Progressive Politics

The American weapons maker Anduril says its founding purpose is to arm democratic governments to safeguard the Western way of life. The company’s official mission document, titled “Rebooting the Arsenal of Democracy,” contains 14 separate references to democracy, two more than the name of the company. Building weapons isn’t simply a matter of national security, the company argues, but a moral imperative to protect the democratic tradition. “The challenge ahead is gigantic,” the manifesto says, “but so are the rewards of success: continued peace and prosperity in the democratic world.”

Mentions of democracy are noticeably absent, however, from Anduril’s recent announcement of a new joint venture with a state-run bomb maker from an authoritarian monarchy that is facilitating a genocide.

Anduril is partnering with EDGE Group, a weapons conglomerate controlled by the United Arab Emirates, a nation run entirely by the royal families of its seven emirates that permits virtually none of the activities typically associated with democratic societies. In the UAE, free expression and association are outlawed, and dissident speech is routinely and brutally punished without due process. A 2024 assessment of political rights and civil liberties by Freedom House, a U.S. State Department-backed think tank, gave the UAE a score of 18 out of 100.