Report: since 2004, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook and Twitter have earned $43.8B in contracts with the Pentagon, mostly in relation to the War on Terror
Edward Ongweso Jr / VICE : Tweets: @greisamartinez , @nullvoidstar , @vice , @caradefabio , @munira_ , and @acrecampaigns Tweets: Undeniable Greisa / @greisamartinez : @ACREcampaigns ... Published a report detailing how Big Tech has profited immensely from the War on Terror over 20 years. From 2007 to 2019, @DHSgov contracts w/ Silicon Valley giants have increased 50-fold. https://www.vice.com/... via @vice @nullvoidstar : “From 2007 to 2019, Department of Homeland Security contracts and subcontracts, for example, with Silicon Valley giants have increased 50-fold.” “The report also found that Google has netted $16 million in contracts with the Pentagon, another $2 million with DHS, and ... https://twitter.com/... @vice : “This is a great example of how tech is not neutral. It's actually been very key in building out a post-9/11 regime that criminalizes Black and brown people.” https://www.vice.com/... Cara Rose Defabio / @caradefabio : 👏 @ACREcampaigns @twittlesis @MPower_Change gathered receipts on how Big Tech is profiting off war & exposed the revolving door between tech & gov intelligence agencies that feels ripe for a true crime podcast https://www.vice.com/... @munira_ : We've been talking about how Big Tech is buying and selling our data - now let's talk about how all that became possible because they enlisted to sell war on Black, Brown, and Muslim communities for the last 20 years. @ACREcampaigns @MPower_Change @twittlesis https://twitter.com/... Acre / @acrecampaigns : Facebook has just over $161,000 in contracts with the Pentagon and $363,600 with the Department of Homeland Security, the latter spent on advertising to promote a Voice of America news outlet titled “Extremism Watch”, now run by an anti-Muslim and homophobic bigot
Context & Ripple Effects
This report puts a two-decade dollar figure under what prior coverage has documented piecemeal: the fight over the $10B JEDI cloud contract, Google's 2018 exit from Project Maven, and the $50M in Maven-linked contracts Microsoft and AWS picked up after that exit. The throughline is that defense and homeland-security work never left Silicon Valley — it just moved between vendors.
The scale here is cumulative rather than new: $43.8B spread across five companies since 2004, most of it War-on-Terror-related, alongside a 50-fold increase in DHS contracts with Silicon Valley firms from 2007 to 2019. That builds directly on the earlier finding of thousands of previously unreported DOD and law-enforcement contracts, and it reframes Google's post-Maven stance — the company is now reportedly pursuing a major Pentagon cloud and AI deal again.
First-order effects
- Microsoft and AWS are the direct beneficiaries of the pattern the report quantifies: they inherited Maven-style work after Google's exit, so publicizing the $43.8B total lands hardest on the two vendors currently holding that business.
- Google faces immediate reputational exposure on both flanks — the report counts its own $16M in Pentagon contracts even as it pursues a new major Pentagon cloud and AI award three years after employee outcry ended its Maven work.
Second-order effects
- Employee and activist pressure becomes a competitive variable again: if Google is willing to re-enter Pentagon procurement, rivals' cost advantage includes not having to relitigate workforce dissent, which shapes who bids on future awards like JEDI.
- DHS emerges as the faster-growing parallel buyer — a 50-fold rise in contracts with Silicon Valley firms means surveillance-adjacent demand is no longer concentrated at the Pentagon, widening the customer base for cloud and data vendors beyond a single controversial agency.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, national-security procurement becomes a structural revenue line for Big Tech rather than an exception, with subcontracting layers — the mechanism behind the unreported-contracts findings — keeping much of it out of public view.
- The normalization path visible here (exit, quiet return, larger totals) suggests accountability debates will shift from whether tech companies work with defense agencies to how such work is disclosed and overseen.
The trend: Defense and homeland-security agencies are becoming recurring, normalized customers for Big Tech's cloud and AI infrastructure, with procurement shifting between vendors rather than shrinking.