13 billion aircraft carriers, which are vulnerable to current generation high speed missiles, and heavy tanks that have little or no relevance to current or likely conflicts.
Another treasure trove of potential savings is the Pentagon’s three decades long, $2 trillion plan to build a new generation of nuclear-armed bombers, missiles and submarines. The last thing the world needs at this moment of extreme tension is a new nuclear arms race. The new intercontinental ballistic missile, dubbed the Sentinel, is not only unnecessary but it is outright dangerous. Former Secretary of Defense William Perry has called it “one of the most dangerous weapons we have” because a president would have only a matter of minutes to decide whether to launch it on warning of an attack, increasing the risk of an accidental nuclear war triggered by a false alarm.
Another potentially rich area for savings is trimming the Pentagon’s cohort of over 500,000 private contractors, many of whom do jobs that could be done better and cheaper by government employees. Cutting spending on service contractors by 15 percent would save $26 billion per year.
A number of independent studies, including one by the Congressional Budget Office, have suggested that the Pentagon budget can be cut by $1 trillion over the next 10 years by a combination of eliminating redundancies and narrowing the missions required of our armed forces.
Regardless of what Musk and Ramaswamy recommend, Congress has a chance to scale back the Pentagon’s enormous budget, which is spiraling towards $1 trillion per year. Given all of the other challenges facing the country, to do otherwise would be a case of budgetary malpractice.
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Top image credit: Andrew Angelov via shutterstock.com
Revenues at the world’s top 100 global arms and military services producing companies totaled $632 billion in 2023, a 4.2% increase over the prior year, according to new data released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
The largest increases were tied to ongoing conflicts, including a 40% increase in revenues for Russian companies involved in supplying Moscow’s war on Ukraine and record sales for Israeli firms producing weapons used in that nation’s brutal war on Gaza. Revenues for Turkey’s top arms producing companies also rose sharply — by 24% — on the strength of increased domestic defense spending plus exports tied to the war in Ukraine.
The United States remains the world’s dominant arms producing nation, with $318 billion in revenues flowing to American firms in the world’s top 100 for 2023, more than half of the global total. And the five highest revenue earners globally were all based in the United States — Lockheed Martin, Raytheon (now RTX), Northrop Grumman, Boeing, and General Dynamics.
China ranked second to the United States in arms industry revenues, with nine firms accounting for 16% of the revenue received by companies in the global top 100. Two of the fastest growing countries in terms of revenue growth for top companies were also in Asia, South Korea (plus 39%) and Japan (plus 35%). South Korea’s increase was tied to major export deals with Poland and Australia, while Japan’s was driven by its largest military buildup since World War II.
SIPRI’s analysis takes a “just the facts” approach, tracking sales numbers and correlating them with increases in domestic and export spending tied to specific events. It does not address the dire humanitarian circumstances that underlie the growing revenues of top arms companies, most notably Israel’s unconscionable attacks on Gaza, which have killed over 40,000 people directly and many more through indirect causes, including over 62,000 who have died from starvation. The companies and countries fueling this mass slaughter — including U.S. firms that have supplied a substantial share of the bombs, missiles, and aircraft used in Gaza — should be held to account for their actions, even as they halt the supply of weapons and services that the Israeli government is using to commit ongoing war crimes.
Another major impact of the revenue surge for top arms makers is the diversion of funding and talent from addressing urgent global problems, from climate change to poverty to outbreaks of disease. And the more companies and countries become dependent on the profits of war, the harder it will be to shift funding towards other urgent priorities. The continuing militarization of the global economy has a double cost — lives lost in conflict and devastating problems left unsolved. The situation needs to be treated as far more than a grim parade of statistics about who benefits from a world at war. It should be treated as an urgent call to action for a change in global priorities.
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Top photo credit: 11/28/24. An anti-government protester holds the European flag in front of a makeshift barricade on fire during the demonstration in Tibilisi, Georgia. Following a controversial election last month, ruling party "Georgian Dream" Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced earlier today that they will no longer pursue a European future until the end of 2028. (Jay Kogler / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect)
Events have taken an astonishing turn in the Republic of Georgia. On Thursday, newly re-appointed Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidzeannounced that Georgia would not “put the issue of opening negotiations with the European Union on the agenda until the end of 2028,” and not accept budget support from the EU until then, either.
In the three-decade history of EU enlargement into Eastern Europe and Eurasia, where the promise of membership and the capricious integration process have roiled societies, felled governments, raised and dashed hopes like no other political variable, this is unheard of. So is the treatment Georgia has received at the hands of the West.
