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militarism
The Big-Tech Warmongers’ American Dream Would Be a Nightmare for the Rest of Us
By all means, let’s unite around a common purpose. But that purpose shouldn’t be a supposedly more efficient way to build killing machines in the service of an outmoded quest for global dominance.
Mar 19, 2025
Alex Karp, the CEO of the controversial military tech firm Palantir, is the coauthor of a new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. In it, he calls for a renewed sense of national purpose and even greater cooperation between government and the tech sector. His book is, in fact, not just an account of how to spur technological innovation, but a distinctly ideological tract.
As a start, Karp roundly criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on consumer-oriented products and events like video-sharing apps, online shopping, and social media platforms, which he dismisses as “the narrow and the trivial.” His focus instead is on what he likes to think of as innovative big-tech projects of greater social and political consequence. He argues, in fact, that Americans face “a moment of reckoning” in which we must decide “what is this country, and for what do we stand?” And in the process, he makes it all too clear just where he stands—in strong support of what can only be considered a new global technological arms race, fueled by close collaboration between government and industry, and designed to preserve America’s “fragile geopolitical advantage over our adversaries.”
Why not put our best technical minds to work creating affordable alternatives to fossil fuels, a public health system focused on the prevention of pandemics and other major outbreaks of disease, and an educational system that prepares students to be engaged citizens, not just cogs in an economic machine?
Karp believes that applying American technological expertise to building next-generation weapons systems is not just a but the genuine path to national salvation, and he advocates a revival of the concept of “the West” as foundational for future freedom and collective identity. As Sophie Hurwitz of Mother Jones noted recently, Karp summarized this view in a letter to Palantir shareholders in which he claimed that the rise of the West wasn’t due to “the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.”
Count on one thing: Karp’s approach, if adopted, will yield billions of taxpayer dollars for Palantir and its militarized Silicon Valley cohorts in their search for AI weaponry that they see as the modern equivalent of nuclear weapons and the key to beating China, America’s current great power rival.
Militarism as a Unifying Force
Karp may be right that this country desperately needs a new national purpose, but his proposed solution is, to put it politely, dangerously misguided.
Ominously enough, one of his primary examples of a unifying initiative worth emulating is World War II’s Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs. He sees the building of those bombs as both a supreme technological achievement and a deep source of national pride, while conveniently ignoring their world-ending potential. And he proposes embarking on a comparable effort in the realm of emerging military technologies:
The United States and its allies abroad should without delay commit to launching a new Manhattan Project in order to retain exclusive control of the most sophisticated forms of AI for the battlefield—the targeting systems and swarms of drones and robots that will become the most powerful weapons of the century.
And here’s a question he simply skips: How exactly will the United States and its allies “retain exclusive control” of whatever sophisticated new military technologies they develop? After all, his call for an American AI buildup echoes the views expressed by opponents of the international control of nuclear technology in the wake of the devastating atomic bombings of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended World War II—the futile belief that the United States could maintain a permanent advantage that would cement its role as the world’s dominant military power. Nearly 80 years later, we continue to live with an enormously costly nuclear arms race—nine countries now possess such weaponry—in which a devastating war has been avoided as much thanks to luck as design. Meanwhile, past predictions of permanent American nuclear superiority have proven to be wishful thinking. Similarly, there’s no reason to assume that predictions of permanent superiority in AI-driven weaponry will prove any more accurate or that our world will be any safer.
Technology Will Not Save Us
Karp’s views are in sync with his fellow Silicon Valley militarists, from Palantir founder Peter Thiel to Palmer Luckey of the up-and-coming military tech firm Anduril to America’s virtual co-president, SpaceX’s Elon Musk. All of them are convinced that, at some future moment, by supplanting old-school corporate weapons makers like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, they will usher in a golden age of American global primacy grounded in ever better technology. They see themselves as superior beings who can save this country and the world, if only the government—and ultimately, democracy itself—would get out of their way. Not surprisingly, their disdain for government does not extend to a refusal to accept billions and billions of dollars in federal contracts. Their anti-government ideology, of course, is part of what’s motivated Musk’s drive to try to dismantle significant parts of the federal government, allegedly in the name of “efficiency.”
