Angry Planet - How Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Listen to this episode commercial free at https://angryplanetpod.com/Facing a friendly audience at an AI expo earlier this year, Palantir CEO Alex Karp let loose on a list of controversial topics. He talked about Israel, Gaza, and campus protests. “The peace activists are war activists,” Karp said. “We are the peace activists.”Palantir, Karp’s company, is promising a bold new way to wage war using AI, one it’s testing out in Ukraine. Karp’s comments hit on an old promise. For generations, salesmen have tried to convince everyone they have a new way to conduct war that’s cleaner and better for everyone. That pitch is at the hard of dozens of new defense tech startups.On today’s show we get into the weeds of the Pentagon’s Silicon Valley obsession with Michael Brenes. Brenes is a Yale historian who recently published a Quincy Institute brief about the rise of private finance and disruptors in the DoD contracting space. To hear Brenes tell it, companies have been trying to sell a peaceful way to make war for a hundred years.It never quite turns out how they planned.Private Finance and the Quest to Remake Modern WarfareA.I. Won’t Transform War. It’ll Only Make Venture Capitalists Richer.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. Hello, and welcome back to another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Jason, how are you doing today? I am great. I am happy to be here.

Really great at 10 a.m. already? Coffee's not wearing on? I have the coffee. I have everything I'm. I could possibly want, including one of my closest friends and an intimate conversation about conflict. About technology and conflict and salesman. This one has been long in the making, and I'm very excited to do it.

Mike, can you introduce yourself? Sure. I'm Mike Brennis. I'm the co-director of the Brady Johnson program in Grand Strategy at Yale University. I also teach in the history department as a lecturer, and I write broadly on 20th century U.S. foreign policy and its relationship to domestic politics and look forward to the conversation. So I wanted to have you on, is there something that's been on my mind quite a bit in the last couple of years, which is this new wave of startup defense stuff? and it's kind of been pinned to the high-flying promises of artificial intelligence. So Silicon Valley's relationship to the Department of Defense is changing.

Things have gotten pretty interesting. And then lo and behold, in June, the Quincy Institute publishes this thing that you co-authored, private finance and the quest to remake modern warfare. And I was quite heartened to read it and see that it was kind of a, I wouldn't call it, quite a takedown, but a reasoned explanation of kind of what's going on and kind of the historical precedents and just like a lot of context, a lot of good, meaty stuff. And so I'm very happy to have you on. And I'm also kind of excited because there were two news stories that broke in the last 24 hours that I thought were pretty funny T-ups to this conversation. one is that Palmer Lucky, who's one of the people we'll be talking today, is suing a contractor because he got trapped in his car elevator.

I don't know if you saw this. No, I didn't see that. He got trapped in his car elevator. So he has this large mansion, needed a place to store all of his cars. As you do, as you do. As you do. He's one of these guys that like buys, like buys all of his, buys a bunch of cars. It's like the thing that he collects.

Everyday problem, you know, for a phone. Right. And so his solution, his solution to the everyday problem was he demolished a mansion across the street. As you do. And turned, as you do. And then turned it into a car complex that includes multiple like elevators so you can move cars between floors. He and the contractor were in one of the elevators when it stalled and they were trapped inside for some time. We've learned about this from a loss.

So that's just like put a pin in that is like the idea of Palmer Lucky trapped in an elevator. Okay. The image is in the back of my brain now as we have this conversation. So, you know, thank you. Thank you, Matt. The other story I saw was an economist profile of Ukraine's new drones are, the guy that is in charge of like kind of the overall grand strategy. for how they're going to use UAVs, which is like a new,

it's a new role, appointed June 10th. Guys, 39's got a long history in the Ukrainian military. Something he said at the end of the conversation that I found was very interesting. It was basically like, this technology will not replace

ground combat. It is always going to be something that is in addition to and in support of artillery soldiers. and he also said that like all the drone AI swarm stuff is bullshit and that I will never I personally would never turn over the decision making to an AI swarm. So I just thought like from the front lines of an actual modern conflict where drones are being deployed where Palantir who are also going to be talking about today is like making

a big impression. It is actively like in country as we've. talked about on the show before. Here's a guy that knows what's going on talking frankly about drones. So I just like those kind of two things at the beginning just to kind of set our, set the mood in the toe. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm happy to jump in wherever, you know. Let's jump in on your, on this Quincy thing.

