The U.S. government, the Pentagon and big tech: key components of U.S. imperialism. Part 2: The Pentagon and Big Tech’s intimate relationships.

 Written by: Alex M. on 7 September 2026

 

Above: Lt. Gen. Michael Groen, Joint Artificial Intelligence Center director, conducts a press briefing about the DOD's efforts to adopt and scale artificial intelligence capabilities, from the Pentagon, Arlington, VA, Nov. 24, 2020. (DoD photo by U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Jack Sanders) Public Domain

 

A cornerstone of U.S. imperialism since the end of World War Two is the military-industrial complex, also known as the military-industrial-Congressional complex, which highlights the symbiotic relationship that the U.S. political system has with the war machine. The military budgets voted by U.S. Congresses are truly staggering, with the ‘Big Five’ military contractors – Lockheed Martin, Raytheon (now RTX), Boeing, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman divvying up $US 2.1 trillion between them in the twenty- year period from11/9/2001 to 2021. The Pentagon budget for the 2025 fiscal year was $US 895 billion, with the expectation that the next Pentagon budget will top $US 1 trillion. (1)

Palantir

 

It is no wonder then that the Tech bros have coveted a slice of this monstrous pie. Tech bros such as Peter Thiel and Alex Karp of Palantir have made no apologies about their pursuit of government contracts, seeing this as both patriotic and lucrative. Thiel made his first fortune with Paypal and then using the fraud detection algorithm from Paypal, Thiel set up Palantir. (2) Palantir came into being in 2003 with early funding coming from In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital arm. (3) Since 2003, Palantir has established itself as the data analytics corporation, not only in the U.S. but increasingly throughout the western world. According to William Hartung and Ben Freeman, Palantir’s connection with the U.S. military runs deep:

 

Palantir’s bread and butter is the supply of advanced computing and data-management systems that have been used to help the Army share data across the service, from bases in the United States to commanders on the battlefield. Palantir also does research for the Army on future uses of AI and on targeting …  (4)

 

As Hartung and Freeman point out this is not all that Palantir does; the company is notorious for 

 

providing systems that have enabled harsh border crackdowns by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as enabling ‘predictive policing,’ which involves the collection of vast amounts of personal data without a warrant, relying on algorithms with built-in racial biases that have led to the systematic, unfair targeting and treatment of people of color. (5)

 

Types like Thiel and Palantir’s CEO Alex Karp embrace Palantir’s notoriety and their military and Pentagon connections as well as their involvement with the Israeli state. Karp has claimed that companies like his, which were providing military systems to Israel to enable its campaign of slaughter and war crimes in Gaza, were the “the true peace activists” that advocates of a ceasefire “are war activists.”’ (6)

 

Thiel has also supported and mentored some up and coming military technology boffins. A prime example being Palmer Luckey, the young billionaire founder of Anduril. Luckey was 22 when he sold the rights to a virtual-reality headset that he developed to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta for $US 2 billion in 2014. Since then Luckey has been involved in various pursuits such as gaming, but is more well known for founding the military technology company Anduril. Anduril’s products include ‘airborne and underwater drones, as well as advanced communications and surveillance systems.’ (7) One of the key products that Anduril has produced is Lattice which gathers information from all available sources, fuses the data and puts it in the hands of military commanders in the field in very quick time.  (8) Lattice was also pressed into service by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency using it to track people trying to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. (9)

 

Project Maven

 

The Pentagon initiated a project of integrating data analytics into the military on a grand scale in 2017 with the implementation of Project Maven. The sheer volume of data that floods into the U.S. military on a daily basis overwhelmed the capacity of military personnel to efficiently deal with it. Hence the drive to automate the process of data mining. One of the first of the Big Tech corporations associated with Project Maven was Google. However, in 2018 Google faced a revolt from its scientists and engineers 4,000 of whom had signed an open letter addressed to Google management, demanding that Google not be involved in the business of war. (10) The revolt was partially successful, with Google stepping away from work on Project Maven, but not completely relinquishing its ties with the Department of Defense (DoD):

 

In March 2019, … an email written by Google’s vice president for Global affairs, Kent Walker, … indicated that a third-party company would continue working on Project Maven using ‘off-the-shelf Google Cloud Platform (basic compute service, rather than Cloud AI or other Cloud Services) to support some workloads.’ Walker added that Google was working with ‘DoD to make the transition in a way that is consistent with our AI principles and contractual commitments.’ Several days later, reports revealed that the Defense Department has awarded the Project Maven contract to Anduril… (11)

 

