by How a new generation of war profiteers are driving American politics in the 21st Century
With his unprecedented financial support for Trump in the last election, Elon Musk has joined his former business partner Peter Thiel as a key funder of the authoritarian, far right MAGA movement.
A closer investigation shows that both Musk and Thiel have both made their fortunes at the nexus of private industry and the expansion of the US imperialist security and intelligence state. Musk’s space and satellite businesses SpaceX and Starlink, and Thiel’s spy software firm Palantir are just the most obvious of the two’s intimate connection with the US security state as it adapts to the digital age. There is also an argument to be that other companies within the two’s influence, including Meta, X, Paypal, and Tesla, also play a role in the US state’s preparation for 21st century warfare. Altogether, these companies represent the new military industry, showing that the political impact of Musk and Thiel is just the 21st century iteration of the military-industrial complex.
Moreover, both men have enjoyed a proximity to important neoconservative political actors – notably those involved in neoconservative efforts in the intelligence and military fields – whose tenures date back to the Reagan period or earlier.
Overall, the following analysis will show how Musk and Thiel are the personification of military-industrial capital in the 21st century, which is expanding its grip ever-tighter on the capitalist state.
Eisenhower’s Warning
On January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower gave his last speech as President of the United States. Despite being himself a military leader, Eisenhower warned of the growing influence of the growing nexus between the defense industry and the state, arguing that
“An immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
While Eisenhower’s address is well known, and he is even credited with coining the term “military-industrial complex,” what is less well known is that forces about which Eisenhower warned were not just an abstract idea or a conception of a set of interests, but rather a very real and organized lobby.
The inarguable center of this lobby was the aptly-named National Military Industrial Conference. This annual conference brought together military and government officials, corporate representatives, academics, and politicians. Among the participating employer associations were the American Ordnance Association, the Aircraft Industries Association of America, and the National Industrial Advertisers Association; the chairmen of General Mills, Sears, and other major corporations were among its planning committee. These corporate interests were joined by various government agencies including the National Security Council, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Labor, as well as representatives from elite universities, the American Legion, and other civil society groups.1 Certainly when Eisenhower had the term “military-industrial complex” on his mind it was this organization about which he was referring.
Of course, the military-industrial complex did go on to have an undue influence on government spending and upon society at large. Some of this influence is straightforward and easy to understand. At the individual level, there has long been a revolving door between government and industry, where regulators are able to give favorable treatment to their friends in the industry, and will almost certainly find themselves in high-paying jobs in that same industry when they leave government service. Likewise, at the corporate level, corporations lobby politicians for expansion of government spending in their industries, perhaps promise to build a plant in some key constituencies, and receive juicy contracts in exchange.
But less obviously, the military-industrial complex was also a major actor in the field of political and cultural warfare, pioneering the role of billionaire influence in politics, and waging a decades-long battle for influence within the institutions of civil society and the fight to bolster the ruling class by heightening polarization on cultural issues.
For example, journalist Jane Mayer tracks in her book Dark Money how John M. Olin, a chemical and ammunition industrialist, used his foundation to support the development of pro-capitalist sentiments in the legal field, funding the right-wing Federalist Society and bankrolling the neoliberal “Law and Economics” legal theory. The impact of the Federalist Society and Law and Economics are most obviously exemplified through their influence on the extremist ideology of Trump’s far-right court nominees.
The CIA itself waged a culture war through the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), through which it backed political, literary, and cultural projects. The politics of the journals backed by the CCF seem counterintuitive at first glance, as they were mostly social democratic publications; the intention was to foster and promote the anti-Soviet left in order to counter Soviet influence. The CIA also turned to private donors to help facilitate its CCF programming. One of these donors, Richard Mellon Scaife, himself adjacent to the NMIC, would go on to be a major funder of the Heritage Foundation.
Similarly, the operatives at the CCF would go on to play a similar role as cultural warriors after that program was wound up. Most notable was Irving Kristol, the father of neoconservatism, who had been a key leader of the CCF and whose ideas have perhaps more than anyone else helped to shape the faux-anti-elitist conservative rhetoric which is so dominant on the right today.
More examples could more thoroughly show the relationship between the military-industrial complex and the rise of the neoconservative right from the post-war period through to the Reagan administration, but as this article aims to cover events today, this evidence will have to be taken as sufficient for now.
As explored below, the relationships developed during these early days are not only replicated in the dual industrial and political impacts of Musk and Thiel, but there is actually a direct link between the two eras in terms of personnel.
