It’s part two of the Never Forget Extravaganza! We’re joined again by military tech journalist Kelsey D. Atherton to explore the deep and decades long entanglement between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon—from the early days of the semiconductors industry being born in the cradle of military contracts to the contemporary period of, as one Pentagon startup calls it, “the new Manhattan Project” of artificial intelligence. We wrap up by considering what the next phase of the forever war machine will bring.

Follow Kelsey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AthertonKD
Subscribe to Kelsey on Substack: https://athertonkd.substack.com/

Some stuff we reference:
• Silicon Valley Giants—Not Start-Ups—Dominate DoD Tech $$ | Kelsey D. Atheron: https://breakingdefense.com/2020/07/silicon-valley-giants-not-start-ups-dominate-dod-tech/
• Reports of a Silicon Valley/Military Divide Have Been Greatly Exaggerated | Jack Poulson: https://techinquiry.org/SiliconValley-Military/
• Silicon Valley Takes the Battlespace | Jonathan Guyer: https://prospect.org/power/silicon-valley-takes-battlespace-eric-schmidt-rebellion/
• Project Maven: Amazon And Microsoft Scored $50 Million In Pentagon Surveillance Contracts After Google Quit | Thomas Brewster: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2021/09/08/project-maven-amazon-and-microsoft-get-50-million-in-pentagon-drone-surveillance-contracts-after-google/?sh=40ebfa5e6f1e
• Silicon Valley Mystery House | Langdon Winner: https://bibliodarq.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/sorkin-m-ed-variations-on-a-theme-park.pdf
• Cold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley | Thomas Heinrich: https://faculty.fiu.edu/~revellk/pad2011/heinrich.pdf

Subscribe to hear more analysis and commentary in our premium episodes every week! patreon.com/thismachinekills

Grab your TMK gear: bonfire.com/store/this-machine-kills-podcast/

Hosted by Jathan Sadowski (twitter.com/jathansadowski) and Edward Ongweso Jr. (twitter.com/bigblackjacobin). Production / Music by Jereme Brown (twitter.com/braunestahl)