/tech/ - Technology

The Alliance Among Washington, Tel Aviv, and Silicon Valley by Stefano Ali Azali

In his farewell address, delivered from the Oval Office on 17 January 1961, US President Dwight Eisenhower warned the nation of the dangers posed by an informal alliance between the armed forces, related government departments, and companies in the military–technology sector. He said:

“This conjunction of 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.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Scholar Alex Roland explains: “Particularly galling to Eisenhower was the mindless pursuit of new and often redundant weapons systems, devices through which the services contended with each other for roles and missions and laid the groundwork for increased budgets and force levels to match their new equipment.”

Following the end of the Cold War in 1991 and the launch of the catastrophic ‘war on terror’ in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, this alliance expanded to include the government of and the tech giants of Silicon Valley, further blurring the boundaries between the public and private sectors.

1.

“The reality of the situation is that (a) Gaza is not presently inhabitable, and (b) Gaza, without its residents (even more important, without their complex maze of Ottoman-era land titles), is worth much more than Gaza with its residents, even to its residents. This is 140 square miles of Mediterranean real estate, clear of titles, demolished and demined at a cost of perhaps ten billion dollars. This land becomes the first charter city backed by US legitimacy: Gaza, Inc. Stock symbol: GAZA.” —Curtis Yarvin (1)

In her recent report, “On the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967,” (2) United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, examines “the corporate machinery sustaining the Israeli settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory.”

The report highlights the crucial role played by the private sector in the broader ecosystem of genocide—namely, those “corporate entities” (3) that, throughout history, have consistently supported and profited from “colonial endeavours and associated genocides” through the establishment of “a mode of domination known as ‘colonial racial capitalism.’”

The Special Rapporteur considers the role of corporate entities within the context of the “Israeli colonisation of Palestinian lands” and the “institutionalization of a regime of settler-colonial apartheid” in light of the historical precedent set by private enterprises such as the Dutch East India Company (4), the East India Company (5), and that British South Africa Company; which had aroused such admiration in Theodor Herzl (6).

While, as Ian Bremmer observes, the geopolitical influence once wielded by “limited liability corporations” cannot match “the pervasive global presence of today’s technology firms”, able to “directly affect the livelihoods, relationships, security, and even thought patterns of billions of people across the globe.” (7) It remains clear that with the creation of digital space, these corporations have established a new geopolitical dimension—one over which they exert absolute authority. (8)

The logic underlying the historical relationship between violent dispossession and private power rests on the fact that colonial powers continued to rely on these relationships to outsource, obscure and avoid accountability for the dispossession and enslavement of Indigenous Peoples and the expropriation of their resources. Corporations have not only inherited the benefits of this legal veil of separation, but have also emerged as shapers of international law.

Today, the public-private partnership is evident in the awarding of military and security contracts to corporate entities, which are increasingly recognised as large transnational conglomerates. This enables international actors to operate in areas that exceed the boundaries of international law. This situation gives rise to immense power without sufficiently justiciable accountability.

Yasha Levine, in his study Surveillance valley: the rise of the military-digital complex exposes the mechanisms of social control and surveillance hidden behind the world’s most widely used search engine:

“Google is one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the world, yet it presents itself as one of the good guys: a company on a mission to make the world a better place and a bulwark against corrupt and intrusive governments all around the globe. And yet, as I traced the story and dug into the details of Google’s government contracting business, I discovered that the company was already a full-fledged military contractor, selling versions of its consumer data mining and analysis technology to police departments, city governments, and just about every major US intelligence and military agency. Over the years, it had supplied mapping technology used by the US Army in Iraq, hosted data for the Central Intelligence Agency, indexed the National Security Agency’s vast intelligence databases, built military robots, co-launched a spy satellite with the Pentagon, and leased its cloud computing platform to help police departments predict crime. And Google is not alone. From Amazon to eBay to Facebook — most of the Internet companies we use every day have also grown into powerful corporations that track and profile their users while pursuing partnerships and business relationships with major US military and intelligence agencies. Some parts of these companies are so thoroughly intertwined with America’s security services that it is hard to tell where they end and the US government begins.” (9)

Francesca Albanese’s investigation “discusses corporate entities in various sectors: arms manufacturers, tech firms, building and construction companies, extractive and service industries, banks, pension funds, insurers, universities and charities.” The outcome of this research was the creation of “a database of approximately 1,000 corporate entities,” which enabled the mapping of “how corporate entities worldwide have been implicated in human rights violations and international crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory.”

Among the companies cited in the report are several “United States tech giants” (“establishing subsidiaries and research and development centres in Israel”), such as Lockheed Martin (10), IBM, Hewlett Packard Enterprises, Microsoft (11), Alphabet Inc. (Google), Amazon (12), and Palantir Technologies Inc.

The symbiosis between Silicon Valley corporations and U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies is further highlighted in a series of investigations by Alan MacLeod, in which the author reveals that tech giants such as Apple, TikTok, Microsoft, Facebook (Meta), and Google (15) have integrated into their staff dozens of veterans from a controversial elite unit of the Israeli Defence Forces (Unit 8200).

Further confirming these reports, recent news revealed that: “Google recently announced it would acquire Israeli-American cloud security firm Wiz for $32 billion. The price tag — 65 times Wiz’s annual revenue — has raised eyebrows and further solidified the close relationship between Google and the Israeli military.

