Arsenal of Democracies

El Segundo is an area of southern Los Angeles, California, sandwiched between International Airport and Manhattan Beach, that became famous during the Second World War because it hosted Douglas, the aerospace company that was born to build planes that could fly around the world, and instead built the bombers that made the difference in the Pacific. Then Lockheed and the others came along and this became a military innovation district. Today, El Segundo is simply “the Gundo”, and its 14 square miles overlooking the ocean are home to thousands of engineers, programmers and visionaries who want to rebuild and renew the arsenal of American democracy. It is an ever-expanding community where white, young, conservative men (there are very few women, and they are usually the men’s partners) hang huge American flags in their offices, often quote the Bible, drink energy drinks and freshly squeezed milk and invent sophisticated weapons to defend America and its allies.

As is easy to guess, the “Gundo boys” - as they have been nicknamed by journalists who have shown up in these industrial open spaces, where you can wear a red Trumpian hat without being treated like the rest of California - are at odds with the northern community in Silicon Valley, which rejects and even despises any contact with the defense industry and weapons. Until a few years ago, the Pentagon’s many attempts to forge partnerships with the tech sector caused protests and resignations: in Silicon Valley, progress was built by imagining a world in which weapons were no longer needed. Then Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine, with its constant threats to spread the conflict to Europe, and the military rise of China - seen in Gundo as the West’s greatest and least understood threat - changed everything: America, like the European countries, found itself needing to review the planning of its arsenals, and to do so with a sense of urgency. Above all, America had to remember that if there is no other way to defend democracy than with weapons, then it is necessary to be prepared to do so.

One of the founders of Gundo - they call themselves that and have developed the myth of the companies that came here in the 1920s and 1930s, feeling like pioneers misunderstood by the rest of the country - gave a definition of the community: “Here we know that America is back, the kids rock, nicotine is good, we’re going back to the moon and Mars, we’re tired of all and only software companies: it’s great to defend our country and build weapons to do it.” Between 2021 and 2023, $108 billion have been invested in defense technology companies building cutting-edge weapons, including hypersonic missiles, drones and satellite surveillance systems: research institute PitchBook predicts that this market will be worth at least $185 billion within three years.

The Gundo also tells another, more political, story, which has to do with the reconnection of the technological world with the Trumpian world: a department store in this area became, about 20 years ago, the first headquarters of SpaceX, the aerospace company of Elon Musk, the entrepreneur who leads a more or less cohesive (but determined) group that wants to win the cultural battle, even more than the electoral one, against liberal thinking. This new defense industry, led by very young people who like to sleep on cots like soldiers, was immediately accompanied by a theory called “effective accelerationism”, an outgrowth of techno-optimism that mixes technological progress with uncontrolled capitalism: on social media it is called “e/acc”, where the “e” is often replaced by an American flag.

Beyond ideological labels and their origins, the Gundo is a hub that tells much about America’s need to protect itself and its allies, enough to bring soft and hard power back together. The Department of Defense has changed its buying and procurement habits, giving start-ups more options and advancing within this previously impenetrable military technology ecosystem. Last year, the Pentagon announced Project Replicator, an initiative to equip the military with autonomous systems by 2025. Its Defense Innovation Unit, which has actually existed for a decade with the same intent but has been ineffective, now has much more funding and much more influence within the department.

What is happening in Europe is very similar, with the aggravating factor that the European continent was poorly equipped for conflict even before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. The new term of the European Commission president, Germany’s Ursula von der Leyen, has already put much more emphasis on strengthening the defense industry. The debate about a common European defense, which has haunted the EU for many years and which overlaps with the debate about funds for participation in the Atlantic Alliance, has seen a much-needed acceleration and is now substantiated by the production capacity of European companies. This is not to say that the process is oiled, on the contrary: in recent years there have been many initiatives outside the EU negotiations - such as the Czech Republic’s fundraising to buy 800,000 rounds of ammunition - that have been smaller but also faster in their realization. Much remains to be done: one million ammunitions were promised to Kyiv in April 2023, but a year later only half had been delivered, and there is no longer an agreed timeline target for fulfilling the promise. Von der Leyen announced that she would like to introduce a defense commissioner, something that is currently lacking in European governments, but while coordination is necessary, defense remains a matter for each individual state. The proposal to create a “defense shield” in Europe, also included in the government programme presented by von der Leyen in July, is also a step in the right direction, but it still has neither the resources nor a roadmap shared by the 27 EU countries.

The European arsenal is essentially the sum of arsenals that depend on national governments, that change, that have to follow domestic priorities and that suffer from public fatigue over long wars.