From code to combat: Meta CTO calls for Silicon Valley involvement in military contracts

This week, Meta announced a partnership with the defense technology startup Anduril to build next-gen VR/AR extended reality headsets for the US military. Microsoft was given the contract in 2018, and the headsets were supposed to be built based on Microsoft HoloLens. Earlier this year, Microsoft gave up the entire project to Anduril but kept its role as the cloud services provider.

Meta's Chief Technology Officer (CTO) is now calling for more Silicon Valley involvement in military contracts. Speaking at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco (via: Business Insider), Andrew Bosworth said the recent partnership between Meta, Anduril, and the US military could be a "return to grace" for Silicon Valley.

"The Valley was founded on a three-way investment between the military, academics, and private industry. That was the founding of it," Bosworth said.

Meta's CTO added that building VR/AR headsets for the US military doesn't turn the company into a defense contractor. He also said it was "way too early" to determine whether military contracts would become a business segment for Meta. "So far, it's like a zero. Let's start with one and go from there. I think there's no reason it couldn't be meaningful in the impact that it has," he added.

"There would be no technology if we weren't all tasked with the problem of keeping naval ballistic trajectories during the first two world wars. That is the heart and soul of the investment that led to what we are today, and that really got severed for a while there."

The US military's desire for AI-powered tools and weapons has turned Big Tech into military contractors, whether willingly or unwillingly. Companies like Microsoft, Google, and Meta have a long history of providing services to the military and law enforcement agencies.

The relationship between tech firms and the defense segment has always been controversial. In the most recent case, a group of Microsoft employees protested against the company's partnership with the Israeli military, which led to the layoff of the protesting staff.