In its press release, the Silicon Valley giant claimed that the purchase will ‘vastly improve how security is designed, operated and automated—providing an end-to-end security platform for customers, of all types and sizes, in the AI era.’

Yet it has also raised fears about the security of user data, particularly of those who oppose Israeli actions against its neighbors, given Unit 8200’s long history of using tech to spy on opponents, gather intelligence, and use that knowledge for extortion and blackmail.’’ (16)

Robert Inlakesh, commenting on Microsoft’s decision to block Scottish lawyer Karim Khan, Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, from accessing his official account in response to the war crimes case he brought against Israeli officials, highlighted the tight web of alliances between institutional actors and private entities. (17)

Inlakesh remarked, “It looked like petty revenge. But it wasn’t just that. It was the latest move in a coordinated campaign, backed by Washington, Tel Aviv, and Silicon Valley, to destroy the one court willing to challenge Israeli impunity. And Microsoft is at the center of it.” (18)

Benjamin Netanyahu made no effort to conceal his threat toward the Scottish prosecutor, stating: “The prosecutor should be worried about his status.”

2.

Since October 2023, the close collaboration and competition between Israeli and international weapons manufacturers has turned Gaza into a kind of ‘’laboratory’’ or “testing ground” for emerging military technologies, including air defence platforms, drones, targeting tools powered by artificial intelligence and even the F-35 programme led by the United States of America.

The demands of segregation and security apparatuses have further contributed to the testing and widespread application of cutting-edge technologies in carceral and surveillance services: from closed-circuit television (CCTV) networks, biometric surveillance, advanced tech checkpoint networks, ‘smart walls’ and drone surveillance to cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data analytics supporting on-the-ground military personnel.

Francesca Albanese has also highlighted the progressive automation of military technologies deployed on the ground in Gaza. The ongoing development and use of autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon systems, which rely on artificial intelligence to identify and strike military targets without human intervention, now raise serious ethical, legal, and political concerns. (19)

Reflecting on the epochal shifts brought about by these new technologies, Henry Kissinger wrote:

“Will the age of AI not only fail to propel humanity forward but instead catalyze a return to a premodern acceptance of unexplained authority? In short, are we, might we be, on the precipice of a great reversal in human cognition — a dark enlightenment? […]

The alliance between science and war has come to ensure increasing accuracy in our instruments, and AI can be expected to make another breakthrough — or many. AIs will thus shrink the gap between original intent and ultimate outcome, including in the application of lethal force. Whether land – based drone swarms, machine corps deployed in the sea, or possibly interstellar fleets, machines will possess highly precise capabilities of killing humans with little degree of uncertainty and with limitless impact. The bounds of the potential destruction will hinge only on the will, and the restraint, of human and machine.’’ (20)

To assess the veracity of these claims, it suffices to examine the results achieved in Gaza by what Brigadier General Y.S. (Yossi Sariel) confirmed to be the current commander of the elite Israeli intelligence unit 8200, (21) has termed the Human-Machine Team (22), a hybrid composed of humans and machines applied to warfare. The use of artificial intelligence by the Israeli military in the Gaza Strip, following the attacks of October 7, 2023, has resulted in what has been called “the first automated genocide in history.”

Unit 8200, described as “the centerpiece of Israel’s hi-tech repressive state apparatus”, operates a system known as “The Gospel” (Habsora in Hebrew), which analyses hundreds of algorithms to identify potential targets from data stored in a vast digital repository.

This system “compiles dossiers on virtually every Gaza resident, including their medical history, sex lives, and search histories, so that this information can be used for extortion or blackmail later. If, for example, an individual is cheating on their spouse, desperately needs a medical operation, or is secretly homosexual, this can be used as leverage to turn civilians into informants and spies for Israel. One former Unit 8200 operative said that as part of his training, he was assigned to memorize different Arabic words for “gay” so that he could listen for them in phone conversations he was eavesdropping on.”

Unit 8200 is also involved in Project Lavender: “a giant, AI-generated kill list of tens of thousands of Gazans that the IDF uses to target the densely populated strip’s civilian population. Every Gazan (including children) is assigned a score of 1-100, based on their perceived proximity to Hamas. A wide range of characteristics will increase an individual’s score, including living or working in the same building or being in a WhatsApp group with a known or suspected Hamas member. If a person’s number reaches a certain threshold, they are automatically added to a Unit 8200 kill list. This, one IDF commander explained, solved Israel’s perennial targeting “human bottleneck,” allowing them to carry out tens of thousands of strikes into Gaza during the first few weeks of the post-October 7 attack alone.”

As Yuval Abraham reports in +972 Magazine: “During the first weeks of the war, the army almost completely relied on Lavender, which clocked as many as 37,000 Palestinians as suspected militants — and their homes — for possible air strikes. … The army gave sweeping approval for officers to adopt Lavender’s kill lists, with no requirement to thoroughly check why the machine made those choices or to examine the raw intelligence data on which they were based. One source stated that human personnel often served only as a ‘rubber stamp’ for the machine’s decisions.” (25) Authorisation for each individual killing determined by the machine reportedly required around 20 seconds of human oversight in the case of male targets. Moreover, “the Israeli army systematically attacked the targeted individuals while they were in their homes — usually at night while their whole families were present — rather than during the course of military activity. According to the sources, this was because, from what they regarded as an intelligence standpoint, it was easier to locate the individuals in their private houses.” Other automated systems, including one called “Where is Daddy?”, were reportedly used “specifically to track the targeted individuals and carry out bombings when they had entered their family’s residences. The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes, especially during the first weeks of the war, because of the AI program’s decisions.” (26)

The widespread use of AI systems helps explain the disproportionately high number of civilian casualties in Gaza—not only due to the machines’ relatively high error rate (10%), such as in cases of individuals with the same name, but also as a result of a deliberate policy of “collateral damage”:

“In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians; in the past, the military did not authorize any ‘collateral damage’ during assassinations of low-ranking militants. The sources added that, in the event that the target was a senior Hamas official with the rank of battalion or brigade commander, the army on several occasions authorized the killing of more than 100 civilians in the assassination of a single commander.” (27)

3.