Since 2018, Anduril has been joined by other tech companies such as Anthropic and Palantir in providing services for Project Maven. Palantir’s involvement with the project started in 2019. What Palantir did was to supply Maven with a sophisticated mapping tool called Gaia and then provided its Foundry software, which became Maven’s operating system. By 2022, when Russia invaded the Ukraine, ‘Maven had … dramatically improved the military’s situational awareness in combat zones … accelerating the so-called kill chain, the time between the identification of a target and its destruction or liquidation.’ (12)

 

Maven has been integral in U.S. support for Ukraine providing real time information to the Ukrainian military about Russian troop movements, by amassing and analysing huge quantities of drone and satellite imagery. Maven however, remains firmly in U.S. control, with the intelligence gathering operation run out of a secret location in Germany led by Lieutenant General Christopher Donahue of the Army’s 18th Airborne Corps. (13) Not only drone and satellite imagery has been gathered up and analysed; data from mobile phones is an important resource as well:

 

… via Foundry, Maven was able to deliver much more than just an exquisitely detailed view of the battlefield. Palantir’s technology also enabled Donahue’s team to pull in cellular data. As it happened, many Russian soldiers – including, it turned out commanding officers – were using their personal cell phones to communicate because their military-issued phones didn’t work. This allowed the Americans to identify their precise locations, information then shared with the Ukrainians. (14)

 

Never one for modesty, Karp bragged that Palantir was behind the Ukrainian successes against the invading Russian forces in the early stages of the war. The Pentagon was embarrassed by Karp’s bragging as it highlighted U.S. involvement in what is a proxy war between rival imperialist powers. (15)

 

Project Nimbus

 

Another major Pentagon and Silicon Valley project run in conjunction with the Israeli state is Project Nimbus. Nimbus is a $US 1.2 billion contract to provide cloud computing, AI, and other services to the Israeli government and military. 

Both Google and Amazon signed up to Nimbus in 2021 with staff at both Tech corporations expressing concern about Google and Amazon’s participation in the project. A number of Google staff quit in protest in 2022, with Jewish employee Ariel Koren citing Google’s silencing of ‘Palestinian, Jewish, Arab and Muslim voices concerned about Google’s complicity in violations of Palestinian human rights …’ in her letter of resignation. (16) 

 

As Loewenstein reveals, Nimbus’s contractual obligations effectively ensures that Israel and its military is not denied access to advanced AI and cloud computing services it has contracted with U.S. big Tech corporations in the event of mass boycott pressure. (17) Project Nimbus is a guarantee that the Zionist state gets what it wants from Silicon Valley and Silicon Valley for the most part is happy to oblige.

 

To conclude, what the above shows is just the tip of the iceberg with a few of the most egregious examples of Big Tech involvement with the Pentagon, the DoD, the Israeli and Ukrainian states and militaries. It is apparent that U.S. imperialism is well served by Silicon Valley.

 

In Part Three, Australia’s supine relationship with U.S. Big Tech will be examined.

 

 

1. William D. Hartung and Ben Freeman, The Trillion Dollar War Machine: How Runaway Military Spending Drives America into Foreign Wars and Bankrupts Us At Home, Bold Type Books, New York, 2025, p. 3.

2. Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley; The Secret Military History of the Internet, Icon Books, London, 2019, p. 180.

3. Hartung and Freeman, The Trillion Dollar War Machine…, p. 243

4. Ibid, p. 243

5. Ibid, p. 243

6. Ibid, p. 240

7. Ibid, p. 241

8. Ibid, p. 241

9. Roberto J Gonzalez, War Virtually The Quest to Automate Conflict, Militarize Data, and Predict the Future, University of California Press, 2024, p. 66

10. Hartung and Freeman, p. 263. 

11. Gonzalez, War Virtually…, p. 65

12. Michael Steinberger, The Philosopher in the Valley Alex Karp, Palantir and the Rise of the Surveillance State, Simon and Schuster, London, 2025, p. 218

13. Steinberger, The Philosopher…, p. 218

14. Ibid, p. 219

15. Ibid, pp. 219-220. At the Pentagon’s behest, Karp toned the bragging down.

16. Antony Loewenstein, The Palestine Laboratory How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World, Scribe, Melbourne, 2024, p. 188 

17. Ibid, p. 188

Notes on Barbarism – The Manifestation of Barbarism with the Decline of US Imperialism

Written by: Contributed on 2 September 2026

 

It is relatively easy to use the term barbarism when referring to specific acts of violence such as those occurring in parts of the world today. This is particularly relevant to what is taking place in Gaza. However, this view of barbarism is limited and limiting in terms of understanding what Marx meant when in 1853 in “The Future Results of the British Rule in India,” he referred to the “profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization.”

