Defense Tech Shouldn’t Be Sexy

The yassification of killing robots makes me queasy. 

Last week, Anduril, a prominent defense technology startup valued at $8.5B, announced that it had acquired the “Fury” line of autonomous airplanes. Think of the plane as a Roomba that can fly, substituting its vacuum for missiles. While the product is not yet deployed, the acquisition was clearly done with the hope of selling these machines by the hundreds. 

In my naivety, I expected the tech community to have some reservations. After all, these planes are powered by an AI technology whose sole purpose is slaughter. 

Instead, X was full of comments showering the announcement with adoration. A sampling of real tweets:

“This makes me so horny”

“*laughs in American asymmetric advantage*”

“This is beautiful. I love the military industrial complex so much.”

I do not want to paint with a broad brush. The dialogue around Silicon Valley’s relationship with the military almost always devolves into tribal warfare, with little space for nuance. My family has a history of military service, and my father-in-law was in the Air Force. Additionally, I’ve argued for years about the power of technology to pull society forward. Ultimately, I feel that war and the technology that supports it are sometimes necessary, but always complicated.