Silicon Valley Goes to War

Sharon Weinberger on big tech’s relationship with the Pentagon

Silicon Valley is a child of the Pentagon. Cold War programs like DARPA bankrolled the research that gave us the internet. Today, the relationship has flipped: tech companies and their powerful CEOs wield far more influence over how and when the country wages war. What happens when private interests outweigh national security interests? And what makes the military’s relationship with this new crop of defense tech startups from the contractors that came before?

In this episode, the Institute for Global Affairs’ Jonathan Guyer is joined by national security reporter Sharon Weinberger to discuss her new book Valley of Death: How Big Tech is Fueling the Future of War. They examine the on-again, off-again relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon, the gold rush ignited by the war in Ukraine, the way today’s battlefields have become proving grounds for new defense products, and much more. This conversation originally took place at the 92nd Street Y in New York.

Sharon Weinberger is a journalist who writes about defense, technology, and national security. She is currently editor-in-chief at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and previously served as national security editor at the Wall Street Journal. She has held several journalism fellowships, including at Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Financial Times, Wired, and Slate, among others.

Find Sharon on X: https://x.com/weinbergersa

Get a copy of Valley of Death: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sharon-weinberger/valley-of-death/9780316595933/?lens=little-brown

Transcript:

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