In a country that “between 2020 and 2024 was the eighth largest arms exporter worldwide”, the commercialisation of new weapons, “battle-tested” (28), not only increases profits for the benefit of the “military-industrial complex” (29) that forms “the economic backbone of the State” but also allows for the establishment of political alliances and the export of a new model of “nationalism” (30) free from the constraints of international law and justified by forms of religious fanaticism and intolerance. This model has been progressively disseminated by an engineered global campaign of hatred against Islam, identified as the “enemy” (31) and the “scapegoat” (32), within the ideological context of a global “war on terror” (33) in which it is claimed the entire liberal international order is a victim (34). This mechanism is then extended, in the domestic sphere, to the problems resulting from those immigration phenomena of an exclusively economic and secular nature to which an imaginary religious intention is attributed.

Anthony Loewenstein, author of a significant essay revealing the close relationship between the export of military and surveillance technologies and the establishment of a new international order, writes: “Today Israel provides inspiration, ideologically and with military and intelligence equipment, to further its missionary zeal to find and create like-minded countries. None will be the same as Israel, but its model of jingoism and unashamed pride in preferencing Jews above all else, is like an easily transportable flatpack that can be adapted to a multitude of countries and scenarios.” (35)

One could argue that maintaining the structure of power requires the creation of a network of client states (in every sense) (36) that ensures, through their policies of perpetual conflict (37), the flow of profits and the defence of the global status quo by suppressing any form of dissent that cannot be reduced to predetermined binary frameworks. In light of such considerations, it is unsurprising that Israeli politician Simcha Rotman has referred to the modern secular State of Israel as the “light unto the nations”, quoting a verse from Isaiah (42:6). (38)

Regarding the pro-Palestinian rhetoric of certain governments, it often proves to be a form of political propaganda, as in the case of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who reportedly even called for a global arms moratorium. This claim is supported by Barcelona’s Delas Centre, which states that since the start of the war, “the Spanish government had awarded 46 contracts totaling $1.2 billion to Israeli arms manufacturers since the war began.” (39)

4.

At a symposium held in July 2004 at Stanford University in honour of Professor Emeritus René Girard, Peter Thiel (40) founder of Palantir Technologies Inc. and “godfather” of the PayPal Mafia (41) outlined the foundations of the new global power architecture. He based this on the premise that “the brute facts of September 11 demand a re-examination of the foundations of modern politics,” given that “Western political philosophy can no longer cope with our world of global violence.”

During his talk, titled The Straussian Moment, a tribute to the leading ideologue (42) of the neoconservative circles that instigated the “War on Terror” under the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, Thiel stated:

“The twenty – first century started with a bang on September 11, 2001. In those shocking hours, the entire political and military framework of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and indeed of the modern age, with its emphasis on deterrent armies, rational nation – states, public debates, and international diplomacy, was called into question. For how could mere talking or even great force deter a handful of crazy, determined, and suicidal persons who seemingly operated outside of all the norms of the liberal West? And what needed now to be done, given that technology had advanced to a point where a tiny number of people could inflict unprecedented levels of damage and death?

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. On the narrow level of public policy, there needed to be more x – ray machines at airports; more security guards on airplanes; more identification cards and invasions of privacy; and fewer rights for some of the accused. Overnight, the fundamentalist civil rights mania of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which spoke in the language of inviolable individual rights, was rendered an unviable anachronism.’’ (43)

5.

“Peace activists are war activists. … We are the peace activists.” Alex Karp

Among the companies within the “military-digital complex” that stand out most for their practical and ideological support of the Tel Aviv government’s policies, Palantir Technologies Inc. stands out as a defining case. As Alex Koller observes:

“Palantir, known for its government contract work in defense and intelligence, has provided its technology to support the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries in their respective wars. (…) [Alex] Karp said on Palantir’s earnings call last month [February 2024] he was ‘exceedingly proud that after Oct. 7, within weeks, we are on the ground and we are involved in operationally crucial operations in Israel.’ Palantir held its first board meeting of the year in Tel Aviv, Israel, in January [2024], after which the company agreed to a ‘strategic partnership’ with the Israeli Ministry of Defense to supply the country with technology for its military efforts. In November, Karp asserted the company’s support of the U.S. government and Israel, declaring on an earnings call that ‘Palantir only supplies its products to Western allies.’

In Wednesday’s interview, Karp reaffirmed his pro-Israel views. Eisen referenced the company’s decision in October to take out a full-page ad in The New York Times, stating it ‘stands with Israel.’”

Palantir Technologies Inc (46) was founded in 2003 “using $2 million in investment rounds from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm,” (47) and counts among its clients the FBI, NSA, IRS, various police departments, and other government agencies (48). The Denver-based company specializes in developing artificial intelligence (AI) software that supports data analytics and decision-making processes in large organizations, primarily militaries and other government agencies. It has been providing its tools to Israel’s security forces at least since 2017, starting with its predictive policing system.

