The New Military Tech Gold Rush

Special Insight Article for Nomos Centre for Future Warfare (NCFW) by Lisa Ling, former Technical Sergeant, US Air Force Drone Surveillance Programme.

According to Admiral William A. Owens, in the 1990’s three overlapping events happened reshaping the United States Military; the first was the fall of the Soviet Union resulting in the second influential event, the United States emergence as a sole superpower. The third event was dubbed a Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) driven by earlier investments in electronic and computational technologies. [1]  Owens further reports “…the things which give military forces their fighting capability are changing”.[2] He identified intelligence, command and control, and precision force as emergent properties resulting from RMA. [3] What followed was an increasing interdependency and development of both the military and civilian technology sectors. Consequently, surveillance, communications and connectivity, data management, and network centricity expanded exponentially, especially after 9/11.

Eventually, the use of autonomous and manned small airframes fitted with interchangeable sensors were used to ingest and distribute what rapidly became an unquenchable appetite for Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) data. This seemingly endless supply of ISR data gave military and intelligence insiders access to technologically mediated surveillance of the battlefield in (near) real time, while at the same time, the myth surrounding the accuracy and precision use of these technologies served to obfuscate the cold brutality of war from the general public.  At first, surveillance and data acquisition were the focus of drones over the battlefield. Drone provided ISR was used as overwatch for troops on the ground, to keep them out of harm’s way whenever and wherever possible.

When the US military deployed its first armed drones during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the mission priorities changed. It was then that the primary mission of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV’s), or drones as they were commonly called, changed from surveillance and oversight to the hunter killer weapon of choice. Killer drones, as they began to be called once they were armed, still ingested data but were primarily used as offensive weapons. Armed Predator and Reaper drones replaced the ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance) focused Global Hawk on most missions. Soon after that, Afghanistan became the most droned country on earth. [4] As the drone program continued to grow, ingest and acquire more and more data [5], the need for civilian owned transmit, compute, and storage became inevitable. Legacy military infrastructure did not have the storage capacity nor bandwidth to sustain a growing appetite for more and more data.[6] The military and intelligence communities burgeoning appetite for technological advancement, autonomous weapons and artificial intelligence to filter endless streams of ingested data became fertile ground for a group of Silicon Valley venture capitalists (VC’s) to grab and consolidate real state power. This is the next evolution of the Military Industrial Complex, from big industrial hardware to Silicon Valley tech moguls leveraging their corporate and capital power to dominate and occupy burgeoning areas of future war, and to capture the levers of military and state control.

The legacy hardware model is rapidly being replaced by an agile data driven software model funded by Silicon Valley VC’s. The cornerstone for this evolution was set into place during Operation Desert Shield/Storm when Kellog Brown and Root (KBR) started building military bases and worked with soldiers to establish the infrastructure they would use throughout the war. Companies like DynCorp replaced Military Police providing base security as it became a new normal to see civilian contractors maintaining equipment, setting up power, and guarding bases during times of conflict, another is watching the venture capital startup and/or acquisition of private military contractors (PMC’s) just as Amentum Holdings LLC acquired DynCorp from Cerberus Capital Management for 1.5 Billion dollars.[7] Early in my military career, it was unusual to see so many soldiers, sailors, and airmen working in conflict zones side by side with civilian contractors, but that is where we are. War pays, peace does not and contractors beholden to their shareholders go where money takes them. In 2002 when I was deployed overseas, PMCs or PSCs (private security companies), were increasingly involved in conflicts worldwide, they provided services like training, logistics, and at times, they even provided combat. The use of contractors has grown significantly, particularly during the "Global War on Terror" (GWOT) in Iraq and Afghanistan, where contractors often outnumbered military personnel. At the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, contractors comprised over 50% of the U.S. force structure in Iraq and 70% in Afghanistan. Private military firms have seen increased demand in the conflict in Ukraine, with some companies providing security, training, and other services.[8] 

To be clear, the use of contractors in conflict zones can be challenging, they are not subject to the same legal framework as military personnel and that can hinder accountability for their actions. Contractor legal status in war zones is complicated. Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions, military contractors directly supporting military operations could be legitimate targets of military inquiry, but because they are not held to the same standards as military personnel, real accountability can be elusive.

Blackwater is an egregious example of a contractor who avoided significant penalties after they shot and killed 17 unarmed civilians and wounded 24 more in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square without provocation. The incident was appropriately called the Nisour Square massacre, and while four employees were convicted in the United States, they were pardoned on December 22, 2020, by then President Donald Trump. It was clear then as it is now that holding contractors to account in conflict zones is more complicated and convoluted than holding military personnel to account, in part because they do not fall under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).

Blackwater was founded in 1997 by Eric Prince, a former Navy Seal. In this case, the company, Blackwater changed its name to Xe, and today they are rebranded again as Academi. Today, that Blackwater history is out of sight and out of mind for most, and similar to DynCorp, they were acquired by USTC Holdings, an investment group led by two private equity firms. Private military companies boomed after the fall of the Soviet Union; they give any government who sends them plausible deniability and little accountability for unintended consequences. For the U.S., using military contractors is also an end run around the War Powers Act, The War Powers Resolution, requires the President of the United States to inform Congress when engaging "U.S. Armed Forces" in combat and omits any reference to PMCs, which can easily lend itself to executive overreach. It is not only the United States using military contractors, but Putin also used the Wagner Group until they staged an uprising against the Russian Government, [9] and Erik Prince, has worked with various countries standing up or training PMC’s.[10] 

