How Silicon Valley is prepping for War
As frontier models join forces with the Pentagon, corporations and the state are becoming too close.
Insider reports of OpenAI’s Orion and Gemini 2 models yet to be publically released suggest that Generative AI and LLMs might be reaching a point of diminishing returns, so where will the new profits and revenue come from for the Generative AI machine inside of BigTech and the research labs and model builders being funded by them? Look to the State.
I’m noticing an increasingly dystopian trend in Silicon Valley. AI research and BigTech are supporting national security initiatives that will lead to the militarization of AI and more dystopian applications of Generative AI like automated weapons. This has a long history in companies such as Google. With the inauguration of Donald Trump in 2025, this will take on a new form.
In 2018, Google faced significant internal protests regarding its involvement in Project Maven, a U.S. Department of Defense initiative aimed at using artificial intelligence to analyze drone footage and in machine learning assisted targeting. The project raised ethical concerns among employees, leading to widespread dissent and public outcry. Yet Google Maven set a precedent of the normalization of this trend and six years later significant BigTech software, data analytics and machine learning systems have been used inside of tools used by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to slaughter innocent people in Gaza, among many other applications. The Ukraine war has supercharged drone development, with the U.S. leading the charge.
It’s not a vibe change in AI policy, Billionaires and BigTech have actually always been pushing for this and in 2024 they have won. They want to normalize AI in war, because it is profitable. Palantir a data analytics firm is the poster-child for this, and their stock PLTR 0.00%↑ is up 250% so far in 2024, mostly simply due to revenue from the U.S. Military. It’s extremely profitable to align yourself with the military industrial complex and the Pentagon.
This all started around September, 2017 and picked up speed in October seven years ago with Google Maven. As Amazon is set to fund Anthropic even more soon, Palantir and Anthropic are partnering with Amazon Web Services (AWS)1, to make Anthropic's Claude models available to U.S. intelligence and defense agencies, the companies announced last week. Anthropic was supposed to be the more ethical version of OpenAI. It’s not about the research you do in the AI, trust and safety world, it’s what your company does with its tech that’s the important thing.
Anthropic funded primarily by Amazon and Google, are following in the footsteps of the company they are a splinter startup of, OpenAI. It was in January, 2024 that OpenAI had already announced their decision to go down this path working directly with the Pentagon. In late 2024, the U.S. even routinely gives out orders to foreign firms to suppress China’s ability to be independent in the semiconductor industry and AI. The U.S. has reportedly ordered TSMC to halt shipments of advanced chips to Chinese customers that are often used in artificial intelligence applications.
Back at the end of 2017, employees at Google articulated their stance through an open letter addressed to CEO Sundar Pichai, stating that Google should not engage in warfare technology. In 2024 and these days currently, all employee activism is shut-down well before it can escallate inside of the likes of Google, Microsoft or Amazon. BigTech and Cloud computing leaders work with the Pentagon increasingly and, not just in cybersecurity. Like I warned the people at the Pentagon involved in project Maven all those years ago, this will escallate. Now as those people retired a while back, it already has escalated and will continue unabated.
BigTech goes full on DARPA mode
In 2024 with the authoritarian MAGA version of American democracy, U.S. exceptionalism is the rule and it’s now a cool time to be advocates of AI Supremacy for the American military complex and supporting Venture Capital infrastructure, which is making companies and tycoons extremely profitable due to to catering to this currently dominant sentiment and AI policy approach by the likes of Palantir, Anduril, Scale AI, Shield AI, Skydio and OpenAI, among many others.
Silicon Valley has decided to side with DARPA and Nationalism here too is on the rise. DARPA stands for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Who knows what OpenAI’s and Anthoropic’s models will soon be used for inside the Pentagon and more classified projects. Anthropic deciding to take this path is a major ethical breach of their alignment policy. It shows you where America is heading if the top AI research labs have already been bought out.
