Valley of Death
How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War
Drawing on deep, exclusive reporting, a veteran national security correspondent reveals how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy and the global balance of power.
Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security, with enormous implications for us all. As Sharon Weinberger reveals in this gripping account, the American military and spy agencies helped to create Silicon Valley as we now know it, and some of its biggest and most valuable companies today owe much of their success to the Pentagon and CIA. Beginning with the War on Terror and accelerating under Donald Trump, however, the old alliance between elected leaders in Washington and the unelected CEOs of Silicon Valley has grown increasingly uneasy as power has shifted to the private sector and Big Tech exerts greater and greater influence over its old patrons. Companies such as SpaceX and Palantir, along with newer entrants to the field such as Anduril, are proudly supporting—and quietly shaping—US national defense, whether by providing spies and soldiers with AI and cloud-computing tools or actual military hardware such as microwave weapons, hypersonic missiles, and advanced drones.
The implications of this historic shift are poorly understood and fraught with peril. What happens when mercurial billionaires like Elon Musk control weapons and technologies that were once the preserve of the US government? How will this new military-industrial complex affect the way wars are fought, or even which wars are fought? That is the urgent question before us today, at the dawn of this new era—and as Weinberger reveals, it is one on which our collective future might well hinge.
“The military-industrial complex is changing fast, and this riveting book captures the earthquake in vivid detail. It’s a shocking story about big money, military might, and a technological revolution that will change our country and the future of war. A masterwork of investigative reporting that reveals a network of billionaires and power brokers at the heart of American empire.”
— Christopher Leonard, author of Kochland and The Lords of Easy Money
The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World
The definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years.
Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the unimagined weapons of the future.” Over the decades, DARPA has been responsible for countless inventions and technologies that extend well beyond military technology. Sharon Weinberger gives us a riveting account of DARPA’s successes and failures, its remarkable innovations, and its wild-eyed schemes. We see how the threat of nuclear Armageddon sparked investment in computer networking, leading to the Internet, as well as to a proposal to power a missile-destroying particle beam by draining the Great Lakes. We learn how DARPA was responsible during the Vietnam War for both Agent Orange and the development of the world’s first armed drones, and how after 9/11 the agency sparked a national controversy over surveillance with its data-mining research. And we see how DARPA’s success with self-driving cars was followed by disappointing contributions to the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Weinberger has interviewed more than one hundred former Pentagon officials and scientists involved in DARPA’s projects—many of whom have never spoken publicly about their work with the agency—and pored over countless declassified records from archives around the country, documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, and exclusive materials provided by sources. The Imagineers of War is a compelling and groundbreaking history in which science, technology, and politics collide.
“[D]eeply researched and briskly paced.”
— New York Times
Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon’s Scientific Underworld
How did a fluke experiment in 1998, involving a used dental X-ray machine and a dubiously obtained sample of radioactive material called hafnium, become the Pentagon’s number one pet weapons project within five years? And why did this occur in spite of objections from the nation’s top scientists? In Imaginary Weapons, Sharon Weinberger-no stranger to harebrained military schemes from her years covering the Pentagon-takes us on a wild ride through the hidden underworld of official fringe science in America.
“[A] warning about excessive credulity that should be heeded by scientists and policy-makers alike—for nature will not bend to political predilections.”
— Science
A Nuclear Family VacationBy Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger
Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger tour the secretive world of nuclear weaponry in this fascinating, kaleidoscopic portrait of the new atomic era, from Los Alamos to Iran-and everywhere in between. The Cold War world of Dr. Strangelove has given way to a new and uncertain future of renegade weapons scientists, missing nuclear blueprints and atomic terror. Weaving together first-class travel writing and investigative journalism, Hodge and Weinberger unearth unknown-and entertaining-stories about the nuclear world.
