Should tech companies supporting the US military be viewed by media/public discourse as a positive contribution or treated with scorn and suspicion?
4 recorded positions from 3 people, first said Sep 28, 2020. They do not agree — the readings below are what each one actually argued.
Also on the record
Alexandr Wang · Jun 12, 2024
It is fundamentally important for the future of the world that the US Department of Defense have access to the best AI technology, and the media was wrong to tear Scale down for supporting the US military instead of treating it as a positive
Congress, when he testified, took the properly broad view that this is powerful technology requiring care but that it is critical that America leads; the media instead took a scornful posture questioning whether the company could be trusted
43:30 Media scorn toward defense tech is misguided congress had the right view
Palmer Luckey · Sep 28, 2020 · hedged
Upwards of 90% of Silicon Valley supports the military — roughly a 10 to 1 ratio — and the perception otherwise exists because a small group of radicals has hijacked the narrative and each supporter believes they are the lone dissenter.
For every person angry about Anduril's work, ten or twenty privately say they agree but are afraid to say so publicly.
19:31 Silent majority of silicon valley actually suppo
Palmer Luckey · Sep 28, 2020
Wanting China and Russia to have better military technology than the US and its allies is one of the rarest political opinions in America, making US technological military superiority among the most universally popular positions worldwide
Allies like the UK, Germany and Australia actively want the US to hold the best military technology, so the position is popular globally and not just domestically
39:26 Us military tech superiority is among the most u
Emil Michael · Oct 24, 2022
Tech companies refusing to support the Defense Department, e.g. declining to provide cloud services, is wrong; business should carry a public-service and patriotic ethic toward the country that enabled it
His time at the White House, Defense Department, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and Pakistan showed him the real world beyond the Silicon Valley bubble; a country that supported your business deserves support back
51:23 Businesses owe patriotic service to the defense department refusal is wrong regardless of esg
Your assistant can query this graph directly — 4 positions here, 19,646 across the corpus. Add 996.fm over MCP.