The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

https://steveblank.com/secret-history/

The video and slide set do a great job of covering it comprehensively.

I had a chance to learn directly from Steve and his Hacking 4 Defense team.

BIG changes since WWII when military R&D was nearly all R&D.

Today, most R&D is commercial with a lot of duel use potential for Defense(hence the desired ties).

It’s quite interesting that military/commercial R&D proportional parity was achieved the year the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War paused.

Here’s an article I wrote that borrows a bit from Steve Blank’s presentation and blog posts.

https://www.cove.org.au/trenchline/article-the-v-twin-effect...

The military is utterly dependent on commercial off the shelf technology modified to suit its needs.

How the tables have turned in R&D.

"Secret History of Silicon Valley" (Computer History Museum, Mountain View)

https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo

> Today, Silicon Valley is known around the world as a fount of technology innovation and development fueled by private venture capital and peopled by fabled entrepreneurs. But it wasn't always so. Unbeknownst to even seasoned inhabitants, today's Silicon Valley had its start in government secrecy and wartime urgency.

> In this lecture, renowned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank presents how the roots of Silicon Valley sprang not from the later development of the silicon semiconductor but instead from the earlier technology duel over the skies of Germany and secret efforts around (and over) the Soviet Union. World War II, the Cold War and one Stanford professor set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley. The world was forever changed when the Defense Department, CIA and the National Security Agency acted like today's venture capitalists funding this first wave of entrepreneurship. Steve Blank shows how these groundbreaking early advances lead up to the high-octane, venture capital fueled Silicon Valley we know today.

Since the American public (and not just the American one) considers such kinds of unrestricted government spending as a waste of resources the way left to fund basic research apart from the little bit that doesn't lead to cries of "government waste" - because let's face it, a lot of it is, that's just what happens when you do very basic research with no immediate goal in mind - is military spending. If the role of military research is considered bad I think there has to be a culture shift coming from all voters. As long as they allow such government actions as long as it's "for defense" but not for anything else (at least not even close to the scale) then stuff will get done through the military. Apparently the demand (pull factor) is there, so if the only path is spending through military channels this is what happens.

EDIT: Also see @chriselles's comment

Microsoft is more like old IBM in that regard, which makes sense given how old its cultural foundation is (dating to the 1970s) and its history of working with more conservative old-line enterprise businesses. As are Oracle, Cisco, Intel, etc. All will very happily serve the military industrial complex. You won't find any serious dissent in Redmond.

Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe?