What Big Tech isn’t telling you about their big military contracts
Amazon, Google among major Pentagon players
“There are notable gaps in this year’s list,” complain the journalists at Defense News, a U.S. publication devoted to covering the U.S. military and industry. Defense News just published its annual report on top global defence companies.
A new wave of Silicon Valley corporations have become major Pentagon suppliers, alongside traditional weapons heavyweights like Lockheed Martin and Boeing. But the tech giants refuse to disclose their military revenues.
“Technology companies, including Amazon and Google, don’t offer comprehensive information on their defense revenue and declined to do so for the list,” reports Defense News.
U.S. technology firms are now as opaque as firms in Russia that similarly fail to disclose defence revenues. Refusal of these companies, along with high-tech giants Microsoft, Oracle, and others leaves a huge gap in our understanding of the global military industry.
Cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and drone warfare have all been disclosed as some of the multi-billion dollar projects militaries are contracting with “Big Tech” companies.
The military-related work is not sitting well with high-tech workers. In April, outraged employees at Google tried to draw the world’s attention to what their employer was up to. Police were called to Google’s offices in New York and California to remove 9 employees engaged in a sit-in to protest the tech firm’s support for the Israeli government, a $1.2 billion cloud contract shared with Amazon called Project Nimbus.
Refusal of these companies, along with high-tech giants Microsoft, Oracle, and others creates huge gaps in our understanding of the global military industry.
The financial links between well-known technology firms and militaries are stronger than we know.
A recent report on Big Tech’s links to the Pentagon by researchers at San José State University and Brown University concluded, “One estimate indicates that U.S. military and intelligence agencies awarded at least $28 billion to Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google's parent company) between 2018 and 2022.”
The actual value of these contracts is likely much higher, as much as $52 billion for the top five contracts during the same period.
Researchers describe the trend as a shift from the Washington D.C. Beltway to California’s Silicon Valley, much to the detriment of public scrutiny. “Many of the largest known contracts with U.S. tech companies are classified and withheld from public procurement databases,” they found.
We know even less about Internet firms’ links to Canada’s military. Anecdotally, a colleague I knew in the Minister of Nation Defence’s office once shared with me that his principal role was monitoring closely the growing number of contracts with Internet technology (IT) firms, because the prevailing view was that the government was not always receiving good value-for-money from the sector.
Global defence industry trends for 2024
By the way, Defense News calculates total defence revenue for those ranked in FY2023 came to $603.9 billion USD, or $829 billion in Canadian dollars (roughly equal to the entire economic output of Ontario).
This is an increase of 13% over the previous year, which occurred in the context of, “the Russia-Ukraine war; Israel’s fight with the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip and its clashes with the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah; as well as tension in the Asia-Pacific region over disputed territory and Taiwan’s independence,” says Defense News.
The only Canadian-owned firm on the top-100 list is Montreal-based flight training simulator-maker CAE, ranking #64 with defence revenues of $1.4 billion USD, a 9% increase over the previous year.
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Thank you for everything you do for peace,
Steve
On the contrary, the world is becoming a much more dangerous place because of increased military spending.
The danger for humanity lies in the unbridled use of force that is destroying our human and natural environment.