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What does it mean for humanity if cutting-edge AI weapons development for the Pentagon is being significantly funded by venture capitalists who are also profiting from the Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people?

Consider, for example, the X-BAT.

On October 21, 2025, in a theatrical unveiling involving a darkened auditorium, a smoke machine, and a black silken shroud that was whisked away, the war industry start-up Shield AI revealed a sleek, black, full-sized model of its proposed X-BAT drone jet fighter.

“When you see it,” teased Shield AI president Brandon Tseng, before the unveiling, “you’ll probably think to yourself: ‘Holy shit, that thing is fucking cool.’”

Shield AI says that the X-BAT will be vertically launched to enable it to operate without runways and from a variety of ships, not just aircraft carriers. The drone will have the AI power to select its own targets and launch weapons without human control, although there may be provision for some degree of human involvement.

Pitching Shield AI’s achievements, Tseng said that its NOVA scout drone was used by Israel in Gaza “to help rescue hostages.” He said another one of its products, the V-BAT surveillance drone, is being used by Ukrainian troops and by the U.S. Coast Guard and Navy “to interdict and destroy billions of dollars’ worth of drugs that were headed for the United States of America.”

The real X-BAT has yet to be created, and whether it will perform as advertised may be known in the fall of 2026 when, the company says, flight tests will begin.

What is clear, however, is that the X-BAT is a poster child for a class of AI-guided weapons being built by military start-ups supported by highly speculative venture capital (VC) funds often built around Silicon Valley AI software. These funds amount to high-stakes gambling by extremely wealthy people, who know that they have perhaps a 10 percent chance of striking it rich should the start-up on which they are betting eventually tap into the nearly $1 trillion Pentagon budget and international military funding.

“We are in the midst of a military AI bonanza”, said Professor Elke Schwarz, a Queen Mary University of London ethicist and analyst, in an article published by Cambridge University Press on the impact of VC investments on U.S. and European militaries and the war industry.

“Between 2022 and 2023,” Professor Schwarz reported, U.S. federal contracts for military AI “nearly tripled, with a potential increase in the value of these contracts by 1,200 percent.”

According to J.P. Morgan, VC investment in military and aerospace companies amounted to $48 billion in 2024, and “Through the first half of 2025, venture investments into U.S.-based defense tech startups totaledroughly $38 billion and could very well exceed the 2021 peak ($55 billion) should the pace of investing remain constant through the end of the year.”

Many of the largest VCs that are funding cutting edge AI weapons development for the Pentagon — such as Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Hercules Capital, Shield Capital, and Sequoia Capital — are also investing in Israeli high-tech firms, thus profiting from Israel’s genocide in........

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