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war profiteers
The US Bombs Kids So Palmer Luckey Can Have Nice Things
I call your attention to Peter Thiel, founder of military tech company Palantir, who just last week visited with Japan’s prime minister last week and was dubbed “America’s shadow president” across Japanese media. I call your attention to Ethan Thornton, founder of Mach Industries, who is attempting to create dangerous hydrogen-powered weapons (and almost killed a coworker in the process). I call your attention to Rob Slaughter, cofounder of Defense Unicorns, whose company has “built the software backbone of the War Department” (and whose surname is rather apt). And I call your attention to Palmer Luckey, self-proclaimed “radical Zionist” and founder of Anduril, a military tech company that supplies the U.S. military with AI and autonomous weapons.
There are many more corporate executives selling weapons and making a killing off of killing. But today we are going to talk about Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, the Tony Stark wannabe who so very badly wants to believe he’s the good guy. Recently, after CODEPINK launched a petition calling him out for his crimes, he claimed that he’s actually saving lives.
This is how war profiteers have always tried to sell war to people. It’s for the greater good! If we don’t kill them, they will probably try to kill us at some much later date! As much as they want us to believe that their pre-emptive wars of aggression are necessary, the truth is we don’t need to security dilemma ourselves into functioning like soulless robots; we’re actually evolved humans who can participate in dialogue, the great human superpower. It’s not a hard conclusion to draw: murder is not the solution to a disagreement with your neighbor, just as systematic murder is not the solution to a disagreement with another nation.
Besides, we all know war isn’t about saving American lives. Instead, American lives are spent carelessly to accomplish elite agendas, and then veterans are discarded like broken utensils. Tell us, Luckey, whose lives were saved by slaughtering civilians in My Lai in 1968 or in Haditha in 2005? Whose lives were saved by taking out every hospital in Gaza? Whose lives were saved by bombing 160+ school children in Iran?
No, murder is not about saving lives, just as war is not about accomplishing everlasting peace. It’s about men in safe, cushy offices far away from the battlefield amassing as much wealth as possible before they have to join the rest of us as dirt in the ground.
You can tell our petition bothered Luckey, because a few minutes later, he tweeted this:
It’s certainly an odd argument to make — that Anduril should never have had the opportunity to exist. It’s almost a direct admission of guilt, if you think about it. A shrugging of responsibility for Anduril’s existence, as if Luckey didn’t build the company himself from the ground up. It’s the world’s fault for needing Anduril, right? He’s just another cog in the machinery of fate. Helpless, unable to withstand his destiny of building murder machines. It’s funny how these war profiteers want all the recognition for what they make until they start getting recognition for the consequences of what they make. Well, we should never have existed anyway!
Luckey also wonders why the media thinks he wants tech to be more involved in the military, as if those words haven’t repeatedly come from his own mouth. He’s been rather urgent about advocating for advanced military tech to counter Russia, China, and Iran, even going so far as to actively prepare for a “simultaneous conflict” by developing advanced, rapid-production military systems. He’s an especially big fan of war on China, and instated a “China 27” strategy, which states that Anduril won’t design and produce any new weapons that won’t be ready by 2027 — the date the War Department set on war with China.
Last year, Anduril secured a $99 million US Air Force contract for autonomous software and a ten-year, $642 million Marine Corps contract for counter-drone systems. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth visited Anduril’s headquarters, where he proclaimed: “We are rebuilding the Arsenal of Freedom.”
Anduril, now valued at nearly $31 billion, was named after the Lord of the Rings sword, “Flame of the West,” a fitting title for a tool of the imperial West’s perpetual exploitation and murder of innocents abroad. The company is also responsible for the “border protection system” of lasers and identification software, inspired by Trump’s dream for a border wall, and has released new wearable headsets that Luckey claims “turn soldiers into superheroes.”
Fact of the matter is, Luckey likes to think of himself as a type of superhero or Lord of the Rings character, bumbling through an adventure, taking down bad guys, and stacking up points. But in doing so, he’s treating reality as a sort of faraway game, entirely detached from human suffering. It’s not all that different from what the White House is doing—just check out this recent White House tweet, which compared the bombing of Iran to a Wii sports game.