Shortly after Israel began its genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, Palantir entered into a ‘strategic partnership’ with Israel’s Ministry of Defense to help the ‘war effort.’ The company reported ‘seeing high demand from Israel for new tools’ and has been providing the Israeli military and intelligence agencies with at least four of its main products:

Gotham: Palantir’s flagship product for military, intelligence, and law enforcement applications. It ingests, integrates, and organizes large amounts of data from many sources to detect patterns and insights. Gotham can also integrate with sensors and autonomous systems like drones and give them tasks.
Foundry: A complementary product that was developed primarily for civilian and commercial uses. A military could use Foundry for big-picture planning and logistics, like predicting equipment failures, analyzing and optimizing complex supply chains, etc.
GAIA: Palantir’s geospatial platform, which integrates with its other products and visualizes their data on a real-time map.
Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP): Palantir’s large language model, which integrates into its other products and allows users to query them and give them commands with natural language.

The company’s presence in Israel has seen a ‘rapid growth’ since 2023. Its employees in Israel work directly with its local clients to help them use Palantir’s systems. As the head of Palantir’s operations in Israel clarified, these primarily include the military and security sector: ‘Palantir is here in Israel to work with the Israeli security system – if we manage to generate commercial business that’s great – but our focus was and remains creating collaborations with security companies and supporting Israel.’

The company has gone through great lengths to express public support for Israel during the Gaza genocide, for example by holding a full company board meeting in Israel in January 2024. Palantir CEO Alex Karp had repeatedly and vocally expressed his support for Israel, stating for example: ‘I am proud that we are supporting Israel in every way we can.’

Palantir has been a politically oriented company since its inception. … Throughout the years, Palantir has vigorously defended its contracts with U.S. military, immigration, and police agencies, pledging to ‘stand by them when it is convenient, and when it is not.’’’ (49)

In a recent meeting with investors, Palantir’s CEO proudly declared:

“Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them. […] I’m very happy to have you along for the journey. We are crushing it. We are dedicating our company to the service of the West, and the United States of America, and we’re super-proud of the role we play, especially in places we can’t talk about.” (50)

The recent alliance between Palantir Technologies and Anduril Industries, a company known for its autonomous weapons systems, described as “a family of autonomous systems, powered by Lattice, that provide integrated, persistent awareness and security across land, sea and air, all at the tactical edge,” highlights the close ties between Peter Thiel’s ventures and the U.S. security apparatus and its allies. Anduril’s leadership includes several former Palantir veterans, underscoring the interconnected nature of these defence tech firms, both heavily backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund.

Palmer Luckey (53), the 33-year-old founder of Anduril, “who has on multiple occasions referred to himself as “a radical Zionist”, declared at the Wall Street Journal’s Tech Live Conference in October 2023: “Israel has my [and our] unqualified support.” He went on to say: “What’s happening in Israel is just another instance of the same type of evil that’s been going on for a very long time,” he added. “And I think it reflects very poorly on our billionaire class that you’re not seeing a whole-of-country effort to become involved and to speak up about these issues, hedging on condemnation of Hamas for fear of saying the wrong thing, either in the court of public opinion or because it hurts their business interests.” (54)

Jay Salley comments:

“The implications of Thiel’s influence on Anduril are far-reaching. Financially, Founders Fund’s substantial backing ensures that Anduril’s leadership remains closely aligned with Thiel’s strategic priorities. Operationally, the influx of former Palantir executives suggests that Anduril’s drive to secure military contracts and develop cutting-edge, AI-enabled warfare systems is less about fostering true innovation and more about extending Thiel’s reach into the defense-industrial complex. Anduril’s flagship technology — its proprietary Lattice system — mirrors the functionality of Palantir’s Gotham software, albeit with a sharper focus on battlefield automation. Yet this technological overlap is telling. Both companies operate in the shadows of U.S. military and intelligence operations, thriving on lucrative government contracts and cloaked in a culture of secrecy. Through Anduril, Thiel appears to be consolidating his long-held ambition: to reshape national security by embedding private tech solutions deep within the military’s command structure.”

Peter Thiel and Alex Karp are members of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group. According to Newsweek, Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt—former CEO and chief executive officer of Google, as well as chair of the Pentagon’s Defence Innovation Advisory Board and, in 2018, the first chair of the U.S. National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence—are considered the true heirs of Henry Kissinger.

Footnotes:

Footnote 1: Curtis Yarvin, “Gaza, Inc.”, https://graymirror.substack.com/p/gaza-inc, 6 February 2025. But it is not over … Curtis Yarvin adds: “On the other hand, the Gazans are now a wealthy, cultured, naturally commercial people. It’s not like there isn’t a Palestinian diaspora everywhere in the world. Take over Africa maybe Uganda …], or something. Also, someone has to live in the new Gaza-there have to be residence requirements, because any country with open admissions will turn into a gigantic global slum. It will probably work like Dubai, but much more Westernized. But with enough GAZA shares… you might be able to afford it.” Ibid.

Footnote 2: Francesca Albanese, From economy of occupation to economy of genocide (A/HRC/59/23) Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Human Rights Council, Fifty-ninth session, 16 June-11 July 2025, https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/.

Footnote 3: “”Corporate entities’ in the present report refers to business enterprises, multinational corporations, for-profit and not-for-profit entities, whether private, public or State-owned. Corporate responsibility applies regardless of the size, sector, operational context, ownership and structure of the entity.”

