It’s not that the U.S. military-industrial complex and Silicon Valley haven’t had deep ties over the past few decades. But this is the first time these phenomena have been revealed, they involve the main technology multinationals and neither their users nor their workers are acting to prevent them. The business of artificial intelligence (AI) and the geopolitical panorama have opened a new scenario for digital giants and arms manufacturers.
Until now, contracts between the military sector and Silicon Valley were handled with discretion. This trend was broken with an official announcement from Meta. “We make Llama available to US government agencies and contractors working on national security applications,” revealed Nick Clegg, a former British deputy prime minister who is now responsible for public policy at the multinational.
“Responsible use of open source AI models promotes global security and helps place the United States in the global race for AI leadership,” insisted the former liberal-democrat politician, signed by Meta in 2018 after losing his seat in the House of Commons.
Llama is the ChatGPT style artificial intelligence developed by Meta. It is currently not available in Europe, blocked unilaterally by the multinational after refusing to offer its European users a clear and simple option to prevent their data from being used in their training. In the rest of the world, it is available for free to Facebook and Instagram members.
Meta had traditionally prohibited the use of its products for military purposes. Most AI developers included similar provisions in their terms and conditions, until OpenAI removed this paragraph from its policies earlier this year. Unlike Meta, Sam Altman’s team did not announce the change. These months of advantage allowed OpenAI to win the first military contract among its competitors.
The same day Meta announced the policy change, OpenAI published that it had reached an agreement with the US Air Force to transfer the technology to it. “Now is the time to give our Airmen the flexibility to develop the necessary skills in parallel. Multiple modernization efforts are currently underway across the federal government and within the Air Force to put tools in the hands of the workforce. This tool is another such effort,” said the organization’s information officer on the use of AI.
This is not the only force in the country to have signed contracts with the organization led by Altman. According to the media The interceptionwho had access to an internal document from AFRICOM, the command of the American military force deployed in Africa, believes that OpenAI technology is “essential” to its mission. Although the purchase price appears redacted in the text, other references throughout the document indicate that it would not exceed $15 million.
The Palantir example
The list continues with Anthropic, a company funded by Amazon and Google that is developing Claude, another AI virtual assistant. In its case, it signed a triple alliance with Amazon and Palantir so that American intelligence services can use its technology. It will be used in missions such as “helping U.S. officials make more informed decisions in emergency situations, while preserving their decision-making powers,” the three companies said.
Palantir’s evolving role within Silicon Valley is an example of how the relationship between big tech and the military industry has changed. Palantir was founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, an early investor in Facebook, and has leveraged data from that and other social networks for nearly two decades to provide technology for data intelligence, targeting and detecting risk models.
Although it is easy to find Palantir products in every country in the Western orbit, from the United States, through Spain or its “special” relations with Israel and its operations in Gaza, it was until ‘now one of the companies that operated the most in the shadows. from all over Silicon Valley. He was an isolated and controversial player with whom other companies tended to refuse to associate. Even Thiel’s role at Facebook was systematically hidden from the company’s public historiography.
Now that has changed. Palantir and its military operations are seen as comparable to theirs by many technology companies looking to enter the tech arms seller business. Its leaders too. In October, OpenAI announced that it had hired one of its security managers. “Enabling democratic institutions to make the most of these technologies and fostering the development of safe artificial intelligence for the world” will be its main objectives, the leader said.
Silent contracts
Before the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and rising tensions between the United States and China over Taiwan, these types of movements faced strong internal opposition from tech company employees. Ratifying one of these agreements meant exposing oneself to workers who denounced it and boycotting the public relations discourse of companies, which wanted to be associated with pacifism and progress.
Google has suffered several of these riots. The most notable occurred in 2018 with Project Maven, a plan by the US Department of Defense to use AI to analyze drone images and select targets. Employees then staged protests and sent a public letter to CEO Sundar Pichai to highlight how this type of behavior contradicted the company culture.
“We cannot entrust moral responsibility for our technologies to third parties. Google’s displayed values make it clear: each of our users trusts us. Never take risks. Never. This contract puts Google’s reputation at risk and is in direct contradiction to our core values. It is not acceptable to develop this technology and assist the US government in military surveillance, with potentially deadly results,” they denounced in their letter.
None of that happened with these latest announcements. “Today, all employee activism dies down long before it can escalate within companies like Google, Microsoft or Amazon,” said Michael Spencer, an analyst specializing in the ins and outs of Silicon Valley who has followed take a close look at these demonstrations.
“Big tech and cloud computing leaders are increasingly working with the Pentagon, and not just on cybersecurity. As I warned Pentagon officials involved in Project Maven all those years ago, this trend will only intensify. Now that these people have retired some time ago, the situation has already intensified and will continue unabated,” Spencer anticipates.
