Big Tech, Big Guns, Small People: The New American Priorities

We are witnessing two profound trends unfolding simultaneously. The new GOP budget earmarks more a trillion dollars for military spending deportation while slashing funding for education and other social programs. At the same time, we see a massive societal push toward AI, with tech giants like Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon collectively investing hundreds of billions into AI development.

Some might view these as unrelated trajectories—one focused on bolstering national security and the other on technological advancement—but they emerge from the same ideological wellspring: a devaluation of human potential in service of abstract metrics of national power, efficiency, and economic growth, all while being done in the name of the very people it systematically devalues and leaves behind. The parallel expanded funding of defense technologies and sophisticated algorithms serves a unified purpose: to enhance control while extracting value from an increasingly marginalized population.

In the sections that follow, I’ll look at how these choices reflect a shift from investing in human security—like education and social well-being (positive peace)—to prioritizing negative security through military might and surveillance. The first use of these technologies isn't to uplift all of humanity, but to fortify boundaries and ensure that those who are different are kept at bay. This approach undermines the flourishing of those excluded and ultimately narrows the beneficiaries to a historically privileged group. As educators, we must rally to push things in different directions.

Defense Spending and Border Security: Trading Human Development to Protect Us from the Outside

The budget framework, unveiled on May 2, 2025, outlines a 13% increase in defense spending, bringing the total to $1.01 trillion for the first time in history.

A centerpiece of the budget is funding for the "Golden Dome for America," a hemispheric missile defense system reminiscent of Reagan-era strategic defense initiatives. This ambitious project represents a significant technological undertaking aimed at strengthening homeland security against ballistic missile threat.

Another key directive in the budget requires the Army to "enable AI-driven command and control at theater, corps and division headquarters by 2027." This initiative aims to leverage AI to enhance battlefield decision-making and provide commanders with superior information processing capabilities.

One of the most ambitious technological initiatives in the budget is the U.S. Army's plan to equip every combat division with approximately 1,000 unmanned systems by the end of 2026. This represents a fundamental shift in military strategy, drawing direct inspiration from Ukraine's effective use of drone warfare against Russian forces. The budget's AI investments are partially driven by strategic competition with China, which has made significant strides in AI efficiency and development. The U.S. defense establishment views AI capabilities as essential for maintaining technological superiority in future conflicts

Similarly, the Republican Party's $175 billion investment in border security over four years represents one of the largest allocations for immigration enforcement in American history, with significant implications for how the United States approaches security along its southern border. The scale of this border security investment becomes particularly striking when compared to South Korea's military expenditure. South Korea spent approximately $47.6 billion on its military in 2024.

The funding focuses overwhelmingly on:

• Physical exclusion through walls and barriers

• Surveillance and detection technology

• Enforcement personnel

• Detention and deportation capabilities

At the heart of this effort is a sprawling technological apparatus. AI-enabled facial recognition, biometric databases, predictive surveillance, and autonomous systems have become central to both border enforcement and military operations. At the border, AI determines who gets detained, deported, or denied. In the military sphere, it automates threat detection, target selection, and even the use of lethal force—removing human judgment from decisions that shape lives and communities.

This approach frames security primarily in terms of keeping people out rather than addressing root causes of migration or providing humanitarian assistance.

Securing us from the other is different than developing ourselves. Human security emphasizes the protection of individuals' well-being, including access to education, healthcare, and a stable environment. This concept was popularized by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in the 1994 Human Development Report. It suggests that true security is achieved not just by preventing conflict but by ensuring that people have the resources and opportunities to live fulfilling lives.

In contrast, military security focuses on protecting a nation from external threats through defense spending and military capabilities. Scholars like Barry Buzan have discussed how traditional security paradigms emphasize state sovereignty and military strength, often at the expense of human-centric approaches.