Peter Thiel: The Rise of a Digital Straussian
Early Days
Although Peter Thiel has only more recently come into public consciousness, in fact he has been active in the right-wing culture wars since his time as a student at Stanford University.
While studying at Stanford, Thiel became a founder of the Stanford Review. This student newspaper was one of a number of right-wing student newspapers supported by the Madison Center, run by Irving Kristol. By the 1990s Kristol had begun replicating many of the tactics developed at the CCF during the 50s and 60s, this time focused on organizing a right wing on the American university scene.
While Thiel was at Stanford in the late 1980s, there was a fight over the decolonization of the campus curriculum. Seizing on this fight as an explosive wedge issue, Thiel promoted a visit by William Bennet, Reagan’s former Secretary of Education and a protege of Kristol, to give a speech in defense of the old Western-centric curricula and against the activists seeking its revision.2
After leaving Stanford, Thiel went on to work as a lawyer and trader on Wall Street, working at Sullivan and Cromwell, a law firm with close ties to the intelligence community whose alumni include the Dulles brothers, and whose former clients include United Fruit. During his time in New York, Thiel also worked as speech writer for William Bennet, and co-authored The Diversity Myth, an attack on ‘multiculturalism’ and its impact on academic freedom, arguments that are still drummed up by right-wing culture warriors today.
Business Ventures
Returning to Silicon Valley, Thiel co-founded Confinity, a financial payments company. The company would soon merge with Elon Musk’s original X.com, a digital financial services company, and change its name to Paypal.
It is possible that Paypal was being exploited by or had a relationship with the intelligence community from its early days. Not only was Thiel already clearly within proximity of this movement, but the recent Wirecard scandal in Germany highlights the importance of such payment software as potential targets for intelligence agencies. When a historically large fraud was revealed at Wirecard, the German rival to Paypal, in 2020, it quickly emerged that Wirecard Chief Operating Officer Jan Marsalek was likely an asset of Russian intelligence. Marsalek fled Germany and is now believed to be hiding in Russia. The fact that Wirecard was targeted by Russian intelligence of course does not prove that Paypal was targeted 20 years earlier by US intelligence; however, it does indicate that there would be value in doing so, and clearly Thiel was intelligence-adjacent both before and after his time at Paypal, so not only should it not be ruled out, it is probably more likely than not.
Whether or not Thiel was involved with US intelligence while at Paypal, he was certainly involved with US intelligence when he used the proceeds of Paypal’s sale to Ebay to found Palantir in 2003. The CIA’s investment fund, In-Q-Tel, was founded a few years earlier to help the CIA and State Department secure advanced technology, and was a funder in Palantir in its first round of funding. This made sense for the CIA, considering they are one of Palantir’s main clients; the company provides software which provides data analysis for the security state, although now Palantir has expanded its offerings to the private sector as well. The 2013 leaks by Edward Snowden revealed Palantir’s role in facilitating the NSA’s massive spy network.3
Interestingly, Thiel was also the first outside investor in Facebook, purchasing 10 percent of the company for $500,000 in 2004. Although Thiel sold his stock in 2012, he remained on the board of Meta through 2022 before announcing his plan not to seek re-election.4 Thiel’s proximity to the social media giant is highly concerning and suggestive, considering he was simultaneously running a massive spying software company which would benefit tremendously from access to Meta’s data.
A report on the news website Unlimited Hangout recently detailed how a number of Thiel’s companies are being employed by the NATO-backed Ukrainian military in the ongoing conflict in that country. Ukraine uses Palantir to assist with the identification of military targets, including through the employment of AI.
In addition to Palantir, Ukraine uses the Thiel-backed Clearview AI to conduct facial recognition on and off the battlefield. “According to the Washington Post, Clearview AI told investors in 2022 that “almost everyone in the world will be identifiable” through its system in 2023, with about 14 photos collected per person on earth.”5 The facial recognition software is being used to identify potential Russian spies and infiltrators at checkpoints, and the war provides favorable PR for Clearview.
Another Thiel-backed company, Anduril, supplies Altius-600 drones to Ukraine, and other software and hardware to empower military surveillance and warfare.
Peter Thiel – Authoritarianism and Culture War
As mentioned above, Thiel has long been a cultural warrior.
