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Beware the Hype: Venture capital for military technology poses ethical risks

Professor Elke Schwarz

Professor of Political Theory

Venture capital (VC) investment firms have focused their attention on defence, providing finance for new military technology startups. The VC financial logic needs military startups to scale up fast in order to make high returns, but this ‘move fast and break things’ ethos raises strong ethical concerns when applied to military organisations where technology is used to make life and death decisions.

Who should read this brief?

The intended audience for this policy brief are defence policy makers, the UK Ministry of Defence and UK, international defence organisations, civil society groups and any stakeholders concerned with the dynamics of the military-industrial-technological complex and its dynamics on war and peace. By highlighting how new, financial actors in the defence technology landscape affect the ethics and practices of military organisations, the brief provides new insights into how these new dynamics have the potential to shape the ethical orientation of democratic countries and their mandate toward limiting the potential for conflict. In particular, the brief is intended to help democratic governments, including the UK, understand that the influx of international venture capital investment for defence may come at a steep cost to ethical guardrails and peace and stability if not regulated appropriately.  

Beware the Hype: Venture capital for military technology poses ethical risks

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The present geopolitics environment warrants a rethinking of approaches to defence, however, an uncritical embrace of venture capital (VC) investment in defence technology comes with significant risks. The VC financial logic needs military startups to scale up fast in order to make high returns, but this ‘move fast and break things’ ethos raises strong ethical concerns when applied to military organisations where technology is used to make life and death decisions. This brief sheds light on these dynamics.
— Professor Elke Schwarz

About the researchers

Professor Elke Schwarz

Elke holds a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), an MA in Conflict Studies from the War Studies Department at King’s College London (KCL) and a Bachelor in Business Studies from Belmont University (USA). Prior to coming to QMUL, she held academic positions at UCL, Anglia Ruskin University and Leicester University. Her work focuses on the nexus of ethics, technology and politics / warfare with a specific emphasis on new and emerging military technologies, including military Artificial Intelligence (AI), autonomous weapon systems, drones and robots.

She is the author of Death Machines: The Ethics of Violent Technologies (Manchester University Press) and her work on military AI and autonomous weapon systems has been widely published in a range of international publications. She is Vice-Chair of the International Committee of Robot Arms Control (ICRAC), an Associate of the Imperial War Museum (IWM) and an RSA Fellow. Elke is also a 2022/23 Centre for Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Studies (CAPAS) Fellow and 2024 Leverhulme Research Fellow with a project on the politics of apocalyptic AI. She works with a number of civil society organisations and serves on several editorial boards for publications and book series on politics and technology.

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Are you an academic at Queen Mary and want to share your research insights in a brief? Email Evie Edwards, Impact Engagement Officer, evie.edwards@qmul.ac.uk

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