Relatedly, the concept of positive peace, developed by Johan Galtung, goes beyond the mere absence of conflict (negative peace). Positive peace involves creating conditions that foster social justice, equality, and sustainable development. It emphasizes the importance of investing in human capabilities and social infrastructure to create a resilient and thriving society. Negative peace, on the other hand, is simply the absence of direct violence or war, often maintained through deterrence and military strength.

The new GOP budget reduces investment in human security and positive peace.

The Department of Education faces a $12 billion cut, amounting to a 15.3% decrease in its budget. Approximately $4.6 billion in cuts target higher education initiatives, affecting programs that assist first-generation college students and adults requiring basic skills training. The Labor Department budget faces a 22% cut.The Health and Human Services (HHS) budget will be reduced by 6%. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding will decrease by $1.8 billion, eliminating research focused on preventing suicide, firearm injuries and deaths, and opioid overdoses.

Protecting the Flourishing of a few

This approach could indeed have underlying biases about who is deemed worthy of flourishing and who is seen as a threat. By focusing on protecting an "in-group" and using technology as a shield, we risk creating a society where the benefits of advancements are not equitably shared.

It really is a complex and somewhat contradictory approach. The idea that AI could fill the gaps left by reduced investment in human development suggests a reliance on technology to solve problems that are inherently human. It’s as if we’re betting that AI will somehow make up for the lack of educational and social investment, enabling those who remain to thrive without the same foundational support.

AGI: Trading human Development for Machine Development

The push to build machines that can out‑think us did not arise in a vacuum. It is a continuation of a centuries‑long habit.”t of measuring progress almost exclusively in terms of technical horsepower, military strength, and economic output. In that worldview, bigger models, faster chips, and higher valuations become self‑justifying goals, while investments that nurture individual curiosity, emotional resilience, or civic imagination are dismissed as “soft.”

Economic incentives favor automation over augmentation. Share‑price math rewards tools that replace salaried workers more than tools that merely help them think better. Hence, venture capital flows to “agentic” AI copilots and autonomous systems, while programs that teach critical thinking or creativity remain chronically underfunded

Techno‑solutionism promises simple fixes to complex social problems. If an AGI could “solve alignment” or “cure disease,” policymakers can avoid messy debates about wages, inequality, or education reform. The allure of a silver bullet reduces appetite for patient investment in human flourishing.

The Dangers of Devaluing Humans

When we talk about the devaluation of human life, we're essentially pointing to a societal shift where human well-being, dignity, and intrinsic value are sidelined in favor of other priorities—like technological efficiency, economic gain, or military dominance.

This concept has been explored by various thinkers. For example, Theodor W. Adorno critiqued how modern capitalist societies diminish individual worth, leading to a more dehumanized existence. Similarly, Hannah Arendt warned about the "banality of evil," where bureaucratic systems reduce individuals to mere statistics, stripping away their humanity.

Historically, when societies reduce the value of human life, we often see dire consequences—ranging from social unrest and inequality to more extreme outcomes like

History offers several poignant examples of what happens when human life is devalued in favor of other priorities:

The Holocaust (1930s-1940s). The Nazi regime's devaluation of certain groups—primarily Jews, but also Romani people, disabled individuals, and others—led to one of the most horrific genocides in history. The prioritization of a twisted ideology over human dignity resulted in the deaths of millions and left a lasting scar on humanity.

Colonialism and Imperialism. During the age of empire, many colonial powers devalued the lives of indigenous peoples and exploited them for economic gain. This led to widespread suffering, cultural destruction, and long-lasting inequality.

The Rwandan Genocide (1994). The dehumanization of the Tutsi minority in Rwanda culminated in a horrific genocide that claimed around 800,000 lives in just 100 days. This was fueled by propaganda that portrayed the Tutsi as subhuman, making mass violence more palatable.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade. The enslavement of millions of Africans was justified by a worldview that saw them as less than human. This not only caused immense suffering and death but also left a legacy of racial inequality that persists today.

