Privatizing war

[Benton]

(08-22-2018, 01:19 AM)TheLeonardLeap Wrote: I don't think we're anywhere close to a point that the military becomes phased out, but it wouldn't surprise me if some of the really giant corporations over the next decade(s) end up with their own privatized forces. Like Google, Walmart, Amazon, Disney, Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, etc, as they continue to grow larger and larger and own more of the world with their tens-of-billion dollar company acquisitions.

They might ostensibly be called private security or whatever, but for all intensive purposes they will be a private military used to protect/seek the company's interests. Maybe they might even be private contractor companies that they acquire as well. I know Google went pretty hard into Robotics, and Amazon went pretty hard into drones, and it's really not a huge leap from there. If a company they own interests in has some destabilization or unrest, at some point they will become large enough that it will be more cost effective to protect themselves than to spread money around with lobbyists to seek government protection.




(At risk of sounding like I have a tinfoil hat on. It just seems like the natural current progression.)

That doesn’t sound that far off. And a lot of our current military actions benefit some of those companies, either by presence stabilizing markets or companies that supply action military operations.