This AI arms race is after all for me personally the reason which I started this Newsletter and called it “AI Supremacy”, which sounds like a very odd name for a Newsletter to use and many of my readers are often a bit baffled about what its significance might pertain to. 2025 marks the beginning of a time of scale and integration of AI capabilities into National security and foreign interference systems. This systems will only become more sophisticated, nefarious and effective. While the rest of the world scrambles to keep up and be part of this Generative AI future even the likes of Saudi Arabia is planning a new artificial intelligence project with backing of as much as $100 billion as it seeks to develop a technological hub to rival the neighboring United Arab Emirates (the UAE). Like innovation around Quantum computing, this isn’t just about science. It’s about nationalism and building entrenched economic moats.
Let’s turn our focus to China and the supposed National security reasons why this is happening. The collapse of China’s economic growth means it has major structural reasons and was well explained in a recent talk given at the World Knowledge Forum by Michael Beckley. Michael Beckley is the Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Tufts University. Listen or watch the YouTube talk here:
What follow is a Customized NotebookLM Audio Overview on this talk: (access it here). This Audio overview is 23 minutes and 29 seconds long:
Listen to the AI Podcast 🎧
U.S. Elites and the Pentagon insist China is a Peaking Power
The idea here is that a China in decline is a more dangerous version of China geopolitically. The Biden administration has followed the whims of people like Eric Schmidt in their national security and AI policy who coincidentally also has a war drone startup. Silicon Valley has totally infiltrated Washington, the separation of BigTech and the State is more in name now rather than in rule of law or actuality. The Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence communities have awarded $53 billion in contracts to major tech firms over a three-year period. As incentives commingle, the institutions of democracy, capitalism and rule of law are starting to show signs of breaking down.
Silicon Valley, Tycoons and Washington are Aligned
In 2025 the likes of personality such as Elon Musk and Sam Altman will have even more unprecedented power. Tycoons by any other name. The tycoons are taking over. Meanwhile employee activism at BigTech have been significantly and ruthlessly been dealt with. These aren’t the symptoms of a benign pivot to National security. I’m noticing a lot of AI policy types doing what amounts to PR for the companies they work at.
The Biden Administration ushered in an era where the U.S. can signal what companies like ASML in the Netherlands, Nvidia - which has significant business in China, or TSMC which it gave money to in Arizona can do, and this is what I mean about U.S. exceptionalism. ASML and TSMC are’t even American companies. The Department of Commerce sent a letter to TSMC imposing export restrictions on certain sophisticated chips, of 7 nanometer or more advanced designs, destined for China that power AI accelerator and graphics processing units (GPU). This is not normal.
Back in 2017, Google’s human resources and ethics compliance teams dismissed those concerns of employees, but here we are just seven years later. BigTech is a war machine and will become implicated in civilian deaths like it is in Gaza and Lebanon. U.S. tech used by the IDF goes contrary to all that machine learning scientists and AI policy people stand for, but nothing has been said on the U.S. side. Even Silicon Valley tech news coverage has not covered the suppressed activism inside of BigTech itself. Something is wrong.
Recently Donald Trump claimed that Taiwan is stealing US semiconductor technology. Pre election on a Joe Rogan podcast, the future POTUS accused Taiwan of stealing America’s chip industry and said he’d put a tariff on Taiwan’s chips. In reality of course, the U.S. begged TSMC to set up shop in Arizona, where TSMC was awarded $11.6 billion in CHIPS Act funding, made up of $6.6 billion in grants and an additional $5 billion in loans. An Act that gives funding to Intel ($8.5 Billion), an incompetent company in decline if I ever saw one. What is going on here?
The rest of the article continues for paid subscribers, go to AI-supremacy.com for further insights.
Silicon Valley has a dark side and things can quickly escalate from cybersecurity partnerships to more covert and profound partnerships relating to OpenAI and Anthorpic’s models. The partnership between Amazon, Palantir and Anthropic means Anthropic is no longer really independent. Since Anthropic requires Amazon’s funding to remain competitive as it struggles with better funded projects like Sam Altman’s OpenAI (where he is expected to get as much as 7% equity) and Elon Musk’s xAI (which has superior AI infrastructure).
But it doesn’t end there. Six days ago after Donald Trump came into power again, Meta changed its policies to allow military use of its free, open-source AI technology Llama, which competes with technology offered by OpenAI and Anthropic. The same day, OpenAI announced a deal to sell ChatGPT to the Air Force, after changing its policies earlier this year to allow some military uses of its software. For Silicon Valley and VCs like a16z, this is big business.