Sure. Why did you and your co-author decide to write this? What were you seeing? So Bill and I were in a position where we'd developed a friendship in a camaraderie over the past couple of years. And we'd been exchanging email correspondence. And before that, we were on a couple panels. And one of the things that, you know, we thought was pertinent and hadn't received much attention was this. topic of the future of warfare and AI in warfare, there seemed to be, as you alluded to,

many people cheering the benefits that technology would bestow, that would be given to or provided to U.S. military and U.S. foreign policy overall. And without real hesitation or consideration of what the consequences of that. that might be. And so we were thinking like, where can we collaborate? What can we do? And then sure enough, the Undersecretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks announced the replicator program. And we thought this was an opportunity in the replicator program for those who don't know is this new Pentagon initiative to court Silicon Valley, particularly venture capital-backed Silicon. Valley startups to Defense Tech to provide the United States and its allies too with the needed

AI weaponry as they feel it's needed to defeat China in a competition, so-called Great Power Competition. And we thought this was an opportunity to step into the conversation and say, hey, okay, wait a minute. This to me, as I'm approaching this as an historian, this to me sounds like earlier efforts to rely upon technology to win wars that can't be won. Or in another way, so when I'm thinking about what I'm saying, when I say that, I think about Vietnam, I think about Iraq, right? Shokanaugh, relying upon air power. Or it's a way to substitute, as you're again implying, substitute a strategy for reliance upon technology.

And both of those things, I think, aren't good. They're not good for the future of American foreign policy, and it's not good for the future of the military. Overall, and I don't think, and I'll put my cards on the table here, I mean, I did in the brief with Bill, but I don't think that AI or whatever technological breakthroughs or innovations are coming down the, in coming down the pike, are going to save America from having to commit itself. if there is a large-scale conflict, committed self to large numbers of troops being sent into a battlefield, or the way that it's presented often is that's going to save casualties, that we're going to spare, particularly civilian casualties, that we can actually use.

We can use AI to better target combatants as opposed to civilians, and therefore we're going to be in a better position where we're waging humane war, as my colleague Sam Moyne would say. Right. It's not just about the promise of winning the war. It's about winning the war in a clean way. Right.

Right. You quote this several places in other things that you've written, but I think the most striking, like, example of that is Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, saying the peace activists are actually war activists. we are the peace activists. Right, right, which is a crazy statement. It's a crazy statement.

But that's, but that, you mean, we could talk about this too. That, this sort of, you know, increasing reliance upon technology comes with this ideological commitment to sort of like tech, what's called techno patriotism. This belief that, you know, is circulated within, you know, the circles that Alex car operates in and among others, that, you know, again, technology can save the day, but also we're good Americans, patriotic Americans, by investing more in defense startups. And we should all be proud of this effort. And here we are, you know, VC backed efforts, you know, to, you know, trying to win a new Cold War with China. And I don't think that's a, that's dangerous.

in my opinion, that kind of thinking. Because again, it breeds hubris and unwillingness to think through the consequences of a reliance upon this technology. Is there, what's the historical parallel that immediately comes to you as a historian?

I think about the long sweep of history. I mean, there's nothing new in the sense that in the wake of World War I, in the rise of the Air Force after World War I, There are people like Billy Mitchell who said, you know, we can rely upon now precision bombing. We can, you know, we don't have to be involved in trench warfare, you know, the ugliness, the catastrophic effects of World War I, you know, the mass deaths, you know, that we can avoid those things by bombing from the air and picking out targets in a more selective way.

and then you'll have a, you know, again, a less of an effort to, or lessing of a willingness to commit troops to a battlefield. And you can save lives and maybe even saved civilian lives too. Although that wasn't as big of an importance because civilians weren't seen as the targets that they would be seen after World War I during World War II. But World War II, to that point, World War II changes. It blows the idea of precision bombing out of the water. You know, you're talking about fire bombing of Japan, Japan, the nuclear bomb, you know, the bombing of Dresden, you know, the idea of precision bombing, you know, that's, that's obviously nullified. But then in the wake of that, the wake of World War II, the rise of the Cold War, it's like, well, now you can rely upon nuclear weapons. So nuclear weapons can create this long piece.

And you don't need, again, to have large-scale land wars like you would see in right, in the end. in World War II in World War I. To a certain extent, that was true. There weren't major land wars, like there were during World War II. But you also have then proxy wars in Vietnam, right? We could go on and on. Vietnam being the most well known. And then you have, of course, the mashed casualties that come with the Vietnam War.