Following his intellectual writings on diversity and academia and in the wake of the “War on Terror,” in 2004, Thiel authored an article, “The Straussian Moment,” in which he draws on Leo Strauss to draw authoritarian conclusions. He writes that,
“The awareness of the West’s vulnerability called for a new compromise, and this new compromise inexorably demanded more security at the expense of less freedom.”
Thiel’s views had progressed further by 2009, as evident in his “The Education of A Libertarian” in 2009. He writes plainly, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
Thiel continued his political activity through the Tea Party years. He befriended Ann Coulter, and funded James O’Keefe, the man behind the fake sting video targeting ACORN and eventually Project Veritas, although Thiel denied funding the video itself. Thiel was a supporter of Ron Paul in 2007, and the single largest donor to the Club For Growth in 2012.
In 2016, Thiel first supported former HP CEO Carly Fiorina, and then moved his support to Donald Trump. This shows that Thiel was originally more aligned with the corporate-imperialist wing of the Republican Party than with Trump, with HP having provided biometric systems for IDF checkpoints as well as the servers for the IDF.6 But with Fiorina dropping out, Thiel quickly moved to support Donald Trump.
Once a Trumper, Thiel went big, donating more than $1 million to the Trump campaign. He was rewarded for his participation, serving as one of around 20 persons on the executive committee of the 2016 Trump transition team.7 Thiel was also an early funder of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.8 In the 2022 race for Senator of Ohio, Thiel spent tens of millions to support the Senate campaign of JD Vance, and that amount again in support of Blake Masters, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Senator of Arizona.9 By February 2022, Thiel was one of the biggest donors to Republicans, contributing $20 million to various races. But then in 2023 Thiel allegedly stepped back from his financial support for Republicans because of their over-focus on the culture war.10
Thiel also funds “anti-college” scholarships, paying students to drop out, which has served as a useful propaganda tool by which to put academia on the defensive. And Thiel is also a member of the steering committee of the notorious Bilderberg Meeting, a key organizing center of Atlantic capitalism.11
Musk’s Military-Industrialism
Musk Goes To Space
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has also built his fortune largely by providing the US security state with services which help to modernize it for the 21st century.
While Thiel used his proceeds from the sale of Paypal to found Palantir, Musk used his Paypal proceeds to move into the spaceflight industry. Because of the high cost of rockets, Musk traveled to Russia to attempt to secure his first space-flight using converted Russian ICBMs. However, he was rebuffed by the Russians and decided to manufacture the rockets himself, launching SpaceX in 2002.
Musk had been joined on his trip by Michael Griffin, a veteran of the right-wing political efforts surrounding the space industry. Griffin had served as Chief Engineer at NASA and had also been the Deputy for Technology at Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDI), known colloquially as the “Star Wars” program.
The Star Wars program had its roots back in the “Team B” neoconservative analysis which argued Soviet military capacity was threatening to exceed that of the United States, despite the lack of concrete evidence. Team B was part of the larger anti-detente effort known as the Second Committee on the Present Danger, staffed by some of the most important facilitators of the neo-conservative movement, which was crucial to Reagan’s coalition because it provided the basis for an escalation in great-power confrontation, and therefore an increase in military spending which could satisfy both arms producers and the AFL-CIO, which agreed to support the initiatives since it meant an increase in union jobs.
Reagan’s Star Wars was the culmination of the Team B report. But although the initiative had succeeded politically in justifying a massive increase in military spending in general, the actual specifics of militarization in the space sector remained limited based on the current technology. Griffin left the SDI, entering the private space-launch industry in 1990s, and penning an update to the Team B analysis for the Heritage Foundation in 1996 in a report, “Defending America: Ending America’s Vulnerability to Ballistic Missiles: An Update To The Missile Defense Study Team (Team B).” The report called for an escalation of the militarization of space, including through investment in space-based sensors as well as space-based defenses like space lasers.
By the 2000s the technology proposed by the Star Wars program seemed to be within reach, and so there was a renewed appetite in the space industry. After being rebuffed by the Russians, Musk turned to Griffin to lead SpaceX, but Griffin declined. Instead, Griffin took a job as CEO of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital fund which would go on to fund Palantir in 2003. This left Musk to found SpaceX on his own. But the two would not remain separated for long, with Griffin appointed as NASA administrator in 2006.The goal in launching SpaceX was to provide space-launch services to the US government. Griffin facilitated this by launching the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program in 2006 upon his return to NASA, which set the goal of securing a commercial vendor for launches to the International Space Station. SpaceX succeeded in winning a spot in the COTS program to perform commercial orbital transportation services after its failed launch of Falcon 1 in 2006.
