As US military prepares for war on China, Silicon Valley tech oligarchs are profiting
The US military is preparing for war on China. It has missile systems in the Philippines. Defense Secretary Hegseth says Japan is "war-fighting headquarters". Silicon Valley oligarchs are profiting.
Evidence grows showing that the US military is setting the stage for war on China.
A leaked memo obtained by the Washington Post reveals that the US Department of Defense has made preparing for war with China into its top priority, giving it precedence over all other issues.
The Pentagon is concentrating its resources in the Asia-Pacific region as it anticipates fighting China in an attempt to exert US control over Taiwan.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a fundamentalist self-declared "crusader" who called for overthrowing the Chinese government, took a trip in March to Japan and the Philippines, where he repeatedly threatened Beijing and boasted of US "war-fighting" preparations and "real war plans".
In 2024, the US military installed its Typhon missile system in the northern Philippines. This has a range of 1,240 miles (roughly 2,000 kilometers), and can hit most major cities on the Chinese mainland.
The United States has access to at least nine military bases in the Philippines.
The Wall Street Journal reported that this "new U.S. missile system deployed in the Philippines puts key Chinese military and commercial hubs within striking distance".
The newspaper added that it "is the first time since the Cold War that the U.S. military has deployed a land-based launching system with such a long range outside its borders".
This blatant US provocation has caused outrage in Beijing, which sees the Pentagon's move as a significant escalation of Washington's new cold war on China.
Cold War Two
Cold War Two has more and more parallels to Cold War One.
Students in US schools are often taught that the Soviet Union's deployment of nuclear weapons to Cuba in the 1962 missile crisis was an act of "aggression". Their classes usually omit the fact the United States first put nuclear weapons in NATO member Turkey in 1959, provoking Moscow.
Today, Washington is provoking Beijing in many domains.
Donald Trump launched a unilateral, aggressive trade war on China in 2018, during his first term.
Trump's Democratic successor, Joe Biden, not only continued this trade war but expanded it further, adding more tariffs and export restrictions in an attempt to strangle China's high-tech sector.
Now in his second term, Trump has waged a nuclear trade war on China, threatening tariffs of 245%.
This new cold war has become a lucrative enterprise for some US oligarchs.
Silicon Valley oligarchs hope to profit from US war on China
Big Tech capitalists in Silicon Valley have poured money into new weapons systems, hoping to profit off of war on China.
The Wall Street Journal published an article in 2024 titled "Tech Bros Are Betting They Can Help Win a War With China”. It featured an interview with right-wing billionaire Palmer Luckey, a former Facebook executive who founded the arms manufacturer Anduril Industries.
Anduril has established itself as a significant Pentagon contractor, with its work developing advanced autonomous weapons.
The Wall Street Journal wrote (emphasis added):
These weapons, Luckey argues, are needed for a potential conflict with China, which the Pentagon two years ago announced is the greatest danger to U.S. security. The U.S. military, Luckey and others say, needs large numbers of cheaper and more intelligent systems that can be effective over long stretches of ocean and against a manufacturing and technological power like China.
Anduril is so focused on a conflict with Beijing, Luckey says, that many teams inside the company are building only weapons that can be completed by 2027—the year Chinese President Xi Jinping has said his country should be prepared to invade Taiwan. The fictional sword for which Anduril is named [from the Lord of the Rings] is also called the “Flame of the West.”
“We keep our eyes on the prize, which is great-power conflict in the Pacific,” Luckey said.
The newspaper highlighted how the US military-industrial complex has become increasingly privatized.
There has been a rapid influx of venture capital funds into weapons corporations in recent years. The Wall Street Journal reported (emphasis added):
Anduril is part of one of the largest shifts to take place in the defense sector since World War II: the flow of venture-capital funding into defense-technology companies.
For decades, the U.S. government funded defense companies, like Lockheed Martin, to develop new weapons, ranging from stealth aircraft to spy satellites. But as the private-sector money available for research and development has outstripped federal-government spending, particularly in areas like AI, a new cohort of defense startups is using private capital to develop technology for the Pentagon.
The amount of private capital flowing into the venture-backed defense-tech industry has ballooned, with investors spending at least 70% more on the sector each of the past three years than any prior year. From 2021 through mid-June 2024, venture capitalists invested a total of $130 billion in defense-tech startups, according to data firm PitchBook. The Pentagon spends about $90 billion on R&D annually.
A major investor in Anduril is Founders Fund, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel.