Then the electronic battlefield coming out of Vietnam. And now the Revolution Military Affairs that comes out of the Gulf War in 1991. where you see all sorts of new technologies that appear on the battlefield, and people are all struck by this. There's, wow, this is, we don't, we don't have to have large numbers of troops on the battlefield. And this is what informs Donald Rumsfeld in 2002, 2003, when he decides to wage war in Iraq, like that way he does, with a light footprint and more relying upon aerial bombing. Of course, that, that doesn't work either because you have mass casualties and you have a backlash

Of course, against the way the United States prosecutes the war, not just the war itself. So again, so if you look at this in historical terms, you look at the 100-year span of efforts to rely upon new innovations and technology to prevent casualties, both from the combatant side, but also the civilian side. It just doesn't work. And I don't think you're going to see the same thing. I don't think you're going to see anything different out of AI. if anything, it's going to encourage people to use these technologies in ways that will be misused because the promise of it will be so enticing that it's going to be misapplied, I think, or the technology will fail, which is also something to take into account, too.

Yeah, the way they talk about, the way almost everyone at the moment talks about artificial intelligence. And when they're talking about artificial intelligence, they're usually actually talking about large language models. The way people talk about large language models right now is as if they are an inevitability that will be on par with the Industrial Revolution. It's going to fall quite short of that, I think. I think you're going to be able to ask PDF documents questions and get pretty good answers.

What is your understanding? of what the specific pitch is around AI from Silicon Valley to the DOD. What does the DOD expect it? That's a good question because I don't think they truly know yet. You know, what Hicks announced last year was this effort, it was a year-long campaign to try to, you know, we're supposed to see results now from the Replicated Program, TBD at the moment. but what I think they're hoping for is in many ways,

I should sort of in macro terms, I should say, I think in general what they're looking to do is just out-compete China on the technology front. So they're looking to acquire and utilize technologies, military technologies before China can develop them. So they will just have, in a blunt sense, or strategic edge, you know, they will have a strategic edge against China. and then this is sort of part and parcel of a new arms race kind of with China, which I think is also misguided.

So I think that's sort of one sort of large scale, you know, way of looking at this. The second is I think is that they're looking to, and this is a problem that I pointed to in other places, they're looking to fill the void that has been opened up by the consolidation of the fence industry in the 1990s. when all these companies merged like Lockheed Martin Marietta, which became Lockheed Martin, and there are others we could point to, and looked to place their fortunes in large big-ticket items like the F-35 or, you know, B-2s, like those types of expensive, overwrought yet very lucrative contracts. for the big five.

That is where they placed their fortunes. And so what that left then was a void for smaller technologies, new technologies, investment in R&D, which declined since has declined since the 1970s, 1980s. And the overall absence of new subcontractors, which, as we've seen from the Ukraine war is a big problem because we don't have enough tillery, we don't have enough small arms for the Ukrainians to defeat Russian aggression. So I think what the Pentagon is hoping for from the Pentagon side is that these Silicon Valley startups will fill that void. So not only will it ultimately, again, I think this is the major strategic goals to out-compete China, but then two,

it'll provide a space for new subcontractors to enter and then enter into the defense acquisition process and then they'll be will be in a better overall strategic position in terms of our defense industrial base. Problem with that is that these VC startups comprise only now 1% of the

defense budget. They're not they're not anywhere near capable of competing with the big five or again even sort of complementing the big five. You know, Boeing you know,

Lockheed, et cetera. So I think that's what the long-term goal is, but as I said, we're supposed to see results from the replicator program, replicator initiative, I should say.

And it's yet to be determined what those results will be. So don't, it's funny because every example that you've mentioned so far, the end result has been that we still need to send in hundreds of thousands of troops,

if we want to win. Right. I mean, none of that's changed. I mean, we can bomb the hell out of people, but the only way we pacified Iraq, at least briefly, was by sending in another 130,000 people. Correct. And Afghanistan, we never even really tried that.

And I think this surge was something like 30,000. So I don't know. It just strikes me as, do the people that the Pentagon even know what AI is? I mean, man, I mean, I really mean. Do they know what it is? And if they, you know, if they're looking to it and some of the other technologies for answers, it just makes me think that they have no idea what they're buying. I don't think they do in the fullest extent, you know, to the fullest extent. I don't think they do. I think, and I think some of this, again, it sort of reliance upon, and you can see this in some of the remarks that Hicks has made about Silicon Valley. It sort of reliance upon these smart, ingenious people, you know, who know more about the technology and who are promising, promising them a great deal of, of transformation, I think, in some ways, if you listen to some of the

rhetoric, transformation of American warfare. And that's sellable. That's sellable to the American people, and it's sellable to, you know, to the Pentagon. And I think there isn't, I don't think there is a sense of like what's going to happen. I think what's going to, well, what they know is going to happen from the technology. I can give you my two cents, which is what I think we're going to do is we're going to pour a lot of money into this effort to transform war. And what's happened in our already is that it's failing on the battlefield to the point about Ukrainian drones.