War profiteers like Luckey are all the same. They exist in some fantastical bubble, getting high on the idea that they’re helping save-the-world, while the government takes their fresh-baked drones and missiles and sends them to schools, hospitals, and residential buildings to take out unsuspecting families, destroy infrastructure, and wreak widespread destruction. But the truth is — even if it’s deep-deep-down in the dark voids of their souls — Luckey and friends know exactly which part they’re playing and choose not to care.
What does Luckey do with his blood money other than enthusiastically participate in a “B-boys club” group chat (B as in billionaire)... Well, he has amassed quite the collection of vehicles, including a 1969 Ford Mustang, a Tesla Model S, a 2001 Honda Insight, a 1967 Disneyland Autopia car, a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, a 1985 ex-Marine Corps Humvee, a Mark V Special Operations Craft, two submarines, and multiple motorcycles, among many others. … I wonder if we converted USD to human lives, how many people had to die for Luckey to afford each vehicle?
It’s a simple equation: more war means more money for war profiteers. So it’s really no surprise Luckey is hellbent on war with China, which would make him billions and could afford him another few submarines for his imaginary underwater adventures. The U.S. has invested trillions of dollars into preparing for war on China ($3.4 trillion to be exact, a number larger than the total amount spent on 20 years of war in Afghanistan). Every incremental increase to the War Department budget is justified with the same reason: we need to counter China, we need to counter China, we need to counter China. China has become the ultimate war budget enhancer, and all the slippery politicians and war profiteers have taken advantage of it.
Unfortunately, war is the main driver of U.S. technological advancement. So instead of developing advanced technology to improve infrastructure, build high-speed railways, and raise the standard of living, the tech industry is creating headsets for soldiers to optimize killing during battle. They are making autonomous robot drones that pick their next targets according to data sets, rather than valuing human life. They are using AI to draft battle strategies and risking escalation to unforeseen, unredeemable heights.
Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, China… These nations are not the enemies of ordinary people in the U.S. Our enemies are internal: the war profiteers, the ruling class, the “B-boys club” members, and the military tech founders. It is the ruling elites who drive war, all for profit. And it is always the people who suffer. Even now, we suffer as all our taxpayer money is funneled into new contracts with companies like Anduril instead of supporting the health and well-being of the American people. And so overseas, children are murdered, so guys like Palmer Luckey can add to their rare car collections.
Instead of pointing at manufactured enemies overseas, we must confront all the war profiteers in the United States, driving us into more war. Their power rests solely on one thing: convincing us that they are the good guys, and that innocent people in Iran, Lebanon, Venezuela, China, and elsewhere are bad and deserving of death. Let’s make sure Palmer Luckey knows that we will never let him get away with profiting off murder.
President Trump Is a Warmonger
But the power and influence of the war machine are not going completely unchallenged. The grip of militarism and the institutions that profit from it are indeed being challenged by organizations like The Poor People’s Campaign: A Call for Moral Revival; Dissenters, a youth antimilitarism group based in Chicago; antiwar veterans organizations like About Face, Common Defense, and Veterans for Peace; longstanding peace groups like the Friends Committee on National Legislation and Peace Action; networks like People Over Pentagon and Dismantle the Military-Industrial Complex; the ceasefire and Palestinian rights movements on U.S. campuses and beyond; and groups working for racial and economic justice, gay and trans rights, immigration reform, the demilitarization of the police, or compensation for environmental damage caused by nuclear weapons testing and other military activities. As such organizations coalesce, bringing together tens of millions of us whose lives and prospects are impacted by this country’s ever-growing war machine, let’s hope it might be possible to create the power needed to build a better, more tolerant, and more peaceful world, one that meets the needs of the majority of its people, rather than endlessly squandering precious resources on war and preparations for more of it.
So why pay attention to that new strategy document if what really determines our safety and security lies elsewhere? There are several reasons to do so.
First, the NSS has prompted discussion in the mainstream media and elite circles of what U.S. priorities in the world should actually be — and such a discussion needs to be expanded to include the perspectives of people and organizations actually suffering the consequences of our militarized domestic and foreign policies.Second, that strategy paper reflects the unnerving intentions and worldview of the current administration, which, of course, has the power to determine whether this country is at war or peace.
Finally, it suggests just how the Trump administration would like to be perceived. As such, it should be considered a weapon in the debate over what kind of country the United States should be.
