An Interview with Sharon Weinberer, Author of Valley of Death
September 15, 2026
An original interview conducted by the dinobaby himself in Washington, DC, on September 4, 2026.
Several years ago, I met Sharon Weinberger. I recognized her name because she had written The Imagineers of War: The Untold Story of DARPA, the Pentagon Agency That Changed the World. She contacted me while on assignment for a major newspaper. Her questions centered on the conferences and training programs of a low-profile organization in Virginia. I had given a few lectures at these conferences, both in the U.S. and abroad.I generally avoid speaking with journalists, so I dodged most of her inquiries. However, I told her, “Next time I’m in D.C., I’ll meet you in a busy public coffee shop—and I’ll bring my son along.”
We did meet, and she was gracious. She brought up her assignments and asked several questions about the stealthy conference company’s programs for intelligence, law enforcement, and policymakers. I bought her another coffee but remained tight-lipped about my lecture topics, the attendees, and the owner of the organization. We exchanged emails, and I discussed my team’s research into the Telegram operation run by Pavel Durov, a citizen of Russia, France, and the UAE. She mentioned that she was looking into Silicon Valley, and I encouraged her to pursue the topic. I also shared a few anecdotes about some of the major players involved in using advanced technology for warfighting. In August 2026, I contacted her and said, “I’m giving a lecture in Staunton, Virginia, during the first week of September. Would you like to meet again at a really busy coffee shop?” We arranged the meetup for September 4, 2026, at the Starbucks on 5454 Wisconsin Avenue, just a short walk from the office where I had worked years ago at Booz Allen Hamilton. Surrounded by chattering masters of the universe and a group of private school students, I spoke with Ms. Weinberger about her new book, Valley of Death. You can pre-order the book on Amazon by navigating to this landing page.
Note: Image is the property of Little, Brown, Sharon Weinberger, a designer, and probably a half dozen lawyers. I am not stealing anything. I am calling attention to what strikes me as an important book because [a] It documents the “baked-in duplicity in a number of powerful, cash-rich firms, and [b] highlights some of the chilling implications of the advanced technology pre-teens to geriatrics like me tote around every day.
The official release date of the volume is September 22, 2026. Amazon’s write up probably crafted by someone at Little, Brown says:
Drawing on deep, exclusive reporting, a veteran national security correspondent reveals how a new military-industrial complex is arising from the cradle of Silicon Valley, with vast implications for American democracy and the global balance of power. Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and Alexander Karp. These tech titans are fast becoming some of the most powerful figures in the realm of national security, with enormous implications for us all. As Sharon Weinberger reveals in this gripping account, the American military and spy agencies helped to create Silicon Valley as we now know it, and some of its biggest and most valuable companies today owe much of their success to the Pentagon and CIA. Beginning with the War on Terror and accelerating under Donald Trump, however, the old alliance between elected leaders in Washington and the unelected CEOs of Silicon Valley has grown increasingly uneasy as power has shifted to the private sector and Big Tech exerts greater and greater influence over its old patrons. Companies such as SpaceX and Palantir, along with newer entrants to the field such as Anduril, are proudly supporting—and quietly shaping—US national defense, whether by providing spies and soldiers with AI and cloud-computing tools or actual military hardware such as microwave weapons, hypersonic missiles, and advanced drones. The implications of this historic shift are poorly understood and fraught with peril. What happens when mercurial billionaires like Elon Musk control weapons and technologies that were once the preserve of the US government? How will this new military-industrial complex affect the way wars are fought, or even which wars are fought? That is the urgent question before us today, at the dawn of this new era—and as Weinberger reveals, it is one on which our collective future might well hinge.
If you go to a bookstore, look for the book’s cover which features drones, robots, and mysterious weapons. The text below is a lightly-edited transcript of Ms. Weinberger’s answers to my questions. I would have posed more, but the noise and grinding of coffee machines curbed my enthusiasm. For that, I owe Ms. Weinberger an apology. I have nothing uplifting to say about the ambiance of the Starbuck’s in Bethesda, Maryland.
Beyond Search: Thanks for agreeing to meet and answer some questions. I dodge yours, but you answer mine. I will try to do better in the future.
Weinberger: I have a new book coming out, and I now want publicity. You have your audience, so here we are.
Beyond Search: I arrived early and bought a weird Starbuck’s soft drink. You were late, and you said you would buy this time.
Weinberger: Well, patience is a virtue.
Beyond Search: Okay, here’s my first question. How did you decide to cover Big Tech from the Valley of Death point of view?
Weinberger: I like writing about questions that defy easy answers. My last book was about DARPA, a Pentagon agency whose name is often regarded as synonymous with innovation. I wanted to know: It is as successful as people claim, and if so why? DARPA has done some amazing things: the internet, driverless cars, and drones. It also introduced Agent Orange to Vietnam.
After I finished that book, I started noticing something at defense conferences I was attending: “Sponsored by Lockheed Martin” was increasingly being replaced with “Sponsored by Amazon Web Services” or “Sponsored by Google.” Silicon Valley had arrived, and I wanted to understand why.
Beyond Search: In the Valley of Death, you describe a shift in perception — from “Big Tech will solve our problems” to “Big Tech is destructive.” What were the pivotal events or corporate actions that crystallized that shift for you?