Definitions
There are several definitions of the term barbarism. For example, Marx in “The German Ideology” and Engels in “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”, referred to the order of stages of social development as primitive communism, savagery, barbarism, feudalism and capitalism, with the latter two representing civilisation. The word “primitive”, and the two stages following it, came from Euro-centric, early studies of ethnography which Marx and Engels had studied and drawn from. They are now recognised as inadequate, inaccurate and insulting to Indigenous peoples.

Another common use of the term barbarism addresses the aspect of regression associated with the collapse of a society, such as the collapse of the Roman Empire.

The 1853 quote from Marx on inherent barbarism is much broader and may be applied to all class societies where the State, in meeting the particular needs of the class(es) it represents reflects an inherent contradiction within the society. Under certain circumstances this can lead to fundamental change, (e.g., the collapse of the Roman Empire). The emphasis is on recourse to force and violence with which bourgeois society deals with its contradictions with others, not on the implied intelligence levels of those it has conflict with.

The following comments relate to this particular use of the term in the current situation of capitalism and the decline of US imperialism. 

Different Manifestations of Barbarism
Dealing with barbarism within capitalist society requires a clear understanding of what Marx and others have determined and an appreciation of how it is both manifested and latent (disguised) within different situations and countries with the development of capitalism and its higher form of imperialism. For Marx the fundamental contradictions within capitalism provide a latent basis for barbarism and under certain circumstances result in its overt manifestation. As he stated, "Beneath the thin layer of culture and modern civilization, there are forces that resemble barbarism at its worst." At the time of writing, he was highlighting the role that capitalism was playing in other countries through colonial rule as well as the subjugation and exploitation of the British working class.

The overt manifestation of barbarism within capitalism occurs when the ruling class can no longer maintain control through ideology and indoctrination. It occurs when the contradiction between the relations of production and the means of production reaches a point where the weight of capitalist exploitation results in mass dislocation and rebellion. The contradiction becomes so overt that the transparency between what is promoted through the existing channels of propaganda and what is taking place reveals the disconnect referred to above.

In the early 1900’s Rosa Luxembourg stated, “All the riches of the earth” would be subjugated to capital; and the world’s population converted into wage slaves. The “civilized world,” which she properly placed in quotes, had turned into the fiercest, most brutal form of barbarism the world had ever seen - armed as it was with weapons of fearsome destruction and propelled forward by an insatiable urge for economic expansion.

At that time in history the manifestation of the latent barbarism within capitalism was clear. Her observation applies equally to capitalist relations of production today. We are witnessing acts of violence and genocide in other parts of the world. While such developments have not occurred on such a scale in recent times within Australia, we are seeing an increasing emphasis on the suppression of demonstrations and actions aimed at exposing these acts of overt barbarism.

A very important question is the extent to which the real potential for overt barbarism is manifesting in countries like Australia and how an understanding of it can be applied constructively to achieve socialism. This is an issue of how explicit the contradiction between the ruling class and workers in general have become. It concerns the question of how this contradiction can be related to the role of US imperialism at this stage of its decline and the impact on class struggle in Australia.

The International Situation
What we are seeing in the current international situation is the decline of US imperialism and the impact that is having in particular on western capitalist civilization. The relationship between US imperialism decline and proxies such as Australia requires ongoing study and interpretation. (This is also closely related to the rapid growth of Chinese social-imperialism).

Marx and Lenin describe the proletariat as being international in nature. This doesn’t mean they don’t live in particular countries with their specific history and nature of class struggle. It does mean the very essence of their struggle is international in that they represent the common interest of the proletariat worldwide. The focus and outcome are conditioned by the international nature of imperialism and reflects the necessary establishment of a world order that is no longer focused on the specific interests of the capitalists in their pursuit of profit.

The manifestation of barbarism in the current world situation exists within this context and can be understood in the same way. The uneven development of nations and class struggle means that barbarism is manifested in different forms and to different degrees due to the essential social and historical nature of each country and their position and role in relation to the imperialist powers. It is an international phenomenon and does reflect the current stage of capitalist imperialist development.

At the international level we have the declining US imperialist power that has accrued a debt of massive proportions. Currently the US debt is well in excess of 100% of GDP and growing in the form of billions of dollars each year. We have seen how the US is trying to address this with the tariffs introduced recently (this is just one example) and through overt forces and intimidation internationally.