Kobakhidze’s announcement triggered the latest flare-up of a chronic crisis described in a recent brief for the Quincy Institute. Its origins lie in the “geopolitization” of Georgia’s domestic political arrangement. Although both the government and opposition have long pursued robust integration with the West, key Western leaders nevertheless favored the current opposition and tried to limit or indeed end the ruling Georgian Dream (GD) party’s hold on power.
The resulting alienation between the Georgian government and the West was exacerbated when, after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Georgia came under intense pressure to join Western sanctions and give much of its heavy weaponry to Ukraine. Fearing for their small, vulnerable country’s security and economic survival, GD declined.
GD has resisted what it views as slow-motion regime change, for example by passing controversial measures this year that would oblige foreign-funded NGOs to disclose their financial records. Those steps further widened the gulf between GD and the West, triggering large-scale protests by pro-EU Georgians in 2023 and 2024. The most recent crest of protests, coming after GD declared victory in an election that the opposition claims (but has been unable to prove) was marred by fraud, had only just petered out days ago.
Within hours of Kobakhidze’s announcement, crowds gathered for protests in Tbilisi and other cities, conspicuously angrier andmore violent than usual, drawing a greater crackdown from the police as well. Georgia’s human rights ombudsmen have criticized not only the police violence against individuals but, critically, their attempts to disperse the entire protest.
Pro-opposition president Salome Zourabichvili, whose term in office expires this month, has declared she intends to remain in office and gather opposition forces in a council to prepare for taking power from a government she denounced as illegitimate. Several Georgian ambassadors have resigned, while hundreds of staff at government agencies have signed letters of protest. A former minister has called for the army to defend the people. This latest flare up of Georgia’s chronic crisis already feels more seismic than previous ones.
EU accession is an arcane process, so it’s important to clarify what actually happened and what didn’t. After eight years as an EU associated country (a sort of half-way house for Europe’s periphery), during which GD adopted a raft of EU regulations at a faster clip than its peers, Georgia was allowed to apply for full EU-membership in March 2022.
The EU presented a list of broadly formulated “priorities” —conditions Georgia had to fulfill to obtain candidate status. There were poison pills in the small print: GD would have to share power with the opposition, let EU-appointed foreign experts vet senior judicial appointments, allow NGOs agitating to get the government sanctioned and deposed to participate in law- and policy-making, and more. Another priority — “de-oligarchization” — turned out to violate the EU’s own civil rights norms. After an unresolved tug of war over these priorities, Georgia was granted candidate status in December 2023.
In recent years, EU accession has morphed from a technocratic-managerial process into an extended obstacle course, in which at every stage arbitrary new demands may be introduced. Georgia may have won candidate status, but accession “negotiations” (a misnomer for supervised adoption of the EU’s entire body of law) do not follow automatically. The government must still accept those same old priorities that GD considers incompatible with the country’s sovereignty.
Kobakhidze took great care to affirm that Georgia would continue to adopt reforms already agreed with the EU. The next day, he walked things back even further, saying that if the EU offered to launch accession negotiations, he would sign the same day.
Even so, it is hard not to read this decision by the Georgian government as an act of defiance, as calling the EU’s bluff. It turns the tables on a relationship in which the EU normally holds all the cards. The Georgian government’s halting of EU accession may be a symbolic act without material consequences, but symbolism matters greatly in the relations between the West and countries like Georgia.
Kobakhidze described Georgia’s predicament as being “blackmailed” by the EU: making the start of accession negotiations and budget support contingent on Georgia’s relinquishing essential elements of its sovereignty. As if to illustrate his point, that same day the European Parliament adopted its latest resolution on Georgia, calling for a re-run of the election with monitoring led not by the OSCE but the EU, as well as sanctioning and asset-freezing of a long list of Georgian officials and judges.
The European Parliament’s new standing rapporteur on Georgia went further still, demanding new elections organized by the international community, reminiscent of occupied Afghanistan or Iraq.
In contrast, the EU’s new High Representative for Foreign Policy together with the Commissioner for Enlargement released a carefully worded statement, avoiding judgment on the election and emphasizing that the door remains open for EU talks. Meanwhile, the State Department suspended the U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership, following earlier threats.
One regional analyst characterized Georgia’s actions as “geopolitical backsliding.” That might have been a Freudian slip. Or it might have been in earnest, normalizing the conflation of geopolitics with democracy that defines the West’s approach to Europe’s periphery.
This approach — demanding ever-greater inroads into sovereign politics and governance, asking vulnerable countries the impossible, arm-twisting and worse — will not restore the constructive partnership we once had with Georgia and continue to fan the country’s crisis.
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