In their new open-access article for a forum on the ‘Tech Oligarchy’ in the journal Science as Culture, PLATFORM WARS’ Marijn Hoijtink, Jasper van der Kist, and Laszlo Steinwärder trace the historical and contemporary ties among major tech firms, their leading figures, and the U.S. military.
Drawing on STS and political economy approaches, they outline the role of military funding in the emergence and development of Silicon Valley firms, then highlight the critical role of digital platforms as central nodes in today's military-tech amalgamations. Taking Project Maven – and its progression from image-recognition software to a data integration and analysis platform to an entire platform ecosystem – as a case, they show how the platformization of the defense market is shaking up conventional procurement processes, thereby reshaping the Pentagon’s organizational structure in line with the tech oligarchs’ beliefs, interests,and business models. They conclude:
“That the military, as the center of state power and a disciplining force both internally and externally, has become subject to the tech oligarchy's scaling and expansion efforts should not surprise us. However, it should concern us. As the tech oligarchy, complemented by new actors from the Defense Tech sector, reorients toward the defense market and remakes it according to its financial interests, political beliefs, and techno-solutionist ideologies, this warrants our critical attention, especially now that these align so closely with the US military’s longstanding but now more outspoken ambitions for global dominance and warfighting at speed and scale. Understanding the political-economic impact of the platforms owned and operated by the tech oligarchy and how they enable military reach and violence is, therefore, a necessary step.”
The article is open access and can be found here.