In terms of the manifestation of the contradictions between productive forces and the relations of production leading to overt barbarism it is important that this debt is understood. While it is not the focus of this article, it is essential that the economic developments are analysed. This relates directly to the relationship between industrial capital and finance capital and the role the latter is playing in facilitation the massive and growing debt in so many countries. As shown recently the Australian debt is now in excess of 1 trillion dollars and growing.

Very briefly, the focus of capitalism is on capital growth. What this means is that there has to be a continuous reinvestment of “surplus capital” year on year and this capital expansion is expressed in terms of an annual percentage (e.g., 3%). For this growth to be substantial it is essential that there is increased investment in industrial capital. What we are seeing is the inability to realise this investment and an attempt to enable the necessary growth through the use of manipulative financial initiatives and programs. However, debt is debt and this has to be addressed. At the moment the bottom line is an attempt to cover this debt by attacking the basic needs of the working populations. For example, flat and declining wages, increased cost of living, programs that favour non-productive investments (e.g., existing housing).

The ongoing and rapidly increasing decline of US imperialism is apparent in so many ways. We have a leader who is clearly identifying with the interests of a cohort of billionaires with no obvious concern for the welfare of the working people within the US. This is resulting in a growing class consciousness through the overt manifestations of the contradictions referred to above. However, this does not necessarily lead to socialist revolution (more shortly). We have increasing international conflict with what is now recognised as a complete disregard for international law and the institutions that exist to protect such laws.

A particular threat of barbarism is posed by AI, which has both a positive and a negative side to it.

An article in the Wall Street Journal last August compared AI’s capacity for efficient economic planning and the allocation of resources with the chaos and social polarisation of market forces which were given full play under neo-liberalism. The article observed that AI “could serve as the handmaid of the socialist planned economy that so many dreamt of in the 20th century but that was never remotely realistic — until now.”

The bottom line is always "AI for whom?" If AI is being presented by the capitalist media as a promise for the social salvation of the workers, and sold to them on that basis, then capitalist relations of production will always stand in the way.

This is the theme of a recent book by Gil Duran titled The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley and the War on Democracy. Duran systematically examines the pro-fascist values of “men who believe their money and technology entitle them to rule”, and the merging of tech billionaires with Trump’s MAGA authoritarians. His warning is that “Current AI models are designed to extract and enslave, not share and liberate”, and while he sees AI as a potential to be used for humanity, as did the author if the WSJ article, his conclusion is that unless capitalism is ended, AI will only result in the furthering of those whose interests are best served by barbarism. Capitalism, he says has “reached the end stage. Today’s capitalists openly plot to destroy the planet and extinguish human life for the sake of endless quarterly growth.”

When looking at US imperialism's decline it is essential to see how this relates to the rapid growth of China’s social-imperialism. Again, it is not the intention of this article to cover such a development in detail but history demonstrates that when you have a situation such as this, outright conflict is a very real possibility. And the possibility of conflict is enhanced when the capitalist nature of China and its role in establishing itself as the replacement imperialist power is not addressed.

The National Situation
To say that overt barbarism is a possibility in Australian society is not to suggest that the majority of the people are engaged in or explicitly support this development. However, barbarism is always in the background, a latent capacity that the ruling class draws on from time to time as contradictions sharpen. It will become the norm when those contradictions make the ruling class unable to rule in the old way, having run out of all other options. Of course, lacking its own independence, the bourgeoise here attaches itself to, is complicit in, and openly supports the barbarism with which the US imperialists seek to maintain their hegemony.

To understand how overt acts of barbarism occur it is necessary to understand the dislocation between the social needs of people in general and the complicity of the ruling class in the promotions of policies and programs that contribute its development. As previously stated, in Marxist terms this is based on the dislocation between the rapidly developing productive forces and the existing relations of production. While understanding this provides a necessary basis for revolutionary work it does not in itself enable a practical, constructive approach.

Since WW2 Australia has been a proxy for the US and its implementation of a world order based on the Marshall Plan and related developments. With globalisation it became a very important “ally” of the US and this relationship has escalated with the US decline. Up until recently it has been relatively easy to obscure the contradiction between the ruling class and workers in general because of the relative affluence of Australian workers. This has enabled the promotion of propaganda and ideology that separated the concerns of people and their specific needs and the needs of workers worldwide. It enables complacency in the face of obvious acts of racism and genocide. This complacency is itself a reflection of the latent form of barbarism that exists within capitalist Australia.,

It is essential that the specific nature of Australian capitalism and the ruling classes relationship with the US is clear. We have a situation where the subservience to the US is becoming increasing overt. While it is unnecessary to address the myriads of recent developments it is important to highlight a couple.