An actual efficiency drive would involve a careful analysis of what works and what doesn’t, which programs are essential and which aren’t, not an across-the-board, sledgehammer approach of the kind recently used to destroy the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), to the detriment of millions of people around the world who depended on its programs for access to food, clean water, and healthcare, including measures to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS. Internal agency memos released to the press earlier this month indicated that, absent USAID assistance, up to 166,000 children could die of malaria, 200,000 could be paralyzed with polio, and 1 million of them wouldn’t be treated for acute malnutrition. In addition to saving lives, USAID’s programs cast America’s image in the world in a far better light than does a narrow reliance on its sprawling military footprint and undue resort to threats of force as pillars of its foreign policy.
The most damning real-world example of the values Karp seeks to promote can be seen in his unwavering support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
As a military proposition, the idea that swarms of drones and robotic systems will prove to be the new “miracle weapons,” ensuring American global dominance, contradicts a long history of such claims. From the “electronic battlefield” in Vietnam to former President Ronald Reagan’s quest for an impenetrable “Star Wars” shield against nuclear missiles to the Gulf War’s “Revolution in Military Affairs” (centered on networked warfare and supposedly precision-guided munitions), expressions of faith in advanced technology as the way to win wars and bolster American power globally have been misplaced. Either the technology didn’t work as advertised; adversaries came up with cheap, effective countermeasures; or the wars being fought were decided by factors like morale and knowledge of the local culture and terrain, not technological marvels. And count on this: AI weaponry will fare no better than those past “miracles.”
First of all, there is no guarantee that weapons based on immensely complex software won’t suffer catastrophic failure in actual war conditions, with the added risk, as military analyst Michael Klare has pointed out, of starting unnecessary conflicts or causing unintended mass slaughter.
Second, Karp’s dream of “exclusive control” of such systems by the U.S. and its allies is just that—a dream. China, for instance, has ample resources and technical talent to join an AI arms race, with uncertain results in terms of the global balance of power or the likelihood of a disastrous U.S.-China conflict.
Third, despite Pentagon pledges that there will always be a “human being in the loop” in the use of AI-driven weaponry, the drive to wipe out enemy targets as quickly as possible will create enormous pressure to let the software, not human operators, make the decisions. As Biden administration Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall put it, “If you have a human in the loop, you will lose.”
Automated weapons will pose tremendous risks of greater civilian casualties and, because such conflicts could be waged without putting large numbers of military personnel at risk, may only increase the incentive to resort to war, regardless of the consequences for civilian populations.
What Should America Stand For?
Technology is one thing. What it’s used for, and why, is another matter. And Karp’s vision of its role seems deeply immoral. The most damning real-world example of the values Karp seeks to promote can be seen in his unwavering support for Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. Not only were Palantir’s systems used to accelerate the pace of the Israeli Defense Force’s murderous bombing campaign there, but Karp himself has been one of the most vocal supporters of the Israeli war effort. He went so far as to hold a Palantir board meeting in Israel just a few months into the Gaza war in an effort to goad other corporate leaders into publicly supporting Israel’s campaign of mass killing.
Are these really the values Americans want to embrace? And given his stance, is Karp in any position to lecture Americans on values and national priorities, much less how to defend them?
Despite the fact that his company is in the business of enabling devastating conflicts, his own twisted logic leads Karp to believe that Palantir and the military-tech sector are on the side of the angels. In May 2024, at the “AI Expo for National Competitiveness,” he said of the student-encampment movement for a cease-fire in Gaza, “The peace activists are war activists. We are the peace activists.”
Invasion of the Techno-Optimists
And, of course, Karp is anything but alone in promoting a new tech-driven arms race. Elon Musk, who has been empowered to take a sledgehammer to large parts of the U.S. government and vacuum up sensitive personal information about millions of Americans, is also a major supplier of military technology to the Pentagon. And Vice President JD Vance, Silicon Valley’s man in the White House, was employed, mentored, and financed by Palantir founder Peter Thiel before joining the Trump administration.
