Silicon Valley in the Trenches: How Corporate Tech Became Central to 21st Cent. War

The war in Ukraine has transformed not only the strategic terrain of Eastern Europe but also the contours of conflict itself. In a moment as sudden as it was profound, warfare leapt from the ground into the ether, from trenches to the stars. And curiously, those stars are increasingly navigated not by states or generals, but by private corporations headquartered in Silicon Valley and beyond. The architects of digital platforms, satellite constellations, and cloud infrastructure have emerged as unexpected protagonists in this era-defining confrontation.

It began with a tweet. On February 26, 2022, Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s minister of digital transformation, posted an open appeal to Elon Musk. Two days into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine was in desperate need of communications infrastructure. Musk responded almost instantly. Within hours, Starlink—a satellite internet system operated by Musk’s company SpaceX—was activated over Ukraine. In the days that followed, thousands of Starlink terminals arrived, delivered at SpaceX’s expense. What might once have been considered a science fiction plot had become an operational necessity: a billionaire businessman wiring a war zone from orbit.

That decision, and the infrastructure it delivered, may have saved Ukraine’s ability to resist. Starlink enabled frontline troops to coordinate through live drone feeds and encrypted messaging. It kept hospitals online. It allowed President Volodymyr Zelensky to broadcast nightly addresses to his people and the world, projecting calm in the face of chaos. In the annals of modern conflict, it is difficult to recall another moment where space-based communications, provided by a private actor, proved so vital to national survival.

But as with all tools of great power, Starlink’s impact was double-edged. Months into the conflict, Kyiv asked SpaceX to expand Starlink’s coverage to Crimea in support of a naval drone operation. Musk declined, fearing it might provoke a wider war. In that refusal lay an uncomfortable truth: a private citizen had just unilaterally vetoed a military action by a sovereign nation. Welcome to the technopolar age.

This is not simply a story of one man’s discretion. Across the spectrum of warfare in Ukraine, private corporations have come to occupy critical roles. Maxar, Planet Labs, and HawkEye 360 supplied satellite imagery that revealed Russian troop movements in real time. These images, once the preserve of state intelligence, became publicly available and tactically decisive. HawkEye’s technology even detected electronic warfare zones by mapping radio frequencies—insights that were shared with Ukrainian forces to help guide manoeuvres and avert ambushes.

Yet raw data alone is not intelligence. To transform this flood of information into a strategy, Ukraine turned to Palantir Technologies. The company’s data integration platforms synthesised satellite feeds, drone footage, and battlefield logistics into usable maps, enabling decisions that might otherwise take days to be made in minutes. This fusion of private sector innovation with military necessity marked a new frontier, where corporate tools became as consequential as conventional weapons.

Even away from the frontlines, the tech sector became indispensable. With Kyiv’s data centres under threat, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft migrated terabytes of sensitive government records to the cloud. This manoeuvre—executed swiftly, based on longstanding relationships—ensured the continuity of Ukraine’s bureaucracy amid bombardment. The ease and agility with which these digital lifelines were secured stand in stark contrast to the slow and often paralysed machinery of intergovernmental aid.

It is tempting to view this convergence of technology and warfare as a heroic tale of corporate benevolence. Certainly, many of these companies acted with admirable speed and moral clarity. But we would be naive not to see the geopolitical implications. The Ukrainian war effort was shaped not just by national alliances but by the inclinations of executives in California boardrooms. And therein lies the paradox: while governments still hold sovereignty, they are increasingly dependent on entities that owe them no constitutional duty.

Globalisation eroded the power of the nation-state, but this moment may signal something even more radical—a shift in strategic autonomy itself. States, once the sole wielders of hard power, now share the battlefield with firms whose reach extends from orbit to algorithm. And unlike treaties or legislatures, these firms operate by their own codes, often insulated from public scrutiny.

Ukraine’s experience is thus not merely a case study in digital resilience; it is a preview of the geopolitical order to come. In potential flashpoints like Taiwan, where digital infrastructure is already under siege from cyberattacks, the question is no longer whether tech companies will be involved, but how—and on whose side. Musk’s continued wavering on Crimea is not an anomaly; it is a harbinger.

This new world demands new rules. Strategic technologies—satellite networks, AI systems, cloud infrastructure—can no longer be treated as peripheral to statecraft. They are now central pillars of power, and their custodians must be held to a standard befitting that responsibility.

The war in Ukraine has exposed both the promise and peril of our space-age geopolitics. It has revealed how swiftly private innovation can adapt to crisis, and how precarious it is to entrust such power without oversight. In the fog of 21st-century war, clarity will not come from the barrel of a gun alone. It may come from above—from the satellites that orbit silently overhead—and from the companies that choose whether they shine their light, or not.

Dimitris Kollias, Junior Research Fellow, ELIAMEP

This opinion piece has been selected as part of To Vima International Edition’s NextGen Corner, an opinion platform spotlighting original voices from the emerging generation on the issues shaping our time.