Thiel is a far-right billionaire oligarch who has strongly supported Donald Trump and has funded Republican politicians. He even previously employed US Vice President JD Vance, and bankrolled his successful 2022 Senate campaign.
A former FBI informant, Thiel co-founded another major Pentagon contractor, Palantir, which the CIA helped to fund.
Thiel is also an extreme anti-China hawk. He openly defends monopolies, arguing "competition is for losers”, and wants to ban Chinese competitors to US Big Tech monopolies.
Like Thiel, Anduril founder Palmer Luckey is staunchly pro-Trump. He is from the same community of far-right Silicon Valley oligarchs.
The Financial Times reported that Thiel's Palantir, Luckey's Anduril, and Elon Musk's SpaceX sought to create a "consortium" -- or, rather, a cartel -- to jointly bid for US government contractors.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wages "holy war" on China, from Japan and the Philippines
Trump has surrounded himself with a team of war hawks, including neoconservative Secretary of State Marco Rubio, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Hegseth personally signed the Pentagon document obtained by the Washington Post that showed that the number one priority of the US military is preparing for war with China over Taiwan.
In this memo, which is officially known as the "Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance", the Pentagon wrote, “China is the Department’s sole pacing threat, and denial of a Chinese fait accompli seizure of Taiwan — while simultaneously defending the U.S. homeland is the Department’s sole pacing scenario”.
The Washington Post revealed that several parts of this document were copied word-for-word from a vehemently anti-China report published by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing Washington, DC-based think tank that is funded by large corporations and conservative billionaires.
The oligarch-backed Heritage Foundation organized the notorious Project 2025, which crafted a detailed policy program for the Trump administration to implement.
Hegseth is a far-right theocratic extremist. He published a book in 2020 called "American Crusade", in which he proudly declared that the US right is in a "holy war" against the international left, China, and Islam.
“Communist China will fall—and lick its wounds for another two hundred years”, Hegseth pledged in the book. He wrote, “If we don’t stand up to communist China now, we will be standing for the Chinese anthem someday”.
In March 2025, Hegseth traveled to Asia to pressure US allies to join Washington in its new cold war on China. The Wall Street Journal summarized his trip with the headline "Hegseth Tells Asian Allies: We’re With You Against China”.
When he spoke in Japan, Hegseth vowed to "strengthen our bilateral bonds and deepen our operational cooperation" against Beijing.
The US defense secretary stated that the Pentagon is turning "Japan into a war-fighting headquarters”.
Japan previously colonized China. The Japanese empire, which later allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, killed tens of millions of people in China and other parts of Asia in the 1930s and '40s.
"America and Japan stand firmly together in the face of aggressive and coercive actions by the Communist Chinese", Hegseth asserted, fearmongering about "the severe nature of the threat".
“Those who long for peace must prepare for war”, the US defense secretary said. "We must be prepared. We look forward to working closely together as we improve our war-fighting capabilities, our lethality, and our readiness".
Hegseth articulated "three pillars" of the Trump administration's Pentagon strategy: "Reviving the warrior ethos, rebuilding our military, and restoring deterrence".
The US defense secretary made similarly aggressive comments in the Philippines, blasting what he called "communist China's aggression in the region".
Hegseth revealed that the US military is making "real war plans" for China, over Taiwan.
At a press conference in the Philippines, Hegseth spoke of Admiral Samuel Paparo, the commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command. He said (emphasis added):
It's not my job to determine where the Seventh Fleet goes. I defer to Admiral Paparo and his war plans. Real war plans. Admiral Paparo understands the situation, understands the geographic significance, understands the urgency, and is prepared to work with those in the region to ensure we are leaning forward in our posture. Not waiting for events to develop, not retrograding to places further from the front, but deploying capabilities forward, posturing and creating dynamics and strategic dilemmas for the Communist Chinese, that help them reconsider whether or not violence or action is something they want to undertake.
During the first cold war, the US hosted a military base on Taiwan, where it stored nuclear weapons.
In the second Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958, top US military officials wanted to attack the Chinese mainland with nuclear bombs, but President Dwight D. Eisenhower preferred conventional weapons.
These people make the old Robber Barons of 100 years ago seem almost warm and cuddly.
WTF ever happened to diplomacy? The US nuked disarmourmnet treaties. Isn't it about time to bring them back so we don't risk blowing up the world?
As always, Ben Norton, you cover a topic thoroughly.