The Force Posture Agreement with the US in 2014 is one of these. A very important aspect of this was the move from “interoperability” of the two military forces to “interchangeability”. This development means that US personnel can take control of military operations in Australia. The issue of abandoning sovereignty is apparent. We have seen a significant escalation of “joint” military facilities and US forces in Australia.

A second important example is the adoption of overt compliance with the US propaganda relating to its facilitation of the ethnic cleansing and genocide in parts of the Middle East. This is practically supported with the supply of arms components to Israel.

Such developments not only emphasise the contradiction between the position of a significant majority of the Australian population in opposing to what is happening in Gaza for example and the policy and programs of the political leaders in support of the US. The overt nature of this contradiction requires the development of measures to ensure it is “managed”.

One of the most overt of such measures is the recent Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion in Australia. A Royal Commission that was prompted by a prominent pro-Zionist, and adopted her call to accept the IHRA definition of antisemitism which conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and has laid the foundation for the introduction of laws that will increase the suppression of anti-war and anti-Zionist activities.

The relevance of Understanding Barbarism
There is no guarantee that the current dislocation and growing rebellion will automatically result in constructive revolution and the inception of a socialist society.

History confirms this as can be seen after WW1 with the Treaty of Versailles. This treaty placed massive financial debt on Germany together with significant land losses. It provided fertile ground for the rise of fascism. This development in Germany was aided and abetted by the very governments and owning classes, particularly in the US for whom the repatriation of debt was identified. In retrospect it is relatively easy to see the role of US imperialism and how this unfolded.

A key similarity of what is taking place now is the transparency associated with what is in the interest of people in general and the policies and programs being implemented that fail to address these interests. The prevention of what happened after WW1 happening again has to address the specific circumstances that currently exist.

This is particularly relevant to the reaction of people to the genocide in Gaza. To fully appreciate the implications of this genocide on what it means for progressive struggle within Australia, it is essential that the specific circumstances within this country are understood.

The outcome of overt barbarism is inherent within capitalist relations of production. Understanding its development provides significant input into achieving its opposite, and that is socialism. We are part of the international community but we have a specific history and a specific relationship to US imperialism and for that matter other forms of imperialism such as the ascendant China.

The application of dialectical materialism and historical materialism is essential. This is apparent in the contradictory approaches to dealing with issues of national independence. On the one hand we have the ruling class and their representatives directly or through their proxies (for example, major political parties and others such as One Nation) fostering xenophobia and racism. These are the same bodies supporting the genocide in Gaza, the US’s illegal war against Iran and the US and NATO’s provocations in Ukraine that provided the excuse for Russia’s invasion of that country.”

They are complicit in the US imperialist role throughout the world and its exploitation of the wealth of this country.

On the other hand, the call for independence and socialism is based on the recognition that this control by the US has to be broken and Australia must define its independence and socialism in solidarity with the independence and sovereignty of all nations. This is an initial step and reflects the current growing aspiration of the Australian people and is essential if the control and influence resulting in peoples drift to conservative views is to be broken.

When we look at the current situation, we need to understand barbarism as the precursor to fundamental social dislocation and as providing fertile grounds for the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of socialism. An environment where the understanding and use of the productive forces aligns with the needs of people in general. This includes the ability of humanity to manage not just its international and national social relations based on principles of equity but its relations with the material world in general in such a way as to ensure the utmost certainty in a sustainable future.

 

Print Version - new window Email article

BOOK REVIEW: MUSKISM - A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Written by: Duncan B. on 2 September 2026

 

(Graphic supplied)

By Duncan B.

Recently we have written a lot about the men behind the race to develop AI, men like Thiel, Karp, Bezos and Musk. We have highlighted the dangers these men pose with their deranged beliefs and their lack of concern for the consequences of their activities.

This newly released book Muskism - A Guide for The Perplexed turns the spotlight on Elon Musk and his companies Tesla, Neuralink, SpaceX, Starlink, StarXAI and X (formerly known as Twitter.) The authors examine what they call Muskism, the beliefs and actions of Elon Musk.

Muskism traces Musk’s early life in Apartheid-era South Africa. In 1989 he moved to Canada and then to Silicon Valley in 1995. In 1999 Musk made a profit of $22 million from the sale of the first company that he founded.

Musk’s next company, X.com, a financial services website, later merged with payments website PayPal. When eBay purchased PayPal in 2022, Musk made $180 million from the sale of his shares. 

