CAMBRIDGE, CAMBRIDGESHIRE - MAY 08: Peter Thiel speaks at The Cambridge Union on May 08, 2024 in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. (Photo by Nordin Catic/Getty Images for The Cambridge Union)

Getty Images for The Cambridge Union

Jacob Silverman’s Gilded Rage: Elon Musk and the Radicalization of Silicon Valley goes well beyond tracking the career and life arcs of Space-X founder Elon Musk, offering a rich history of the rise of Silicon Valley military tech firms and psychologies and ideologies on not just Musk but Palantir’s Peter Thiel, its co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and the whole upper tier of leaders of the sharp turn of tech firms in the valley and beyond to military contracting and surveillance as their primary business lines.

Thiel, whose firm got its first government contract in 2003 from the CIA’s venture capital arm, In-Q-Tel, is the elder statesman of the current group of military tech leaders in Silicon Valley. The CIA contract was premised on the idea that Palantir’s software could help the U.S. government sort through its reams of intelligence data more efficiently, a top priority after the failure of the CIA and FBI to share data that might have given them the identities of the 9/11 hijackers before they took action against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Crunching data and finding targets remains the bread and butter of Palantir’s business, doing everything from helping Israel speed up its bombing in Gaza to helping ICE conduct surveillance of individuals, to helping the British Health Service better organize its operations through better data analysis.

Thiel’s influence is far reaching. He provided early financing to Palmer Luckey when he established his up and coming military tech firm Anduril. Most importantly from an influence point of view was Thiel’s employment and political backing of JD Vance well before he became Donald Trump’s vice president.

Guided Rage recounts this history in lively fashion with insights into the career paths and world views of today’s military tech moguls. The book’s combination of profiles of these men alongside the growth of their companies makes fascinating reading.

The political influence of the Silicon Valley military tech firms has grown dramatically in the past decade, cemented by their provision of millions in support of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid. In addition to the vice president, dozens of other Trump administration personnel, at the Pentagon and beyond, come from the Silicon Valley military tech sector.

Meanwhile, a small flood of ex-Pentagon officials and ex-military officers have gone to work at venture capital firms that fund military tech startups as well as established firms. In addition, the former head the Congressional Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, former Rep. Mike Gallagher, left his influential position on Capitol Hill early to go to work for Palantir.

The battle between the Silicon Valley tech sector and established firms will shape the future of the U.S. arms industry, and is worth studying as such. But Gilded Rage’s analysis of the psychology and politics of the key leaders of the modern military tech sector offers insights that are far more valuable than a narrow business analysis.

There is far more in the book, including, of course, Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and the role of Gulf States in investing in the U.S. military tech sector, both directly and through U.S.-based venture capital firms.

Gilded Rage is an essential analysis of a monumental, ongoing shift in how the U.S. arms sector operates, both economically and politically. It is a necessary tool for understanding what’s next for U.S. military spending, national security strategy, and foreign policy.