Silicon Valley’s national security pivot will only accelerate under the new Trump administration

The political ascendancy of Elon Musk and others like him will likely draw Silicon Valley and the Pentagon even closer – a trend that may profoundly impact technology development and further entrench the power of ‘big tech’.

Expert comment Published 29 November 2024 Updated 2 December 2024 3 minute READ

Katja Bego

Senior Research Fellow, International Security Programme

Silicon Valley’s roots lie firmly in the military-industrial complex: the internet was initially the product of military funding. But that symbiotic relationship began to wane  after the Cold War, as the focus for development turned to commercial applications. Bureaucratic Department of Defense procurement processes did not mesh well with the Silicon Valley ethos of ‘go fast and break things’ and few tech workers had the appetite to work on weapon systems. 

This has started to change in the past few years. Rising geopolitical tensions, a slowdown in traditional venture capital investment, and the increased battlefield significance of off-the-shelf, commercial technologies such as FPV drones and Musk’s Starlink, have made chasing defence contracts more appealing for tech companies large and small. 

In 2024, more Silicon Valley leaders endorsed the former president – especially those with ties to the Pentagon – and they are now likely to want to seize on their electoral gamble.

Earlier this month Amazon, Anthropic and Palantir launched a partnership to develop AI solutions for the US defence and intelligence communities. And in September, the storied tech accelerator Y-combinator backed a weapons company for the first time in its history. 

Such developments reflect a wider trend: venture capital investment in defence tech reached $100 billion between 2021 and 2023, nearly 40 per cent higher than the previous seven years combined. The Pentagon signed contracts worth an estimated $53 billion with big tech companies between 2018 and 2022. 

Trump’s second term

This collaboration is only likely to accelerate under the second administration of President Donald Trump. Tech entrepreneurs such as Peter Thiel and Anduril’s Palmer Luckey, in the vanguard of this defence tech renaissance, were among the vanishingly few tech figures to support Trump in 2016. In 2024, more Silicon Valley leaders endorsed the former president – especially those with ties to the Pentagon – and they are now likely to want to seize on their electoral gamble.

The night of Trump’s re-election, incoming government efficiency czar Elon Musk took to X to tell Luckey that the US Department of Defense urgently needed entrepreneurial companies such as his to shake things up. Reacting to the result, Luckey saw his company’s prospects as positive under the new administration: ‘We did well under Trump and we did better under Biden,’ he said. ‘I think we will do even better now’. 

The idea that US hegemony is predicated on maintaining technological supremacy over its adversaries has long been at the heart of American strategic thinking.

Project 2025, considered by many a policy blueprint for the incoming White House, calls the cutting of red tape in Pentagon technology procurement processes essential for America’s ability to ‘fight and win our nation’s wars’ and stay on top in the competition with China. 

These efforts should be seen as a continuation rather than a departure from the previous administration’s approach. Indeed, the idea that US hegemony is predicated on maintaining technological supremacy over its adversaries has long been at the heart of American strategic thinking.

Key pillars of Biden’s technology and economic policy agenda – from the CHIPS Act to export restrictions on strategic technologies – were framed through a national security lens and intended to enable US tech to retain its edge over Chinese challengers. This push reflects a widely held, bipartisan fear in Washington that, though the US military remains the world’s largest, its capabilities are atrophying, while more nimble rivals (i.e. China) are rapidly catching up.

As a result, the Pentagon has made repeated overtures to Silicon Valley over the past decade to bring more of its cutting-edge technology to the military. In return, figures like venture capitalist Marc Andreessen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt have publicly pushed for US big tech firms and new startups to heed the call and do their ‘patriotic duty’. 

Advantages for big tech

There are many advantages for the companies involved, beyond lucrative Pentagon contracts. If the US government increasingly sees dominance in technologies like AI as a national security issue of almost existential strategic importance, it will not want to put too many constraints on its development. 

Indeed, more deregulation is likely under the new Trump administration. The president-elect has already made clear that he will get rid of most of the guardrails on the development of AI put in place by Biden, which he argued would hamper American competitiveness with China. 

The incoming president is also embracing a ‘drill, baby, drill’ ethos when it comes to enabling energy supplies for Silicon Valley companies (an exorbitant amount is needed to fuel the AI revolution). Some companies, like OpenAI, are now also pushing for Washington to foot more of the ballooning bill for the infrastructure underpinning AI development.  

A high-risk approach

There is reason to be wary about increased symbiosis between segments of Silicon Valley and the national security apparatus – and what it may mean for future technology development, tensions with China, and the intertwining of military and economic power. 

Hyperconnected, tech-mediated warfare requires guardrails. During their recent bilateral meeting in Lima, President Biden and President Xi stressed the need to ‘develop AI technology in the military field in a prudent and responsible manner’. A Trump administration infused with a techno-accelerationist streak may well abandon this course. 

The increased securitization of Silicon Valley will also affect the kinds of innovations that flow out of the tech sector. Technologies developed for the military, from drones to surveillance tools, have a tendency to find their way to the civilian sphere – which could introduce new, increasingly high-risk technology to civilian life. 

Closer Pentagon-Silicon Valley collaboration could also further fuel Sino-American technology competition and accelerate decoupling. If more technology solutions come to be seen as highly strategic in the rivalry with China, and new innovations are increasingly developed with dual-use objectives in mind, the impetus to limit access to these solutions will increase. 

There has already been a rapid uptick in the types and nature of technologies facing trade restrictions under Biden – from quantum to biotechnology to semiconductors. This net may well widen under Trump. The ‘yard’ in Jake Sullivan’s ‘small yard-high fence’ analogy may now become very sizable indeed.

The increasingly intimate relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon will also see the further entrenchment of the extraordinary amount of power already wielded by big tech companies.

Perhaps most concerningly, the increasingly intimate relationship between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon will also see the further entrenchment of the extraordinary amount of power already wielded by big tech companies – from data, to physical and social infrastructure, to information flows. Enabling these companies to shape the way the world’s most powerful military wages war concentrates even more unaccountable power in one place.  

President Eisenhower famously warned against the establishment of a military-industrial complex, and its potential corrosive impact on democracy. As the fate of the US’s chief engine of growth and competitiveness becomes increasingly intertwined with the country’s military fortunes, the incoming president would do well to heed his predecessor’s warnings.