2022 marked Musk’s turn to the right. He turned X into a platform for racism, antisemitism and conspiracy theories. He interfered in the elections of several countries, by promoting right-wing candidates. When Trump was re-elected, Musk assisted in the destruction of important sections of the US government and sacked many government workers under the banner of DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency.) For example, US Aid, which provides food and medical assistance to poor countries was wiped out.

Musk seeks to use the US Government to finance his companies through grants and lucrative contracts. SpaceX has benefitted from government grants and contracts to the point that governments have become dependent on SpaceX for launch services. Tesla benefitted from US Government subsidies and loans to develop its business.

The authors also expose Musk’s racist and anti-migrant beliefs, his belief in transhumanism, where people merge with machines, his fantasies about conquering space and his hatred of anything he considers to be “woke.”

 

Marles, you pathetic lackey - No more US military in Australia!

Written by: Nick G. on 4 September 2026

 

Meeting with US Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, the pathetic chief lackey of US imperialism in Australia, Richard Marles, has further sold out our sovereignty by welcoming a greater US military presence in our country.

“…since we've come to government, you can see a through-line of growing American force in Australia, and we think that's really important,” Marles said.

Marles has agreed to increase the American military presence in Australia by "accelerat force posture initiatives at Australian bases". 

“American force posture in Australia is growing. That’s across all the domains,” Marles told reporters. The “domains” are five in number: land, sea, air, cyber and space.

The Force Posture Agreement of 2014 permits the US to prepare for, launch and control its own military operations from Australian territory: “United States Forces and United States Contractors shall have unimpeded access to and use of Agreed Facilities and Areas for activities undertaken in connection with this Agreement.”

Addressing Hegseth, or “Pete” as he called him, Marles remarked that they were meeting on the 75th anniversary of the ANZUS Treaty, which he said “emanates from the Second World War, during which a million American service personnel used Australia as a base to project north…”

“And it's an example in the past of America's use of the Australian continent, which feels very pertinent today,” said Marles. 

“America’s use of the Australian continent”?  Who agreed to this today? We, the people, certainly did not. 

According to media reports, Mr Marles also met with a number of the world's leading tech companies, headed by billionaires collectively labelled the “Nerd Reich” by author Gil Duran, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft and Google while visiting San Francisco.

The federal government has been pushing to build stronger links with top AI companies in the hope of attracting US investment into Australian-based data centres.

Treasury estimates suggest the construction of data centres in Australia to be worth about $150 billion by 2030. To whom are they worth such sums?  Not to people unable to afford homes or food.

Data centres are attracting strong opposition from the American people and campaigns against them are growing here too. 

But the sycophant in Marles can only welcome such developments.

It’s time to clear the Empire loyalists out of their positions of power.

No more US military in Australia!

For genuine anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Break the hold of the US on the Australian state

Written by: John G. on 2 September 2026

 

Australia is a capitalist country. It has developed to a point where capitalism in Australia is characterised by each sector of industry and commerce being dominated by a few big monopoly companies. There are 4 big retail banks, 2 major supermarket chains, 3 phone networks (Telstra, Optus, Vodaphone), 5 Big Tech monopolies (Amazon, Apple, Meta, Google, Microsoft), a handful of retail oil companies, 1 dominant hardware chain, 2 corporate management Software monopolies (Oracle, SAP), a handful of legacy media companies, 2 steel producers, 4 iron ore mining companies, a handful of big oil and gas production companies, and it goes on and on.

It is a society rent with increasing cost-of-living burdens and difficulties for working people, professionals and small and medium business people. Meeting basic needs like housing for all, decent health care and bright futures for ordinary people become mirages disappearing as peoples’ hopes fade while big monopoly capitalists make super-profits, often without paying tax, and of such a quantity that it is hard to believe. 

The Australian state is a product of the process by which this came about while it has also facilitated and overseen the path to this society.

Capitalism in Australia is the system of a group of monopoly capitalists exploiting and oppressing workers, and subordinating small and medium capitalists, subcontractors, and professionals (self-employed and salaried) to their system, pumping greater accumulations of capital to their massive holdings.    

The Australia state is the state of the group of monopoly capitalists at Australia’s economic system’s heart, the political, administrative, legal and military arm of Australia’s capitalist economic system.

