Keen On

The cover story of Harper’s this month is piece by Andrew Cockburn, their Washington DC editor, entitled “The Pentagon’s Silicon Valley Problem”. But as Cockburn explained to me today, the Pentagon’s problem is also ours. Silicon Valley, he argues, was in many ways founded and financed by the Cold War military-industrial complex and has become the economic, military and ideological motor of 21st century American militarism. And in our age of AI, Cockburn warns, the farce of American military incompetence and Silicon Valley technological hubris threaten to merge into the tragedy of unintended war. Andrew Cockburn is the Washington DC Editor of Harper's magazine and the author of many articles and books on national security, including the New York Times Editor's Choice Rumsfeld and The Threat, which destroyed the myth of Soviet military superiority underpinning the Cold War. He is a regular opinion contributor to the Los Angeles Times and has written for, among others, the New York Times, National Geographic an