A Militarized Google Goes for the Gold.

Although the discussion of AI focused on improving the lives of ordinary people in the rather unconvincing words of Donald Trump, it is clear now that a major part of the AI spending will be in the defense and intelligence space, with much of the spending and intentions being entirely obscured from view.

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The decision of Google to jump back into the weapons market in response to the current giveaway by the AI-empowered Department of Defense under the rule of Steve Feinberg, deputy secretary of defense and CEO of defense-budget-gobbling private equity firm Cerberus (named for the three-headed beast that guards the gates of hell) tells us quite a lot.

Google had pledged to stay out of the weapons business after its deception of the public, and of its workforce, regarding its deep involvement in the Air Force’s Maven project for supplying data to drones was revealed. Google employees resigned en massein protest of how they had been deceived about this covert misuse of Google assets.

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But the implications of Google bidding for even more defense and intelligence contracts takes on a sinister tone as the nature of defense and intelligence is being rapidly transformed. The decision of the Trump administration to deploy the military domestically, starting with the border with Mexico, and to combine military operations with those of domestic security organizations like the FBI and ICE, to such a degree that it is hard to tell them apart, is most revealing. We saw on television the FBI and ICE in military gear and in armored personnel carriers sent out to round of illegal aliens, and some legal aliens and citizens as well (by mistake), to make it clear that almost anything goes now. And anything will go in a few years.

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February 5, 2025 roundup of immigrants by FBI in military uniforms

That it to say that we are forced to recognize as accepted practice the militarization all things. It is now fine for the government, the military, to threaten to send citizens who protest government actions to jails in El Salvador, or to prison camp in Guantanamo Bay. Both are best known for their torture programs.

In such an environment, what will Google do with the enormous databases it has amassed about every citizen through the use of Google searches, Gmail, Google Scholar, and Google Drive over the last twenty five years? Remember that we were forced to use Google and Gmail; we never had a chance to make any real choice because the entire system was designed to force feed these services to us.

Will that information be used to track down and kill citizens who are on the wrong list, or maybe put there by (a convenient) mistake? What might be done in the near future when lethal drones are employed for law enforcement by the FBI and ICE, in combination with the next generation of Star Link and Star Shield low-orbit drones? How might those systems be combined with Google’s massive data troves? Could it be that the horrific Maven drone program that Google participated in previously will now be coming home to roost as the Trump administration increasingly benchmarks Israel and Argentina in American domestic policies?

And the suggestion that China somehow is already ahead in AI, as mentioned in this article, is all the more justification to import such systems without any concern for how they are laying the foundations for totalitarian rule. As Professor Johannes Himmelreich, interviewed below, remarks,

“Military and surveillance tech aren’t bad or unethical as such. Instead, supporting national security and doing so in the right way is incredibly important. And supporting national security is, in fact, arguably the ethical thing to do.”

Can’t argue with that—unless you want to be placed in a camp by a Google drone!

 

By: Emanuel Pastreich

Emanuel Pastreich serves as president of the Asia Institute and director of the Center for Truth Politics at Green Liberty (green-liberty.org/ctp). Pastreich ran as a candidate for president as an independent in 2020, and briefly in the Green Party in 2023.