These capitalists use the machinery of the state (its laws, its courts, its police, its senior bureaucrats and politicians) to strive to restrain workers’ struggles for economic benefits and reforms that improve workers’ bargaining position.  They try to restrict our struggle to improve our economic and political position, and to restrict it within the system of exploitation. Their effort to narrow workers’ struggles from taking up all cases of capitalist oppression and exploitation, to stand against their state, police abuses, hardships and difficulties imposed on people from every section of society, to lead the struggle against monopoly capitalists, is constant and many faceted.

Established in pre-Federation times and centralised and strengthened thereafter, the state first served British colonial and imperialist interests. It imposed and abetted the force and violence by which the invasion of the lands of the First Peoples was carried out. From a prison settlement, to expanded settler colonialist development of Australian capitalism onto the agricultural, mining and industrial development of the mid-late 19th Century, the state in Australia, consisting of branches of the British state under British Governors, facilitated British investment and according to Brian Fitzpatrick, returns to Britain from the 3m people in the Australasian colonies of 10.5m pounds per annum, more than doubled the return of 5m pounds from the 4.5m people of the Dominion of Canada and comparable to the 13m pounds exploited from the 250 million people of their Indian, Sri Lankan and Malayan colonies

During the 1930s Depression, the fight between NSW Premier Lang and the controllers of British finance capital exposed the role of the Australian state machine to be facilitating British capitalists’ accumulation of capital in Australia and, in the conditions of British crisis, facilitating the export of capital to prop up those British bank capitalists under pressure in the Depression, whatever the cost to Australian working people and small business.

Today, the controlling imperialist power in Australia is the US.  It controls our economy, and it has us enmeshed in a web of political, cultural, diplomatic, military and “intelligence” subordination. 

The era of finance capital in the hands of tiny groups of capitalists linked together in big monopoly corporations sees them dominate the economic life of countries under their control. Those groups of capitalists form national state groups for the subordination of small and weak countries and to struggle with rival national state groups of financiers over division of the world: domination over other countries, sources of raw materials, markets and sources of labour. 

A handful of the richest and most powerful nations strive for domination as an aspect of exploiting large numbers of small or weak nations, as Lenin noted. 
State action to subordinate small and weak countries is action for particular groups of monopoly capitalists. It is vital to understand who are those monopoly capitalists whose interests are served by the actions of the Australian state, in order to identify if the state is a proxy for the imperialist superpower state of foreign capitalists, or an independent state of a local group of monopoly capitalists.  

The core group of monopoly capitalists gaining advantages from the actions of the Australian state internationally and locally are foreign capitalists, mainly US capitalists. In 2003 an international controversy flared up as to whether Australia was deputy sheriff to the US in the Pacific. It went as far as questions to then US President George W Bush. It resonated through news output for weeks because it put the position fairly clearly.  Time has only made this clearer.

The Australian state is a state of a tiny group of monopoly capitalists overseas. It protects their exploitation and oppression of the people, increasing workers’ burdens and exploitation of the country’s resources, destroying the environment and further dispossessing and oppressing First Peoples. They amass immense profits at the people’s and country’s expense. They have some collaborators here but really relatively few. 

There are millions of us and we stand up to look after ourselves, the people and the country as a whole, 

We will break the hold of US imperialism on the Australia state.

 

ICOR Statement: Fight for peace, international solidarity, and against fascism!

 Written by: ICOR on 1 September 2026

 

 

The International Coordination of Revolutionary parties and Organisations (ICOR), to which we are affiliated, released a statement today calling for actions to take place today as an Anti-War Day.
We are publishing the statement in solidarity with our ICOR affiliates.
In our country, September  20 will be celebrated as an International Day of Peace, and we call on members and supporters to check for activities in their own cities and regions.

.................

 

Fight for peace, international solidarity, and against fascism!

For socialism – Strengthen the ICOR!

 

The world today stands on the brink of a terrible, nuclear Third World War. Led by the main warmonger, the USA, all NATO states are pushing ahead with massive rearmament. All imperialist countries are arming their armies, engaging in ideological preparations for war and pursuing a redistribution of spheres of power and influence by any means necessary. Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine is a war of aggression on both sides—by Russia and by the West. In Africa, imperialist powers are fuelling barbaric proxy wars. The South China Sea is a flashpoint of rivalry. The fascist Trump administration is laying claim to hegemony over the whole of the Americas. What it calls ‘peace policy’ through its self-appointed Peace Council amounts to imperialist interventions. The US military abducted Venezuela’s elected president and overthrew the government. US imperialism is starving Cuba through blockades and laying claim to Greenland and the Arctic. The genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza represents a new level of barbaric, fascist warfare, directed in particular against women and children. The root cause of all these wars lies in the inherent nature of the imperialist world system and the bitter inter-imperialist rivalry.

