Is Silicon Valley unwittingly building military tech?
You’re starting and army in 2021, what weapons do you need? Are you going to assemble the strongest and bravest men of your country? Hell no. You’ll all be dead in the first 5 minutes.
Psychology
First of all, you don’t want to look like an army. Sounds counter intuitive, but I think it’s true. Looking like an army draws too much attention. You want to have an organizing principle that isn’t explicitly war. So instead of looking for things that look like military, if we want to find the new armies of the future, we want to look for something different.
Sport may be a way to submerge the violent instinct. To nerds, sports is dumb and pointless. But maybe sports may be a way for some people to cope with their killer instinct.
“Green” as in 🌱 or 🪖?
A population that can make the same weapon more quickly and with less materials will have an advantage over its enemies. Green tech could just mean that you can build a lot more with fewer resources.
Instead of calling solar “green”, we might also call it decentralized. A 6 headed monster may be harder to kill. Likewise, a population that doesn’t rely on any singular system of infrastructure is more likely to survive an attack.
Transportation is also key. If you can deliver diapers to doors, maybe you can deliver ammo to soldiers. Imagine what would happen if Amazon, the most advanced logistics company in the world, became a military logistics company.
Drones
In the future we may face a drone war in the US. One way to defend ourselves is to take down drones directly. Another way is to get to the root cause. You want to attack the ones controlling the drone, the ones who fix them, the suppliers of drones, and then the ships that transport parts to the factory that makes the drones. I think you get the picture.
A drone is a guided bullet with a camera strapped to it. If you have a drone war, you want high quality cameras (like you might find in iPhones), and big beautiful displays with high color accuracy. You want decentralized internet, and high bandwidth.
Energy
You don't want to rely on a single source of energy like oil. It’s not that you want to be “green”. No, you just don’t want your enemies to take down your energy infrastructure.
All of this Carbon-neutral speak might just be code for “you can’t take us down”. If your system can operate productively with little energy resources, then it’s not just a badge for corporations to boast about. There may be real tangible (though unrealized) benefits of being lean and green.
Social Media
You also want to divide and conquer. You want to separate your enemies from their friends. You want to make them feel alone. Social media can potentially do both. If some people commit suicide, you grieve the loss and make superficial moves to “help”, but ultimately if the person isn’t one of your own you don’t care.
In conclusion, I’m trying to say something controversial: that your iPhone is a piece of weapons tech, same goes for Amazon, Uber Eats, and hell maybe even McDonalds. These are all weapons. Sometimes the goal isn’t even to kill your enemy, but to make him weak.