How Many People Have a16z and Founder’s Fund Killed?

If you’ve been following my work, you’ll note my coverage of the weapons build-out by venture capitalists: in particular and most significantly by Andreessen Horowitz (hereafter “a16z), but also Founder’s Fund (from Peter Thiel) and Lux Capital, a small bloodthirsty leech of a firm with only 4 billion AUM, embarrassing, but a very disproportionate contributor to the violent turn of the industry.

Often together, in conspiracy, these VC firms have been engaging in a totally unprecedented explosion of VC-backed weapons startups that have already been put to work in large-scale human rights abuses — such as implementations of weaponized surveillance by an a16z/Founder’s Fund collab at the US/Mexico border, leading to the concrete detention and subsequent, widely known physical, emotional and sexual abuse (particularly of children) and trauma. Not an isolated case, as numerous portfolio companies from these war criminals contributed to this as well, most famously Palantir; and a16z darling Github even had an ICE contract as well; during the #NoTechforICE movement, Marc Andreessen doubled down with funding to Auduril and made a number of nationalistic war-mongering defenses of it. He had a chance to change the direction of his soul in those moments and that is what he will most regret not investing in when it comes time for hell. 

Anyhow, the VC military they are designing, has been envisioned in large part by Palmer Luckey of Anduril, who is functioning as the head of military and active war strategist. He heralds the age of autonomous warfare, where there is no need for “boots on the ground,” but killing by programmer soldiers or weapons-grade AI pilots, the architects all operating from total safety, worth billions or trillions of dollars, in their own doomsday bunkers (which they all have), while they drone strike the hell out of whoever they want in almost totally unregulated direct entry into conflict zones. 

In case you wonder if I’m using the word “weapon” hyperbolically, I absolutely am not. Take just one Anduril product, Ghost, a “near silent” drone for “multi-mission reconnaissance”. 37 pounds and can be put in the air in under 3 minutes. Or Lattice, an “operating system” for war which leverages machine intelligence to accelerate the “closing” of…. *checks notes* “complex kill chains”.

 This is like on page 2 of their websites, none of this is hidden, I am not a conspiracy theorist, all of this is easily verifiable with publicly available information. 

So yeah, this is about killing people. Directly.   

Quick roll-call from one of my other pieces on what some of these other companies are and do, and this is a limited overview:  

….digital forensics for the CIA (Toka), weapons-grade drone defense (SkyShield), AI pilots to create drone swarms (ShieldAI), a surveillance company with more than 1,200 law enforcement agencies in use (Flock), training programs for military “personnel” read: war criminals, probably to create killer hybrid war machine computer programmers (Shift). And Founder’s Fund marked the first VC funding of a firearms tech company in just November 2022, “Biofire”, which is making a *checks notes* “smart gun”. 

And more are coming all the time. They are building an entire autonomous military. And tech companies are increasingly being called on DIRECTLY to collaborate in wars half-way across the globe, as imperialists and colonizers, where they are able to transact weapons freely as sovereign entities with other sovereign entities such as foreign militaries. In fact, a recent interview with Palantir CEO Alex Karp, saw him bragging about how they ship fast into a war zone and don’t even ask for money up front. Because patriotism, or something.  Or predatory loans, more likely.

The fact that VCs are now in the killing industry, means we need to change literally everything about how we think about or look at these people. 

I want a journalist or “fireside chat” moderator to ask Palmer Luckey: have YOU personally killed someone? Because last time I talked to Palmer and inquired about his wellbeing, he told me that he was quite occupied killing people in a war zone. It was his infrastructure specifically, from his company Anduril, that has been implicated in said US/Mexico child detainment and abuse. He is a ruthless psychopathic serial killer, one of Marc’s finds. Marc is quite the talent scout. (And a great manager).

The venture capital industry and the startup community have entered into a new world where we are making weapons that are designed for direct killings of live human beings. While tech is no stranger to a death count — such as suicides of teenage girls consistently produced by Meta products — this is obviously a major shift and a major escalation, and that means that we need to start asking entirely new questions of the venture capital firms that are behind this: a16z, Founder’s Fund, and Lux Capital. 

• What active conflict zones are these companies and weapons deploying in? What deals do they have with war-makers? What countries are they working with? Who is getting preferential access to the weapons? 

• Who is operating all of these weapons? Because Anduril employees including CEO Palmer Luckey, have been deployed and operating weapons directly in conflict zones. Which employees are “certified” to kill people and which aren’t? How are those hires made? What ethical codes exist for your employees personally firing on, bombing or otherwise killing people? 

• What exactly are you up to with the CIA? 

• How many children have been killed by weapons created by your startups? How many women? 

• How many total people have been killed by companies in your portfolio? (Broken down by startup please.) 

We can’t use the same playbook here for a situation that is rapidly becoming much more dangerous and violent than ever before; the game has very literally changed and it isn’t just AI and web 3.0 and crypto, it’s the transition of the venture capitalist into a major manufacturer and dealer of arms. 

We are officially in the death business. And I think we need to know more about what that looks like. And I think we need to get some answers about how much blood is already on our hands here.