The militarization of Silicon Valley
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
* although that's useless as a definition of fascism
Yes, discussed in the article, too.
There has been an article like this every few years since at least the 1990s where someone (re-)discovers that Silicon Valley works closely with DoD. Almost every startup delivering genuinely novel technology will have a relationship with some part of the DoD whether they talk about it or not, it has always worked that way. People who think startups are not working with DoD are deluding themselves.
The government has generally taken a "buy one of everything" approach to evaluating new technology. They are actually an interesting early customer to work with, which is why so many startups do.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/1/24259369/microsoft-holole...
I don't see Anduril producing anything like the B2 or the F22 or nuclear submarines, all of which are the really important technologies. Oculus VR isn't really successful, VR is shoehorned into Army applications "because high tech". Given that the army is unliklely to be deployed and soldiers probably hate the VR headsets this is just more waste.
That said, they are definitely competing against nuclear subs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNCHZBJxsM
In Israel things that got through from Iran were the ballistic missiles.
If the drones turn into Skynet with hundreds of thousands of mini drones, we are doomed or probably new anti loitering drone treaties will emerge. Recall how nervous Russia already was about the claimed threat of stationing the Tomahawk missile in Ukraine.
There is an advantage for having few and large things that each side can monitor. That's why nuclear bombers were supposed to be parked in the open for observation by the START treaty.
Say that no incompetence, or at least indifference to usability, exists among the tech companies after using many Alphabet and Microsoft products. Aside from it decidedly not being the best thing in the world to cheer for tech expertise being leveraged towards the refinement of killing people and destroying things, said tech expertise is grossly self-serving enough for one to seriously worry about wedding it to the military industrial and state surveillance apparatus of the world's most powerful government. Sure, pragmatic reality dictates that much of this will happen anyhow, but i'd hardly call it a joyful thing.
It's strange that people in SV pretend like if they refuse to build software then nobody else will. Palantir exists (and has been so successful) because the government was trying to build this software (either themselves or through defense contractors) and ended up spending WAY too much money and only delivering a product that put US soldiers at risk.
E.g. hedge funds or short sellers publishing financial advice is seen as "talking their book" rather than high quality analysis.
I find it absurd to think that the NYT would hope to achieve some commercial advantage by (and being able to) "slander" big software as a whole.
That makes no sense to me.
You could also say that every member of this board should be considered biased towards journalism as a whole, because most work for companies who have nothing to win from independent journalism.
Maybe some even work for direct competitors (online media) or companies with an interest to thwart the independence of journalism?
Framing the NYT as a competitor to SV as a whole also says that SV would be a competitor to journalism: that makes no sense to me.
Which one of the MAG7 is a journalism company? I know Amazon owns The Washington Post and I know that Alphabet and MS want to use content from journalists without paying and best replace journalism with AI or at least become a gatekeeper.
> Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news
(unknown)
The NYT should do more investigative journalism, but it is better than nothing. SV pundits just recycle and comment on news stories that the mainstream press has reported.
SV outlets will never go after the "deep state" apart from performative complaining because they are in it and get the money from it.
I wish the NYT/WaPo were as good as in the 1980s in terms of investigative reporting, but that is what we have.
In the West if you run afoul of political elites in the worst case: you get imprisoned & cancelled, potentially bankrupted.
If speaking out mildly: you may have some dueling op-eds or lose a contract/customer. Big whoop
In the best case: you'll make tons of money and have great quality of life provided you don't become an overt monopoly, but even if you get broken up you'll make even more money.
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In the East if you run afoul of political elites in the worst case: you & your family will be disappeared, executed or harvested for body parts
If speaking out mildly: you may get sent to a re-education camp and lose control of your company & assets, or eat a negative social credit score
In the best case: you'll make tons of money and have great quality of life provided the Nation does not choose to nationalize you.
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While I may be broadly grouped on the nuanced Paleo-Libertarian R faction, I've been pretty content to work with my very L colleagues, that is the influential in our industry.
But let us not mistake the best case, likely case, and worst cases for the very different world views of East vs West.
As much as I have an anti-Color Revolution approach, I think much of the L has been very conscious of Ukraine / Chinese Nationalization, and State-Owned Enterprise organized theft of IP and lack of a rule of law.
If it comes down to a question of institutions, and outcomes, most of us vastly prefer those of the West bloc to the East bloc.
Well Dark-Enlightenment has been speeding up since trump took office. I am not surprised that the neo fascist movent aiming to transform Silicon Valley tech giants into authoritatian city states would embrace and strenghen its relationship with the military. Someone is gonna need to defend your company-state proprety against minorities, former employees and the annoying non-fascists.
Tactical control and an embedded influence that ensures that "failure" never manifests in the way that it has for civilizations past.
"They" pivot. From keyboards to motorbikes. Nuclear power plants to...'sex toys'.
Pivot in such a way you can't really point a finger at who's to blame and before you've got a handle on it they've spun around into something else again.
The rest of DOD has shifted to very conservative approaches to system development and sustainment (for better or worse, mostly worse IMO). It's stuck in the mindset of "This aircraft platform will be around for 50 years." Which is not conducive to the move fast, breaking things or not, approach.
Even WWII demonstrated that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aircraft_product...
Nearly 300,000 planes built by the US during that war. Peak production in 1944 approached 100,000 new planes built in one year. The nature of the aircraft also changed substantially across the war, it's not like they took a few 1938 designs and churned out more and more each year. What was being made was constantly changing as their understanding of what was needed and what did or didn't work changed and engineering advances led to better systems (by some measure).
These weren't planes meant to last a century like the B-52 is currently targeting.
The JSF project began in 1993 (studies) with competitions later. First flight training batches delivered in 2012 and it reached operational status in 2015. 22 years from conception to operation. A grossly unsustainable approach for a military capability. It's not even one of the worst systems I'm aware of.
They haven’t destroyed every vestige of liberal democracy — the states can fight and there are still courtroom battles — but the fascists own the enforcement mechanisms for justice, and don’t feel bound by the outcomes. The guardrails are gone.
Do not harbor illusions that we’re going to return to normality in our lifetimes. It’s possible something new and better will take over once the Trump regime is somehow ended, but I doubt it; they’re trashing the place pretty thoroughly.
>Silicon Valley’s militarization is in many ways a return to the region’s roots.
>Before the area was a tech epicenter, it was a bucolic land of fruit orchards. In the 1950s, the Defense Department began investing in tech companies in the region, aiming to compete with Russia’s technological advantages in the Cold War. That made the federal government the first major backer of Silicon Valley.
>The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a division of the Department of Defense, later incubated technology — such as the internet — that became the basis for Silicon Valley’s largest companies. In 1998, the Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page received funding from Darpa and other government agencies to create Google.
But one guy came back from retirement after 9/11 and moved into a trailer in the Lockheed parking lot.
Does anyone else remember the good old days when the Secretary of Defense would fly to Redmond to meet with Bill Gates?