Golden Domes And Hollow Promises— Tanks For Nuthin'

Trump & The Tech Bros Are Planning Our Future— It’s All Guns, No Butter

Señor TACO ordered up some B-2s, F-22s and F-35s to fly over the White House yesterday while he signed the incredibly unpopular Big Ugly Bill to strip healthcare from between 11 and 17 million Americans, deprive millions of food, explode the deficit by trillions of dollars, super-charge the Climate Crisis, weaponize violent deportations… and make the very rich much richer. Never mind what he’s doing to his voters— we’ll come back to that in a moment— he certainly loves a spectacle, the circuses part of the old Roman “bread and circuses” appeasement and governing formula. Satirist and poet, Juvenal wrote (in around 100 AD)— and I’m not saying this is a complete MAGA fit— that “Already long ago, from when we sold our vote to no man, the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions— everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”

So… Señor Trumpanzee claimed he’ll be hosting a White House UFC fight on July 4, 2026. He says he plans on having events at “Every one of our national park battlefields and historic sites are going to have special events in honor of ‘America250.’” I guess he hopes that will offset the animus voters feel about his Big Ugly Bill right before the midterms.

Juvenal would see the value but might wonder why Trump and his GOP bootlickers decided to cut Medicaid in the first place— especially after vowing not to touch it. There are several reasons— financing gargantuan tax cuts for the wealthy is a big part of it, so is cruelty and a lack of understanding about the demographic changes in their own base. But feeding the military industrial complex is a big part as well and on Thursday that was what William Hartung concentrated on. He wrote that over the next few years, the bill “will add another $150 billion to a Pentagon budget already soaring toward a record $1 trillion…” and includes Trump’s ‘Golden dome’ pipe dream and funding for next-generation combat aircraft like the F-47. “[T]he share aimed at the well-being of soldiers, sailors, and airmen (and women) is less than 6 percent of the $150 billion… despite the way Pentagon budget hawks invariably claim that the enormous sums they routinely plan on shoveling into it— and the overflowing coffers of the contractors it funds— are ‘for the troops.’”

Much of the funding in the bill will flow into the districts of key members of Congress (to their considerable political benefit)… And while weapons contractors will gorge on a huge new infusion of cash, military personnel, past and present, are clearly going to be neglected. As a start, the Veterans Administration is on the block for deep cuts, including possible layoffs of up to 80,000 employees— a move that would undoubtedly slow down the processing of benefits for those who have served in America’s past wars. Research on ailments that disproportionately impact veterans will also be cut, which should be considered an outrage.

…As President (and former general) Dwight Eisenhower, a very different kind of Republican, said more than 70 years ago, the ultimate security of a nation lies not in how many weapons it can pile up, but in the health, education, and resilience of its people. The big beautiful bill and the divisive politics surrounding it threaten those foundations of our national strength.

As budget cuts threaten to make the population weaker, distorted spending priorities are making arms producers stronger. The Big Five— Lockheed Martin, RTX, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman— produce most of the current big-ticket weapon systems, from submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles to tanks, combat aircraft, and missile-defense systems. Meanwhile, emerging tech firms like Palantir, Anduril, and Space X are cashing in on contracts for unpiloted vehicles, advanced communications systems, new-age goggles for the Army, anti-drone systems, and so much more.

But even as weapons spending hits near-record or record levels, there may still be a fight between the Big Five and the emerging tech firms over who gets the biggest share of that budget. One front in the coming battle between the Big Five and the Silicon Valley militarists could be the Army Transformation Initiative. According to Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll, one of the goals of ATI is to “eliminate obsolete systems.” 

… Since the tech firms don’t have the equivalent of the Big Five’s extensive production networks in key congressional districts, they need to find other ways to persuade Congress to fund their weapons programs. Fortunately, the Silicon Valley militarists have a significant number of former employees or financial backers in the Trump administration who can plead their case.

In addition, military-tech-focused venture capital firms have hired at least 50 former Pentagon and military officials, all of whom can help them exert influence over both the Trump administration and Congress. The biggest “catch” was Palantir’s hiring of former Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, who had run the hawkish Congressional special committee on Communist China.

… A shift toward emerging military tech firms and away from the Big Five will be about more than money and technology. Key figures among the growing cohort of Silicon Valley militarists like Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir, see building weapons as more than just a necessary pillar of national defense. They see it as a measure of national character.

Karp’s new book, The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, And The Future of the West, mixes the Cold War ideology of the 1950s with the emerging technology of the twenty-first century. He decries the lack of unifying concepts like “the West” and sees too many Americans as slackers with no sense of national pride or patriotism. His solution, a supposedly unifying national mission, is— wait for it!— a modern Manhattan project for the development of the military applications of artificial intelligence. To say that this is an impoverished version of what this country’s mission should be is putting it mildly. Many other possibilities come to mind, from addressing climate change to preventing pandemics to upgrading our educational system to building a society where everyone’s basic needs are met, leaving room for creative pursuits of all kinds.

The techno-optimists are also obsessed with preparing for a war with China, which Palmer Luckey, the 32-year-old founder of the military tech firm Anduril, believes will happen by 2027. And many in his circle, including Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, are convinced that any potential risks from the development of AI play in comparison to the need to “beat China,” not just in getting to sophisticated military applications first, but in winning a future war with Beijing, if it comes to that. Talk of diplomacy to head off a war over Taiwan or cooperation on global issues like climate change, outbreaks of disease, and building a more inclusive, less unequal global economy rarely come up in discussions among the hardcore militarist faction in Silicon Valley. Instead, that group is spending inordinate amounts of time and money seeking to influence the future of US foreign and military policy, a dangerous development indeed.

Whether the emerging tech firms can build cheaper weapons with superior capabilities will be irrelevant if such developments are tied to an aggressive strategy that makes a devastating conflict with China more likely. While the fight between the Big Five and the tech leaders may prove interesting to observe, it is also ominous in terms of this country’s future economic and foreign policies, not to speak of the shape and size of our national budget.

The rest of us, who aren’t billionaires and don’t draw $20 million in annual compensation packages like the CEOs of the big weapons firms (directly or indirectly funded by our tax dollars), should play a leading role in rethinking and revising this country’s global role and our policies at home. If we don’t rise to that challenge, this country could end up swapping one form of militarism, led by the Big Five, for another, spearheaded by hawkish, self-important tech leaders who care more about making money and spawning devastating new technologies than they do about democracy or the quality of life of the average American.

The transformation we’re witnessing is existential, not just fiscal. It’s a shift in the very idea of what a nation owes its people. The GOP’s Big Ugly Bill enshrines the notion that military spectacle and elite profits are more vital than health, housing, education or basic human dignity. It’s beyond bread and circuses now— it's drone strikes and data mining. It isn’t a battle between “old” and “new” militarism; it’s a merger. Silicon Valley’s techno-authoritarians aren’t trying to reinvent the military-industrial complex; they’re trying to buy it out, rebrand it, and pump it full of algorithmic adrenaline. But their vision of a “technological republic” is one in which democracy is optional and empathy is obsolete. War will be just another subscription service.