Footnote 4: “The Dutch East India Company (1602-1799) was worth $7.4 trillion at its peak, more than Alphabet, Apple, Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft put together.” Audrey Kurth Cronin, How Private Tech Companies Are Reshaping Great Power Competition, PDF, Henry A, Kissinger Center for Global Affairs, https://sais.jhu.edu/kissinger/programs-and-projects/kissinger-center-papers/how-private-tech-companies-are-reshaping-great-power-competition# edn2, August 2023.

Footnote 5: “The English East India Company played a crucial role in changing the flow of wealth from East to West between 1600 and 1870, building private armies, ruling territory, and helping shift power from India and China to England.” Ibidem.

Footnote 6: The Complete Diaries of Theodor Herzl. Volumes I-V. Ed. Raphael Patai. Trans. Harry Kohn. New York: Herzl Press and Thomas Yoseloff, 1960, III 1193-1194.

Footnote 7: Ian Bremmer, “The Technopolar Moment”, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/world/ian-bremmer-big-tech-global-order, November/December 2021.

Footnote 8: “As an entrepreneur and investor, I have focused my efforts on the Internet. In the late 1990s, the founding vision of PayPal centered on the creation of a new world currency, free from all government control and dilution – the end of monetary sovereignty, as it were. In the 2000s, companies like Facebook create the space for new modes of dissent and new ways to form communities not bounded by historical nation-states. By starting a new Internet business, an entrepreneur may create a new world.”. Peter Thiel, The Education of a Libertarian, https://www.cato-unbound.org/2009/04/13/peter-thiel/education-libertarian/, 13 April 2009.

Footnote 9: Yasha Levine, Surveillance valley: the rise of the military – digital complex, New York, 2018, pp. 10-11 (e-book).

Footnote 10: “The world’s largest weapons manufacturer, Lockheed Martin supplies Israel with F-16 and F-35 fighter jets, which Israel has been using extensively to bomb Gaza. Israel also uses the company’s C-130 Hercules transport planes to support the ground invasion of Gaza. Lockheed Martin manufactures AGM-114 Hellfire missiles for Israel’s Apache helicopters. One of the main weapon types used in aerial attacks on Gaza, these missiles have been used extensively in 2023. Some 2,000 Hellfire missiles were delivered to Israel sometime between Oct. 7 and Nov. 14. Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky manufactures the CH-53K King Stallion heavy lift helicopter, used to transport Israeli soldiers into and out of Gaza. On Jan. 8, Sikorsky was awarded $18.3 million from U.S. taxpayers’ money for continued work on the CH-53K aircraft it has provided to Israel. On Dec. 28, Lockheed Martin was awarded a $10.5 million contract for continued support for Israel’s fleet of F-35 warplanes.” American Friends Service Committee, “Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide”. https://afsc.org/gaza-genocide-companies#:~:text=Lockheed%20Martin%20manufactures%20AGM-114..%207%20and%20Nov.%2014.

Footnote 11: “Microsoft has been active in Israel since 1991, developing its largest centre outside the United States. Its technologies are embedded in the prison service, police, universities and schools – including in colonies. Microsoft has been integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003, while acquiring Israeli cybersecurity and surveillance start-ups”. Francesca Albanese, op. cit., p. 10. See also: Yuval Abraham, “Microsoft storing Israeli intelligence trove used to attack Palestinians,” https://www.972mag.com/microsoft-8200-intelligence-surveillance-cloud-azure/, August 6, 2025.

Footnote 12: “As Israeli apartheid, military and population-control systems generate increasing volumes of data, its reliance on cloud storage and computing has grown. In 2021, Israel awarded Alphabet Inc. (Google) and Amazon.com, Inc. a $1.2 billion contract (Project Nimbus) – largely funded through Ministry of Defense expenditure – to provide core tech infrastructure”. Ibid.

Footnote 13: Alan MacLeod, “Rotten Apples: Dozens of Former Israeli Spies Hired by Silicon Valley Giant”, 18 July 2025, https://www.mintpressnews.com/apple-israel-unit-8200-hiring/290226/.

Footnote 14: Alan MacLeod, “TikTok isn’t anti-Israel: it’s hired Unit 8200 agents to run its affairs”, 27 November 2024, https://www.mintpressnews.com/288710-tiktok-isnt-anti-israel-its-hired-unit-8200-agents-to-run-its-affairs/288710/. See also: Matthew Kassel, “TikTok hires new hate speech manager amid concerns over rising antisemitic content on the platform”, 28 July 2025, https://jewishinsider.com/2025/07/tiktok-hate-speech-manager-erica-mindel-antisemitism-social-media/.

Footnote 15: Alan MacLeod, “Revealed: the former Israeli spies working in top jobs at Google, Facebook and Microsoft”, 31 December 2022, https://www.mintpressnews.com/revealed-former-israeli-spies-working-top-jobs-google-facebook-amazon/282413/.

Footnote 16: Alan MacLeod, “Wiz acquisition puts Israeli Intelligence in charge of your Google data”, https://www.mintpressnews.com/oogle-wiz-cybersecurity-data-deal/289413/, 17 April 2025..

Footnote 17: “Then came the kicker: the U.S. government sanctioned Khan himself. His bank accounts were frozen, and his allies were warned: help him and face criminal charges.” Robert Inlakesh, “Microsoft’s Role in Gaza Goes Way Beyond the ICC Email Lockout”, https://www.mintpressnews.com/microsoft-gaza-war-icc/289838/, 21 May 2025.

