Big Tech is receiving more DoD contracts for Military AI

DoD Is Awarding More (and Larger) Contracts to Big Tech Companies A growing portion of the Defense Department’s spending is going to large, well known tech firms, including some of the most valuable corporations in the world. These include Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Oracle, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Motorola, and Dell, among others.23 Contracts for hardware, software, and support services may have ceilings of hundreds of millions—or even billions—of dollars. According to the nonprofit research organization Tech Inquiry, three of the world’s biggest tech corporations were awarded approximately $28 billion from 2018 to 2022, including Microsoft ($13.5 billion), Amazon ($10.2 billion), and Alphabet, Google’s parent company ($4.3 billion). 24 It is important to note that this is a conservative estimate, since large defense and intelligence contracts are often classified. The top five contracts to major tech firms during this period have contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion (see Table 1). In addition to the Pentagon, other non-DoD agencies (the CIA in particular) have also dramatically expanded their technology contracts while forging closer bonds with Silicon Valley firms. It is exceedingly difficult to untangle the web of Pentagon procurement contracts awarded to tech companies for several reasons. Like many defense contractors, tech firms frequently acquire or merge with other companies. Sometimes segments of a corporation are reorganized as independent entities (or “spinoffs”). For example, over the past decade the firm commonly known as “Hewlett Packard” has undergone a number of transformations that resulted in the creation of many entities, including a personal computer company (HP Inc.), a cloud services company (Hewlett Packard Enterprise or HPE), an IT provider that was spun off from HPE following a merger (DTX Technology), and a public sector IT provider that was spun off from DTX technology (Perspecta). Perspecta was later acquired by another entity (Peraton), which is owned by a private equity firm (Veritas Capital).25 Table 1. Five Largest Publicly Disclosed Tech Contracts Awarded by U.S. Military and Intelligence Agencies, 2019-2022.26 [Table Omitted for Brevity] Another complication that makes it challenging to analyze DoD procurement contracts is the fact that major tech firms are often awarded large subcontracts from relatively obscure intermediary or “passthrough” companies that are granted primary contracts from the Pentagon.27 Such arrangements make it difficult—but not impossible—to determine the extent to which the tech industry is involved in military work. Tech Inquiry is a non-profit research organization that uses FOIA (the U.S. Freedom of Information Act), among other methods, to collect, collate, and analyze public government records, particularly procurement contracts with companies that provide weapon systems, surveillance technologies, and cloud computing services to U.S. government agencies.28 In a 2020 report, Tech Inquiry concluded that Pentagon officials’ “alarmist claims” about Silicon Valley’s purported reluctance to conduct defense work were unwarranted, since major tech firms were awarded hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of Pentagon contracts and subcontracts.29 Some of these deals were worth hundreds of millions, or even billions, of dollars. After an endless series of summits, forums, and private meetings bringing together DoD officials, academics, Silicon Valley executives, and influential investors—as well as years of persistent messaging from Pentagon leaders and hawkish public policy think tanks about an “AI arms race” with China and the looming threats to U.S. national security posed by Russia and Iran—the Defense Department and the CIA now routinely award multiyear contracts to major tech firms.30