By AJ Dellinger Published December 23, 2024 | Comments (0) | Tesla CEO Elon Musk (L) and Palantir CEO Alex Karp appear together on Capitol Hill Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images New Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse just dropped: According to the Financial Times, major defense technology companies Palantir and Palmer Luckeys Anduril are in conversations with SpaceX and OpenAI (among other tech players) to form a consortium to bid for US government defense contracts. The goal of the group, which reportedly plans to announce its membership as soon as January, is to disrupt the prime contractors who have a habit of scoring major deals with the Pentagon. In the crosshairs of the consortium, theres Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Boeing. There is little question that the legacy brands do well bidding on defense work. According to the Department of Defenses Fiscal Year 2023 review, Lockheed Martin took home $61.4 billion, RTX (ne Raytheon) scored $24.1 billion, and Boeing got a cool $20.1 billion. In 2021, 71% of all of Lockheed Martins revenue came from contracts with the US government. Just under 50% of all annual sales for Boeing and RTX went to the feds during the same time period. As The American Prospect has previously pointed out, these are basically state-funded companies but the government has no real control over operations or leadership. So would the safety and security of the country improve by disrupting the big threes vice grip on the Pentagon? Probably, under the assumption that mass-producing weapons of war and supplying them to allies for conflicts that range from mostly just to genocidal is a net positive on national security, which, lets call that dubious.But this particular collection of tech firms as the hammer to bash the oligopoly? Its not clear that this is an improvement upon the status quo. Palantir has carved itself out a niche as the Defense Departments go-to for AI systems. Just this year, it snagged a $100 million contract to build the military AI-powered targeting tools and $480 million to expand the Pentagons data analysis and decision making tools. The company has been more than happy to lend its tech to programs that are at best ethically questionable, including being the technological backbone of the Trump administrations Immigration and Customs Enforcement, helping lead to the breakup of migrant families and facilitating mass raids that led to the separation of children and parents. The companys technology has also been central to Israels ongoing seige in Gaza that has killed over 45,000 people.Anduril, called techs most controversial startup by Bloomberg, has built sensor towers for use on the US-Mexico border to track migrants and has explored the development of autonomous weapons. The companys big play is building drones for warfare, but it also has its eyes on building surveillance satellites, all of which carry some serious ethical questions attached. OpenAI recently announced a partnership with Anduril to work on anti-drone systems, but it seems likely that will be the first of many collaborations if the consortium comes together. The agreement, which has caused some upheaval among OpenAI employees who dont particularly want to be involved in doing defense work, comes after OpenAI quietly removed language from its usage policy restricting the use of its technology for military and warfare purposes.And on top of all that, Its Peter Thiel all the way down, baby. Thiel, the techno-libertarian lizard man who has not-so-quietly been trying to place his acolytes in as many branches of government as possible, has his hands in basically all of these firms. He founded Palantir, co-founded OpenAI, put major financial backing behind Anduril, and was an early-stage investor in SpaceX. Hes proven himself to be a less-than-scrupulous person with an ideology that can far-too-generously be summed up as technological progress no matter the human cost. Thiels biographer, Max Chafkin, told Time that Thiel is worth fearing, stating, When you combine the hostility to democracy and institutional norms with the bankroll of a billionaire you can potentially do some damage. Suddenly, maybe the malignant but status quo evil of the old school defense contractors doesnt seem quite as bad.Daily NewsletterYou May Also Like By Thomas Maxwell Published December 20, 2024 By Passant Rabie Published December 18, 2024 By Thomas Maxwell Published December 18, 2024 By Passant Rabie Published December 18, 2024 By AJ Dellinger Published December 16, 2024 By Passant Rabie Published December 16, 2024