Footnote 18: “Following October 7, Microsoft signed $10 million in new contracts with the Israeli military. Through a secretive program called ‘Project Azure,’ the company provided infrastructure for Israeli intelligence and air force units, including Unit 8200 and Unit 81. These are the same units compiling ‘kill lists’ in Gaza. The company stayed quiet until recently, when it admitted to providing ’emergency support’ to Israel. But insisted that there was ‘no evidence’ its tech harmed civilians. That’s not all. Microsoft previously poured $78 million into the Israeli surveillance firm AnyVision, whose facial recognition tech was deployed across the West Bank. It also powered an app developed by the Israeli military-‘Al Munaseq’-which spies on Palestinian permit-holders. Its cloud systems processed their private phone data. Worse still, Microsoft has been stacking its upper ranks with veterans of Israel’s Unit 8200, effectively embedding a foreign intelligence agency into the core of one of America’s most powerful corporations and building its next data centers in Israel.” Ibid.

Footnote 19: “The principles of distinction and proportionality (Additional Protocols to the Geneva Conventions) complicate their use: do not directly attack those who are not actively involved in military operations and limit attacks to military targets. Research has yet to develop autonomous weapon systems that can reliably discriminate whether a person intends to surrender, is out of combat or is not taking part in combat, with the same reliability as a competent and well-trained soldier.” Runipace, Le armi autonome, https://www.runipace.org/aree-tematiche/le-armi-autonome/.

Footnote 20: Craig Mundie, Eric Schmidt, Henry Kissinger, Genesis: Artificial Intelligence, Hope, and the Human Spirit, New York, 2024, pp. 46 e 92 (e-book).

Footnote 21: Yuval Abraham, ‘Lavender’: The Al machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza, https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/, 3 April 2024.

Footnote 22: Brigadier General Y.S., The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human & Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World, eBookPro Publishing, 2021.

Footnote 23: Alan MacLeod, Wiz acquisition puts Israeli Intelligence in charge of your Google data, cit.

Footnote 24: Ibidem.

Footnote 25: Yuval Abraham, ‘Lavender’: The Al machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza, cit.

Footnote 26: “”We were not interested in killing [Hamas] operatives only when they were in a military building or engaged in a military activity,’ A., an intelligence officer, told +972 and Local Call. ‘On the contrary, the IDF bombed them in homes without hesitation, as a first option. It’s much easier to bomb a family’s home. The system is built to look for them in these situations.” Ibidem.

Footnote 27: Ibidem.

Footnote 28: “Between 2020 and 2024, European arms imports increased by 155% compared to the previous five years, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). Over that same period, Israel limbed the ranks of global arms exporters, now standing eighth worldwide. The surge in sales reflects a growing European reliance on Israeli military technology. In 2023, EU nations imported $111 million in Israeli arms. By 2024, that number jumped to $135 million, even as European governments publicly condemned Israel’s war in Gaza. ‘Militaries often are quite interested in real-life experience witnessed by other militaries,’ Dr. lain Overton, executive director of Action on Armed Violence, told MintPress News. Israel’s repeated assaults on Gaza and the West Bank-and its long-running campaigns in Syria and Lebanon-have become central to its marketing pitch.” Jessica Buxbaum, “Revealed: EU Nations Condemning Gaza Genocide Secretly Inking Billion-Dollar Arms Deal with Israel”, 5 June 2025, https://www.mintpressnews.com/eu-nations-condemn-gaza-genocide-secret-israel-arms-deals/289927/.

Footnote 29: “For Israeli companies such as Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, the ongoing genocide has been a profitable venture. The 65 per cent surge in Israeli military spending from 2023 to 2024 – amounting to $46.5 billion, one of the highest per capita worldwide – generated a sharp surge in their annual profits. Foreign arms companies, especially producers of munitions and ordnance, also profit”. Albanese, op. cit., p. 9.

Footnote 30: This ideology is based on a critique of liberalism in the name of freedom from imperialism, as evidenced by the National Conservatism movement and its founder, Yoram Hazony. In an insightful essay published in Jewish Currents, Suzanne Schneider states: “The clearest instantiation today of Hazony’s ideal is neither Donald Trump’s America nor Boris Johnson’s Britain, but the hilltop settlements located deep in the heart of the West Bank: tight-knit communities made up of large, traditional families, united in the face of the enemy, producing legions of young soldiers who have been schooled in the fusion of state violence and spirituality. This is the template that Hazony now offers to the world via the neutralized language of National Conservatism. Like his Zionist predecessors, he too imagines Israel as a light unto the nations—an illiberal model for the international nationalist brigade.” Suzanne Schneider, Light Among the Nations, 28 September 2023, https://jewishcurrents.org/light-among-the-nations. Contrary to the unfounded claims of some contemporary journalists and politicians, the resurgence of nationalism that we are witnessing today cannot be equated with the historical European movement of the same name. The latter was characterised by a secular and anti-clerical stance, inspired by the universalist values of the Enlightenment and spread by a network of revolutionary secret societies, including the Carbonari in Italy and the Filiki Eteria in Greece. Yoram Hazony’s National Conservatism movement appears to be an attempt to export the ideology and practices of the Zionist movement from the Middle East to Western countries in their most illiberal form. After all, the founder’s biography has always been consistent with his ideals, beginning with his encounter with the extremist Meir Kahane at Princeton in 1984.