I mean, the drones being sent to Ukraine by defense startups have proven to be woefully inadequate to the point that Ukraine is now. buying drones from China, which are, they're built better and they're much more capable, they're much more efficient in terms of how they're used by the Ukrainians on the battlefield. I don't think they know. And I think there's a lot of faith. And again, the sort of technopatriatism is faith in technology. But that also is, you see that in the Cold War as well, where Silicon Valley made its name because of the Cold War.

Stanford University became Stanford University because of the Cold War. war because of the investment that was from the Pentagon that was poured into Stanford and that was poured into, you know, R&D efforts in Silicon Valley. And the consequences, I think, are, you see in the Cold War, so in 1980s and the rise of the treaty defense initiative, the SDI program under Reagan, where, you know, these satellites are going to be sent out into space with lasers and they can intercept Soviet missiles when they, I mean, it's all fantastical, but people believe this, right? And yes, it was called Star Wars, but, you know, that's not a bad thing in the eyes of the Riga administration at the time. And I think the same thing can be said about Hicks, too, is that people are, you know, promising then the Earth, Moon, Sun and Stars, but Hicks is sort of saying, well, well, let's trust the experts. Let's trust the technology. And in the meantime, it's ultimately going to be a better, a better message to send to America's enemies, China, Russia, that. that we are at the cutting edge of new technological innovations in military software.

Can you give us the history of Silicon Valley in its relationship to the Pentagon? It's changed quite a bit. It's fluctuated back and forth over the years, right? Yes. So since the 1950s, 1960s, Silicon Valley developed a closer relationship with the Pentagon. The Pentagon was in a position where, with the rise of nuclear power, the nuclear era, intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs, you know, being the weapons of the future, not, you know, B-29 bombers. Those new weapons relied upon technology, the development of new

technology, and engineers and physicists and educated people with PhDs. not workers in factories who, like the Rosie River, Rose of the Riveter kind of character that you'd see come out of World War II. So you don't need this industrial base in the Northeast, you know, the Detroit's and places like that that built the weaponry for World War II. So the Pentagon turns to, you know, these research universities like Stanford and others. to start developing new technology for a space race and an arms race with the Soviet Union. And the Silicon Valley is more than eager to help out. I mean, this is where you have the rise of the computer industry. And the computers develop out of the investment from the Pentagon and so on and so forth.

And by the 1970s and the 80s, though, that relationship starts to change. because there is a greater interest from the Silicon Valley people in the civilian market, as opposed to the defense market. And then in the 1990s, that fundamentally changes, again, because now with the rise of mass computerization of the United States and the globe and the ways in which finance comes to shape industry, the Pentagon seems to be, kind of a loser in the sense that it's not going to be the place where they get their money. It's not a very lucrative source of funding anymore. You know, it's great to get your business off the ground. You know, you can develop new technologies and create a customer, you know, you have a reliable customer from the Pentagon, but you're not going to be making your Bill Gates type fortunes from Pentagon spending.

You add to that by the late 1990s, really after 9-11, Silicon Valley starts to sour on the war on terror because they don't want to be associated with, rightfully so, two failed wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. They don't want to be associated with an overall, I would argue, failed foreign policy. many of the employees who work for Silicon Valley companies, the biggest being Google and others, you know, these are defense contractors. Google is a defense contractor. Get upset when the Pentagon starts to give them money or when Google seeks Pentagon spending, pending on funding, and they say, we're going to quit or we won't work for you if you take money to bomb children in Iraq. things like that.

And so the Silicon Valley startups and Silicon Valley companies of Raw say, well, we don't really want much to do with the Pentagon because it's not good PR for us and it's also not very lucrative. That's now changed in the shift to China as an enemy as opposed to terrorism. Because now with China, there's, again, less of the sting or the association of failed foreign policy. our foreign policy vis-s-vis China is still in development in many ways the uncertainty over what China's foreign policy will be, I think is also contributing to this in regards to Taiwan and other things. But that is also coupled with the reasons I said earlier, or the factors I said earlier, which is that there's this mass need for subcontractors in the wake of consolidation. And so they're entering into the spacing, seeing profits once again for these starters.

