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While weapons manufacturers have rightly gotten much attention as war profiteers, tech also has a role in war against our communities. The United States remains the largest arms exporter in the world, but now tools to fight “war” are different and focused on what the tech and military industries refer to as the “digital battlefield” where metadata, drones, and artificial intelligence (AI) do the killing in the name of efficiency. Add the reality that surveillance has become an essential part of the GWoT and there is now an entire terror industry for Big Tech to profit from.

>>> Select a tech corporation below along with a type of department contract to see how much money was made in the “terror industry.”

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  • From 2004 to today, Big Tech corporations have seen a huge climb in federal demand for their services. The top three federal agencies that have the highest demand for Big Tech services are all central to foreign policy- the Pentagon and State- and or were established as a direct result of the GWoT- Department of Homeland Security. 
  • The GWoT’s reliance on surveillance and database technology from the start laid the groundwork for the data economy as we know it- where our personal data is collected on profit-driven platforms and then sold to third parties, the police, and the federal government. Surveillance is a primary driver of terror capitalism. 
  • The scale and power of Big Tech has enabled them to both monetize the GWoT and perpetuate the harms on Muslim communities that ensures the GWoT continues. While on the one hand corporations like Google can create the AI for military drones to target Muslims, they can also perpetuate the criminalization of that very same community by spreading anti-Muslim bigotry on their platforms like YouTube. Big Tech corporations like Google can therefore profit from creating the conditions to make an “enemy” of Muslim communities while also creating the machinery that can target and kill them.
  • The federal demand for Big Tech’s services will only increase as the government continues to turn to private sector contractors to build public infrastructure. The Pentagon, ICE, and DHS together have put out calls for proposals for cloud computing contracts potentially worth tens of billions of dollars.