 

This imperialist policy of war means endless suffering, countless deaths, hunger, destruction and misery for the masses. It is driving the global environmental catastrophe. People all over the world are rising up against these wars and preparations for war. Dockworkers in southern Europe prevented arms shipments to Israel. Despite massive repression, there were protests against the NATO summit in Turkey. International solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle is being organised on a permanent basis in many places. Intensive work is underway to implement the ICOR solidarity pact with the Al-Awda health network in Gaza for the construction of a hospital. The vibrant ICOR maternity clinic in Kobane continues to stand as a symbol of unreserved support for the peoples’ just struggle for democracy, self-determination and women’s liberation. In many cases, young people are a particularly active force in the anti-militarist struggle. They do not want to see their future in the trenches of the powerful.

 

ICOR is holding its annual Anti-War Day on 1 September as a remembrance and warning of the start of the Second World War, which began with Hitler’s Germany’s invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. As ICOR and Marxist-Leninists, we stand for the struggle to support the working class and the broad masses, the oppressed peoples, against imperialist and fascist oppression. The international revolutionary and labour movement is fighting to ensure clarity within its own ranks, amongst the working class and the broad masses, as to who is friend and who is foe. In the face of increasingly aggressive actions – some of them carried out on the quiet – by China and Russia as well, the debate over their characterisation as imperialist countries is intensifying.

Without the revolutionary overthrow of the imperialist system and the establishment of socialism, there will be no real peace. Pacifist and social-chauvinist illusions are deliberately spread by those in power to paralyse the masses. Let us promote in our own countries the struggle of the international working class and the broad masses of the people for world peace. A Third World War can and must be prevented.

 

Long live proletarian internationalism!

Victory to the struggles of the peoples against imperialism and all reactionaries!

Strengthen the ICOR!

 

Status of the signatories 29.08.2026. Further signatures possible. Current list of signatories at www.icor.info

1. PCPCI   Parti Communiste Proletarien de Côte d'Ivoire (Proletarian Communist Party of Ivory Coast)

2. UPC-Manidem   Union des Populations du Cameroun - Manifeste National pour l’Instauration de la Démocratie (Union of Populations of Cameroon - National Manifesto for the Establishment of Democracy)

3. MMLPL   Moroccan Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Line

4. CPSA (ML)   Communist Party of South Africa (Marxist-Leninist)

5. PCT   Parti Comuniste du Togo (Communist Party of Togo)

6. PPDS   Parti Patriotique Démocratique Socialiste (Patriotic Democratic Socialist Party), Tunisia

7. SPB   Socialist Party of Bangladesh

8. SPB(M)   Socialist Party of Bangladesh (Marxist)

9. Chinese Communists (MLM)   Chinese Communists (Marxist Leninist Maoist)

10. CPI (ML) MassLine   Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) MassLine

11. SUCI (C)   Socialist Unity Center of India (Communist)

12. NCP (Mashal)   Nepal Communist Party (Mashal)

13. NDMLP   New-Democratic Marxist-Leninist Party, Sri Lanka

14. CPA/ML   Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)

15. PR-ByH   Partija Rada - ByH (Party of Labor - Bosnia and Herzegovina)

16. MLPD   Marxistisch-Leninistische Partei Deutschlands (Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany)

17. UPML   Union Prolétarienne Marxiste-Léniniste (Marxist-Leninist Proletarian Union), France

18. KOL   Kommunistische Organisation Luxemburg (Communist Organization of Luxemburg)

19. RM   Rode Morgen (Red Dawn), Netherlands

20. UMLP   União Marxista-Leninista Portuguesa (Portuguese Marxist-Leninist Union)

21. MLGS   Marxistisch-Leninistische Gruppe Schweiz (Marxist-Leninist Group of Switzerland)

22. TKP-ML   Türkiye Komünist Partisi – Marksist-Leninist (Communist Party of Turkey – Marxist-Leninist)

23. MLKP   Marksist Leninist Komünist Parti Türkiye / Kürdistan (Marxist Leninist Communist Party Turkey / Kurdistan)

24. KSRD   Koordinazionnyj Sowjet Rabotschewo Dvizhenija (Coordination Council of the Workers Class Movement), Ukraine

25. PCP (independiente)   Partido Comunista Paraguayo (independiente) (Paraguayan  Communist Party (independent))

26. PC (ML)   Partido Comunista (Marxista Leninista) (Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)), Dominican Republic

27.  Red Network Ireland

28.  Communist Party of China (Marxist-Leninist)