Big Tech joins the army with Meta, Palantir and Openai

Since Donald Trump’s presidential election victory, major tech companies have abandoned years of policy restrictions on military work and sought profitable defense contracts and have built deeper ties with the Pentagon.

Executives from Meta, Openai and Palantir Army reserve officers to swore on Friday. Openai signature A $200 million defense contract This week. Yuan Yes Partner with defense startup Anduril Build AI-powered combat goggles for soldiers.

Promotion by Trump A trillion-dollar defense budget – The largest in American history.

The companies that built Americans’ everyday digital tools are now entering the war business. Tech giants are tweaking consumer AI systems for battlefield use, meaning that every chatgpt query and Instagram scrolling can now train military training for algorithms. Meanwhile, just as these dual-purpose technologies are at the heart of the war, the security guardrail is being removed.

The reversal of Silicon Valley

The relationship between Silicon Valley and the military is nothing new. DARPA funds helped create Internet, GPS and even Siri. Military research has been involved in civilian applications for decades: the Pentagon has developed the technology and the company has commercialized it for everyday use.

But for years, the reverse process has hardly existed. When tech companies try to work with the military, their employees resisted. Google employees staged unprecedented protests Pentagon plans Maven Project Maven to use AI to analyze drone video recording. Nearly 5,000 workers signed a petition asking the company to cancel the contract and dozens of them resigned.

The rebound works. Google did not renew the Maven contract and established AI principles that restrict military applications. For many years, major tech companies have retained policies for weapons development, and employees have successfully opposed military partnerships.

With the unsustainability of artificial intelligence economics, this resistance collapsed. Training and running large language models cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and consumer income alone cannot pay bills. For many companies, working with the military is not only an opportunity—it may be crucial to survival.

The most striking symbol of this partnership will be held Friday, with Silicon Valley executives actually going to wear military uniforms. Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, Palantir’s CTO, Shyam Sankar and Openai executives Kevin Weil and Bob McGrew will be sworn in for the Army’s Inauguration “Separation 201” program.

Technical reserves will serve approximately 120 hours a year, advise on AI-powered systems, and assist the Department of Defense in recruiting other high-tech experts. They will survive basic training and have greater flexibility than typical reserve personnel. Due to its private sector status, everyone will take the rank of lieutenant colonel and immediately play it in a senior leadership position.

“We need to go faster, and that’s exactly what we do here,” General Randy George, Chief of Staff, Army Chief of Staff Tell the Wall Street Journal.

The arrangement establishes an unprecedented level of integration between private companies and military planning. Executives won’t work on projects involving their employers, but they will directly invest in military strategies while the company competes for large-scale defense contracts.

Corporate partnerships are developing equally fast. Last month, Meta and Anduril announced that they are collaborating to build augmented reality headsets for U.S. soldiers, technology that provides real-time battlefield intelligence through head displays.

These devices will rely on Meta’s Llama AI model and Anduril’s command and control software. According to Anduril’s CEO, the goal isTurn the warrior into a technician.“

Safety guardrail drops

When a company accepts a military contract, They quietly give up their security commitment. Since 2023, the MIDAS project is a nonprofit that tracks policy changes in major AI companies and has recorded 30 major changes to the ethics code.

Openai removed values ​​like “impact-driven” that emphasizes employees “a deep concern about the meaning of the real world” and replace them with “AGI Focus.” Google has revised its security framework to show that the guidelines are followed only if competitors take similar measures. Openai and others explicitly reversed the previous ban on military applications.

At the same time, supervision is actually weakening. In May, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Cut the Pentagon’s independent weapons testing office Half of the employees have been reduced from 94 to 45. Founded in the 1980s, after weapons performed poorly in combat, the office now has fewer resources to evaluate AI systems, just as they were at the heart of war.

Time is meaningless. Conflicts like the Israel-Iran War Shows the increasing role of artificial intelligence in wara company that once boycotted military partnerships is now an integral part of the U.S. defense strategy.

The question Americans face is whether they are satisfied with this new arrangement—their daily digital interaction training targets the AI ​​systems of foreign enemies.