Footnote 31: Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Footnote 32: René Girard, The Scapegoat, Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 1989

Footnote 33: In 2015, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated: “Israel is in the forefront of the global war on terror. This is the frontline between the free and civilized world and radical Islam. We’re stopping the wave of radical Islam from flowing from Iran and Iraq all the way to Europe. When we fight terror here, we’re protecting London, Paris, and Madrid.”. Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory – How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation around the World, London – New York, 2023, p. 18 (e-book).

Footnote 34: In an article about the misuse of René Girard’s ideas by Peter Thiel and the oligarchs of the US techno-right, Paul Leslie writes: In today’s world, political leaders and influencers often invoke victimhood to justify aggressive policies or silence opposition. Claims of oppression become a rhetorical strategy, turning the concern for victims into a justification for making additional victims. Our growing awareness of how scapegoating works affects the culture in strange ways. Coming to understand scapegoating as wrong, we increasingly justify our violence by portraying ourselves as victims, or by aligning ourselves with others we allege have been victimized by our enemies. This paradox lies at the heart of many modern political movements, where claims of victimhood mask new cycles of exclusion and violence. In a meeting from February 1993, Girard observed, “We have reached a stage where the only way you can be violent is against the violent ones. That’s why everything today is propaganda… . You always claim to be fighting the violence of others.” Paul Leslie, From Philosophy to Power: The Misuse of René Girard by Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance and the American Right, Salmagundi 226-227, Spring – Summer 2025, https://salmagundi.skidmore.edu/articles/1176-from-philosophy-to-power.

Footnote 35: Anthony Loewenstein, op. cit., p. 124.

Footnote 36: The case of India is paradigmatic. Azad Essa, in a 2019 article, notes: “Israeli-India relations have intensified since the election of Narendra Modi in 2014. India is Israel’s biggest purchaser of arms, amounting to $1bn per year. Both India and Israel have used the spectre of Islamic terror to justify their security policies and the need for partnership.” Azad Essa, “India consul general in United States calls for ‘Israeli model’ in Kashmir”, Middle East Eye, 26 novembre 2019, https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/india-consul-general-united-states-calls-israeli-solution-kashmir.

Footnote 37 In an interview given in 2022, Volodymyr Zelensky outlined his vision for the future of post-war Ukraine as follows: “I think all our people will be our great army. We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future’ – probably, our state will be able to be like this a long time after. But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face. We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas, there will be people with weapons. I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.” President of Ukraine Official Website, For the Ukrainian state, the issue of security should be in the first place for the next ten years – the President, 5 April 2022, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/dlya-ukrayinskoyi-derzhavi-pitannya-bezpeki-maye-buti-na-per-74113.

Footnote 38: Antony Loewenstein, op. cit., p. 21.

Footnote 39: Jessica Buxbaum, cit.

Footnote 40: Peter Thiel is a pioneer in the fields of techno-finance, social networking services, and the application of artificial intelligence technologies to the global pharmaceutical industry, defence, surveillance, and intelligence. He was one of the founders of PayPal, alongside Elon Musk, and is an investor in SpaceX and Tesla. In 2004, he became Facebook’s first institutional investor and supporter, inspired by Girard’s “theories of mimetic desire”. He has funded Vance’s Senate campaigns with over $30 million and has mentored him since 2011. As Whitney Webb wrote, ‘The profile of Vance, one of the PayPal co-founder’s leading protégés, has grown in recent years, as have those of other Thiel protégés, such as Sam Altman of OpenAI and Palmer Luckey of Anduril’. Thiel is also one of the main financiers of the National Conservatism movement, founded by Yoram Hazony. He has spoken at conferences held by the movement in Orlando, Florida in 2021 and Miami in 2022.

Footnote 41: “They’re a group of men who were at the top, the founding of PayPal, all of whom, in some way or other, grew up in South Africa as children. You’ve got Musk himself, who was born in South Africa and lived there, went to high school there ’til he was 18, and then moves to Canada. You’ve got Peter Thiel, who was a co-founder with Musk of PayPal. Thiel was born in Germany but brought to South Africa as a young child. His father was a mining engineer, lived in Johannesburg and then moved to South West Africa, which was then a South African colony, is now Namibia. And he went to school in Swakopmund, which was notorious as probably the last place on the planet where people still openly greeted each other with “Heil Hitler” and celebrated Hitler’s birthday. He went to a German school there before moving to the United States when he was 10 or 11. You’ve got David Sacks, who was born in Cape Town. He was big in PayPal and is now Trump’s AI and crypto czar. He moved to Tennessee as a relatively young child but grew up in the white South African diaspora there. And you’ve got Roelof Botha, who is the son of Pik Botha — sorry, the grandson of Pik Botha, the last foreign minister of apartheid South Africa. He was the acceptable face of apartheid. You will remember, he used to run around the United States trying to put a gloss on how they were reforming things and that everything was getting better, which apparently it wasn’t. But, so, you see those four key people at the top of PayPal, and they all have this very intimate connection to South Africa.”, intervista di Amy Goodman a Chris McGreal, https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/10/elon_musk_doge_south_africa_apartheid, 10 February 2025.

