[I]f government gets a monopoly on powerful technology, then over time, tech will strip people of their freedoms. But if government doesn’t have privileged access to new tech, then you don’t need to worry much about government tech since you’ll have it too.
That makes it odd to see the trend of venture capital firms getting into defense tech. There have been a lot of firms jumping into that space recently, often with PR pushes about how brave it is to fund defense tech. It’s all well and good to fund companies that build weapons for the government. Someone has to. (Probably? Maybe. Kind of.) But brave it is not. It is not a contrarian, anti-consensus play. There are actually few things more conformist than strengthening the military industrial complex.
If you really believe in freedom through technology, the most important place to invest is the civilian defense industry.
— Open Source Defense in Military Industrial Context
Another reason to invest in civilian defense: maintaining a populace which can effectively defend itself against its own government if said government becomes an enemy of the populace.
Where’s the 2nd thought?