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Meta's Push Into Defense Tech Reflects Cultural Shift, CTO Says (bloomberg.com) 51

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that the "tides have turned" in Silicon Valley and made it more palatable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts. From a report: There's long existed a "silent majority" who wanted to pursue defense projects, Bosworth said during an interview at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. "There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for," he said. Silicon Valley was founded on military development and "there's really a long history here that we are kind of hoping to return to, but it is not even day one," Bosworth added. He described Silicon Valley's new openness to work with the US military as a "return to grace."

Meta's Push Into Defense Tech Reflects Cultural Shift, CTO Says

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  • It is easy.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @12:53AM (#65428686)

    ...just follow the money. That is how companies operate.

    Where inflation has caused drop in big ticker purchases that have driven a lot of the ad revenue, defense spending is instead increasing.

    • With paying customers, you have to keep them happy and coming back. With govt, you needn't provide a good service, just wooz politicians to cast a vote for some pork filled bill. Politicians have no trouble spending your money (and your great grandkids money who haven't been born yet)
    • Crony capitalism is in this season. That's about the whole of it.

  • I mean they always collected personal data, for example, fully aware that this can and will be used against people.
    There are insane amount of money in the "defence" Industry. If you have no ethical standards, it makes no sense to ignore that kind of money.

    • by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @01:46AM (#65428720) Homepage

      The difference is that tech companies used to feel like they had to at least maintain a polite fiction that they were ethical and in some way serving a greater good. Now we're in the Trump/Musk era, where being unethical is considered morally superior to being pointlessly encumbered by ethics/morals/empathy/etc, so there's no need to pretend.

      • The difference is that tech companies used to feel like they had to at least maintain a polite fiction that they were ethical and in some way serving a greater good.

        I don't get it...I would think most anyone in the US would consider supporting our warfighters would be "serving the greater good"....

        When exactly did being patriotic become a negative thing...?

        • Much of this defense tech is surveillance tech that will also be on Americans. Not particularly patriotic.

        • You just equated three very different things: military contracts, "supporting our warfighters", and patriotism. They're barely even related.

          A lot of Americans are very patriotic (in the sense of loving their country, not in the xenophobic "America first" sense). And they also support the troops in the sense of wanting to taking care of them and make sure they come home alive. But those same people are deeply suspicious of the military, believe the government does some very evil things, and don't want to

        • Supporting war fighters hasn't looked good since the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Claims of WMDs in Iraq didn't help.

          What did help was a tyrant invading a new aspiring democracy. Russia's attacks on Ukraine have given the world a new appreciation for the defense industry, because we finally have an example of what the defense industry was supposed to be all about.

  • "There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for," he said.

    But also the money!

  • by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @01:52AM (#65428732)

    Most of this will turn out not to be "defense", but "national security".

    Known as the "counter-espionage", "internal intelligence" or political police in the former Communist countries.

    The KGB, Stasi, Belügyminisztérium III and the Securitate pale in comparison [mashable.com] to the plans of the "swamp drainers" for surveillance.

    Makes "governing" really easy for the people in power.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by buck-yar ( 164658 )
      There's already Oracle, who boasts about having a dossier on 5 billion people. Their first contract was to make a database for the CIA. But sure, make it out like Trump is starting something new (guess you were in a cave during Snowden). https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

      You blame Trump but Biden or the autopen signed the 702 reauth not all that long ago. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/20... [npr.org]

      • Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)

        Shut up nazi

        • The maturity of the Slashdot left never ceases to amaze me, using NAZI 80 years after the fall of Berlin as a pejorative is certainly a call back. There might be about 2000 Nazi youth hanging around, all over 80, rarely on a tech forum, their population is vastly overstated by the american left, like cobol programmers and actual software developers around here.
      • Larry Ellison is already best buddies with the orange one.

      • There's already Oracle, who boasts about having a dossier on 5 billion people. Their first contract was to make a database for the CIA. But sure, make it out like Trump is starting something new (guess you were in a cave during Snowden). https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]

        You blame Trump but Biden or the autopen signed the 702 reauth not all that long ago. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/20... [npr.org]

        I don't know why people are surprised by any of this. None of it is new. SV has been selling gear and services to the Pentagon since SV existed. SGI was famous for providing high-end stuff for Air Force/Navy simulator systems. Microsoft famously tried to sell the Navy "Windows for Warships". And Sun made what at the time was the single biggest sale in their history to the Army. [techmonitor.ai]

        At one point the Pentagon was the biggest customer Sun had. It was only until Google came along that you had the granola types bitc

  • by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @01:56AM (#65428740)
    Their entire existence is predicated on the mass-objectification of their user base, this is just innovation in market segmentation.

