Silicon Valley’s technologies illustrate the unpredictable consequences of unleashing new hardware or software. The idea that an invention can be used for either peaceful or military purposes – that is, the notion of dual-use technology – became widely accepted in US society over the past century. Historian Margaret O’Mara reminds us that throughout the Cold War, ‘the Valley built small: microwaves and radar for high-frequency communication, transistors and integrated circuits. . .Silicon Valley built elegant miniaturised machines that could power missiles and rockets, but that also held possibilities for peaceful use—in watches, calculators, appliances, and computers’.
These technologies continue to have dual-use applications. Google Earth can be employed for mapping and geographic research, but it can also be used by Special Forces teams for targeting electrical power grids, bridges, or other infrastructures. Microsoft first marketed HoloLens as an augmented-reality device for gamers, artists, and architects, but the most profitable consumers are likely to be infantry. Amazon’s facial-recognition programme might be used for secure bank or ATM transactions, but they can also be used as surveillance technologies by military, intelligence, or law enforcement agencies such as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Cloud platforms offered by Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google can potentially store data for scientific researchers, public health officials, or commercial firms. But they can also increase the lethality of military forces.
Some might chide Google’s dissident engineers and scientists as naïve Pollyannas. After all, didn’t they know what they were getting into? If scientists generally understand that fact that once they produce knowledge, they will probably have no control over how it is used, then they must have surely understood that the devices and apps they were creating might at some point be weaponised. Or did they?
It is possible that many scientists and engineers now objecting to Silicon Valley’s military work might have never imagined that they would be drawn into the military-industrial-technological complex. Perhaps they even decided to work for tech companies because they thought those firms were not in the weapons business. After all, the letter written by Microsoft’s protesters states: ‘We did not sign up to develop weapons’.
The researchers may also have placed inordinate faith in their company’s executives. At Google, employees felt betrayed by secretive decisions that led to the Project Maven contract. The business press regularly recognises the firm as having the best ‘corporate culture’ in the US, not only because employees can bring pets to work and have access to organic meals prepared by professional chefs, but also because the organisation has a reputation for valuing employee collaboration.
Once Project Maven came to light, tech workers’ false consciousness began to evaporate. Earning a six-figure income as an engineer or a programmer straight out of college makes it difficult to think of yourself as a proletarian, especially when you’re enjoying the perks offered by the industry – free gourmet lunches, on-site gyms, and complimentary childcare, for example. For thousands of employees, being shut out of discussions about whether the company should collaborate in AI weapons development woke up a latent sense of class consciousness.
There was also another problem: Silicon Valley’s long-standing entanglements with the Pentagon. As this essay accounts and as noted by Margaret O’Mara, ‘Whether their employees realize it or not, today’s tech giants all contain some defense industry DNA. . . This involves a much fuller reckoning with the long and complicated history of Silicon Valley and the business of war’.
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The divide between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley is mostly a myth – it’s never really existed, at least not in any significant way. The differences are superficial and stylistic. For the better part of a century, the regional economy and culture have been shaped by what might be called the military-industrial-university complex. During the Cold War, the Pentagon helped build the computer industry by awarding military contracts in fields like microwave electronics, missile and satellite production, and semiconductor research.
Historian Thomas Heinrich reminds us that popular portrayals of ‘ingenious inventor-businessmen and venture capitalists [who] forged a dynamic, high-tech economy unencumbered by government’s heavy hand’ draw attention away from the crucial role of ‘Pentagon funding for research and development [that] helped lay the technological groundwork for a new generation of startups’ in the twenty-first century. From the 1950s until the late 1990s, Silicon Valley’s biggest private-sector employer wasn’t Hewlett Packard, Apple, Ampex, or Atari. It was defence giant Lockheed. Today the region faces a familiar pattern, albeit that the gargantuan size and influence of today’s tech firms dwarf the computer companies of yesteryear.
This is likely to have major implications in the near future. Jack Poulson, a former Google senior research scientist and co-founder of Tech Inquiry, put it to me this way: ‘I believe we’re witnessing the transition of major US tech companies into defense contracts and would go so far as to predict them purchasing defense contractors in the coming years – something like Amazon buying Raytheon’.
The real fault line isn’t between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley. It’s within Silicon Valley, where a modest contingent of politically awakened engineers and scientists have pushed back against the weaponisation of their work. When they face a full attack from PR messaging, hearts and minds campaigns, ‘collaborative’ discussion, more compensation and perquisites – and perhaps the tacit threat of losing their jobs or having them outsourced – will they capitulate?
At this point it’s too early to know the outcome, but the future of virtual warfare and digital battlefields may well rest in their hands.