The grip of the military-tech sector on the Trump administration is virtually unprecedented in the annals of influence-peddling, beginning with Elon Musk’s investment of an unprecedented $277 million in support of electing Donald Trump and Republican candidates for Congress in 2024. His influence then carried over into the presidential transition period, when he was consulted about all manner of budgetary and organizational issues, while emerging tech gurus like Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz became involved in interviewing candidates for sensitive positions at the Pentagon. Today, the figure who is second-in-charge at the Pentagon, Stephen Feinberg of Cerberus Capital, has a long history of investing in military firms, including the emerging tech sector.
But by far the greatest form of influence is Musk’s wielding of the essentially self-created Department of Government Efficiency( DOGE) to determine the fate of federal agencies, programs, and employees, despite the fact that he has neither been elected to any position, nor even confirmed by Congress, and that he now wields more power than all of Trump’s cabinet members combined.
As Alex Karp noted—no surprise here, of course—in a February 2025 call with Palantir investors, he’s a big fan of the DOGE, even if some people get hurt along the way:
We love disruption, and whatever’s good for America will be good for Americans and very good for Palantir. Disruption, at the end of the day, exposes things that aren’t working. There will be ups and downs. There’s a revolution. Some people are going to get their heads cut off. We’re expecting to see really unexpected things and to win.
Even as Musk disrupts and destroys civilian government agencies, some critics of Pentagon overspending hold out hope that at least he will put his budget-cutting skills to work on that bloated agency. But so far the plan there is simply to shift money within the department, not reduce its near-trillion-dollar top line. And if anything is trimmed, it’s likely to involve reductions in civilian personnel, not lower spending on developing and building weaponry, which is where firms like Palantir make their money. Musk’s harsh critique of existing systems like Lockheed’s F-35 jet fighter—which he described as “the worst military value for money in history”—is counterbalanced by his desire to get the Pentagon to spend far more on drones and other systems based on emerging (particularly AI) technologies.
Of course, any ideas about ditching older weapons systems will run up against fierce resistance in Congress, where jobs, revenues, campaign contributions, and armies of well-connected lobbyists create a firewall against reducing spending on existing programs, whether they have a useful role to play or not. And whatever DOGE suggests, Congress will have the last word. Key players like Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) have already revived the Reaganite slogan of “peace through strength” to push for an increase of—no, this is not a misprint!—$150 billion in the Pentagon’s already staggering budget over the next four years.
What Should Our National Purpose Be?
Karp and his Silicon Valley colleagues are proposing a world in which government-subsidized military technology restores American global dominance and gives us a sense of renewed national purpose. It is, in fact, a remarkably impoverished vision of what the United States should stand for at this moment in history when non-military challenges like disease, climate change, racial and economic injustice, resurgent authoritarianism, and growing neofascist movements pose greater dangers than traditional military threats.
Technology has its place, but why not put our best technical minds to work creating affordable alternatives to fossil fuels, a public health system focused on the prevention of pandemics and other major outbreaks of disease, and an educational system that prepares students to be engaged citizens, not just cogs in an economic machine?
Reaching such goals would require reforming or even transforming our democracy—or what’s left of it—so that the input of the public actually made far more of a difference, and leadership served the public interest, not its own economic interests. In addition, government policy would no longer be distorted to meet the emotional needs of narcissistic demagogues, or to satisfy the desires of delusional tech moguls.
By all means, let’s unite around a common purpose. But that purpose shouldn’t be a supposedly more efficient way to build killing machines in the service of an outmoded quest for global dominance. Karp’s dream of a “technological republic” armed with his AI weaponry would be one long nightmare for the rest of us.
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Trump Orders US Military to Plan Invasion of Panama to Seize Canal: Report
U.S. officials familiar with the planning said options for "reclaiming" the vital waterway include close cooperation with Panama's military and, absent that, possible war.
Mar 13, 2025
President Donald Trump has directed the Pentagon to prepare plans for carrying out his threat to "take back" the Panama Canal, including by military force if needed, two U.S. officials familiar with the situation told NBC News Thursday.
According to the outlet, the officials said that U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) is drawing up potential plans that run the gamut from working more closely with Panama's military to a less likely scenario in which U.S. troops invade the country and take the canal by force. They also said that SOUTHCOM commander Adm. Alvin Holsey has presented draft strategies to be reviewed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is scheduled to visit Panama next month.
