The diffusion of military technologies into civilian industries, sectors, and institutions has long formed a significant element of the forms of innovation required in thriving processes of capital accumulation (Ceruzzi 2008; Friedman 2013; Goldman and Eliason 2013; Starosielski 2015). Often, the military technologies most deeply scrutinised tend to be kinetic (i.e. violent or sanguinary) instruments, weapons and techniques. Oft forgotten (with the notable exception of railroads; see van Creveld 2004; Wolmar 2012) is the diffusion of military knowledge/technology/technique in the mostly invisible milieu of ports and logistics that constitute transnational networks of maritime connection (for an exceptional study of these maritime/military logistical connections see Cowen 2014). In this paper, I will discuss the role and centrality of diffusion of military technologies in the making of maritime transport and networks in the Arabian Peninsula in the post-Second-World-War era. I will be drawing on a) the recently declassified archives of the US Army Corps of Engineers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Arabian Peninsula, as well as b) the open-source materials published over the course of decades by various branches of the US military, and c) memoirs written in Arabic and English by participants in the processes delineated here. The paper will argue that there has been a two-way traffic between military technologies and networks of trade and commerce in the Arabian Peninsula. The US Army Corps of Engineers, but also logistics firms serving various US wars in the region, have been crucial in the formation of ports and maritime transport in the region. The US Army Corps of Engineers has been involved in the construction of harbours and ports at Dhahran, Jeddah and Salalah. In some locations, it is the commercial value of the ports, in others their strategic significance, but in all neo-mercantilist ideologies and protection of capital accumulation, that have encouraged the US military’s involvement. This two-way traffic between military/strategic and commercial interests has been crucial in the transformation of the Arabian Peninsula into the most significant transport hub in the Middle East, with Jabal Ali (9th largest container port in the world) and Salalah (largest port on the western littoral of Indian Ocean) leading the way, and new construction in Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait and elsewhere comparing for transport capacity.