Palantir meanwhile is behaving like a meme stock, where the company called for fourth-quarter revenue of $767 million to $771 million, most of which comes from the U.S. government contracts. A company that wouldn’t even be profitable without it’s emphasis on black-ops data analytics. Palantir’s revenue grew 30% year over year in the quarter and working with the Pentagon is suddenly cool in America. When OpenAI appointed retired U.S. Army General Paul M. Nakasone to join their Board of Directors I knew where this would all lead. It really is dystopian where this will lead.
The U.S. ordering its allies against China’s AI capabilities and bulking up AI in its military is the new normal and it’s doing so, at a frantic obsessive pace. While China announces insufficient trillion dollar debt bailouts, the U.S. is busy securing its dominance geopolitically and in the technology of war and national security, while Europe, specifically Germany, and China look to be in total chaos and economic malaise. U.S. exceptionalism did you say?
BigTech has now officially bought out Generative AI model leaders, while freedom of speech is actively suppressed inside of BigTech. What do you suppose is the real reason AI researchers have been leaving OpenAI recently? Is it really just the pivot to a for-profit model? Generative AI isn’t some incredible tool for consumers or students, it’s going to concentrate power and economic leverage differently. Even in terms of military and foreign interference technology. The U.S. is quickly going from free-market geopolitical father-figure, to something a bit more authoritarian. And it’s not a good force for the future.
The Neo-nationalism speak in the content of a16z that funds military-tech is obvious. The cult of personality in Silicon Valley only leads in one direction. AI policy folk sounding like they are doing PR for BigTech isn’t very reassuring. OpenAI and Anthorpic were our two top frontier model builders tha tare now serving big Military contracts. Where does this lead do you imagine?
What is the marginal risk of this kind of AI policy? If Google, Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic are all aligned with the State and an era of a more authoritarian U.S. exceptionalism?
At left, CEO of Scale AI Alexandr Wang testified during a House Armed Services Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation. TIME via Drew Angerer—Getty Images.
This isn’t about National security partnerships for cybersecurity purposes, this is about what they are doing that they aren’t telling you or making public. The U.S. state puts out PR that it exaggerates to propose nefarious conditions of U.S. exceptionalism.
This week saw a string of announcements from AI firms about their work with the US Department of Defense. Meta was first out of the blocks, with the firm saying it’s making its Llama models available for US government agencies and contractors in national security — including Amazon, Anduril, Palantir, and Lockheed Martin. - Harry Law.
Why do you suppose the Pentagon is doing that? Using frontier models for AI Supremacy is also something U.S. billionaires want to do to benefit their own commercial empires. In America, even geopolitical rivalry is also profitable. Foreign interference sowing seeds for American interests have long-term plans. The military industrial complex has major winners. The Biden Administration must have reasons for ramping all of this war-machine tech up. And it’s going to make a lot of people rich.
Anduril raised $1.5B more in August, 2024. Anduril Industries, Inc. is an American defense technology company founded in 2017, specializing in advanced autonomous systems. It aims to transform U.S. and allied military capabilities through innovative technology and a unique approach to defense contracting. Automated drone, drone swarm and AI-controlled ghost fighter planes tech are all being pushed by the United States now in an AI arms race with China. What I call Black-ops AI tech is about to enter a renaissance in 2025. It’s going to also make the world a much more dangerous place.
China’s Growth Story has Officially Ended
It’s going to lead to unforeseen consequences and further normalize Surveillance Capitalism at home among other things. Civil War? Anything and everything is on the table. However one thing is for sure, China’s economic future is in serious doubt and on the ground is in shambles with youth unemployment so high they refuse to report the actual figures, and the U.S. is doing this, not out of the goodness of its heart. This has everything to do with Taiwan, and TSMC is the choke-point of the world of chips.
Since Taiwan has related regulations to protect its own technologies, TSMC cannot produce 2-nanometer chips overseas currently. Although TSMC plans to make 2-nanometer chips [abroad] in the future, its core technology will stay in Taiwan. U.S. exceptionalism means U.S. Billionaires want to have as much control over the world as possible.