Touting the “President of Peace”
From the start, the submission letter that accompanies the new strategy document is pure Donald Trump. In case you hadn’t noticed, the current occupant of the Oval Office would have us believe that everything — every single thing! — he does is bigger, better, and more beautiful than anything that ever came before it. And that’s definitely the case, in the first year of his second term, when it comes to his view of what this country’s national security policies should actually be. As the letter puts it:
“Over the past nine months, we have brought our nation — and the world — back from the brink of catastrophe and disaster. After four years of weakness, extremism, and deadly failures, my administration has moved with urgency and historic speed to restore American strength at home and abroad, and bring peace and stability to our world.
“No administration in history has brought about such a dramatic turnaround in so short a time.”
Needless to say, we’re expected to attribute that alleged American revival to the brilliance and tough-guy attitudes of the president and his team. But any reasonable American should instantly have doubts about that. After all, one of the Trump administration’s proudest accomplishments, as the new document notes, has been getting “radical gender ideology and woke lunacy out of our military.” Or, to put it slightly differently, under the guise of its crusade against DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), the administration has effectively dismantled programs designed to reduce racism, misogyny, and anti-gay and anti-trans violence in the ranks of the military.
Whether the programs aimed at reducing entrenched discrimination in those ranks were ever sufficient is certainly doubtful, but that discrimination in the military needs to be addressed should have been and should still be beyond question. To cite just one example, a 2024 study by political geographer Jennifer Greenberg conducted for the Costs of War Project at Brown University found that there were more than 70,000 cases of sexual assault in the U.S. military in 2021 and 2023 (the years covered by her analysis). Her report also noted that, “on average, over the course of the war in Afghanistan, 24 percent of active-duty women and 1.9 percent of active-duty men experienced sexual assault.” Pretending that widespread sexual violence doesn’t exist in the U.S. military or dismissing it as an example of “radical gender ideology and woke lunacy” should be considered, at best, a policy equivalent of criminal negligence. And it’s certainly not a great look for the person who desperately wants to be known as the “president of peace.”
But our commander-in-chief is nothing if not persistent (and predictable). In his introduction to the new strategy document, I’m sure you won’t be shocked to learn that President Trump takes the opportunity to pat himself on the back for allegedly ending “eight raging conflicts” in his first eight months in office — including those between Cambodia and Thailand, Kosovo and Serbia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, India and Pakistan, and Israel and Iran.
Of course, residents of many of those countries can be forgiven for not being aware of President Trump’s purported role in bringing relative peace to their regions or, in some of those cases, for failing to note that the peaceful situations he claims to have brought about don’t even exist. And they would be right to be skeptical. After all, this is the same president who has decimated the U.S. diplomatic corps and dismantled Washington’s main economic and humanitarian aid organization, the U.S. Agency for International Development — hardly the actions of a president of global peace.
Trump’s rhetoric in his introductory letter contrasts with some of the more sober passages in the document itself. His ranting and self-praise, however, are undoubtedly of more relevance when it comes to understanding the world that we’re actually in than the words in the body of that strategy’s blueprint. If his time in office tells us anything, it’s that his administration’s policies are heavily influenced by his personal desires and resentments, whether or not they square with existing laws, procedures, or policy pronouncements.
The Donroe Doctrine: A 19th Century Strategy for the 21st Century World
The aspect of the newly announced military strategy that has gotten the most attention (and may be the closest to the president’s heart) is its focus not on the rest of the world but on the Western Hemisphere, including what the president has called the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, or what’s come to be known as the “Donroe Doctrine.”
The hemispheric focus includes the administration’s harsh immigration crackdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is now literally kidnapping people off the city streets of this country, often regardless of their actual immigration status and absent the alleged criminal histories that have been used to justify its activities. President Trump sees this wave of repression as a badge of honor, arguing that “starting on my first day in office, we restored the sovereign borders of the United States and deployed the military to stop the invasion of our country.”
The hyper-militarization of the border has been paralleled by a wildly more aggressive posture in the hemisphere as a whole, most notably in the repeated attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean Sea, the waters off of Venezuela, and even the eastern Pacific Ocean, and the preparations for what could become a regime-change war against the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. No matter that his country poses no direct threat whatsoever to the United States. And Republican calls for a full-scale war against that nation are occurring despite the disastrous results of this country’s regime-change policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and beyond in this century.
