Silicon Valley executives enlist in the military en masse.

Silicon Valley has truly undergone a significant transformation.

Recently, several Silicon Valley executives, including the Chief Technology Officer of Meta and the Chief Product Officer of OpenAI, have collectively joined the U.S. Army.

Almost simultaneously, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that OpenAI had won a $120 million contract to provide AI for the military.

Looking back seven years ago, Google canceled its Maven project with the Pentagon due to employee protests. Last year, when employees protested against the company's Nimbus project with Israel, Google fired dozens of people.

Two years ago, Castelion, a company developing hypersonic missiles, couldn't open a bank account in Silicon Valley. Now, it has no such problems.

Silicon Valley, which has given up resistance, embraced government contracts, and shouts "maintaining U.S. leadership in the AI field," has changed greatly.

A

The Silicon Valley executives joining the U.S. Army is not just for show.

The U.S. Army Reserve has established a new innovation team, codenamed "Unit 201," with a straightforward purpose: to bring technological upgrades to the military.

The first batch of recruited Silicon Valley executives are all heavyweights: Andrew Bosworth, the Chief Technology Officer of Meta; Kevin Weil, the Chief Product Officer of OpenAI; Bob McGrew, the former Chief Revenue Officer of OpenAI and now an advisor to Thinking Machines Lab; and Shyam Sankar, the Chief Technology Officer of Palantir.

Note that they have truly "joined the army" and have been awarded the rank of lieutenant colonel. They will serve about 120 hours a year, participating in projects covering military AI systems and optimizing soldiers' physical fitness using health data.

Different from traditional reservists, they can work remotely flexibly without undergoing basic training, but they must complete physical fitness tests and shooting training.

This news seems a bit surreal. The Wall Street Journal exclaimed: Here comes the nerd brigade!

Image source: AI-generated

As for the purpose, of course, the U.S. military hopes to strengthen its military technology with the help of tech talents.

"We need to pick up the pace, and that's what we're doing," said General Randy George, the Army Chief of Staff. The project aims to bridge the "gap between commercial and military technology" and help the Army prepare for future wars involving ground robots, drones, and AI-coordinated sensor networks.

This is just an appetizer. In the future, this plan will expand to all military branches, covering thousands of participants. These tech reservists will provide advice on commercial technology procurement and assist in recruiting more high-tech talents.

The first batch of recruited executives all seem very excited and expectant.

"Maybe I've watched too many Top Gun movies," said Bosworth, the Chief Technology Officer of Meta. Standing over 1.93 meters tall, he was told he was too tall to fulfill his childhood dream of flying an F-16 fighter jet.

He also said that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Meta, supports his joining Unit 201: "I think there's a lot of patriotism hidden in Silicon Valley, and it's gradually emerging."

This statement is quite thought-provoking and reveals a key signal from Unit 201 - the culture of Silicon Valley has quietly changed significantly.

Less than a decade ago, in Silicon Valley, even researching technology that might be used for military purposes - not to mention serving in the military - was considered heresy.

Now, the relationship between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley is quite different.

B

How "resistant" was Silicon Valley to military connections in the past?

Just two years ago, Castelion, a company developing hypersonic missiles, still couldn't open a bank account in Silicon Valley due to the "stigma" of weapon manufacturing.

Residents, university researchers, and venture capitalists in Silicon Valley generally have anti-war sentiments and utopian technicism tendencies, and are more vigilant about "weapon research and development" than other regions in the country. Local and regional banks in Silicon Valley (including some California banks and active branches in the San Francisco Bay Area) are usually very cautious about the nature of their customers' businesses.

This culture was set when Silicon Valley emerged.

Stanford scholar Leslie Berlin pointed out in her book Troublemakers: Silicon Valley's Coming of Age that the key years for Silicon Valley's rise began in the 1970s. In 1969, with the high anti-Vietnam War sentiment among the U.S. public, there were numerous protests in San Francisco, where Silicon Valley is located. There was obvious hostility between the young people and the authorities in Silicon Valley.

It was this hostility that promoted the development of Silicon Valley - young technical experts who originally planned to work in the Pentagon or university laboratories decided to "go their own way" and work for independent high-tech companies instead.

In the following years, Silicon Valley maintained a distance from political and military cooperation.

The culture of Silicon Valley is bright, innovative, and diverse. Company management is flat and open, which seems to form a strong contrast with the U.S. government and military.

In 2013, after the exposure of the U.S. "Prism Project," Silicon Valley's tech companies improved their encryption capabilities and publicly distanced themselves from the U.S. government's intelligence monitoring.

Cooperation with the military either doesn't happen, or if a company has such an intention, it will face strong resistance from employees and public opinion.

The most typical example is Google's Maven project controversy in 2018.

Project Maven is an AI project of the U.S. Pentagon, aiming to use machine learning to analyze video images taken by drones to improve the accuracy of military strikes.

Google initially agreed to participate in the project, but the news sparked strong controversy and moral concerns within the company. Nearly 5,000 Google employees jointly petitioned internally for the company to withdraw from the Maven project, and a dozen employees quit in anger. They also dug out Google's creed: Don't be evil!