because it's good to, again, get money, get your business off the ground. And then idea, I assume the idea is from there, from there to go to the civilian market, you know, in the next 10, 15 years with not necessarily the technology they develop for the Pentagon, but with patents and other types of technologies that they've, that they develop from this funding. So I think that's the calculation now. And so now you have, you know, VC venture capital funding has, overall kind of peaked, you know, in terms of all sectors, but in the defense sector,

it's actually kind of, it's gone up over the past couple of years. And I think that's, you know, money follows money. I think people are going to be in a position where they see more, you know, more lucrative, more benefits from from the Pentagon in the future. And you'll see more VC-backed defense startups beyond the ones that we have, you know, currently, we are currently doing with. All right, Angry Planet listeners. I want to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, Angry Planet listeners. Welcome back to the conversation. Can you walk us through some of the major players? We've talked about Palmer Lucky. Yeah. What is he into and who else is out there? Well, the big, so the biggest is Elon Musk and SpaceX. So, so SpaceX, if you look at

defense um the defense pie um in terms of vc uh defense tech startups defense SpaceX I think has about 80% of the of the of the of the market share and market space in terms of new um new pentagon spending um the others um are palenteer um you know there's um rebellion was won until it failed, which we can talk about until recently. But these people kind of, they all came together in this convention that was held earlier this year. That's where the Alex Ward comment came from. And they're all, I would say, you know, they're not operating, they're operating in a sort of unified sense and that they all believe the same thing. is that they all believe that there's more Pentagon spending coming down the pike for VC startups,

and they all believe that they can save the day. And from, you know, whatever enemy comes the United States' way, you know, I think that that's, that's what they share, no matter who they are or what they, what they are. And again, I say overall, the portion of these VC defense startups in terms of like the overall portion of the portion of the, defense, you know, defense budget is very small, but again, I think they see promise in the ways that they frame their, their contribution to, to the Pentagon and to the military. You just got to stick around long enough until you can get, you two can get your Sentinel program going, right? I think so. And have your $150 billion contract.

Yeah. And I think that's, that's, that's what's happening is that people, you know, rebellion, that's what rebellion put its, put its, um, put its money on was, you know, what they did was they enticed investors before they had a major defense contract, you know, so Eric Schmidt and all the others who were backing Rebellion came in and said, well, you know, don't worry, we're going to get this major new defense contract for something that, you know, never came to fruition. What were they selling? They were selling this. It's a good question because I, I was, I did some digging. I don't even actually know what, what this was.

It was like, it was a, it was like a part, a component of, um, an AI component of a larger sort of defense program. Um, and it was sort of like this, this innovative thing that, that could supposedly, you know, shift the nature of, um, I, I mean, I looked into it for the brief, the Quincy brief. I was. And I, I, forget what it was. And I read the article, the Vox article on this. But whatever it was, I'm sure I could find it. But it wasn't, it wasn't applicable. I couldn't actually develop it. And they didn't get funding for it. And this is also kind of, to my point, is that they're promising the moon or sun, stars.

And yet, you know, they don't have the money. And then they collapse. You could say that's a good thing in the sense that, well, what are they losing? They're losing private money as opposed to public money, which is something that you should take into consideration in terms of these companies and how they're families. and how they're failing is that they're not failing in the way that will lose public money at the moment. However, down the road, if they do get that big contract and they do overspend, or if they're in a position where they have huge cost overruns and they're asking the Pentagon for more money, for Congress for more money, or they'll fail, then you might start to see these companies collapse

and take public money with them. It's just funny. Here we go. Oh, sorry. Go ahead, Matthew. No,

no, I've got it. I've got it in the, the Forbes, uh, write up of them, just Thomas Brewster Sarah Emerson and David Jeans, who do pretty good work.

Yeah, that's right. Forbes. Yeah. It wasn't box. Um, it was a tactical threat awareness tool that would use AI to make battlefield decisions.

Yeah, what is that? Right. Exactly. Right. Sorry, Jason. I didn't mean to,

no, I just was thinking, you know, you notice patterns and the names of these things, which just gives you such faith. Like, you know, you've got two Lord of the Ring references and Anderiel and Ballantir and then Rebellion. I'm assuming that's Star Wars. I mean.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Of course. You know, and it just, it almost makes you wish that North of Grumman, you know, like, I mean, makes you feel good about them. I mean, it just seems like, you know, there's such. children.

You know what you know that J.D. Vance had his own little his own little tech company for a little while. You know what it was called? No. It had a it had a Lord of the Rings name as well.

So just throwing that out there. Soron. I'm actually, I'm looking right now. I'm scrambling. Because I know he had a It was a teal-backed thing. Yeah. He and teal are close.

