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Posted by EwanG 21 hours ago

CIA funding helped keep NeXT afloat in the 80s(www.wsj.com)
https://archive.is/JfB5V
277 points | 178 commentspage 3
pjmlp 5 hours ago|
LinuxSE also exists thanks to them.
hoistbypetard 3 hours ago|
SELinux, and that was NSA.
pjmlp 2 hours ago||
Yeah, I never remember how to type that, and was too lazy to check before posting.

While I stand corrected, it isn't much better anyway, in regards of the points of view being discussed towards CIA and software industry.

xhkkffbf 6 hours ago||
The NSA bought plenty of the machines back then too. They weren't always the favorites of the staff who spent plenty of time with IBM mainframes.
jongjong 6 hours ago||
It's pretty obvious now that governments have been propping up the tech sector in many countries. It's a weird industry. Look at the biggest tech companies. They all start out with apparently legitimate products but slowly lose market share over decades, end up doing nothing and yet more profitable and more valuable than ever. Look at companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Palantir, SpaceX, Salesforce... Their main business is extracting money from the government.
heaney-555 5 hours ago||
>slowly lose market share over decades, end up doing nothing and yet more profitable and more valuable than ever

>SpaceX

SpaceX has been gaining market share, not losing, and its primary business is Starlink, of which most customers are consumers.

(there is also Starshield)

bigyabai 5 hours ago||
Having used it, Starlink's entire business model seems to be rooted in handwavium. You'll almost never hit advertised speeds or latency, and there are regular outages where you get no service at all. The cost of the service fluctuates constantly if you don't get locked-in to a specific rate, too.

My impression is that Starlink is a hastily-launched DoD project. It's not a broadband replacement and scarcely an alternative to other satnet providers or LTE hotspots.

inemesitaffia 3 hours ago||
Most Satellite Internet users use Starlink.

Most Satellite data (including non internet data) is delivered over Starlink.

Most Satellite Internet revenue is from Starlink customers.

And I'm sure a certain Eastern European country wouldn't be asking to extend coverage to Russia if it was truly "scarcely an alternative"

The cost (actually price) you're complaining about is lower than than other satellite providers and significantly lower than what was available in 2019. Around the pricing of more expensive mobile internet data plans meant for hotspots (in the US)

I'm pretty sure no one paying residential pricing back was doing >1TB/month on SATCOM

The performance for most users is definitely above the 100/10 99ms advertised (per Ookla)

How long are these "regular outages"? Have you used the service in 2026?

sigbottle 5 hours ago|||
I think software, paradoxically, has deeper network and intertial effects than pretty much anything else we have invented so far. Compare the leverage it enables to the ecosystem lock in it forces.

With physical goods, it's not nearly that coupled.

adventured 4 hours ago|||
Microsoft's main business... is extracting money from the government.

Please, elaborate on where Microsoft is getting a hundred billion dollars plus per year from the government.

By an extreme margin Microsoft's main business is productivity software sold to businesses and consumers and has been for 40 years, along with Windows (the majority customers for which are businesses + consumers).

Teever 5 hours ago||
What's fascinating to me is just how many people in the American tech industry are in complete denial about the amount of government support their industry receives and by extension that they personally receive.

All too often someone who espouses libertarian or ultra free-market capitalist beliefs will smugly state that Silicon Valley is proof that America and free market ideals are better than another country such as say Norway, Finland, or Estonia.

I've never really had a good way to respond to that kind of belief in part because I'm not too well versed in the history of intelligence agencies funding American tech industries or the contemporary state of that relationship but also because it's so startlingly ubiquitous and adamant.

Does anyone else have any input on how it's best to address this misconception and worldview that people in SV have?

bflesch 5 hours ago||
People talk a lot about metadata collection but not about DNA collection.

It is imperative for any intelligence service to know if any politically exposed person has a child, especially if it spawns from an affair. Logically, we have to assume that all laboratories processing human blood are also doing some sort of DNA genealogy.

gregw2 3 hours ago||
Last time I went to donate blood, I read all the fine print they asked me to sign, and I was giving them the right to sequence my DNA (!)

The tech taking my blood had no idea; nobody else had ever read it.