The COTS program provided a sustained revenue for SpaceX as it developed its technologies and eventually began launching successful flights to the ISS. In 2013, it also began winning contracts to launch commercial satellites, and in 2014 began providing satellite launch services for the Department of Defense. Then in 2015 it launched its Starlink program, launching its own satellites into orbit and beginning in earnest Griffin’s 1996 proposal for expansion of space-based sensors.
Reviewing the above facts altogether, Musk’s entrepreneurial pursuits at SpaceX highlight several important trends. First, we see the basic relation of profit seeking through collaboration with the public sector, multiplied by the factor of the neoliberal privatization of NASA. This is the basic economic tendency of the military-industrial complex. In the technological field, we see the integration between technological development and military capacity. But we also see that there is a political dimension, in the close collaboration between Musk
Musk Goes Electric
SpaceX and Starlink are the clearest basis for understanding Musk as a military industrialist, that the interests of the world’s richest man reflect the interests of capital involved in military production. However, there may be an argument that Musk’s other holdings, including Tesla and Twitter, also align with the military-industrial narrative.
Musk was an early investor in Tesla. Tesla is highly relevant to the geo-strategic interests of the United States capitalist class, because it is a leading force in the development of electronic vehicles and battery technology. Musk’s positioning set him up to receive large government subsidies to consumers, again benefiting from the neoliberalization of industrial policy.12 Securing production of self-driving electric vehicles is crucial because it provides funding in the form of domestic consumption to the development of key technologies. The technologies surrounding electric vehicles are also likely to be more directly important, as the US military explores the development of ai-driven robots.13
Musk the Twitter Warrior
Since purchasing Twitter, Musk has taken the leading role in the rise of the digital new right.
Musk launched his drive to purchase Twitter in 2022, eventually purchasing the social media giant for $44 billion in partnership with Saudi prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud, venture capital funds Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, and Oracle founder Larry Elison.
Since purchase, it seems that Twitter has suffered a massive devaluation, with Musk valuing it at $19 billion only one year later. Musk spent around $20 billion of his own funds for Twitter, and his equity position has shed around half of that value, down to around $10 billion. That $10 billion loss means that for about that cost, he has secured an incredibly important vehicle for shaping political discourse and fomenting right-wing unrest around the world.
It almost need not be said that since Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the platform has become both a cesspool of racist and extremist content as well as a key organizing ground for the global far right. The impact of Twitter was especially evident in the UK riots of July and August 2024, where far-right mobs rioted in Muslim neighborhoods in response to false stories spread online about Muslim involvement in the stabbing of three children.
The result of Musk’s purchase is political conditions which support globalist-critical perspectives, anti-liberal right wing forces, pull working class people towards the right on the basis of racism, xenophobia, anti-trans, conspiracy, etc
Musk not only gained the ability to foster this kind of environment, but he has also almost certainly gained access to the private messages of thousands of journalists, politicians, activists, and officials who use Twitter.
Twitter is undeniably an important tool for geostrategic influence. The trial against Tik Tok has revealed the US capitalist class’s concern about Chinese-owned social media. Truth is the first casualty of war, while data is essential ammunition in the construction of global surveillance networks.
Fighting Back Against the Military-Industrial Capital
Musk and Thiel’s wealth and influence have only grown through the victory of the Trump/Vance ticket. The unprecedented amount of money spent by Musk and his leading role in Trump’s second administration is a new peak for the influence of billionaires on American politics. Yet, the amount Musk spent on the election was equal to less than 1 percent of what he made in one day a few days before the election, where his calculated wealth rose by $30 billion. His wealth rose again by more than $60 billion in one day earlier this month.14
How should we understand the role that Elon Musk and Peter Thiel play in the unfolding of contemporary events? What is the relation between their accumulation of inordinate wealth, their political activities, and their control of industries crucial to the military ambitions of the US capitalist class?
As Marxists, we draw depth in our analysis by relating the actions of individuals to the larger economic forces at hand, trying to provide specificity at the various levels of agency, from individuals, through organizations, to sub-classes and industries, to classes as a whole and onward to entire historical periods. Employing these lenses sharpens our understanding of Thiel and Musk as representatives of military-industrial capital in the digitization of American imperialism.