The attacks on those defenseless ships, targeting individuals who pose no direct threat to the United States and haven’t even been proven to be involved in drug trafficking, violate international law and are being carried out without the approval of Congress. That was no less true of the recent seizure of a Venezuelan cargo ship transporting oil to Asia and the imposition of sanctions on six more oil-carrying ships.
Unfortunately, waging war without input from Congress has been the norm in U.S. military interventions of this century. Data generated by the Military Intervention Project at Tufts University indicates that the United States has used military force or engaged in outright warfare 30 times since 2001, with Congress largely on the sidelines. And rarely have those interventions achieved anything like their stated objectives, as documented by the Costs of War Project, which has shown that America’s post-9/11 war on terror has cost at least $8 trillion, involved the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians, and left a huge cohort of U.S. veterans with physical and psychological injuries, all without faintly achieving the stated goals of promoting democracy or stability in the targeted nations.
Can the Trump Administration End Endless Wars?
Despite its increasingly aggressive posture in the Western Hemisphere (and on U.S. soil), some analysts hold out hope that the Trump administration will ultimately reduce the frequency of U.S. military intervention globally and perhaps even “end endless wars.” There is rhetoric in the new strategy document that could support such a notion, but the real question is whether the president will act on it in any meaningful way.
Judging by its rhetoric alone, the administration’s strategy document would seem to suggest at least an implicit reduction in the use of force overseas, as evidenced in its discussion of strategy:
“A strategy must evaluate, sort, and prioritize. Not every country, region, issue, or cause — however worthy — can be the focus of American strategy…American strategies since the end of the Cold War have fallen short — they have been laundry lists of wishes or desired end states; have not clearly defined what we want but instead stated vague platitudes.”
The document then goes further, seeming to denounce the American war machine and the drive for U.S. military dominance globally:
“After the end of the Cold War, American foreign policy elites convinced themselves that permanent American domination of the entire world was in the best interests of our country… Our elites badly miscalculated America’s willingness to shoulder forever global burdens to which the American people saw no connection to the national interest. They overestimated America’s ability to fund, simultaneously, a massive welfare-regulatory-administrative state alongside a massive military, diplomatic, intelligence, and foreign aid complex.”
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth reinforced such themes in a December 6th speech at the Reagan National Defense Forum, while highlighting the administration’s usual condemnations of efforts to reduce discrimination in the military or this country or address climate change. As he summed it up, “The War Department will not be distracted by democracy building, interventionism, undefined wars, regime change, climate change, moralizing and feckless nation building.”
Taken seriously, such observations would lead to a sharp reduction in the American global military footprint of 750 foreign bases, more than 170,000 troops deployed overseas, a Navy designed to support combat anywhere in the world, dozens of ongoing “counterterror” operations globally from Somalia to Yemen, and arms-supplying relationships with more than half the nations on earth.
Needless to say, so far that hasn’t happened, whether a Republican or a Democrat was at the helm of the administration. But as with President Trump’s professions of being a peacemaker or his occasional rhetorical jabs at “war profiteers” and “warmongers,” the anti-interventionist language in some of the administration’s new National Security Strategy is clearly aimed mainly at those parts of the president’s base here at home who are indeed sick of war and skeptical of large corporations and the “deep state.”
All too sadly, President Donald Trump, Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth, and the rest of the crew seem all too willing to make war in the Western Hemisphere in a significant fashion, while essentially ignoring the U.S. military’s other warring activities elsewhere on the planet. (Only recently, for instance, U.S. Africa Command confirmed that it had launched 111 airstrikes in Somalia in 2025.) And whether Trump supporters here at home are willing or in any fashion able to hold Trump to his antiwar rhetoric and blunt his penchant for using military force remains to be seen.
The Fight for Peace
To resist and reverse the militarization of American foreign policy will mean speaking truth to power, while working to debunk the myths that rationalize this country’s permanent war footing. But it will also require confronting power with power by generating a broad people’s movement against militarism in all its manifestations, including the militarization of foreign policy, immigration enforcement, and policing in this country, as well as the military’s role in generating staggering amounts of greenhouse gases and so accelerating climate change and threatening public health.
There are people and organizations fighting on all those fronts. Building a network of resistance that respects the priorities of each of them will take dedicated organizing and relationship-building. Much of that work is already underway. But the question remains: Can the public interest overcome the special interests and bankrupt ideologies that continue to make war and the threat of more war America’s face to the world? It’s a question on which none of us can afford to remain neutral.
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