The U.S. Air Power is taking steps to purchase Tesla Cybertrucks—for the categorical function of blowing them up. However whereas the automobiles on this context are supposed to be destroyed, the Air Power searching for out the Tesla model is simply one other instance of how Large Tech and the Division of Protection have turn into unlikely bedfellows, one protection spending knowledgeable stated.
The U.S. Air Power Materials Command, a part of the Division of Defence, is seeking to purchase two Cybertrucks “for goal car coaching flight take a look at occasions,” in line with paperwork filed to the System for Award Administration on Wednesday. The Air Power can also be searching for out 31 different automobiles, together with sedans and bongo vans, to equally possible use as missile targets. Enemies might “possible” transition to utilizing automobiles like Cybertrucks, that are extra proof against sure sorts of damages, in line with the filings.
“Testing must mirror actual world conditions,” one doc stated. “The intent of the coaching is to prep the items for operations by simulating eventualities as intently as potential to the true world conditions.”
Citing market analysis performed in February by a redacted supply, one doc stated Tesla Cybertrucks are particularly known as for in this sort of battleground testing due to its “aggressively angular and futuristic design, paired with its unpainted stainless-steel exoskeleton,” that differentiates it from different fashions. The automobiles don’t have to be totally operational, however quite be intact and in a position to transfer on their wheels, per the doc.
In keeping with Gordon Adams, a professor of U.S. international coverage at American College who researches protection spending, the Air Power’s resolution to pursue Tesla automobiles for battlefield coaching is, in isolation, of little consequence—however it’s indicative of the rising ties between the U.S. navy and personal sector tech.
“At one stage, I don’t see it as terribly uncommon for them to hunt to make use of a Tesla truck as a goal set,” Adams advised Fortune. “At one other stage, I discover it symbolic of an evolving relationship between, normally, the high-tech sector and the Division of Protection.”
“I’ve little doubt that that is one thing of the camel’s nostril underneath the tent with respect to the connection between DOD and [Tesla CEO] Elon Musk and his companies, of which there are numerous connections,” he added.
The Air Power and Tesla didn’t reply to Fortune’s requests for remark.
Certainly, the Air Power’s curiosity in Cybertrucks is way from the primary time the U.S. Division of Protection has taken an curiosity in certainly one of Musk’s tasks. His firms have acquired billions of {dollars} in authorities contracts, together with $22 billion in offers with SpaceX to offer launch providers to the Pentagon, in addition to for Starlink to offer satellite-based connectivity to the Protection Division in sure distant places and assist for navy operations in Ukraine.
A ‘entire new sector’ of militarized tech
Musk’s personal authorities contracts are only a slice of the offers the Protection Division is making with tech firms, together with the Peter Thiel-founded Palantir, which surpassed $1 billion in quarterly income for the primary time this week, partly because of its largest contract to this point: a 10-year, $10 billion software program cope with the U.S. Military. Final month, OpenAI gained a $200 million contract with the Pentagon to make use of AI capabilities to handle safety challenges in each “warfighting and enterprise domains,” the Protection Division stated.
The Pentagon’s contracts with the personal sector make up greater than half of the federal government’s complete contracts, swelling in fiscal 2024 to $445 billion out of $755 billion in obligations, in line with Authorities Accountability Workplace information.
The floodgates of navy funding for personal tech opened about 10 years in the past, when the Obama administration pushed for initiatives between the Pentagon and personal sector, together with a “folks bridge” encouraging tech sector innovators to briefly work on tasks on the Division of Protection.
Beforehand, personal tech firms eschewed work with the federal government, believing it too bureaucratic and never worthwhile sufficient, Adams stated. However after years of wooing Silicon Valley, the Protection Division’s curiosity turned requited, with firms like Amazon seeing alternatives to exchange the federal government’s hodge-podge information facilities with cloud computing, for which the Pentagon was providing a $10 billion contract prize in 2019.
Below the Trump administration, these relationships have solely deepened. The president’s “Large, Stunning Invoice” accommodates a $150 billion bump in protection spending, a mouthwatering prospect for a number of companies throughout the Protection Division actively testing use instances for AI instruments from tech giants like Meta, Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral, in addition to from startups like Gladstone AI and ScaleAI, Fortune reported final yr.
The enmeshing of Large Tech and the Pentagon is unlikely to unravel any time quickly because the ballooning demand from the navy for modern know-how creates a “entire new sector,” Adams stated.
“We’re going full-bore into the privatization of know-how by the Protection Division utilizing the excessive tech capabilities of firms like Apple and Microsoft, Palantir and different contractors, together with, Elon Musk’s operations. So it’s a course of which may be very a lot now uncontrolled,” he added.
“Should you needed to place the brakes on know-how developments and take an in depth have a look at them underneath this political scenario—the distribution of energy between Republicans and Democrats—that’s actually not going to occur. The door is fairly open to the interpenetration of excessive tech and the Protection Division.”