The impact of military industrialists and military-industrial capital, and its integration into the forces of counter-revolution, has its first basis in the direct production of military hardware and services to meet the operational needs of the repressive state forces. But it is hardly limited to this straightforward aspect; rather, military industrial capital tends to intervene more directly into political events in order to drive more favorable conditions for production, thereby reinforcing its relationship with the state. Moreover, actors in the state military apparatus and intelligence also take an interest in the development of the defensive industry, and actively take a hand in influencing its participants.
The prominence of this new rank of military-industrial capital will only grow as the general repressive and military activities of the US capitalist class continue to expand and modernize. Any escalations by Trump in the direction of authoritarianism will almost certainly rely both on Musk’s Twitter to spread disinformation, and on Thiel’s Palantir to surveille and target immigrants for deportation or activists for repression. Furthermore, escalations in the military conflicts between East and West will only mean the expansion of the US government’s reliance on Palantir, Anduril, Starlink, and other similar ventures.
Near the end of 2024, Palantir announced it is launching a new defense ‘consortium’ with Anduril, SpaceX, OpenAI, and more in order to compete more effectively with establishment defense contractors like Raytheon and Northrop Grumman for the $780 billion dollar defense-contract market.15
While the increase in mass-surveillance raises important tactical and technical considerations for activists in how to minimize surveillance and repression, the key to fighting back against this AI and far-right hellscape is primarily not tactical, but political.
A review of the strategy of Team B reminds us that not only for ourselves, but also for the capitalists, one of the key tasks is building political legitimacy for expansion of military spending. A key strategy in this was winning over labor through the bounty of labor imperialism. This raises resisting labor imperialism and raising an anti-imperialist wing within the US labor movement as a key strategic task for Marxists today.
More generally, we want to unite broad layers of working people against billionaire politics, against imperialism, against the new military-industrial complex, and for socialism. This requires us to lay out a majoritarian strategy and tactics for mass struggle, including through labor and electoral campaigns, as well as direct action, street protests, and political strikes. This is in contrast to individual acts of bravery and minoritarian politics which can lead to self-isolation from the masses.
Popular legitimacy is especially important in terms of splitting the rank and file layers of the military from the worst expressions of Trump’s second administration. While AI and technology are increasingly powerful, widespread repression of mass movements would still require the active participation of a large number of police and military forces. Especially for rank and file members of the military, who are largely working class and did not enlist to suppress their own neighbors, in periods of mass upsurge it remains possible to undermine their compliance with orders or move them into defense of the masses if it is clear that one side represents the rich and the other represents working class people.
Ultimately, the noxious and obnoxious influence of this new generation of military-industrial capitalists personified by Musk and Thiel is just the tip of the larger system of capitalist-imperialism. We will not have peace from war or from right wing billionaires as long as the structural pressures of capitalism drive the world towards conflict. The only solution is a socialist movement which seeks not peace but class war, and secures the overthrow and elimination of the billionaire class.
Citations:
- https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01731R000400520005-0.pdf ↩︎
- https://cafe.com/article/out-of-ignorance-william-bennett-stanford-and-the-debate-over-history-education/ ↩︎
- https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/ ↩︎
- https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/07/peter-thiel-to-step-down-from-facebook-board.html
↩︎ - https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/02/16/clearview-expansion-facial-recognition/
↩︎ - https://www.whoprofits.org/publications/report/113?the-israeli-ministry-of-defense-expands-hps-biometric-system-in-checkpoints ↩︎
- https://fortune.com/2016/11/11/thiel-trump-transition-team/ ↩︎
- https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=peter+thiel&order=desc&sort=A ↩︎
- https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-populism/the-rise-of-the-thielists ↩︎
- https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/04/peter-thiel-culture-war-2024-donations-blake-masters/ ↩︎
- https://web.archive.org/web/20210501064333/https://www.bilderbergmeetings.org/background/steering-committee/steering-committee ↩︎
- https://newrepublic.com/article/175397/teslas-cheaper-now-thanks-subsidies-musk-hated
↩︎ - https://www.militarytimes.com/news/2024/07/14/one-third-of-us-military-could-be-robotic-by-2039-milley/
↩︎ - https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/2024/12/11/elon-musk-gains-62-8-billion-in-one-day-pushing-net-worth-to-historic-level/76936374007/ ↩︎
- https://www.ft.com/content/6cfdfe2b-6872-4963-bde8-dc6c43be5093
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Henry De Groot
Henry De Groot, he/him, is involved with the Boston DSA Labor Working Group, an editor of Working Mass, and author of the book Student Radicals and the Rise of Russian Marxism.