Okay. So this, all of that stuff speaks to this weird thing. As you said, like Peter Teal is kind of tied up in all of this. And there is almost this ideological bent to what is happening now in Silicon Valley with these defense contractors that you've named a couple of times. And it's techno patriotism. What is techno patriotism? Like, who are the thought leaders of it and how is it affecting things? So I understand it to be, as I've read about it and read the statements from the people who've made comments that reflect this technopatriatism.

I take it to have sort of two fundamental components. One is something we already mentioned, was sort of this uncritical faith in technology as a means to further American capabilities. on the battlefield and overall win a competition with China and Russia and whoever dares to face the military progress of the United States. So it's just Rath Soron. So it's just sort of this faith in technology for technology's sake that, no matter better living through technology is you know that's just sort of in in general that's a fundamental premise that they accept um that's that's what's motivating us add that to the fact that

you know this is where the patriotism comes in that um we are on a righteous mission because we are you know smart uh we have money uh because we overall know better in terms of of the technology, we have sort of a missionary zeal to create the next weapons or create the next components of new weapons, the new components that are going to be in these new weapons that are going to out compete China, Russia. We have a mission to ensure that the Pentagon buys these products to save democracy in the United States and overall in the world. And I sort of, I guess it's a third component to this too, which is that there's an element of kind of like the peace through strength stuff that you start to see echoed in the Reagan

administration and, you know, echoed by sort of right-wing technocrats and foreign policymakers in the Cold War before that. But the idea that the United States, this is, again, not new, but the United States is in the 21st century has not taken, has not done enough to invest in the defense industrial base, has not done enough to invest in defense spending. Despite we're getting near $1 trillion defense budget, we still haven't invested enough in terms of overall GDP in American capabilities and strength. And if we're going to do that, if we're going to actually invest what we need to, then you need to rely upon us, the smart, educated people who can provide you with the necessary technology and know how to defeat our enemies. And so it's not just for profits or profits sake. That's obviously an element to this. But it's like, how do you frame this well? This is righteous and necessary and needed. We are the next saviors of democracy kind of thing. it sounds like the whole bro ethos, the chicken hawk ethos really fits into this beautifully. I mean, I don't know how many people in Silicon Valley are military veterans have been to guess it's vanishingly small.

But put on your vest and, you know, it's a fleece vest as opposed to an actual flack jacket, but, you know, go out there and fight the good fight. Yeah, I think I think this is why, yeah, I don't think many of them have military experience, But what's happening is they're recruiting military veterans and they're recruiting people out of the military. They're relying upon this revolving door that has been around since the Cold War of ex-military officials, generals, you know, high-ranking military officials or people who have worked for the Pentagon or people who have worked for the Trump administration or the Obama administration. Mark Esper, you know, Secretary of Defense is now working for one of these VC-backed startups, and there are others. What's his name, Mike Gallagher from the Trump administration is now working for Palantir. These people who have sort of military experience or experience with the military, they're bringing them in as board members or as investors.

they are the ones who sort of know the Pentagon side of things and they also can sell this endeavor, their endeavors to the Pentagon in a better way. And it also provides them with the necessary clout as opposed to like we're just a bunch of eggheads who know this technology kind of Bill Gates tinkering with technology in our computer and in our garage kind of thing and ticking with computers in our garage kind of thing like that. Now that you have people with cloud, who have been the military or been in the Pentagon, that's what they're doing. And so it's a way in which, and this is, again, a bigger problem of the need for regulating this type of revolving door, regulating, you know, these companies from acquiring people who are out of,

you know, just coming out or have recently exited the Pentagon or recently left, retired from the military, and then using their knowledge and, uh, experience to secure their defense contracts, which is lobbying, which is not good, I think, for democracy and fine relationship between money and democracy. I'd say you'd see the, by the way, it was Naria, which is the name of one of Gavis rings. Okay. But I thought you said Narnia first. I'm like, oh, that's a bit more interesting.

No, weirdly, the Christian values are too overt for the apenni of the aesthetics of Narnia. Right. So this kind of revolving door you're talking about it, I would say that we've seen some of the consequences of that in more traditional defense contractors. The one that really springs to mind is how many ex-marines are on the board of various companies that have things to do with the V22 Osprey. Yeah. this tilt rotor aircraft that crashes and kills people at an alarming rate. It's the widow.

They call it the widow maker, I think. Is that? Yeah. Yes. They call it the widow maker. Yeah. And other countries are other countries that have them are saying, like, you know what? Maybe not with this anymore.

Right. And the problems of bad. It have been known for a long time. But, you know, when you've got people on your board that have these old contacts, and everyone's kind of chummy. These things kind of get, have a way of just going through almost on their own inertia, right?