Footnote 42: Leo Strauss, a prominent ideologue of those neoconservatives integrated into the Bush administration whose parents were “Trotskyist militants, anti-Stalinists and belonged to the movement of the 1930s to the 40s that arose when Leon Trotsky abandoned the Soviet Union and denounced Stalin as a revisionist and a dictator. Of course, the United States supported with all its might the Trotskyist movement, which was spread worldwide; this included here in New York the CIA’s organizing their congress at the Waldorf Astoria in 1949 (The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Frances Stonor Saunders) The children of the made-in-the-USA Trotskyists, their names are Wolfowitz, Perle, Kristol, Feith, David Wurmser, etc., became part of the liberal anticommunist movements between the 1950s and 70s. Later they converted themselves into neoconservatives and transformed Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution into Permanent Conquest based on Strauss. Then they put it into action after taking power, calling it Permanent Expansion, justifying it by saying that ‘everything that is good for America is good for the world’ and that ‘the United States has the right to attack any country if it perceives the existence of any danger.’” Bill Vann, The historical roots of neoconservatism: a reply to a slanderous attack on Trotskyism, https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/05/shac-m23.html, 23 May 2003.

Footnote 43: Peter Thiel, Straussian Moment, in “Politics and Apocalypse”, ed. Robert Hamerton-Kelly, Michigan State University Press, 2007, pp.189-190.

Footnote 44: Caroline Haskins, “‘I’m the new Oppenheimer!’: my soul-destroying day at Palantir’s first-ever AI warfare conference”, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/17/ai-weapons-palantir-war-technology, 17 May 2024.

Footnote 45: Alex Koller, “Palantir CEO says his outspoken pro-Israel views have caused employees to leave company”, https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/13/palantir-ceo-says-outspoken-pro-israel-views-led-employees-to-leave-.html, 9 March 2024.

Footnote 46: Palantir, The Future of Warfare (Army vs Navy Commercial 2024), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiiqiaUBAL8, 16 December 2024. In Tolkien’s sagas, the palantiri is a type of magic sphere used by the evil lord Sauron to watch, deceive and threaten his enemies in Middle Earth. During an interview, CEO Alex Karp said: “The Palantiri distort the truth”, “And those who look into them”, he adds, “only see what they want to see.” Andy Greenberg e Ryan Mac, “How A ‘Deviant’ Philosopher Built Palantir, A CIA-Funded Data-Mining Juggernaut”,

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/08/14/agent-of-intelligence-how-a-deviant-philosopher-built-palantir-a-cia-funded-data-mining-juggernaut/, 14 August 2013.

Footnote 47: “In-Q-Tel (autism scoreT), formerly Peleus and In-Q-It, is an American not-for-profit venture capital firm based in Arlington, Virginia. It invests in companies to keep the Central Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence agencies, equipped with the latest in information technology in support of United States intelligence capability. The name ‘In-Q-Tel’ is an intentional reference to Q, the fictional inventor who supplies technology to James Bond”. Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel.

Footnote 48: “As the war machine gets smarter, and every last bit of weaponry becomes AI-enhanced, the lines between Silicon Valley and the Pentagon start to get awfully blurry.”. Charlie Skelton, Silicon Valley in Switzerland: Bilderberg 2019 and the High-Tech Future of Transatlantic Power, https://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-switzerland-bilderberg-2019-and-high-tech-future-transatlantic-1441259, 1 June 2019.

Footnote 49: Alex Koller, op. cit.

Footnote 50: Lucas Ropek, Palantir’s Billionaire CEO Just Can’t Stop Talking About Killing People, https://gizmodo.com/palantirs-billionaire-ceo-just-cant-stop-talking-about-killing-people-2000560597, 7 February 2025.

Footnote 51: Anduril and Palantir to Accelerate AI Capabilities for National Security, https://www.anduril.com/article/anduril-and-palantir-to-accelerate-ai-capabilities-for-national-security/, 6 December 2024.

Footnote 52: https://www.anduril.com/.

Footnote 53: “Defense contractor and the father of modern virtual reality” Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries, “has created a VR headset that will kill the user if they die in the game they’re playing. He did this to commemorate the anime, Sword Art Online. Luckey is the founder of Oculus, a company he sold to Facebook in 2014 for $2 billion. This is the technology that Mark Zuckerberg rebranded as the foundation for Meta. Luckey’s killer headset looks like a Meta Quest Pro hooked up with three explosive charge modules that sit above the screen. The charges are aimed directly at the user’s forebrain and, should they go off, would obliterate the head of the user.” Matthew Gault, “Palmer Luckey Made a VR Headset That Kills the User If They Die in the Game”, https://www.vice.com/en/article/palmer-luckey-made-a-vr-headset-that-kills-the-user-if-they-die-in-the-game/, 7 November 2022.

Footnote 54: Corey Walker, “Tech Entrepreneur Palmer Luckey Calls Himself a ‘Radical Zionist’ While Defending Israel’s Right to Exist”, 18 February 2025, https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/02/18/tech-entrepreneur-palmer-luckey-calls-himself-radical-zionist-while-defending-israels-right-exist/.

Footnote 55: Jay Salley, Is Anduril Just a Shell Company for Peter Thiel?, https://jasonsalley.medium.com/is-anduril-just-a-shell-company-for-peter-thiel-8ea02cef077c, 22 February 2025.

Footnote 56: Charlie Skelton, “Silicon Valley in Switzerland: Bilderberg 2019 and the High-Tech Future of Transatlantic Power”, https://www.newsweek.com/silicon-valley-switzerland-bilderberg-2019-and-high-tech-future-transatlantic-1441259, 1 June 2019.