    It turns out, some customers will pay substantially more to kill certain audience segments than their expected lifetime NPV from advertising would ever provide, so to someone like Zuckerface, it is just good business, right?

  • Is Zuck intending to stop tracking everyone?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    more palatable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts

    Maybe more palatable for shareholders, but not for the recipients of criminal US bombing campaigns.

  • by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @03:10AM (#65428782) Journal

    "There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for,"

    Yeah, after Bush invaded a country unprovoked, it became patriotic to oppose war. Opposing Iraq was pro-American. Bush betrayed the principles this country is founded on. If you are going to kill people (especially since a lot of those people are innocent), you better have a VERY good reason.

    Bosworth added. He described Silicon Valley's new openness to work with the US military as a "return to grace."

    Oh fuck you Bosworth. Silicon Valley isn't the one that invaded another country preemptively. The one that needs a "return to grace" is the military, or more precisely, the ones who control it. Fuck you hard for brown-nosing those who kill innocents.

    (If anyone here on Slashdot has the last name Bosworth, I apologize preemptively for the insult. It's not you, it's him).

    • by necro81 ( 917438 )

      Bosworth added. He described Silicon Valley's new openness to work with the US military as a "return to grace."

      Oh fuck you Bosworth. Silicon Valley isn't the one that invaded another country preemptively. The one that needs a "return to grace" is the military, or more precisely, the ones who control it.

      In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare described the quality of mercy [wikipedia.org]: "...in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation".

      I see parallels here: if one is seeking grace, the military is not

    • Oh fuck you Bosworth. Silicon Valley isn't the one that invaded another country preemptively. The one that needs a "return to grace" is the military

      The valley is part of the MIC. It's the same picture.

  • When Meta wants to do its thing they do their thing. When they want to blame "the workers" for "being patriotic" they trot out technology to kill brown people, harvest intelligence, help ICE do on-street renditions.

    Meta should just shut the fuck up. They have out eviled Google.

    "Patriotic" means support of your country's concepts, not its military, its DHS, its ICE, it's wicked witches Noem and Blondi and Trumpi. No, it's support of those ideals that made the US great in the first place, not tawdry red ha

  • these treacherous profiteering companies will be broken up, and their execs will go to jail, IG Farben-stylee. Personally, I can't wait for Zuck to go cool off in the slammer.

    • Love the company until the left no longer controls all the levers of power. This walk in the wilderness is going to be longer the left resists coming with terms, that they have raised children of their politics nobody enjoys being around. They held out a hallow party for better part of 24 years and told everyone to get in line with the party, with nothing but opposition to milk toast republicans. One pound for pound good politician latter, the American left is mental unhinged on their hate for the f
      • It takes a special kind of stupid not to understand the obvious about the United States. It is an end stage corporate kleptocracy staggering toward Third World status. It's like a caterpillar that ran into the wrong kind of wasp. The eggs the wasp laid in it hatched. The larvae have eaten the caterpillar alive, and they're now chowing down on the vital organs before they move out of the empty shell.

      • cities with the urban blight project class

        I put this into a CHUD translator and it returned the N-word.

  • The US arms industry is going to need a really good propaganda branch to persuade international customers that its wares don't have some kind of kill switch to render them useless against US armed forces.

  • by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Thursday June 05, 2025 @10:42AM (#65429506)

    There are a lot of tech jobs related to the military and I've been tempted to apply for a few at times but there's a moral problem. They call it the defense industry, yet clearly there is quite a bit of offense going on as well and many weapons systems are dual purpose. I don't want to work on things that could kill innocent people on the whim of some evil politician. I suspect there are many other people who feel the same way.

    Andrew Bosworth is trying to justify working with the military as patriotism but it sure looks like simple greed.

    • Same here... my old friend, who now works for Anduril, tells me that he's working for the "good guys", so it's all good. Its up to him to decide what to do with his life and it is true that someone else would do it if he didn't. But it sounds like it won't be you or me.
  • they just want access to that pork barrell of tax payers funded money
  • Given ByteDance's apparent ties to the Chinese government to ban Tik Tok, this would likely give validation to other countries to ban Facebook, on the same basis. Maybe Meta is looking to get banned elsewhere?

  • ..murder journalists and activists in their AI assisted targeting programs Lavender and Where's Daddy.

    Seems Facebook is fully embracing bloodshed for profit.

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