This event is co-sponsored by Security in Context and the Middle East Policy Forum at The George Washington University. Ties between the financial sector and the weapons industry are not new. The very first venture capital firm in the US was founded to profit from new technologies developed for use in WWII, and the role of military spending in turning Silicon Valley into a tech hub is well documented. But the rapid proliferation in the number of VC and private equity firms investing in weapons and intelligence technologies is a more recent phenomenon. Firms like Veritas Capital, Civitas Group, and Paladin Capital specialize in steering more private capital into weapons development and pushing tech start-ups to develop military applications for their products. And it isn’t just startups. Many large funds have divisions that combine the marquee names and government contacts of high-ranking military and national security retirees alongside asset managers who use their rolodexes of wealthy clients to raise capital for new defense-tech investments.
