Nitin Pai: When US technology companies effectively contribute to war, they become targets

It declared that “since the main element in designing and tracking terror targets are American [Information and Communications Technology] and [artificial intelligence or AI] companies... the main institutions effective in terrorist operations [against Iran] will be our legitimate targets.”

Employees were warned to vacate their workplaces and residents living within a kilometre’s radius of their premises were told to evacuate to safety.

On Iran’s target list were Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Meta, IBM, Dell, Palantir, Nvidia, JPMorgan, Tesla, GE and Boeing. G42 and Spire Solutions, two UAE-based companies, were also named. Iranian strikes have already damaged Amazon Web Services data centres in Dubai and Siemens and AT&T facilities in Israel.

There was a time when I would have found this inexcusable. Now I am still appalled, but cannot in good conscience argue that the Iranians are wrong. Even international humanitarian law, which permits only military targets to be attacked, defines one “as an object that by its nature, location, purpose, or use makes an effective contribution to military action, and whose destruction offers a definite military advantage.”

Palantir, for instance, has boasted that AI-powered targeting technology is playing an important role in the war. Some are defence contractors. Others provide communications and IT infrastructure used by the US and Israel. Iran can make a prima facie case that these companies are indeed making an “effective contribution to military action” against them. Under international law, any retaliation must have a legitimate military purpose, minimize civilian harm and be proportionate in nature.

It is chilling to realize that one consequence of civil-military fusion, network-centric warfare and AI-based lethal autonomous weapon systems is that private technology companies can be legitimate targets of war.

The US-Israel war on Iran has disregarded such distinctions, but there is a big ethical and legal difference between attacking purely civilian infrastructure (which can be a war crime) and targeting private companies that are part of the military campaign (which is not).

For their part, the US and Israel have attacked Iranian universities and steel plants that they could claim—although tenuously—are contributing to Iran’s military capacity.

In 2024, Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp argued in a book that “the technology sector has an affirmative obligation to support the state that made its rise possible.” In his view, Silicon Valley owes its existence and success to the US government and must discharge its historical debt by backing Washington’s geopolitical agenda.

Amid a geopolitical contest with China, it is necessary for the tech industry to cooperate with the US government, especially to seize the unassailable dominance of AI. He berates the technology sector’s intellectual culture for ignoring nation and purpose.

Karp has become the standard-bearer for a new-generation Silicon Valley elite that has successfully mixed its commercial interests with domestic political choices and aligned them with Washington’s foreign policy positions.

His case is not that tech firms should support the US military as doing so promotes a global liberal order, but because the US faces specific adversaries (China, Russia, Iran) in a civilizational contest and Western tech firms owe the home side their allegiance.

He’s not alone. Several technology industry figures have published manifestos or declarations of support for America’s national interests. Some have even joined the US Army. Even Anthropic—which had a famous fallout with the Pentagon after disallowing its technology to be used for mass surveillance of US citizens and powering fully-autonomous weapons—has declared that it agrees with nearly all military use-cases and believes in defending America. Its argument centres around the accuracy of targeting, not the military use of AI per se.

What this means is that it is not wrong to see US tech companies as wilful instruments of Washington’s foreign policy, if not of its military machine.

We saw this when Microsoft cut off access to its Russian customers after President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Intel, AMD, Dell, HP, Cisco, Oracle, Adobe, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and many others followed suit. To be sure, they did so ‘voluntarily,’ but clearly in service of Washington’s desires. They only applied political and economic pressure. SpaceX, however, provides military assistance to Ukrainian forces.

Now, whether or not multinational companies should become instruments of their home governments is a decision for their shareholders to make. What Iran’s threat shows is that they cannot escape the consequences of those decisions.

The challenge for India is to systematically de-risk the country’s defence, security and financial as well as energy infrastructure from dependence on foreign companies. This is not easy, but imperative. This is one more reason for India to urgently double its defence expenditure.

The author is co-founder and director of The Takshashila Institution, an independent centre for research and education in public policy.