Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work with the Pentagon
&gt; Yet we shouldn’t forget that civil-military antagonism and the deep American tradition of distrusting the state have been crucial to the United States’ ability to innovate. There are good reasons why defense-tech giants of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s like Raytheon and Grumman missed out on such major tech advances as Web protocols, the smartphone, personal computers and various types of encryption — all of which would eventually have great military significance. The biggest reason was that none of these advances were directed at waging war; indeed, many aimed at transcending the power of the state.<p>This is a fairly cherry picked story to match a narrative that frankly does not really exist.  Silicon valley is not a partner of the defense world, it&#x27;s derivative of it.  The vast majority of technological disruption has come from technologies emerging from the state, that are then popularized by Silicon Valley.  Most of these came from the space race, and in many ways Silicon Valley is still &quot;behind&quot; the Pentagon.<p>Web protocols, smartphones, personal computers, encryption etc., <i>all</i> of this came from the military into Silicon Valley, not the other way around.<p>The Pentagon doesn&#x27;t need Silicon Valley, it&#x27;s quite the opposite.