Partners by design: the military-industrial complex today

JVL Introduction

In this insightful but complex (and somewhat gloomy) analysis Jacob Ostfield explains how the modern military-industrial complex (MIC) exemplifies “a cyclical process that develops and refines technology through carnage”.

The extensive alliances he discusses, between big tech and the US military, are not opportunistic anomalies, but part of the plan.

This is how the AI boom today  has come to represents “the apex of military-civil fusion: the same technology used to commit genocide and wage war abroad is the largest source of economic growth in the US today.”

Palantir’s latest entry into the civilian tech sector represents the final stage in the MIC cycle, in which private companies re-commercialise military products after decades of collaboration between the civilian and military sectors.

It can only be disrupted, Ostfield argues, if we understand “not only tech companies’ complicity in genocide, but  [also …] the logic that turns daily consumption patterns in the US, UK, and elsewhere into insights used to enact violence.”

The challenge is to  develop technology in the service of human need, rather than imperial carnage.

PS: Coincidentally Peter Geoghegan’s Guardian article has just appeared today – I investigated Palantir’s foothold in the British state – and what I found should worry us all

This article was originally published by Vashti on Tue 14 Jul 2026. Read the original here.