On military, beware the techno-optimists of Silicon Valley

Pentagon funding was essential to the creation of the Silicon Valley tech industry. But eventually commercial business became much more lucrative than working for the Pentagon, and many firms opted out of doing military work. That has changed in recent years as the military seeks to capture the superior software skills and computing power that Silicon Valley firms have to offer to build a new generation of military technology. The Pentagon wants to build a new kind of war machine that can crank out large numbers of affordable, high-tech, high-speed, pilotless weapons systems in short order. Thus the need to…