Totalitarian Regimes. Under regimes like Stalinist Russia or Maoist China, human life was often subordinated to ideological goals. The resulting famines, purges, and mass incarcerations led to millions of deaths and immense human suffering.

These examples illustrate that when societies prioritize other goals over the inherent worth of individuals, the consequences can be catastrophic. Now imagine all of those historical regimes armed with modern technologies like a trillion-dollar military budget, AI-enabled mass surveillance, autonomous weapons, and hyper-persuasive synthetic realities paints a chilling picture. These tools would amplify the capacity for control, coercion, and dehumanization to unprecedented levels.

With advanced surveillance, dissent could be identified and quashed almost instantly. Autonomous weapons could enforce regimes' will without hesitation or moral judgment, leading to even more efficient and ruthless suppression. Hyper-realistic propaganda and synthetic realities could warp public perception, making resistance almost impossible and ensuring total ideological conformity.

In such a scenario, the scale of atrocities could be far greater, with even fewer checks on power. The ability to manipulate reality and automate enforcement could turn already oppressive regimes into near-unstoppable forces, erasing individuality and freedom on a massive scale.

Communities At-Risk

There is no reason to believe we’ve escaped human history.

In today's world, the devaluation of human life manifests across multiple systems and policies that treat people not as ends in themselves.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the treatment of migrants and refugees, who are increasingly cast as burdens or threats rather than individuals with inherent dignity. Instead of being welcomed with compassion, they are met with surveillance drones, AI-powered screening tools, and militarized borders designed to keep them out. Meanwhile, laborers in global supply chains endure unsafe conditions and meager wages, their well-being sacrificed for corporate profit and consumer convenience. At home, many governments continue to cut funding for education, public health, and social services, sending a clear message about whose lives are worth investing in. Environmental injustice similarly exposes a brutal hierarchy of human worth: low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately exposed to pollution and climate-related risks, treated as acceptable collateral in the pursuit of economic development. The criminal justice system, too, reflects this erosion of dignity, with mass incarceration, police brutality, and prison labor turning vulnerable lives into tools of control and exploitation.

We Could Do Better

Yet none of this is inevitable. The same algorithms now poised to surveil borders or automate layoffs could, with deliberate design and public investment, become engines of human flourishing—mapping undiscovered diseases instead of troop movements, translating lessons into every language instead of monetizing attention, tailoring tutoring to each child rather than optimizing ads. But that pivot will not happen by default: it demands that policymakers fund open civic‑minded research, that educators embed ethics and domain expertise into model training, and that citizens insist on governance frameworks where accountability, transparency, and equitable access are hard‑coded from the start. In short, AI can amplify our collective potential only when its development is guided by intentional choices that put people—not just profits or power—at the center. It just doesn’t seem to be where we are headed.

Conclusion

If budgets are moral documents, then the numbers now before Congress and the balance sheets of Silicon Valley speak louder than any campaign speech. They announce that, in 2025-6, the United States is willing to spend over a trillion dollars to defend borders and build smarter weapons, while shrinking the very programs that cultivate human capacity. They declare that we will pour un‑precedented capital into machines that mimic (and may one day surpass) our minds, yet shortchange the schools, clinics, and social systems that nurture those minds in the first place. In short, our ledgers reveal a society prepared to algorithmically optimize and militarily fortify the present—at the cost of future generations’ ability to flourish.

History warns that civilizations which treat people as expendable inputs eventually exhaust both their legitimacy and their luck. Yet history also offers a different lesson: when societies invest in human beings—the Marshall Plan, universal vaccination campaigns, K-12, or large‑scale public universities—their dividends compound across generations.

We stand, once again, at such a fork. Choosing the human path will not make us weaker; it will make us resilient in ways missiles and models never can. It asks only that we remember what every budget ledger omits but every flourishing democracy affirms: that the ultimate measure of national strength is not how tightly we can close a border or how quickly we can train a neural net, but how boldly we can expand the circle of human concern—and how fiercely we can defend every life.