Meta now says it’s perfectly ok for big tech to team up with the US military

After partnering with Anduril Industries, a defense contractor, to develop new products for the US military, Meta now says the move signifies a cultural shift. But big tech has been working with the Pentagon for years anyway.

Various US big tech companies, including Google, have recently seen workers sign letters urging their bosses to drop military contracts. Most of them are pro-peace liberals who fear AI misuse.

But their wishes are seemingly ignored – the digital-military-industrial complex is successfully expanding.

In April, NATO signed a deal with Palantir to deploy battlefield AI across its operations. The US Department of Defense has at least 800 active military AI projects, including unclassified ones.

Finally, last year, the US argued at the United Nations that human control of autonomous weapons is not required by international law.

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Now, Meta has partnered with defense contractor Anduril Industries to develop new products for the American military, including an AI-powered helmet with virtual and augmented reality features.

“Silent majority”

“Meta has spent the last decade building AI and AR to enable the computing platform of the future,” Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, said in a statement.

“We’re proud to partner with Anduril to help bring these technologies to the American service members who protect our interests at home and abroad.”

Palmer Luckey, co-founder of Anduril, also told the media one of the new products will be a “sci-fi-style military helmet,” up until now seen only in video games like Halo or Call of Duty.

The point is, of course, that in November, Meta changed its “acceptable use” policies so that its large language AI models could be used by US military contractors, including Lockheed Martin Corp., Booz Allen Hamilton Holding Corp., and Palantir.

Even company employees are protesting against expanding work with the US military, so Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth followed the announcement by saying that there has, in fact, long existed a “silent majority” of Silicon Valley firms that want to pursue defense projects.

“There’s a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for. Silicon Valley was founded on military development, and there’s really a long history here that we are kind of hoping to return to, but it is not even day one,” Bosworth told Bloomberg.

The danger of overreliance on big tech

If it’s all transparent, this type of cooperation seems perfectly legitimate. But, as Defense News reported last year, tech giants supplying the Pentagon with their toys persistently refuse to disclose their military revenues.

This is leaving a huge gap in our understanding of the military industry – it’s secretive in ways it shouldn’t be in a democracy.

With generative AI now in play, the question is whether the US government is overreliant on major tech players.

Observers are forced to rely on brute estimates. One report on big tech’s links to the Pentagon by researchers at San Jose State University and Brown University concluded (PDF) that US military and intelligence agencies awarded at least $28 billion to Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet between 2018 and 2022.

And with generative AI now in play, the question is whether the US government is overreliant on major tech players.

“By overseeing data centres, cloud services, submarine cables, AI systems designed to prevent cyberattacks and infrastructures that ensure connectivity in conflict zones, big tech has become the eyes and ears of governments both at home and abroad,” Andrea Coveri, assistant professor at the University of Urbino in Italy, wrote last year.

“This allows them to access sensitive information and develop specific competences that may further strengthen their position vis-à-vis national governments.”