Kari Frederickson tells in her book Cold War Dixie that when Truman asked Du Pont to build a plant to develop nuclear weapons, the petrochemical company agreed on the condition that it not make a penny from the operation. They had made so much money selling explosives during the last two wars that they had been nicknamed “death merchants.” They were afraid that a lead role in the Manhattan project would hurt sales of products like nylon and cellophane. “We cannot afford to make money from as abominable a war machine as this is expected to be,” Chairman Crawford Greenewalt told the Atomic Energy Committee in 1950.
At that time, the military industry was a machine that was turned on for war, involving companies like Du Pont or Levi Strauss to guarantee rapid production capacity for weapons and uniforms. Later, the companies resumed their commercial activity, redirecting the infrastructures towards civil life. But, after World War II, the machine stayed on.
During the Cold War, the US invested billions in defense, including the development of nuclear weapons and the establishment of military bases around the world. The machine grew and grew without Russia invading the West or conclusive evidence that they intended to. In his farewell speech, Eisenhower warned of the distorting power of the machine. “In the Governing Councils, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or not, by the military-industrial complex.” Then the machine was already upended in the surveillance infrastructures that were released in September 2001, just in time for the war on terror. Since then, technology companies have been competing to plug into the great US military-industrial complex. And Eric Schmidt has established himself as the main link.
It is a board in which it has been unfolded into two positions. On the one hand, as chairman of the Defense Innovation Board and the Artificial Intelligence National Security Commission, he advises the Pentagon on its investments and also on the regulation of AI. On the other hand, his venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors invests in the same companies that receive multi-million dollar contracts from the federal government.
His speech is based on two premises: all AI developed in China is dangerous for world peace and all regulation of American AI limits the ability of the United States to guarantee world peace. With this speech, Schmidt revives the myth of the two rival powers that divide the planet into two factions with allegedly irreconcilable values to justify the need to outmaneuver the other with a large military investment. To ignore their interests is to forget history. As Eisenhower said in that speech, “only an alert and well-informed citizenry can force the great industrial and military defense machine into proper gear with our peaceful methods and objectives, so that security and liberty can prosper together.” .
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