Longtime national security reporter Sharon Weinberger’s new book, Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War, follows the rise of the military-industrial complex in Silicon Valley, where defense technology companies, like Palantir, Anduril and SpaceX, and their billionaire founders, are increasingly shaping U.S. foreign policy. Weinberger explains that because “the government doesn’t own the underlying technology” peddled by “this new class of entrepreneurs,” these companies have upended the traditional procurement relationship between the U.S. government and older defense firms, and now unilaterally control access to the new weapons and systems — including drones and artificial intelligence — used in modern warfare.
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