If BigTech is controlling the top AI research labs in Generative AI, what does this mean for the rest of the world? They literally have no chance of keeping up, once the rival of China is eliminated. The U.S. will have monopoly capitalism rule over the future of AI and commercial AGI systems. This is not about protecting the world or doing the right thing. This is about control for the future of technology and especially those behavior modification mechanisms than the Pentagon (and China) so aggressively uses. Economic control is also about soft power, cultural projection and geopolitical ties. It’s about manipulation and fooling your allies into doing what you want. The U.S. getting its allies to fall in line will actually be the legacy of the Biden Administration (deaths in Gaza come to mind), and obviously American voters were not impressed.
Silicon Valley backing National security priorities doesn’t sound dystopian, until you realize where it will lead. Our corporations improving U.S. interests is a good thing right? If you could trust U.S. leadership to use it and Generative AI responsibly. Knowing the history of Google and project Maven, you definitely cannot. Tycoon and monopoly capitalism and politics changes everything. And it will change everything. This is the path the U.S. has taken and all the world will be held hostage to it. Democratic values, am I right?
History has a way of unravelling empires from the inside. The AI arms race and the thirst for AI Supremacy is going to intersect in the U.S. with a new era of authoritarianism, populism, civil unrest and the developing world rejecting U.S. exceptionalism. BigTech and AI are going to increasingly become centralized and controlled by a select few. It’s going to be utilized also in ways the Government would prefer you don’t know. This is what is actually happening.
On November 7th, 2024 Anthropic and Palantir Technologies Inc. announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to provide U.S. intelligence and defense agencies access to the Claude 3 and 3.5 family of models on AWS. This is only the beginning of what Generative AI will do for the U.S. military and its Superpower claims to mandatory full control of this technology. How will China and CCP leadership react to all of this news? If your foreign investment funding had declined so sharply in such a coordinated campaign and U.S. trade bans had infringed on your ability to compete, how would you react? The Biden Administration is baiting China into war. Because they realize what China could become, if it had gone unchecked.
In the version of U.S. exceptionalism of Donald Trump, there is no room for any other superpower, but the United States. But it might not be the U.S. you or I grew grew up with. AI is just a tool and a means to an end for Trump’s Billionaire and authoritarian friends and network. In truth, it didn’t matter who won the 2024 Presidential elections, Silicon Valley and Washington have been getting closer since Google first booted up the Maven project back in 2017. That was the catalyst for all that was yet to come, and so much is yet to come. The U.S. National defense sector and the Pentagon depends on Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud more and more.
Generative AI isn’t a flashy consumer product, in fact most of its consumer applications have already failed. Many B2C Gen AI categories are already consolidating. Generative AI might actually be a way for the U.S. to monopolize a new wave of technological and economic colonialism. The Great datacenter boom and making ChatGPT great again (e.g. normalizing search inside of a chatbot), can be viewed as a form of technological interference with the rights and freedoms of other countries. Just like the world uses Google search or Meta Platforms apps by default, while the U.S. gets to keep the data and revenue spoils with one system. How very benevolent, the internet seems to work in the opposite way as Nvidia’s CEO describes Sovereign AI. There’s little reason to believe the future of AI in American hands won’t be the same.
This isn’t just about national security or advertising revenue, it’s about power and power projection globally for economic gains and technological moats so insurmountable, it would take decades to break. The U.S. story around AI Supremacy isn’t about free competition. This is a battle over the 21st century internet between superpowers and about America’s desperation to keep its hegemony over the internet. BigTech is an extension of U.S. power, which means serious rule law in their regulation is highly unlikely to occur anytime soon. Only China could have competed against them, but was not even allowed the opportunity.
While China curtailed their BigTech leaders in recent years, the U.S. has done just the opposite. What might the outcome be for the automation of our military, automated weapons and AI technologies used in the military and nation self-interests? Silicon Valley is building a war-machine and Washington is fully behind it. Biden’s foreign affairs policy was staggeringly unpopular, and the next four years are likely to determine our long-term AI policy at the intersection of geopolitics and National self-interests. A ubiquitous kind of monopoly capitalism might have absolute power in AI. What could go wrong.
Following a $4 billion investment last year, Amazon is reportedly considering another significant investment in AI startup Anthropic.
