The militarization of Silicon Valley | Press review n°18
I selected important news on artificial intelligence during the week of August 4 to 10, 2025. Here's my commentary.
Welcome to the eighteenth press review of Artificial reality. This week I focused on the rapprochement between Big Tech companies and the military in the United States, on the convergence of state surveillance and private surveillance and on the 100,000 private conversations with ChatGPT that ended up on Google. Have a good read!
📰 Read
The militarization of Silicon Valley
The big technology companies of Silicon Valley have strengthened their ties to the military-industrial complex in recent years, notes The New York Times.
The most notable example is certainly a military ceremony held in June in Virginia, where four executives from Meta, OpenAI and Palantir officially joined a military unit called Detachment 201, which aims to provide advice on new technologies that can be used in combat. These new reservists will serve 120 hours a year in the military, for example to train soldiers on the use of artificial intelligence systems.
“Over the past two years, Silicon Valley’s leaders and investors — many of whom had once forsworn involvement in weapons and war — have plunged headfirst into the military industrial complex,” says journalist Sheera Frenkel. She points out that Google, OpenAI and Meta previously prohibited the use of artificial intelligence for military purposes but later removed this commitment from their corporate policies, in January 2024 for OpenAI, in November 2024 for Meta and in February 2025 for Google.
OpenAI is currently developing an artificial intelligence model for anti-drone systems with the weapons manufacturer Anduril. The company which owns ChatGPT also signed a $200 million contract with the Pentagon in June to provide various services, including support to its proactive cyber defense. Meta, which owns Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Threads, is making an augmented reality headset for the US military, also with Anduril.
The startup Anthropic has ties to the Pentagon as well. At the beginning of June, it launched a new version of its chatbot Claude for US defense and intelligence agencies.
Also read: The Pentagon signs contracts with four AI companies
Investment companies are also approaching the military-industrial complex. The important venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz stated in 2023 that it intended to invest $500 million in defense technologies. And the famous startup accelerator Y Combinator, known for having launched Airbnb, Coinbase, Dropbox, Stripe or Twitch, financed a weapons manufacturer for the first time in August 2024. In total, global venture capital investments in defense-related companies grew strongly last year, with an increase of 33% to $31 billion.
A coveted jackpot
This rapprochement between tech companies and the Defense Department can be explained mainly by a political and geopolitical shift, according to The New York Times. Influential Silicon Valley executives and investors have indeed been supporting more right-wing positions since the last presidential race. Donald Trump did not fail to return the favor. A few months after his election, he signed an executive order demanding the military to update its new technologies acquisition system, which will allow it to speed up that process, among other things. He also allocated a $1000 billion budget for the Department of Defense in 2026, a record. “Silicon Valley executives and venture capitalists are eagerly eying that bonanza,” analyzes Sheera Frenkel.
At a geopolitical level, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, where drones and AI-backed weapons systems are increasingly being used, also contribute to the militarization of the technological capital that is Silicon Valley. The competition between the United States and China further reinforces this phenomenon.
“There isn’t a lot of pausing to think”
However, tech executives and engineers are concerned about the potential risks related to this change. Once the autonomous drones and AI weapons have been built for the army, they will have almost no control over how these technologies will be used. Debates took place in Google and Meta to know if these advanced weapons will kill more people than the traditional ones.
“These Silicon Valley companies are hyper competitive, and in their drive to get into these defense sectors, there isn’t a lot of pausing to think,” comments Margaret O’Mara, a tech historian at the University of Washington.
A return to the origins
The militarization of Silicon Valley is a return to the origins of the technology park, which has developed largely thanks to the “iron triangle,” a term that defines the very close ties in this region between universities, private companies and the Pentagon since the 1930s.
In the 1950s, the Department of Defense began investing in Silicon Valley companies to compete against the Russian technological advances during the Cold War. The US federal government thus became the first major backer of the technological capital.
A division of the Defense Department gave birth to the internet in 1969. Nearly two decades later, in 1998, it would co-finance two Stanford graduate students to create Google.
Since the end of 1990s, companies at Silicon Valley seemed to have taken distance from the Pentagon and developed consumer technologies such as e-commerce platforms and social networks. They displayed a positive, pro-democracy image, and had a largely liberal work force that was opposed to any collaboration with the war industry. Times have changed.
Seven important news this week
US agency approves OpenAI, Google, Anthropic for federal AI vendor list (Reuters)
A CBP Agent Wore Meta Smart Glasses to an Immigration Raid in Los Angeles (404 Media)
Home Depot and Lowe's Share Data From Hundreds of AI Cameras With Cops (404 Media)
Should big tech be allowed to mine Australians’ text and data to train AI? The Productivity Commission is considering it (The Guardian)
Nuclear Experts Say Mixing AI and Nuclear Weapons Is Inevitable (Wired)
‘AI veganism’: Some people’s issues with AI parallel vegans’ concerns about diet (The Conversation)
Read the other articles of the week I have selected by clicking here.
🎥 Watch
A new internet era
In a video published on Monday 6th, Micro talks about the new age verification laws that are being rolled out in the United Kingdom, in certain European Union countries and in the United States in the name of children safety.
Some platforms, such as pornography websites, Youtube, Reddit, Discord and Spotify, as well as social medias, now ask their users to verify their age if required by law. They can, for example, upload a picture of their ID card or have their face analyzed by an artificial intelligence system. People under the age of 16 will have a restricted access to these platforms, or no access at all.
Also read: The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived (Wired)
Micro addresses some of the risks associated with these new laws, including massive leaks of personal data and a decline in users’ privacy.
Why The Internet Really Wants Your ID... (and why now?)
Seven important videos this week
AI Security Warning from Signal app's Meredith Whittaker – The Hidden Dangers of Agentic AI (Content Renegade)
What happens when tech companies hold more power than governments? (Dr Myriam Francois)
Whitney Webb Sounds Alarm on Surveillance as Palantir Revenue Soars (Due Dissidence)
AI Price Gouging: Corporate Greed Is Out of Control (Vanessa Wingårdh)
Anthropic: The Worst Actor in the AI Industry? (Doom Debates)
Watch the other videos of the week I have selected by clicking here.
🔈 Listen
Nearly 100,000 private ChatGPT conversations on Google
In the latest episode of the 404 Media podcast, journalists Samantha Cole and Joseph Cox revisit a recent story regarding ChatGPT and the fact that nearly 100,000 conversations with the chatbot have been indexed by Google. Some of these discussions showed up in users’ search results, sometimes revealing sensitive information.
“At this point, I treat almost everything that I type onto a screen as potentially leakable. (…) If you’re typing something out, it could go anywhere. (…) People are putting wild things into these tools they ultimately have no control over.”
- Samantha Cole
Listen to the podcast on 404 Media
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Have a good week,
Arnaud
Thank you to Priscila Páez for translating this press review to English.
