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Two days ago, the San Francisco Standard published an article titled “Stanford students used to chase jobs at Meta and Google. Now they want to work on war.” The backlash to this article on social media has shown that this is evidently not the case.
The article, which highlighted positive attitudes towards defense technology on campus and an increased willingness among the student body to work for defense-oriented firms such as Palantir, Anduril, and Shield AI, was bombarded on Stanford internal social media platform Fizz with comments deriding students interested in defense technology. One such comment on Fizz claimed that “anyone with a moral compass would never be friends with defense tech scum,” with many comments calling such students “evil.”
The Review has observed similarly dismissive attitudes towards defense technology at Stanford in the past among Stanford administrators. Campus administrators previously rejected defense tech startup Aurelius Systems from joining job-listing platform Handshake and denied an application from GSB students to form a Defense Tech Club. While Stanford has improved in some regards, through initiatives such as the Gordian Knot Center and Hacking for Defense, the reaction to the San Francisco Standard article is proof that student attitudes have not.
Despite these negative remarks, any observer of geopolitics knows that innovative defense technology is not an abstraction—it is an essential pillar of global stability. The modern international order, in which human rights and democratic governance can flourish, did not emerge by accident. It was won on the battlefield, secured by superior military capabilities, and is maintained through vigilant deterrence.
Critics of defense technology fail to engage with the realities of the world we live in. Europe, long complacent about its security, is now rearming at a pace unseen since the Cold War in response to Russian aggression. China’s military ambitions continue to grow, with an expanding nuclear arsenal and aggressive posturing over Taiwan. These are not problems that can be solved with wishful thinking or moral posturing. They require technological superiority to deter escalation.
The very fact that so many at Stanford vilify defense tech reflects a deep failing of the university itself. How has Stanford cultivated a generation so willfully ignorant of geopolitics? A group so reflexively opposed to any action by the Western world? So convinced that American strength is a liability rather than an asset?
A Stanford education should prepare students to grapple with morally and strategically complex global issues. Instead, many are content with a simplistic worldview in which all defense-related work is dismissed as unethical. This intellectual laziness is dangerous.
The Stanford community’s persistent vilification of defense tech ignores the fundamental role military funding has played, and continues to play, in the success and prosperity of Stanford and Silicon Valley. Our university's ascendance wasn’t merely a product of the free-market entrepreneurship of tech-bros. It was a strategic partnership between private enterprise and defense dollars.
When Frederick Terman transformed Stanford into an engineering powerhouse, he didn’t just ride the wave of innovation—he actively positioned the university to capture Cold War defense spending. Sputnik launched just three days after Fairchild Semiconductor’s incorporation, kickstarting an era of military-backed technological investment that fueled Silicon Valley’s rise. ARPANET, the technical foundation of the internet, was a Department of Defense project.
Rather than railing against the military-industrial complex, we should recognize that America’s technological dominance depends on maintaining a relationship between innovators and our government. With foreign competitors like China pouring resources into their tech sectors (which are fundamentally intertwined with the military), Stanford must embrace, not reject, the defense relationships that made the university what it is today.
We are clearly not at the end of history, and war remains a grim reality for millions across the globe. If advanced defense technology can protect our servicemen and women, deter conflicts before they begin, and ensure that America and its allies remain secure, then working on it is not just moral: it is imperative. Stanford should recognize that strength preserves peace, and in a world where adversaries are relentless in their military ambitions, rejecting defense innovation is not a virtue. It is a failure of responsibility.
