Valley of Death: How Big Tech is Fueling the Future of War

Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security, with enormous implications for us all.As Sharon Weinberger reveals in this gripping account, the American military and spy agencies helped to create Silicon Valley as we now know it, and some of its biggest and most valuable companies today owe much of their success to the Pentagon and CIA.Beginning with the War on Terror and accelerating under Donald Trump, however, the old alliance between elected leaders in Washington and the unelected CEOs of Silicon Valley has grown increasingly uneasy as power has shifted to the private sector and Big Tech exerts greater and greater influence over its old patrons.Companies such as SpaceX and Palantir, along with newer entrants to the field such as Anduril, are proudly supporting-and quietly shaping-US national defense, whether by providing spies and soldiers with AI and cloud-computing tools or actua