Weinberger: It’s not that black and white. I’ve never thought that any sort of tech solves our problems. It’s at best a tool. I think Silicon Valley can certainly contribute important tools to national security, but I’m concerned when people think Big Tech is the answer to everything.
One important moment came when I was sitting in the office of a partner at a prominent venture capital firm involved in defense tech. The partner told me: “I honestly don’t care about the product. It’s like, I want it to be cool and I want the thing that they work on to be something that the DOD is going to spend money on, right? But like doing technical diligence? It’s not how the DOD buys things.”
It felt like the investor was saying the quiet part out loud: national security wasn’t really the point. If the technology happened to make the country safer, that was a nice side benefit, I suppose. But fundamentally, Silicon Valley wants to make money.
Beyond Search: What were the three most significant discoveries or findings you encountered while reporting the book?
Weinberger. Okay, let me think a minute. I would say that, first, the CIA played a crucial role in helping Steve Jobs when he was exiled from Apple and started his own computer company, NeXT. The agency gave him a large contract for NeXT workstations that helped him gain the momentum that eventually propelled him back to Apple.
And, second, that Big Tech went all in on defense and weapons over the last 10 years in large part because of the loss of China’s commercial market. It wasn’t the whole reason, of course, but it certainly played a major role.
Third, that the picture of Alex Karp wearing a keffiyeh in his college yearbook—which I have in the book—is a wonderful reminder that we all evolve according to the incentive structure of our operating environment.
Beyond Search: Palantir Technologies is now more than 20 years old, yet it still presents itself as a technology company shaped by fiction and mimetic philosophy, especially René Girard. How does Palantir’s philosophical and ideological DNA distinguish it from other major players such as Google or OpenAI?
Weinberger: I think Palantir relies on narrative more than many other tech companies, in part because it has a hard time explaining what, exactly, distinguishes its products from an increasing number of competitors. “We’re going to save Western civilization” is a more compelling storyline than “we make enterprise software that helps organizations integrate, analyze, and act on their data.” Lots of companies now do that.
Beyond Search: How does Peter Thiel represent a new archetype of leadership in the “Valley of Death” — someone who profits from defense contracts through Palantir and Anduril while operating from an ideological framework that goes well beyond conventional business strategy?
Weinberger: I think Peter Thiel deserves credit for recognizing, much sooner than almost any other Silicon Valley investor, that there was a substantial market to be had in Pentagon and intelligence contracts. His ideological contrarianism no doubt contributed to that insight. But as he goes further down the road of Antichrist lectures, and the like, I think he risks becoming a distraction to the companies he’s supporting.
Beyond Search: Technology leaders from Anthropic’s Dario Amodei to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, along with Palantir’s Alex Karp and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, have published manifestos or mission-driven essays. Based on your research, why are these figures moving from applied technology into philosophical claims about their firms’ products and services?
Weinberger: These technology leaders want to believe they have big ideas—and what ideas are bigger than those of philosophy? Nobody discusses rich people who lived hundreds of years ago, but we do discuss philosophers. It’s a form of immortality, I suppose.
Beyond Search: In your interviews, how did tech executives and engineers reconcile their companies’ commercial missions with the military and surveillance applications you describe?
Weinberger: They believe they’re doing good and important work. And I don’t necessarily doubt the sincerity of that belief. I’m a journalist, so I believe in the role of transparency and accountability in making the world a better place. People involved in nuclear weapons believe in nuclear deterrence. People involved in military and surveillance tech have their own beliefs about how their work contributes to the greater good.
I think what becomes problematic, as I write about in my book, is when a particular sector starts to hold both economic and political power, which is what we’re seeing with tech companies and national security.
Beyond Search: Your book focuses heavily on leaders, companies, and institutions. But what about the rank-and-file engineers, designers, and data scientists? In your reporting, did you find evidence of meaningful internal dissent — walkouts, whistleblowing, quiet quitting — and does that resistance have any real power to change the trajectory you describe?
Weinberger: We are all creatures of our environment. People have real beliefs, but those beliefs are also shaped by the world we live in. When an industry becomes a major source of jobs and wealth in a community, opposition tends to shift from questioning whether the industry should exist to arguing over the terms on which it operates. That’s true of coal and fossil fuels, and I think it’s increasingly true of Silicon Valley.
There has certainly been meaningful dissent. The Google employee protests over Project Maven, the Pentagon AI targeting effort, is an important example. But those protests came from a generation of tech workers who entered an industry whose economic success was not dependent on military funding. As that changes—and defense becomes a larger and more accepted part of Silicon Valley’s business model—I suspect attitudes among workers will change with it. In fact, I think we may already be seeing that shift.
Beyond Search: How has reporting this book affected your view of Silicon Valley?
Weinberger: I’m even more impressed and horrified by the ability of Silicon Valley leaders to project their narrative as reality.
Beyond Search: These teenagers are making our conversation impossible. Let’s work with what I captured. Good luck with the new book. Next time we connect, it is your responsibility to buy me another of these horrible Starbuck’s flavored water drinks.
Weinberger: Okay, that’s a deal. Did you buy a copy of my book.
Beyond Search: I pre-ordered. Thanks for talking with me.
Weinberger: No problem. Will you answer my questions if I call or email you?
Beyond Search: Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2026
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