So it's bad, folks, is what we're saying. And you don't want, you don't want to get to the point where that kind of relationship is established between, I think, these kind of techno-patriots and the, DoD. I would say you don't want things that have entrenched, right? Yeah. You don't want a revolving door with Peter Thiel sitting at the head of a table with a bunch of old admirals at the table with him.

Right, right. And I should say there isn't inject some optimism into this. There are efforts by, in particular, Elizabeth Warren, to push back on the revolving door. She's introduced bipartisan and legislation over the past couple years with some unlikely folks like Chuck Grassley on the Republican side to regulate the revolving door between industry and in the military. This has also tackled something we haven't mentioned, the role of foreign money and foreign investment in defense contractors, which is also a big question mark in these companies, is sort of where is the foreign money coming from? And if they're taking foreign venture capital money,

if it's taking foreign services of money, that raises a question mark in terms of democracy and the role of who's backing what in terms of these companies and how it's influencing democracy. And I think the next step would be for Warren and her allies to sort of step into the space and regulate what's happening here in the VC side of things and the Silicon defense startup side of things.

But the role of defense, I mean, the role of oversight, congressional oversight of defense industry, you know, there are, well, there are a few willing to take that on. Let's just put it that way.

So Warren doesn't have too many supporters. She has a few, but not as many. as we would have liked. But I would say that there is other reasons for hope. Like we've been in these places before. There's a lot of reasons why, like, defense spending changed in the 90s. It was not just at the end of the Cold War,

but it was also, like, at the end of the Reagan administration, a bunch of high-profile, like, defense scandals and arrests that led to reform in kind of a pullback. right? And it's possible that things like that can happen again. Yeah. Agreed. Yeah. There's, you know, we're another, what, $800, you know, toot seat, you know, kind of thing, you know, that, those things that came out of the Reagan administration, you know, another scandal away. I think that would, that would also cause Congress to act, you know, how much this is getting to the public, I think, is a good question, you know, how much is,

you know, it's great that we're having this conversation and that Dill and I could write the brief and that there's being reporting, good reporting done. on this by many outlets. Eric Lipped at the New York Times, you know, others, you know, Forbes, but how much is the public kind of attentive to these things and how much do they vote because of these things? It's minimal. But I think there would have to be some sort of outcry, public outcry about this. And that's also something that we should be trying to accomplish, too, is getting the public

more aware of this stuff and how their money is being spent. spent or what their money could be spent for and how I don't, well, I think the public wouldn't necessarily be on board with many of these things. That is usually the framing that's worked for me. When I've reported on this stuff, is to really put it forward as a, look how they're wasting your money issue. You know, the war in Afghanistan maybe couldn't get anyone to read about it, but unless I was like, hey, the DOD just spent a billion dollars, or it wasn't a billion dollars, several

million dollars flying in goats from Italy because they didn't like the indigenous goats in Afghanistan. Right. Stuff like that. Right. You know, usually played pretty well. Yeah. And I think that if the reporting can kind of focus on that waste fraud abuse angle on this

stuff, which is a little bit harder to do. and it's a little bit harder to prove. Yes. And that's, you know, then we can get into talking about like the incentive structure around journalism and how things work now. That's a whole other podcast. Yeah, I'd be interested. But yeah, I agree. I mean, I think the one, you know, the public getting on board is essential here.

And I think that's, you know, remains to be seen how much we can do to, to create, you know, some sort of scandal. Like there was, like there was in the past with the $800. whatever was, $1,500 to a toilet seed or, there are other big examples from the Cold War. Operation Illwind, which I think was Air Force. There was this plane called the C-5A Galaxy plane that had the wingspan of a football field and couldn't actually fly. It couldn't.

And that became very public and ultimately, you know, led to some, backlash and C5A is still flying, but with some backlash and that paid dividends, I think, overall, but we'll see. Here at the end of the conversation, I want to switch tracks just a little bit. So I notice in the end of the Quincy Institute brief, it says that you are writing a book about the global war on terror. I am. And as we are now kind of, as the Pentagon has declared the global war on terror is over, whether or not there's some lingering bits of it kind of out there still ongoing at the moment.

I'm kind of wondering like what you see. How do you write a book about something so large? Like what is the focus? What are you looking at? Yeah. What's the process? It's a good question. One way I want answers, I'll tell you when it's written.

but when I finished it. But so I'm approaching the global war and terror is not a war and terror per se. That is not a war, but actually an era in history. That if you look at the end of the Cold War, 1991, 1992, there's an understanding that with the end of communism, American power has to find you know, new ways to deploy forces. It has to rethink defense acquisitions. It has to rethink overall what its strategic focus should be. And Clinton takes office.