The officials explained that the likelihood of a U.S invasion depended on the level of cooperation shown by the Panamanian military.
Trump has repeatedly refused to rule out use of military force to seize control of the vital U.S.-built waterway, as well as Greenland, an autonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Last week during his joint address to Congress, Trump proclaimed that "to further enhance our national security, my administration will be reclaiming the Panama Canal," but his administration has not clarified precisely what "reclaiming" entails.
The Republican president says the U.S. needs to retake control of the Panama Canal to enhance "economic security," and has falsely claimed that the waterway is "operated by China."
Earlier this month, the New York-based investment firm BlackRock led a group of investors in a $23 billion deal to purchase ports at both ends of the Panama Canal from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate, an agreement Trump dubiously seized upon as proof that "we've already started" reclaiming the conduit.
Panamanian President José Raúl Molina countered that "the Panama Canal is not in the process of being reclaimed... The canal is Panamanian and will continue to be Panamanian!"
The U.S. controlled what was formerly called the Panama Canal Zone from the time of the waterway's construction in the early 20th century—largely done by Afro-Caribbean workers, thousands of whom died in what's widely known as the world's deadliest construction project—until then-President Jimmy Carter transferred sovereignty to Panama in the late 1970s. Under the Torrijos-Carter treaties, the U.S. reserves the right to use military force to defend the canal's neutrality.
The United States has repeatedly used deadly military force in Panama over the decades, including during a 1964 student-led uprising against American control in which 22 Panamanians and four U.S. soldiers were killed, and in a full-scale invasion in 1989 ordered by then-President George H.W. Bush to capture erstwhile ally and CIA asset turned narcotrafficking dictator Manuel Noriega. The U.S. invaders killed hundreds of Panamanians, including many civilians.
Writing for Americas Quarterly this week, Panamanian jurist Alonso E. Illueca argued that Panama's efforts to appease Trump aren't working. These include the BlackRock deal and other moves like quitting China's "Belt and Road" initiative, taking in third-country migrants deported by the U.S., backing a U.S. resolution on Ukraine at the United Nations Security Council, auditing the country's ports, and revisiting a railway project originally developed by the Chinese government.
"Panama should abandon its accommodating policy towards the U.S., which can only lead to escalating demands to banish Chinese influence, to the detriment of Panama's national sovereignty," Illueca asserted.
"An alternative policy for Panama is to align with the rules based international order," he continued. "This includes establishing synergies with like-minded states which have been also affected by U.S. actions such as Canada, Mexico, Greenland, and Denmark. The country should seek to transcend the U.S.-China binary and find alternatives for alliances, which should include partners like the European Union."
"In short," Illueca added, "the way forward for Panama lies in replacing strategic dissonance with strategic clarity."
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Reflecting on the 22 Years Since the World Said No to War
Over $21 trillion were blown on wars. Think what alternative uses for those trillions might have been, and weep.
Feb 15, 2025
Dedication: to the Declaration of Independence; it is worth re-reading.
What do we have to show for more than 20 years of war and trillions of dollars spent, since that prophetic day, February 15, 2003, when the world said no to the impending war on Iraq?
It may be useful to reflect on the past decades of never-ending wars and peer at the near future to assess where we might be headed.
The fact that there has been no accountability for U.S. war crimes now holds crucial consequences for our society, as we are faced with renegade rule in all branches of government.
The Middle East is destabilized and war-ravaged and with 4.7 million people killed. This number includes indirect deaths from food insecurity, demolished infrastructure, environmental damage, and the chaos that ensues when people are bombed, in addition to those killed outright in military strikes. Women and children continue to suffer the deepest and most brutal consequences of the wars. More than 7.6 million children in post 9/11 war zones are suffering from acute malnutrition.
Over 38 million people have been displaced across Asia. A global refugee crisis due to violence and climate change continues unabated as internecine armed conflicts rage and weapons flow across every continent.
In the Afghan and Iraq wars, 53,533 U.S. service members were wounded, over 7,000 killed, and over 30,000 committed suicide. At this point, 22 veterans a day commit suicide; this number has been doubled in the past.
