Big Tech veteran warns woke mind virus nearly ended us

As a defense contractor embarked on a new partnership to help “build and defend our country,” the Big Tech veteran addressed what industry fixation almost amounted to “the demise of our society.”

After speaking to the impact the woke mind virus had on his own family, Elon Musk had gone on to critique it as the amplification of “all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite.” Now, with a $195 million contract with the U.S. Army, Rivet Industries co-founder and CEO Dave Marra is looking to drive the industry away from those cultural obsessions that he witnessed grow to threaten civilization while utilizing artificial intelligence.

“I watched the woke mind virus be conceived, gestated, born and turned into an unruly teenager. And it was almost the demise of our society,” Marra told Fox News Digital while contending the country was in the midst of an influential paradigm redirection.

To aid in that shift, the executive explained how his company’s Soldier Borne Mission Command was prioritizing the capabilities of warfighters by executing “toward Army stated objectives and priorities before we got paid.”

Rivet is delivering Soldier Borne Mission Command with the @USArmy.
https://t.co/TA4k97KlXa pic.twitter.com/TYMmDaL1CW

— Rivet Industries (@Rivet_US) September 5, 2025

“It’s a dereliction of duty that my 12-year-old on her iPad can use generative AI to pursue her interests … she can pursue her interest in art and athletics, etc., but the guy in the bucket truck can’t,” the former employee of Palantir Technologies and Microsoft contended. “Not only because the companies who are building these products don’t understand that these people are operating in very austere environments, so the underpinning of the device needs to be able to operate with them in that environment, [but] because the business rewards weren’t there. And that’s the paradigm that we’re looking to shift.”

“The adversary that we have to be ultimately prepared for — the technology companies [that] are state-sponsored, the sovereign currency is manipulated, the priorities are not set by free market capitalism as we love and enjoy it and have for the last several hundred years. If technology companies don’t work in concert with the Department of War in order to ensure that are folks in harms way are equipped with superior technology, we will not have a chance.”

Marra had argued much of the focus in innovation had been driven toward those working in office settings and there had been little development for those doing jobs that impact the necessities for everyday life in America like home repairs.

“When we think about everyday Americans … the privilege is that our lights come on, clean water comes out of the faucet, and planes land safely,” said the CEO. “The people who are most important are the ones that are making sure the electrons come out of the outlet, that the clean water comes out of the faucet, that the plane, the train, the boat and the factory are online. So where we see Rivet’s tech over the next three to five years is exactly in all of those places … that ensures that the rising tide lifts all boats for all Americans, all people and residents of the Western world.

Where it concerned the warfighters and the objective to get away from Big Tech’s cultural obsessions and back to people who “build and defend our country,” Marra expressed, “This group of people, and this is the people who are building, operating and ultimately defending our critical infrastructure, are the people that actually make the world turn.”

“AI is an accelerant to the most important asset that we have,” he remarked, “and that’s the people.”

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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