Meta seems to have military ambitions, hires former Pentagon officials

Meta seems to have strengthen its military ambitions by recruiting former Pentagon officials in a bid to win large government contracts. While Meta is mired in antitrust proceedings threatening to dismantle it, Mark Zuckerberg is desperately tightening his ties with the Trump administration, which he has been trying to seduce for several months in the hope of securing lucrative military contracts, it appears.

Mark Zuckerberg has been making one strategic gesture after another towards Donald Trump, combining financial initiatives, internal decisions and political signals: $1 million donation at his inauguration in January, meeting at Mar-a-Lago, dismantling Facebook’s fact-checking program, eliminating the diversity team at Meta, appointing people close to Trump to the board of directors, and buying a house in Washington D.C.

All the indications are that it is now focusing all its efforts on obtaining military contracts to promote its own artificial intelligence technologies, in direct competition with those of OpenAI, as reported by Forbes.

According to Forbes, Meta recently recruited former Pentagon officials to support Mark Zuckerberg’s ambitions: to win lucrative government contracts by directing Llama artificial intelligence towards military intelligence uses.

Meta, which is leading this sustained recruitment campaign, is banking in particular on its Llama artificial intelligence model, initially designed for civilian use, but now geared towards military applications to appeal to defense and intelligence agencies.

Meta, clearly in seduction mode, is also looking to recruit policy experts linked to national security, including a position specifically designed to manage relations with the White House. The company would preferably target profiles with security clearance and Pentagon experience.

Meta recently hired Francis Brennan, a former Donald Trump advisor, to head up its strategic communications in Washington.