I did complain and ask the blood donation org to make sequencing opt-in and my message was "passed on to leadership" but with no followup from "leadership."

rjsw 5 hours ago|||
Is your idea that NeXT machines had more sharp edges than other computers so would make it easier to collect blood?
bflesch 4 hours ago||
Other comments tied this report into the cute and nerdy NSA/PRISM scheme of things.

That's too easy. If CIA is involved, it's a topic that's actually important for global nobility.

CIA scope includes things like Hollywood movie productions, babysitting the next-in-line to the British crown, teen beauty pageants, keeping black people marginalized by dumping excess drugs on them, and of course DNA tracking of Nazis (which has been extended to basically everyone).

All this five eyes bs is framed as if the US is in the driving seat, and Americans eat it up with their hubris about "winning" the war of independence. Epstein/Maxwell scandal highlights that James Bond was actually British and not American.

It's kinda clever how it all ended up like this and I highly respect the capabilities. It's the best and most prosperous system that humanity has come up with. I sure as hell won't rock the boat.

Let's hope this establishment is flexible enough to handle the climate crisis. The solutions proposed so far include more colonization (of other planets) and more castles/bunkers (in remote locations) - there must be better ways to deal with a climate crisis.

WillAdams 4 hours ago|||
Twist on that was the fake immunization campaigns run in Pakistan so as to find relatives of Osama Bin Laden.

Or, just check Strom Thurmond's list of children on Wikipedia.

alexander2002 3 hours ago||
That caused alot of death for polio workers in local region Everything usa does take a toil in long run on local population . I am sure 911 caused alot of immense and grief for alot of people but total Estimated Toll comes to around over 4.5 million total deaths linked to the post-9/11 conflicts and Roughly 38 million people displaced or made refugees.

USA can hell or heaven for different people

cindyllm 3 hours ago||
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Taikhoom10 6 hours ago||
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dang 6 hours ago||
[stub for offtopicness]

(we put the gift link above)

firefax 21 hours ago||
ew paywall
EwanG 21 hours ago||
https://archive.is/JfB5V
malshe 7 hours ago|||
Gift link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/steve-jobs-apple-next-cia-161b65f9?...
kevmo 5 hours ago||
Whenever you really start peeling away at Silicon Valley mega tech stories, you mostly find tax dollars.
otterley 5 hours ago||
A large majority of basic scientific research is funded by tax dollars. One mustn't underestimate the importance of DOD, NIH, and NSF grants in ongoing technological innovation.

Update: s/majority/amount/

jandrewrogers 4 hours ago||
> A large majority of basic scientific research is funded by tax dollars.

Used to be. The US government only funds 40% of basic scientific research now.

This is due to large increases investment from private industry, which now rivals the US government even for basic scientific research in addition to funding the vast majority of other research. US government funding didn't decrease, the pie just became much larger.

NSF regularly publishes detailed reports on US R&D funding. The trend toward industry funding eclipsing US government funding started in the 1960s.

https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20257/trends-in-u-s-r-d-perfor...

otterley 4 hours ago||
That's a great link! Thanks for that :-)
nunez 3 hours ago|||
Hence why Silicon Valley started at Silicon Valley. It was (is?) a huge defense contractor outpost.
briandw 3 hours ago||
What's your actually point? Reading between the lines I'm seeing the following logic.

1) The free market develops and sell products. 2) The government buys the products that the free market has produced. 3) Therefore the free market isn't viable without government tax money? Therefore socialism? Silicon Valley wouldn't be as successful without govt spending money on things it needs? Help me out here.

qwertyuiop_ 5 hours ago||
Now do Anthropic and OpenAI.
creamedcorn 3 hours ago||
Misleading headline, AI generated article. Getting sick of this shit. Glad I still think for myself unlike a lot of the useful idiots here.
alexthedigger 1 hour ago||
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cindyllm 1 hour ago||
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webdoodle 5 hours ago|
> many tech leaders cite patriotism and national renewal in their quest for military contracts, but mutual self-interest is what drove cooperation in the past

How can they be patriots when they do so at the expense of the 1st, 4th, 5th and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution? That's not patriotism, it's terrorism.

hulitu 5 hours ago|
> How can they be patriots when they do so at the expense of the 1st, 4th, 5th and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution?

" The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.

George Orwell "