Although Google's management initially argued that the AI was only for "non-offensive" purposes, it failed to quell the doubts.

Finally, under great pressure, Google announced in June 2018 that it would not renew the contract after its expiration and immediately formulated and released an ethical guideline for AI applications, clearly promising not to use AI for weapon development.

The employees had a great victory. In Silicon Valley at that time, the values and demands within the company could significantly influence strategic decisions. This event also alerted other Silicon Valley companies that the backlash from public opinion and employees regarding military cooperation should not be underestimated.

Almost at the same time, GitHub, a subsidiary of Microsoft, had a $200,000 contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which triggered 150 employees to publicly petition, and some resigned or participated in public protests. Although GitHub didn't terminate the contract, it donated $500,000 to an immigration rights organization to appease the employees.

In 2019, Microsoft won a contract worth about $480 million for the U.S. military's augmented reality (AR) headsets, which also triggered more than 200 employees to jointly petition, saying "We're not here to profit from war," and demanding the cancellation of the contract. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella had to step in and say that he would stick to the position and not cancel the contract.

Meanwhile, some giants are being "different." Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, once clearly said: "If big tech companies turn their backs on the U.S. Department of Defense, the country will be in trouble."

In general, in the past decade, despite different voices, Silicon Valley's culture as a whole has resisted cooperation with the U.S. government and military. Doing so would be frowned upon.

But in the past two years, beyond the AI wave, this narrative has changed.

C

Now, defense startups like Castelion have no difficulty opening accounts or seeking loans in Silicon Valley. This is just a slice of the cultural change in Silicon Valley.

Take the companies whose executives have joined the U.S. Army's Unit 201 this time.

Meta and OpenAI adjusted their policies last year to strengthen cooperation with the military. Recently, they have respectively partnered with weapon manufacturer Anduril Industries to develop products for the Pentagon. Palantir has been involved in national security work for twenty years. Its AI and data projects with the U.S. Army could be worth over $1 billion.

On June 16th local time, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that OpenAI had won a $200 million contract to supply AI tools for the military.

When discussing the transformation of Silicon Valley's culture, we have to mention Google.

In 2021, the Israeli government announced that it would award a national cloud computing contract worth about $1.2 billion to Amazon and Google to provide cloud infrastructure for government departments including the Israeli military. This project is called Project Nimbus.

The Nimbus project was revealed to include functions such as facial recognition, which might be used for Israel's surveillance of the Palestinian region, triggering moral protests from some employees within the two companies. Several times, employees interrupted speeches at important events and loudly criticized the companies' decisions.

More than hundreds of Google and Amazon employees anonymously co-signed an open letter calling on the companies to abandon the contract.

Yes, it's the familiar scenario. This kind of development has happened many times in Silicon Valley.

But different from Google's decision to abandon the Maven project in 2018 under employee protests, despite the protests attracting public attention, Amazon and Google did not withdraw from the Nimbus project.

The protests around Nimbus have never stopped, and the giants' attitudes have become tougher.

In 2024, after a protest involving about a hundred people, Google quickly fired 27 employees.

With the great changes in geopolitics and the technological landscape, the stance of Silicon Valley's tech companies has gradually softened.

In the era of the Internet boom, Silicon Valley's culture was eager to distance itself from the government and military - technology belongs to the world. After the birth of ChatGPT and the arrival of the AI wave, the voice in Silicon Valley of "we must strive to maintain U.S. leadership in the AI field" has become the mainstream.

This can also be seen from the shock caused by DeepSeek at the beginning of the year. At that time, several Silicon Valley tech leaders called for strengthening U.S. chip export controls to restrict China's development in the AI field.

To some extent, the change in the attitude of Silicon Valley's tech companies towards military cooperation is part of their shift from deliberately staying away from politics to getting involved.

A typical example is that when Trump started his second term this year, just for the inauguration ceremony, several Silicon Valley leaders donated money. Bezos, Nadella, Zuckerberg, Cook, etc. didn't hesitate to show their support. Not to mention "Silicon Valley Iron Man" Elon Musk, who almost became Trump's right-hand man and served in the White House for some time.

Everyone seems to be trying to forget that Silicon Valley was actively resisting during Trump's first term a few years ago.

From a business perspective, Silicon Valley's giants also have difficulties. In recent years, regulatory agencies around the world have targeted tech giants. Giants like Google and Apple are deeply involved in antitrust issues. The government lobbying investment of tech giants is increasing, and executives are getting closer to the government.

Meanwhile, compared with the consumer market, government and defense contracts provide stable and substantial financial support for tech companies. The U.S. government has invested heavily in supporting domestic high-tech industries in recent years (such as the Chip Act and AI R & D funds), and military projects have become a new "gold mine."

Contracts worth billions or even tens of billions of dollars - what's not to like?

But even outsiders can't help but feel sad and melancholy.

Silicon Valley has finally changed.

When we miss the past Silicon Valley, what exactly are we missing? Maybe it's the once almost utopian tech idealism around the world.

The dream is over. It's time to sign the contracts.

This article is from the WeChat official account “Zimu Bang” (ID: wujicaijing), author: Bi Andi, published by 36Kr with authorization.