SpaceX, Palantir, and OpenAI have teamed up to earn some money for a defense contract.

New Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse just dropped: According to the Financial Timesmajor defense technology companies Palantir and Palmer Luckey Anduril is in talks with SpaceX and OpenAI (among other technological players) to form a consortium to bid for US government defense contracts.

The goal of the group, which is said to be planning to announce its membership as soon as January, is to disrupt the “mainstream” entrepreneurs who are in the habit of meeting major deals with the Pentagon. At the crossroads of the consortium, there are Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Boeing.

There is little doubt that the legacy brands are doing well on defense work. According to the Department of Defense Fiscal Year 2023 ReviewLockheed Martin took home $61.4 billion, RTX (née Raytheon) scored $24.1 billion, and Boeing had a cool $20.1 billion. In 2021, 71% of all Lockheed Martin revenue they come from contracts with the US government. A little less than 50% of all annual sales for Boeing and RTX went to the feds during the same period. As The American Prospect previously reported, these are basically state-funded enterprises but the government has no real control over operations or leadership.

So will the safety and security of the country improve by interrupting the vice of the big three over the Pentagon? Probably, under the assumption that mass war weapons and providing allies for conflicts ranging from the most alone to genocide is a net positive for national security, which, we call this doubt.

Ma this particular collection of technology companies as the hammer to smash the oligopoly? It is not clear that this is an improvement over the status quo.

Palantir has carved a niche for itself as the Department of Defense for AI systems. Just this year, snagged a $100 million contract to build AI-powered military targeting tools and $480 million to expand the Pentagon’s data analysis and decision-making tools. The company has been more than happy to lend its technology to programs that are ethically questionable at best, including being the technological backbone of the Trump administration’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, helping to lead the breakdown of migrant families and facilitating mass raids which led to the separation of children and parents. The company Technology has also been central to Israel’s ongoing siege in Gaza that has killed more than 45,000 people.

Anduril, called “the technology’s most controversial start“by Bloomberg, has built sensor towers for use at the US-Mexico border to track migrants and has explored the development of autonomous weapons. The company’s big play is building drones for warbut he also has his eyes build surveillance satellitesall of which carry some serious ethical questions attached.

OpenAI recently announced a partnership with Anduril to work with anti-drone systemsbut it seems likely that it will be the first of many collaborations if the consortium comes together. The agreement, which caused some upheavals among OpenAI employees who do not particularly want to be involved in defense work, come after OpenAI quietly has removed the language from its usage policy restrict the use of its technology for military and war purposes.

And on top of all that, it’s Peter Thiel all the way, baby. Thiel, the not-so-quiet techno-libertarian lizard man trying to place his acolytes in as many branches of government as possible, he has his hands in basically all of these businesses. He founded Palantir, co-founded OpenAI, put major financial backing behind Anduril, and was an early-stage investor in SpaceX. It is shown that he was a less scrupulous person with an ideology that can too generously be summed up as “technological progress no matter the human cost”. Thiel’s biographer, Max Chafkin, he told Time that Thiel is worth fearing, saying: “When you combine hostility to democracy and institutional norms with the bankroll of a billionaire you can potentially do some damage.”

Suddenly, the perhaps evil but status quo of old-school defense contractors doesn’t seem so bad.