Today this concern is more prescient than at any other time in U.S. history when Silicon Valley connected civilians like Elon Musk have made their way into our government institutions and by extension or intent, into its massive data stores. These are institutions where personal and personally identifiable information belonging to U.S. persons has been, under any other instance, protected from private persons and/or corporations having, disclosing or transmitting it for unintended purposes without notice. A line that was once drawn in the sand protecting individuals right to privacy is now blurred in favor of privatization and data extraction. In the framework of future war, this data can be loaded into targeting systems similar to those we saw used against Palestinians. In a paper published on October 18th, 2024, Heidy Khlaaf, and Sarah Myers West from the AI Now Institute, and Meredith Whittaker, President of Signal Messenger argue that "Personal data embedded within existing commercial foundation models thus positions AI as a link between commercial personal data and automated weapons’ target lists and surveillance capabilities." [11]They go on to say that “…no effective approaches exist that reliably prevent personal data exposure in current foundation models, from contributing to (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance) ISTAR capabilities.” In Israel, Gospel, Lavender, and Where’s Daddy, are the military decision-making systems used and they dependon personally identifiable information (PII) to target.”[12] Despite the personal expertise of these authors, this argument rarely comes up in public discourse regarding military and/or government use of AI systems.

When the complexity of evolving remotely operated weapons technology, secrecy, and civilian contractor’s became normative battlefield properties, it has brought with it a fresh new assortment of companies backed by venture capital funders fully invested in AI, big data, big compute, and civilian owned cloud technologies being used to grow and expand the existing Network Centric Warfare frameworks.  This new interconnectable way of war allows for allied western countries to surveil, and share data, bypassing state oversight processes that protect individual privacy. The technology once used to prosecute remote extrajudicial killings both inside and outside of designated war zones is expanding while (former) venture capitalists are being appointed to high positions within the U.S. government, military and intelligence establishments.[13] The character of war is forever changed, the brutal violence of war is not. Placing Silicon Valley venture capitalists in positions of power and influence within our government almost guarantees that these technologies are not going to deter war but encourage it.  This will not deter grift, but it will enable it.

Today high tech future wars are poised to be supported by Silicon Valley venture capital in what is considered by many Stanford University students to be a “new military tech gold rush”.[14] Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir technologies believes “The United States and its allies abroad should without delay commit to launching a new Manhattan Project in order to retain exclusive control over the most sophisticated forms of AI for the battlefield—the targeting systems and swarms of drones and eventually robots that will become the most powerful weapons of this century.” [15] He also states "The atomic age is coming to a close. This is the software century, and the decisive wars of the future will be driven by artificial intelligence, whose development is proceeding on a far different, and faster, timeline than weapons of the past."[16] While these things may be true, the driving force of venture capital is profit and they answer to shareholders, not states. War is profitable, however our foreign policy should not be profit driven. These new VC backed weapons companies have the appearance of colluding with each other rather than competing with the traditional “Big Five” defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and RTX (previously Raytheon) for lucrative defense contracts.[17] VC’s also have ties to foreign countries, muddying the waters when it comes to influencing policies demonstrating their financial motives.[18] [19]

As a former insider who has participated in, and witnessed, the devastation these “new technologies” have inflicted on innocent civilians in Afghanistan and beyond, we are headed to war, whether it is a hot war or a cold one. It doesn’t take much in the way of technical prowess or military acumen to understand this, it is common sense watching industry influence on surveillance and war. It is recognizing the patterns I have witnessed throughout my military career, a martial throughline running parallel with what is considered by many to be technological progress and capital growth. I know from personal experience what it takes to get a security clearance, and that given the right conditions it too can be waived by a commander willing to take the risk for the rest of us. This is where systems of checks and balances are critical and transparency necessary. Systems and norms are a bulwark against executive, judicial, or any other flavor of overreach that quashes democratic norms and allows fascism to flourish. These bulwarks are public discourse, an active judiciary picking up the important cases that hold power to account and protect public privacy and discourse, congressional legislation specific enough that it used as intended and not so broad and expansive that it permits loosely defined battle spaces to crop up anywhere funded with endless dollars and human lives. Finally, executive decisions that promote the public good, stay within the boundaries of the office and protect the populace when needed are crucial to good governance. I hope that we will all push back against government and military overreach, return to an effective fourth estate, and for those in positions of power to stand with us so that we can all speak freely about war, war crimes, technofascism, genocide, and how we can achieve a lasting peace.

[1] Admiral William A. Owens, “The Emerging U.S. System-of-Systems.”

[2] Admiral William A. Owens.

[3] Admiral William A. Owens.

[4] Emran Feroz, “Death by Drone: America’s Vicious Legacy in Afghanistan.”

[5] Emile Ayoub and Elizabeth Goitein, “Closing the Data Broker Loophole.”

[6] “From Open Source to Everything as a Source.”

[7] dev_admin, “DynCorp International Announces Completion of Acquisition by Affiliates of Cerberus Capital Management.”

[8] “Department of Defense Contractor and Troop Levels in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

[9] “Moscow’s Mercenary Wars.”

[10] “Private Military Companies.”

[11] Khlaaf, West, and Whittaker, “Mind the Gap.”

[12] Khlaaf, West, and Whittaker.

[13] “Venture Capital Ties Could Shift U.S. Government Policies | TechTarget.”

[14] Jasmine Sun, “Stanford Students Used to Chase Jobs at Meta and Google. Now They Want to Work on Defense.”

[15] Karp and Zamiska, The Technological Republic.

[16] Karp and Zamiska.

[17] “New Monopoly?”

[18] “Andreessen Horowitz Is Now Openly Courting Capital from Saudi Arabia, despite US Strains | TechCrunch.”

[19] “Saudi Arabia Reveals Investments in VC Firms like Andreessen Horowitz as the Tech Sector Embraces the Country’s Money Again.”