Silicon Valley enlists in the business of war

How tech firms are embracing military

- SHEERA FRENKEL

In a ceremony in June at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall in Arlington, Virginia, four current and former executives from Meta, OpenAI and Palantir lined up onstage to swear an oath to support and defend the United States.

The US Army had just created a technical innovation unit for the executives, who were dressed in combat gear and boots. At the event, they were pronounced lieutenant colonels in the new unit, Detachment 201, which will advise the Army on new technologies for potential combat.

“We desperately need what they are good at,” Secretary of the Army Daniel Driscoll said of the tech executives, who have since undergone basic training.

“It’s an understatement how grateful we are that they are taking this risk to come and try to build this out with us.”

The military is not just courting Silicon Valley tech companies. In the age of President Donald Trump, it has successfully recruited them.

Over the past two years, Silicon Valley's leaders and investors — many of whom had once forsworn involvement in weapons and war — have plunged headfirst into the military industrial complex. Meta, Google and OpenAI, which once had language in their corporate policies banning the use of artificial intelligence in weapons, have removed such wording. OpenAl is creating anti-drone technology, while Meta is making virtual reality glasses to train soldiers for battle.

At the same time, weapons and defence startups are taking off. Andreessen Horowitz, a venture capital firm, said in 2023 that it would invest $500 million in defence technology and other companies that would help America “move forward.” Y Combinator, the startup incubator known for hatching companies like Airbnb and DoorDash, funded its first defence startup in August 2024. Venture capital investment in defence-related companies surged 33% last year to $31 billion, according to McKinsey.

'THE TIDE HAS TURNED'