Rocket Lab are nothing but an American Military Industrial Complex enabler – look at how dead Sir Peter Beck’s eyes are
Rocket Lab is still marketed to New Zealanders as a plucky Kiwi success story, but the deeper it embeds itself inside the American military-industrial complex, the harder that mythology becomes to sustain. Record revenues and US defence contracts might thrill shareholders, but they also raise uncomfortable questions about sovereignty, militarisation and whether New Zealand is quietly becoming part of someone else’s geopolitical war machine.
Rocket Lab clocks record quarterly revenue, reveals new US military contracts
Rocket Lab has reported first-quarter 2026 revenue that rose 63% over the first quarter of 2025 to US$201.3 million ($339 million) – ahead of its guidance and the analyst consensus of US$180.0million.
It forecast another record – revenue between US$225 million and US$240 million – for the second quarter.
Shares, which closed the regular Nasdaq session at US$78.58, jumped as high as US$85.12 in after-hours trading for a US$45.4 billion market cap [UPDATE: Friday trading saw the stock jump 34% to US$105.55.]
The Kiwi-founded, California-headquartered firm also revealed that its backlog of orders had more than doubled over this time last year to a record US$2.2 billion after signing 36 launch deals in the quarter, including its largest ever contract (below). Analysts had been expecting $2.0 billion.
NZME
Rocket Lab’s growing links to US defence contracts are raising serious questions about New Zealand’s role in global military strategy, and whether closer ties come with unintended consequences.
Every passing month, NZ drifts into the thrall of the American Military Industrial Complex, why would we want to be closer to an Orange fascist like Trump?
As The Daily Blog has been pointing out for like half a decade now, Rocket Lab is not this Number-8-wire go-getter, it’s a franchisee holder for the American Military Industrial Complex, their launch sites in New Zealand are a secondary launch site for the CIA and the American Military.
Has Rocket Lab turned New Zealand into a military target?
Let me spell it out to you, Rocket Lab has made us a legitimate military target in the eyes of the Russians and Chinese.
Why do you think we bought sub-hunting helicopters?
Because in the event of open conflict, Chinese and Russian subs would legitimately see sitting off the east coast of New Zealand to strike our launch sites as a legitimate military target.
Rocket Lab made us a legitimate military target and no one in the mainstream media will ever point this out!
Rocket Lab’s success comes with geopolitical consequences
Why not make Rocket Lab pay for the $2.7 billion helicopters, we are buying them to defend Rocket Lab’s interests, not New Zealand’s!
When you dance with the devil, the devil doesn’t change, you do.
The dead eyes of Rocket Lab’s Peter Beck tell us everything we need to know about cutting corporate deals with Satan.
If New Zealand continues down this path without public debate, we risk sleepwalking into geopolitical realities far bigger than ourselves — with consequences we may not be prepared to face.
I find it far more problematic that Peter Beck got knighted than Rod Dury winning New Zealander of the Year.
Yeah / Nah. We’re fornicated. We’ve all got foreign penises up our AO/NZ anuses and vaginas and all without the kissing.
The post neoliberal farce that’s our politic has left us with a pretense of a country now owned by the ‘merican neo-cons while we got pissed and let that happen.
Go us, right?
Again it’s patently obvious that Luxon doesn’t grasp how vulnerable NZ is with Rocket Lab’s military ties to the USA. Of course we are a legitimate target with the risks increasing as this current ‘war’ continues. But that’s okay, Luxon’s bach, whoops another of his palatial homes, is not on the Mahia Peninsular! Oh lucky him.
If we had more Peter Becks starting successful companies paying top wages and earning the country millions we would all benefit and could afford the education and health system we all want .
“If we had more Peter Becks starting successful companies paying top wages and earning the country millions we would all benefit and could afford the education and health system we all want .”
Yep that would be awesome and as you say we could afford a desirable education and health system, but alas the right would still want to cancel school lunches, cut education and health spending, privatise roads, subsidise landlords, have a huge pool of unemployed, empty out state houses, fill the streets with homeless people and share whats left of the country with people from worse off countries.
Poor old Trevor, locked into such stupid ways of thinking.
We can currently afford to have a 1st world education and health system if we taxed wealth. Especially unearned or stolen wealth.
Like the wealth stolen from New Zealand by Fay Richwhite and co.
The same gang of asset strippers and thieves who initially bankrolled Rocket Lab using funds stolen from this country in the 80s & 90s.
The same pack of “patriotic” Kiwis who, unhappy at returning a small amount of the stolen capital to NZ, convinced Rocket Lab to list on the NYSE and not the NZ stock exchange.
So tell me Trevor, how many of these “patriotic wealth creators” can this country afford?
And FYI, most of those “top paying jobs” go to overseas contractors. Just like the “high paying jobs” in the mining and energy sectors.