The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

> Design For Rapid Scale In a Crisis

One of the things that I think Anduril (Palmer Luckey and other founders) is doing right is designing for manufacturability. The invasion of Ukraine has shown that future conflicts will use up weapons at a very high pace. And that the US capability to build them at the rate needed to sustain conflict isn't there anymore. But that one thing that could help is making them easier to build. (the decline of US manufacturing is a related but separate topic)

What’s up with Maga people using LotR names for their military/panopticon companies?

Anduril, Palantir, Lembas have I seen so far.

It's especially interesting because their philosophy is the opposite of Tolkien's. They seek power at all costs, trying to create 'rings' and dallying with bad people.

One common rhetorical tactic, commonly used by their political allies, is to use their (perceived) enemies' most powerful words and ideas against them, to disarm and counter-attack. 'Woke' was a term on the left; racism became descrimination against white people, diversity becomes affirmative action for conservatives, banning and mocking and even embracing discussions of Nazis, etc.

I don't know what Tolkien's personal philosophy was but I think a reasonable reading of LOTR would put it at centre right. The culture it valorizes has military capability and heroism at its core.

The LoTR had a great distrust of power as dangerous and corrupting - the Ring corrupted everyone who tried to use it - and a rejection of those who abided with evil. The mission was to destroy the power, not build a super-army.

Well in fact the raising of a huge army is indeed one of the goals of the protagonists. Of course for them the goal is to defeat evil. I'm sure that the people behind Palantir, Anduril and other such companies also believe they are building a military capability that will allow the United States to defeat what they see as evil. Every centre right libertarian I've encountered also has a "great distrust of power".

All I'm saying is that it only takes a small shift of perspective to see how the LoTR will appeal broadly to anyone who believes in good vs evil narratives - whichever side they appear to be on from one's own point of view.

well, this assumes that the person who created Palantir identifies with the protagonists and not with mordor, and this issue with your interpretation is that peter thiel very explicitly identifies with mordor

“Gandalf’s the crazy person who wants to start a war… Mordor is this technological civilization based on reason and science. Outside of Mordor, it’s all sort of mystical and environmental and nothing works.” - Thiel 2011 Details

Source: https://bsky.app/profile/takedemocracyback.org/post/3lk4u55a... it's an interview from the September issue of details magazine 2011, has largely been scrubbed from the internet

So in the case of Thiel, he read LOTR and identified with the villains, which is about as large a misreading of Tolkien as one can make