Over $21 trillion were blown on wars. Think what alternative uses for those trillions might have been, and weep for the hungry, unhoused, those lacking healthcare or going bankrupt during a health crisis that insurance refuses to cover, our always under-funded schools, the lack of public transit systems, and the intentional failure to transition from fossil fuels to mitigate the climate crisis that now has us firmly in its grip. Weep for what did not happen that could have benefited everyone and might have transformed our society in positive ways. Instead, trillions went to a few military contractors: Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrup Grumman.
Political accountability for the lies told prior to the shock and awe attack on Iraq and all the subsequent war crimes has been zero. The fact that there has been no accountability for U.S. war crimes now holds crucial consequences for our society, as we are faced with renegade rule in all branches of government—executive, legislative, and judicial—with each branch imposing a reactionary political will on all of us, with impunity, respecting no protocols, laws, or even the battered Constitution they swear to uphold. The wars always come home.
The horror visited on Gaza cannot be overlooked. The U.S. supplies lethal arms to Israel’s vengeful, genocidal rampage that has destroyed Gaza and unmercifully persecutes the West Bank. U.S. military support to Israel stands at over $22 billion since October 7, 2023 with additional billions of military aid in the pipeline. Gaza is a ruin of rubble, homes destroyed, no hospitals, no schools, tens (likely hundreds) of thousands killed, at least a hundred thousand wounded (thousands of children with arms and legs blown off), more than 95% of the population is starving. Governments and institutions failed to call for an end to the massacre, yet punished those speaking out for a cease-fire and arms embargo. What can and will be done to mitigate the ordeal the people of Gaza and the West Bank endure, living under murderous occupation?
The devastation from the wildfires in Los Angeles and Israel’s military destruction in Gaza bear an eerie resemblance to each other, one landscape caused by blowback from nature for our failure to care for our planet, the other by intentional military destruction. How painfully similar these landscapes are, as stunning symbols of the harm human beings do to their environment and to each other.
During these decades, the Pentagon budget has risen to astronomical heights despite the fact that the Pentagon has never passed an audit (those wishing to focus on waste in government might start there). The Department of Defense is the single largest fossil fuel consumer in the world and the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, yet environmental organizations and putative leaders carefully avoid implicating wars and militarism as part of the environmental crisis we face.
U.S. popular culture is driven by a saccharine romance with militarism in which the devastating realities of war are obscured, minimized, sanitized. “Enemies” are manufactured to resemble peoples who have governments the U.S. does not like, so that current politics and policies justify wars waged by the Pentagon. The enemy is familiar to all, no questions asked. The wars are so “vast and … absentee” (apologies to Thomas Pynchon) that the wretched, inflicted suffering endured by human beings goes on for years without notice by mainstream society.
The U.S. has only one political party: the War Party. Everyone in the established status quo agrees on policies to develop and build any and all weapons, to foment and continue to wage wars, abrogating international law and treaties that stand in the way. Those of us who rightly object to such destructive folly (defined by Barbara Tuchman as policies pursued that are counter to the true interest of a society) are treated with withering scorn at best and dismissed out of hand by a venal, corrupt establishment that literally coins money for itself by investing in merchants of death.
Environmental consequences loom, military destruction around the world is a significant contributor that includes elevated carbon dioxide released by bombing and the highly polluting jet fuel used for bombing missions. Scarce resources should be used to lessen suffering in our society and across the world, not employed for destructive purposes. Like it or not, we live on an interdependent, ecologically fragile planet. Humans, as Russell Means used to say, are “cursed with rationality,” which enables the crude justification of policies that are detrimental to life on Earth. The stark, evident fact is that Planet Earth itself, and all living things, cannot take any more war.
Do we face an imminent endgame in which nuclear weapons are used? All nuclear nations are busily upgrading their arsenals, flouting the international ban treaty. The Doomsday Clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight, although moving it to midnight and saying there will be no more changes unless humanity finds a way to save itself might be more apropos for the historical moment we are living in.
Is it at all possible for people to rise up in large enough numbers, out of love for Planet Earth and all living things, across the globe to prevent such a catastrophe, as it is clear that there is no governmental or institutional entity willing or able to call a halt to military madness?
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