At conferences, in pitch decks, and increasingly in public writing, “service” is increasingly being used to describe the work of startup founders, employees, and venture capital investors in defense technology. The claim, sometimes explicit, more often implied, is that building defense technology is itself a form of service comparable to uniformed military service.
It is visible in corporate messaging that invites civilians to “serve” through product work, from Palantir’s “Why We Serve” to Anduril’s description of “national service as a form of innovation,” to public-private innovation narratives that describe entrepreneurship as a form of national service and “answering the call” advocacy pieces for technologists. Broader defense industrial-base discourse regularly reaches for language that blurs the line between public duty and private-sector participation.
My argument is simple: Private market civilian participation in defense is essential and can be honorable. However, it should not be considered “service” and treating it as such has negative consequences. Collapsing these categories lowers the moral and social barriers to war by confusing contribution with obligation, and admiration with sacrifice.
What “Service” Is
Americans join the military for a wide range of personal, economic, and civic reasons, and for many, the decision is tied to some conception of patriotism. However, service is not defined by proximity to national security or by belief in a righteous cause. It is defined by degree of state-imposed obligation and constraint; military servicemembers voluntarily relinquish personal autonomy, acknowledging that the state may direct them to places they would not choose to go and require them to assume risks they would not independently accept. They accept deployments that separate them from their families, frequent relocations that disrupt spouses’ careers and children’s educations, as well as limitations on travel, speech, and personal behaviors that extend well beyond the workplace. They do so at compensation levels set by statute, not market negotiation — often earning far less than private market civilians with comparable technical skills.
A civilian defense technologist, investor, or founder can be as mission-driven and patriotic as a servicemember in intention. They can also have outsized impacts on the mission, building systems that often have greater impact than any single servicemember could. The fundamental differentiator is the decisive civilian privilege: an exit option. They can quit or walk away when the risks or incentives change. Doing so may carry real costs such as lost capital, reputational damage, or strained relationships, but these are market consequences, not legal ones.
It is important to distinguish civil servants from private market civilians in this conversation. On the spectrum of service as defined above, civil servants occupy a position between market actors and uniformed servicemembers. Like military service members, civil servants can bear meaningful costs of war and are paid at statutory rates without the potential for outsized economic gain. Some civil servants at the Department of Defense can bear the costs of war. However, like private market civilians, they still retain the legal ability to quit. Moreover, the civil service itself is not a monolith. Some civil servants, such as those in the intelligence community and law enforcement, are subject to deployment, professional constraint, and real personal disruption in support of the mission, whereas others in commercial facing roles may not be. Their work can therefore be understood as a form of public service, grounded in statutory duty and public obligation, but distinct in degree and structure from the unique asymmetric commitment that defines military service. The debate here, however, is not about drawing fine distinctions within public service. It is about whether voluntary, market driven participation should be rhetorically elevated into the same moral category.
I want to be clear: I am not arguing for moral hierarchy. Both the private sector and the profession of arms can be admirable, and both are essential to national defense. I can attest to that from personal experience as both a veteran and an investor in defense technology. But when we use the same word category to describe fundamentally different commitments, we do not elevate civilian contribution. Instead, we blur the line between choice and obligation, and in doing so dilute the meaning of sacrifice that gives military service its distinctive moral weight.
Why This Rhetoric Is Spreading
The growth of “service” as rhetoric is being driven by two factors: the value it provides in government sales and its ability to help win the war for talent.
Defense technology companies sell primarily to government agencies whose missions are framed in terms of mission, duty, and national security. In this environment, adopting the language of service signals alignment with the customer’s values and end users. It reassures procurement officials and uniformed leaders that a company understands the gravity of the work. Orienting a business around the customer’s mission is good practice; it reflects the realities of operating in a market where credibility depends on demonstrating commitment to public purpose.
Perhaps more challenging is usage of the term around talent acquisition. It is generally undisputed that the United States needs more technical civilian talent engaged in the industrial base. After years of building venture-backed software optimized for advertising and engagement, many technologists and investors are seeking work that feels more consequential, and in a time of geopolitical instability and moral uncertainty, defense technology promises purpose, clarity, and community. As Sebastian Junger observes in Tribe, modern society leaves many people seeking belonging and meaning that was once provided by shared hardship. Framing this work in the language of service, as Palantir, Anduril, and others do above, presents defense technology work as a way to provide the shared hardship Junger argues people seek, albeit without the coercive obligation that defines military life.
However, when this framing of service converges with capital and institutional influence, what begins as sincere mission alignment can harden into identity, which is where civil-military consequences emerge.
Vibe Patriotism and the Moral Abstraction of War
Framing civilian defense work as “service” encourages a form of what might be called vibe patriotism and, in doing so, lowers the moral and social barriers to war. By blurring who bears real risk, it weakens the skepticism and demand for justification that normally serve as democratic guardrails before escalation, allowing influential civilians to affiliate with war’s moral weight while remaining insulated from its costs.
While abstract sounding, vibe patriotism is clearly visible in moments of symbolic imitation. At a recent defense tech conference at Stanford, investors and startup founders marched through campus carrying weighted rucksacks in a gesture of solidarity with troops. The gesture was well-intentioned, but the ability to choose the ruck, and to set it down, is the very thing that separates them from the people they were honoring. The gesture, however sincere, enacts the distinction it means to collapse.
The symbolic blurring would matter less if it were confined to the margins. However, the language and rituals of service are being adopted most readily by founders, investors, and executives who are simultaneously expanding their influence over defense policy through lobbying, think tank funding, government advisory roles, and a revolving door between the Pentagon and venture capital. These are the people increasingly shaping governmental perception of threat and urgency.
What makes this moment distinct is the nature of what defense tech market participants are building. Attritable systems, autonomous platforms, and precision weapons genuinely reduce the monetary and operational costs of military action, a real contribution to national security. However, Andrew Bacevich’s central insight in Breach of Trust is that war becomes easier when elites can affiliate with military action while remaining insulated from its consequences. By framing their work as service, the elites shaping defense policy are able to do just that: claim moral participation in the burdens of war while remaining insulated from its consequences, normalizing an increasingly aggressive posture toward adversaries premised on technological superiority that, whatever its merits, will ultimately be tested not by those who promote it but by the servicemembers who cannot opt out.
Conclusion: Strong Defense, Clear Distinctions
As both a veteran and an investor in defense technologies, I want a strong defense and a robust, economically incentivized industrial base that can adapt quickly, scale production, and sustain competition. I also firmly believe that civilian technologists and investors play critical roles in strengthening national security.
Moreover, I have argued before for serious, practical civilian engagement with the military, work that improves leadership, institutional effectiveness, and performance without romanticizing war or borrowing the aesthetics of sacrifice. In War on the Rocks in 2022, I made the case that effective civilian support means helping the defense apparatus function better, not mimicking the symbolism of military life.
None of those points detract from my core thesis: Private market civilians cannot be said to be engaging in service. We do not strengthen the military by borrowing its moral authority, rather we strengthen our national security and develop better foreign policies by building better tools, supporting effective institutions, and preserving the clarity of the distinctions that make “service” mean something in the first place. The stakes are not merely rhetorical: Service language grants civilian elites the moral standing to advocate for more aggressive postures toward adversaries while remaining insulated from their human costs.
Ben Buchheim-Jurisson is a U.S. Air Force veteran and venture investor backing dual-use and defense technologies. The opinions in this article are his own.
**Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress.
Image: Tech. Sgt. Bailee Darbasie via DVIDS.
