Source: Global Times

Bloomberg News, May 30 article, original title: Mark Zuckerberg Finally Finds a Use for the Metaverse - War I can't think of any deal that better reflects the changes that have occurred in Silicon Valley over the past few years than this partnership announced by Meta on May 29 in its press release: Anduril Industries and Meta will jointly design, manufacture, and deploy a series of integrated extended reality (XR) products aimed at helping soldiers enhance their perception capabilities on the battlefield and achieve intuitive control of autonomous platforms.

Anduril is an American military-industrial company whose co-founder Palmer Luckey once developed the Oculus virtual reality (VR) headset. The device was acquired by Meta (then known as Facebook) for $2 billion in 2014. However, Luckey was later ousted from Meta after being exposed for funding a pro-Trump campaign group. Now that he can cooperate with Meta again, it indicates that political stances like his are no longer taboo in Silicon Valley.

"Turning Soldiers into Tech Wizards"

In the post-millennium Silicon Valley, there has always been an apparently insurmountable "red line": not developing technology for war. For example, in 2018, Google employees went on strike due to the company's involvement in military projects, forcing management to terminate related collaborations. But today, the military application of technology has become a major selling point for enterprises, rather than needing to be quietly hidden as "underground business."

Meta also has another consideration. The agreement reached between Zuckerberg and Anduril may just be the beginning of Meta's military hardware layout, but it has already provided a glimmer of hope for the Reality Labs department, which has been suffering losses year after year. Since 2019, the department's losses have exceeded $70 billion. Additionally, although technology continues to advance, sales of related products have not kept pace. Although the smart sunglasses jointly launched by Meta and Ray-Ban have potential, they remain niche products.

Perhaps, this so-called "killer app" really has something to do with "killing." As Luckey said in the press release: "My mission has always been to turn soldiers into tech wizards. And the products we are developing with Meta are achieving exactly that."

The Path of Silicon Valley Is Reversing

Luckey revealed in a podcast that the helmet named "Hawk Eye," jointly developed by the two companies, will be delivered to the Pentagon in 2025. He compared its functionality to the equipment worn by players in the game "Halo" - a heads-up display system capable of displaying large amounts of target and geographic information in real time, even equipped with an AI assistant "Cortana" that can issue critical and potentially life-saving instructions.

This transformation also has a striking aspect: it means the historical development path of technological innovation is reversing. Silicon Valley was originally established as a region to develop military technology, and only later developed products for businesses and consumers. Many technological innovations followed this "from military to civilian" path, such as the Internet, microwave ovens, global positioning systems, and super glue. Now, this route is reversing.

As Luckey said, Meta's head-mounted display devices have the same purpose on the battlefield as they do on consumers' heads. Similarly, AI is also being heavily adopted by the military, but its most advanced developments are still mainly led by private technology companies.

Participating in the Future of Human Conflict

The temptation and potential of this collaboration are too great. Luckey said that he was willing to cooperate with Meta again because things here have changed drastically compared to when he was driven away. Luckey said that he and Zuckerberg are friends again, and he believes that Zuckerberg dismissed him back then because he was misled by bad advice. And now Zuckerberg is also moving toward Republican thinking, as evidenced by his willingness to use Meta's AI technology for government projects.

I have no reason to doubt Luckey's judgment, but I wonder if Meta should revise their mission statement. It claims to "build the future of human connection," but perhaps now they should also acknowledge - they are also participating in the future of human conflict. (Author Dave Lee, translated by Wei Sijun)

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7511861189278810675/

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