And if you read Clinton's 1993 now security strategy document, it's basically kind of saying there really are no threats here except for like organized crime. And what he calls failed states or what? what later becomes failed states or called failed states. But then in 1993, fall of 1993, you have the World Trade Center bombing, the first World Trade Center bombing by Ramsey Youssef, kills several people, including a pregnant woman. And from there, you start to see the national security state,

the defense defense. Defense Department, in particular, and that security council start to think broadly about terrorism as a threat. And it's not just about calling in the FBI or local law enforcement. Now we need to find terrorists and ferret them out and defeat them. And that becomes a project of the NASCAR Council in particular and people like Richard Clark. And so what I'm arguing is that from 1993, you start to see a focus on counterterrorism policy. by the end of the 1990s, to sum up a very big book, which I'm telling myself, won't be a very big book.

But by the end of the 1990s, you have Clinton bombing Iraq almost daily. You know, there's a, there's a CIA task force that's trying to find Osama bin Laden. There are, we're not calling them al-Qaeda yet, but there's an effort to, you know, find al-Qaeda operatives. the United States has bombed Afghanistan after the bombings of U.S. embassies, all the things that we would consider to be sort of part of a war on terror actually happening by the late 1990s or the 2000s. So when 9-11 does happen, it's not like Bush is coming out of nowhere with his policies. He has a precedent in place. And what happens then is that Bush is taking on a project of nation building, nation building in Afghanistan first and then Iraq. And then by the end of that, era by the two men of his Bush the Bush presidency he's kind of given up on that to a certain extent but then Obama kind of says well we if I don't want to be a nation builder but then I can rely upon new technologies like drones and light footprint to still nation builds but do it better and then in Egypt and Libya and Syria try to overthrow regimes that that aren't in the best interest he feels in

the United States until Trump comes along and we know what Trump says and then Biden pulling out of Afghanistan in 2021. Then to 2020, 2020, with the October 7 terrorist attacks, which I would argue if they occurred in 2002, you'd see a very different U.S. response, you know, to those terrorist attacks. So that tells me that between 1983 and 2003, there was an error here of U.S. history, beginning of sort of a genesis of, you know, nascent counterterrorism policy that then metastasizes. And then by 2023, that policy or that approach, that strategy towards terrorism has fundamentally changed. So if we look at then this history, then we can sort of figure out who the key players

are, main actors are. And that's what the book is built around. It's like these key actors in the NASCAR apparatus who make the decisions, many of them aren't elected, but, they're appointed, and you don't actually read about them in the newspaper, but they're the ones making the decisions, and then I'm trying to connect their decision-making to what's happening in the places that the United States is attacking or invading, you know, what's happening on the ground and how those experiences then come back and kind of either feed into decision-making or come back to haunt us in terms of, you know, causing back against our war on terror.

So that's the book, and I'm hoping that it'll make sense. I'm hoping it will make sense by the end of it and that people will read it. So that's what I'm trying to do. Do you have a title yet? A War for Our Times, semi-colon, the United States in the Age of Terror. So that's the subtitle is the United States in the Age of Terror. Well, when it comes out, we'd love to have you on again to talk through it. I would love that.

Yeah, I love that. Two years from now, three years from now, maybe. Yeah. But yeah, I love that. We'll be here. Well, I mean, we've been here nine years. We should actually mention that the next episode that goes out probably be our ninth anniversary. Congrats.

Really? The one, the, because it's the beginning of August. Beginning of August. You know what I was thinking about while we were having this conversation, actually, is that I wish that we had done what all sane podcasts, do and numbered the episodes from the beginning, but we never did. I have no idea how many there are. More than five.

Several hundred. More than five. Mike, thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this. Where can people find your work? You can find my work on Google. And I also have a sub-examined. stack called Warfare and Welfare. So if you want to read my thoughts on the state of U.S. foreign policy and the history of it,

and you also want to keep updated on my book project, you can go to warfare and welfare. You can also buy a book I have coming out on why Great Power Competition isn't very good for American democracy. That book is called The Robbery Pearl. I co-authored it with Van Jackson, a political scientist, and I'll be out in January with Yale University Press. you can pre-order it now. So I'd appreciate that. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thank you. That's all for this week. Angry Planet listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Gould, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, go to Angry Planetpod.com, kick us $9 a month. You get bonus episodes, early access to the mainline episodes, and written content as well. Got a NATO episode brewing in the bonus hopper.

should go out next week. Thank you all for your support. It does keep us going. We will be back again later with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe until then.