If there was ever a word to define the current political state in America, it would be technocracy.

Describing a system of government controlled by an elite group of technically skilled individuals, it's easy to see why the term has been used to describe the overwhelming influence Silicon Valley billionaires seem to occupy within the current administration. Departing from Joe Biden’s more aggressive antitrust efforts, which sought to weaken companies like Amazon and Google, Donald Trump has seemingly embraced Big Tech with open arms.

Notable attendants of his inauguration included Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sundar Pichai, and of course, Elon Musk, who contributed an eye-popping $288 million to Trump’s re-election efforts. Under the flag of “Dark MAGA,” Musk has proudly become the face of the recent Department of Government Efficiency initiative, sparking controversy and drawing ire from mainstream liberal media. It is no surprise that SpaceX, Musk’s airspace company, is now being floated to develop a “Golden Dome” missile defense shield modeled after the Israeli Iron Dome defense system. While it may seem like a simple case of quid pro quo in the form of contract kickbacks for wealthy CEOs in return for their sizable political contributions, the reality is much more complex.

As U.S. capacity to export consumer goods wanes in the face of competitors like China, the pivot to evergreen industries like weapons manufacturing has been sizable. In the last 10 years alone, U.S. arms exports have surged over 20 percent, and in face of rising global tensions on multiple fronts, this only stands to increase. While Silicon Valley races to integrate rapidly developing technology like artificial intelligence (AI) into weapons capabilities, this marriage between Big Tech and the military-industrial complex is not unique to the Trump era; it is the continuation of complex machinations put into play during the War on Terror, now reaching a crescendo with the genocide in Gaza and looming potential of widescale war across the Middle East. It’s important to recognize how the ideological motivations behind these technocratic players shape the geopolitical landscape we find ourselves in today and what this means for those who dare to challenge the status quo.

While his attention-seeking appearances at Trump’s side most publicly display this alliance between Big Tech and Washington, Musk is not the only billionaire leveraging influence within the current administration. He, along with the newly appointed czar of AI and Cryptocurrency, David Sacks, and Peter Thiel, venture capitalist and mentor of J.D. Vance, belong to an elite circle known as the Paypal Mafia. This group refers to the early founders and employees of the widely successful digital payment platform. After the company’s sale in 2002, the Paypal Mafia would go on to become titans in the tech industry as CEOs, shareholders and angel investors, allowing them to carve out their domain in Silicon Valley and eventually in Washington, DC.

While Musk and Thiel have self-described as conservative libertarians in the past, a more fitting label for the ideology behind these Paypal Mafia dons would be accelerationism. Proponents of accelerationism favor the advancement of technological solutions to any and all social, political and economic problems. They support the rapid and unfettered development of both capitalism and technology in tandem, allowing the digital realm to imbed itself into the very fabric of human existence. Monopolies are welcomed and social welfare is discouraged as a roadblock to progress.

While these values conflict with traditional bipartisan political dogma, accelerationism has been successful at balancing favor across administrations through providing essential services in the one arena few politicians ever dare to limit or critique: defense.

Palantir Streamlines Killing

As America launched its War on Terror following the attacks on 9/ 11, Peter Thiel successfully ingratiated himself in the national security state through the creation of Palantir, otherwise known as the greatest case study of technocracy in action. Named after the magical orb in The Lord of the Rings trilogy which allowed the holder to covertly observe events past, present and future, Palantir was created as the digital manifestation of this fantastical desire to see and know all. In short, it operates as database software that processes and organizes immense amounts of raw data to predict events and produce a succinct tapestry of connections for the benefit of its clients.

With heavy investments from In-Q-Tel, the venture-capital wing of the CIA, Palantir enabled the U.S. government to easily wade through the vast trove of surveillance data it had harvested from unsuspecting Americans through the sweeping powers of the Patriot Act. During its wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon heavily relied on Palantir systems for battlefield reconnaissance, target identification and operation planning. Palantir has since grown in scope and size since its early days working almost exclusively for the U.S. Defense sector, and now lends its vast services to companies across the S&P 500, as well as a number of U.S.-allied foreign governments engaged in active conflict, where it has seemingly found its niche.

In a truly enlightening op-ed in The New York Times (July 25, 2023) titled “Our Oppenheimer Moment: The Creation of AI Weapons,” current CEO of Palantir Alex Karp openly proclaimed support for harnessing the power of technology in the fight to defend Western civilization and rebuffed hesitancy on the grounds of ethical concerns as folly. According to Karp, “the ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.”

In Gaza, this hard power has enabled the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) to automate its genocide against Palestinians. As reported in +972 Magazine, whistleblowers revealed the process through which data processing software like Palantir’s transformed the IOF Unit 8200’s surveillance operations into a streamlined killing machine. The AI system helped Israel convert troves of surveillance data on Palestinians into a spurious web of more than 37,000 targets in the weeks following Oct. 7 alone. These kill lists encompassed journalists, municipality workers, medics, university professors and even underage teens. Entire sectors of society had been swiftly and methodically dehumanized and designated worthy of death, establishing the groundwork for the genocide to come.

Other software like “Where’s Daddy?” further enabled the IOF to track a designated target’s location, allowing them to strike at the precise moment they entered their homes where they would join their wives, kids and extended family. This explains why, despite the marketed power of these softwares to generate, track and target with ostensible precision, over 80 percent of casualties in Gaza have been women and children.

Under the cover of these technologies, the IOF has been able to offload the manual and mental burden that comes with killing more than 52,000 people in less than 18 months. With the power of AI, genocide has never been easier. As dystopian and inhumane as it may sound, this is the future that technocrats have dreamt of. In the course of this ongoing genocide, Israel has successfully applied a technological solution to its Palestinian problem in Gaza. Not only have these technologies produced great success in streamlining the IOF’s goals, defense startups like Anduril and Palantir are now able to market their innovations on the global weapons market as “battle tested.” In December 2024, the first ever DefenseTech summit kicked off in Tel Aviv. Venture capitalists, military officers and weapons manufacturers alike gathered to eagerly discuss the future of war in a new digital age, undeterred by the growing calls for Israel’s prosecution in international courts and the cries of Gazans just 70 kilometers (43 miles) away.

AI has already changed the ways in which we communicate, create and organize information despite the technology only being in its infancy. Left in the hands of accelerationists, we can only expect these technologies to take more pernicious and destructive forms. It becomes imperative for any advocate for peace to recognize the role of Big Tech in operationalizing these new developments in advancement of their ideological drive for control instead of the advancement of human progress.

Put simply, AI is not the problem. Technocracy is.

As we sharpen our analysis on the changing global political landscape, it becomes imperative to consider the role that figures like Peter Thiel play in making the world a darker place, not because they exist as singularly and uniquely evil forces pulling the strings behind the U.S. government, but because they fulfill a critical function in the longstanding imperialist drive toward domination through force, a model so successful that it now exists as a commodity for export.

So long as war remains the existential mainstay of U.S. politics, opportunists will invariably emerge to take advantage of these circumstances. By challenging the underlying assumption that Western society must be preserved against its perceived enemies at any and all costs, the potential exists to channel technological innovation toward liberatory and humanitarian objectives and away from Orwellian surveillance and weaponry systems. Just as the technocratic elite have modeled a world in their image, so too can the oppressed peoples of the world in their fight for justice and liberation.