Tech companies aren’t just going to war. They’re owning the battlefield

In the months after Russia invaded Ukraine and destroyed much of the country’s telecom infrastructure, Elon Musk offered 20 thousand Starlink satellite internet terminals to facilitate internet connections for Ukrainians. These SpaceX terminals did not just enable communications between citizens or allow people to reach news websites; they were also critical for military operations, such as navigating drones and launching artillery. Ronan Farrow has called Musk “a private citizen with a private company who had become the arbiter of the outcome of this war.”  There are few people in the world not in government of whom the same can be said.  After his rescue mission, Musk was hailed as a savior by Ukrainian politicians and received appreciation from around the world. But that changed when he started hinting that the services his company was providing were too costly. Eventually, the company threatened to discontinue access to the satellites unless the U.S. government picked up a large portion of the cost, which the government had little choice but to do, as the Ukrainian war effort had become dependent on the service. Shutting it off could incapacitate military operations—and result in real casualties.  Adapted from The Tech Coup: How to Save Democracy from Silicon Valley [Princeton University Press] SpaceX is not the only company that has purposely—or even inadvertently—become involved in the fighting in Ukraine. The battlefields are full of companies. Defense tech has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s newest darlings, as start-ups like Anduril and Shield AI take in hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in funding rounds. Commercial satellite imaging companies like Maxar have helped open-source investigators and journalists identify mass graves and Russian troop movements. And even before Russian soldiers entered Ukraine, Microsoft was working to take down malware attacking Ukrainian government organizations.  The involvement of big tech companies in active military conflicts raises tough questions about the concept that underpins the foundations of international relations and international law: state sovereignty. The principle of state sovereignty assumes that a government is responsible for the activities within its borders and is mandated to uphold international standards and agreements. Most famously, after World War II, states signed the UN Charter, which held them to a host of commitments regarding human rights and the use of military force. Additional treaties and conventions bind signatory governments to uphold everything from the laws of armed conflict to trade agreements to the laws of the seas. Typically these treaties also include mechanisms of accountability in case signatories don’t comply.  But companies are not signatories to these agreements or treaties. Google, Maxar, Microsoft, and SpaceX and Clearview have few, if any, legal mandates according to international law. They are private, not public, actors. The rules that surround companies cover reporting revenue, accounting costs, and filing taxes—not when or how they should act in military confrontations. Yet companies like these exude sovereign power in new ways. They have monopolies on key insights and data analytics and make decisions about affairs that were once the exclusive domain of states, while these companies are not subject to comparable checks and balances. Moreover, companies that operate at a global scale often chafe against geographic borders. Even when governments want to exert control over such companies, which happens far less frequently than it should, they face a variety of constraints. As far as we know, tech companies have abided by international conventions in the case of Ukraine, but there is no reason to expect that they will be on the right side of history or human rights law in the next conflict. Elon Musk, for instance, has recognized that in the current geopolitical climate, standing by Ukraine is good for business.  But the market calculus changes with respect to China and some Middle Eastern nations. In conflicts involving those countries, companies may prioritize their business interests over the greater good. They may be reluctant to hand over aerial imagery of war crimes, assist in blocking troop movements, or even provide internet service for fear that such assistance would hurt their quarterly revenue.  The challenge posed to state sovereignty by the shifting technology landscape is perhaps clearest at the moment war begins. When a tank breaches a nation’s border, the situation is clear: the aggressor has violated article 2.1 of the UN Charter, which commits member states to refrain from “threats and the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.” When soldiers manning the tank proceed to shoot at people in a school, hospital, or any other civilian target such as energy infrastructure, they violate the Geneva Conventions