Anduril, Palantir and SpaceX are changing how America wages war

wateralien

Are they also changing the way America puts a new (wholly-owned) president in the white house in 2028 in order to approve these contracts?

Svip

As an aside, it really irks me how Tolkien's names are used in this manner.

exogeny

I have a lot of deep ambivalence here. On one hand, I would rather Americans be safe. I don't want anyone in harm's way; if I absolutely had to choose, I'd rather we have superiority. On the other hand, the "the ends justifies the means" justification of the near constant erosion of civil liberties and due process is really, really concerning. And I do not trust, at all, the Rand-lite tech bro sociopaths or anyone in the Trump administration to do the right thing.

Zigurd

Great results so far!

redeux

Paywall so I can’t read the whole thing, but … > THE IRAN war may end up teaching America many lessons. One that it has learned the hard way is the woeful economics of using traditional weaponry against cheap Iranian drones. “The dynamics of the world have changed,” says Emil Michael, a former Silicon Valley executive who is now a senior official in the Pentagon. “You don’t want to spend a $1m missile to take out a $50,000 drone.” This would have been obvious to anyone following the war in Ukraine. The implication that we learned this from our attacks on Iran are absurd.

moralestapia

And Thiel is behind all of them.

ed_balls

Palantir must be destroyed.

isodev

And to think just a few days ago we got that photo from the Moon, putting in perspective just how tiny the Earth is in the grand scheme of things. We need more “for all of humanity” mindset instead of this “barbaric tribes beat each other over the head for sticky oil”

david_shaw

I don't have a subscription to The Economist, but I was interested in the concept of these organizations as "neo-primes." I found an article on The Cipher Brief describing them: https://www.thecipherbrief.com/defense-neoprime-innovation Specifically, the idea here is that companies like Anduril, Palantir, and SpaceX are rapidly delivering cutting-edge technology (including software) as opposed to the traditional defense contractor process of long, drawn out, super expensive projects mostly focused on hardware (such as building a new type of jet). It makes sense: this is basically what happened in civilian tech, too. Delivering high-tech solutions quickly -- dare I say with agility -- is usually the superior approach.

Teever

I've been wondering for a while now what sort of air defense if any the US military has around SpaceX launch sites. After watching videos of Russian and now gulf state oil & gas infrastructure being blown up by small drones for the past while I've come to realize the obvious reality that a SpaceX rocket -- particularly Starship is an extremely vulnerable and expensive target. It seems totally feasible for a nation state or even an individual to short SpaceX stock after it goes public and then blow up a rocket or two on the launch pad.

sosomoxie

Palantir just ran a full page add in the NYT saying that they "stand with Israel", they also just released a techno-fascist manifesto. We've already seen people shooting at Sam Altman's house, I feel like Palantir is openly inviting citizens to practice self-defense against their executives.

hparadiz

Without being drawn too much into politics I can't imagine anything more unamerican than universal civil service. Of course a dweeb like Karp would push this bullshit. I dare anyone to explain to me how, exactly, it's any different from communism.

BoredPositron

It really just rhymes. Happy New guilded age America.

johnbarron

Palantir CEO is a Psychopath: "CEO of Palantir, described people killed in the Gaza Genocide as “useful idiots”" https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/1sp4rpd/ale... "12% of corporate leaders are psychopaths. It’s time to take this problem seriously" https://fortune.com/2021/06/06/corporate-psychopaths-busines... And Musk well its a whole classification on its own... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-sued-by-british-dive... https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/these-federal-employee... https://www.timesofisrael.com/musk-endorses-tweet-claiming-j...

panick21_

In principle not relaying on the same old contractors is not a bad thing. SpaceX has genuine capability that literally nobody else in the world has. Same might be true for the others but that's hard to tell. And its not like the old primes are 'good' guys either. So the fact that Anduril makes its money from government isn't really special or surprising. If anything is surprising its how much money SpaceX makes out of government. And embracing some of these capabilities is what a smart government would do. What a smart government wouldn't do is to have a literal clown 'run' the show talking about 'mass-killing' and 'DoW' and all the other Buzzword nonsense that is mostly about signaling to Trump himself. Not getting locked into one system is good, but not using advanced capabilities because there is only one supplier is bad. Its not SpaceX fault that Vulcan has been a shitshow for example. But while on the merits many of these things can be defended, the way and process its arrived at is almost everything you don't want to have happen.