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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element" dir="ltr"> <font
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href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/22/vicious-cycle-the-pentagon-creates-tech-giants-and-then-buys-their-services/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/22/vicious-cycle-the-pentagon-creates-tech-giants-and-then-buys-their-services/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Vicious Cycle: The Pentagon Creates
Tech Giants and Then Buys their Services</h1>
<span class="post_author_intro">by</span> <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/t-j-coles/"
rel="nofollow">T.J. Coles</a> - May 22, 2019</span></div>
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<p>The US Department of Defense’s bloated budget, along
with CIA venture capital, helped to create tech giants,
including Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google and PayPal.
The government then contracts those companies to help
its military and intelligence operations. In doing so,
it makes the tech giants even bigger.</p>
<p>In recent years, the traditional banking, energy and
industrial <a href="http://fortune.com/fortune500">Fortune
500</a> companies have been losing ground to tech
giants like Apple and Facebook. But the technology on
which they rely emerged from the <a
href="https://marianamazzucato.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/MOFI-2014-PB-01-Mazzucato.pdf">taxpayer-funded</a>
research and development of bygone decades. The internet
started as ARPANET, an <a
href="https://www.raytheon.com/sites/default/files/rtnwcm/groups/gallery/documents/digitalasset/rtn_224614.pdf">invention</a>
of Honeywell-Raytheon working under a Department of
Defense (DoD) contract. The same satellites that enable
modern internet communications also enable US jets to
bomb their enemies, as does the <a
href="https://www.darpa.mil/attachments/(2O10)%20Global%20Nav%20-%20About%20Us%20-%20History%20-%20Resources%20-%2050th%20-%20GPS%20(Approved).pdf">GPS</a>
that enables online retailers to deliver products with
pinpoint accuracy. Apple’s touchscreen technology <a
href="https://www.ft.com/content/00347008-88af-11e7-afd2-74b8ecd34d3b">originated</a>
as a US Air Force tool. The same drones that record
breath-taking video are modified versions of Reapers and
Predators.</p>
<p>Tax-funded DoD research is the backbone of the modern,
hi-tech economy. But these technologies are dual-use.
The companies that many of us take for granted–including
Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and
PayPal–are connected indirectly and sometimes very
directly to the US military-intelligence complex.</p>
<p>A recent <a
href="https://www.openthegovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CDW-Report_FINAL-_Government-Inc.-Amazon-Government-Security-Secrecy-1.pdf">report</a>
by Open the Government, a bipartisan advocate of
transparency, reveals the extent of Amazon’s contracts
with the Pentagon. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos, the
company is <a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/technology/amazon-stock-price-1-trillion-value.html">now
valued</a> at $1 trillion, giving Bezos a personal <a
href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/#571d76e6251c">fortune</a> of
$131 billion. Open the Government’s report notes that
much of the US government “now runs on Amazon,” so much
so that the tech giant is opening a branch near
Washington, DC. Services provided by Amazon include
cloud contracts, machine learning and biometric data
systems. But more than this, Amazon is set to enjoy a
lucrative Pentagon IT contract under the $10bn, Joint
Enterprise Defense Infrastructure program, or JEDI. The
Pentagon says that it hopes Amazon technology will
“support lethality and enhanced operational efficiency.”</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://www.openthegovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CDW-Report_FINAL-_Government-Inc.-Amazon-Government-Security-Secrecy-1.pdf">report</a>
reveals what it can, but much is protected from public
scrutiny under the twin veils of national security and
corporate secrecy. For instance, all prospective host
cities for Amazon’s second headquarters were asked to
sign non-disclosure agreements.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t end there. According to the <a
href="https://www.openthegovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CDW-Report_FINAL-_Government-Inc.-Amazon-Government-Security-Secrecy-1.pdf">report,</a>
Amazon supplied surveillance and facial Rekognition
software to the police and FBI, and it has pitched the
reportedly inaccurate and <a
href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/1/28/18201204/amazon-facial-recognition-dark-skinned-women-mit-study">race/gender-biased</a>
technology to the Department of Homeland Security for
its counter-immigration operations. Ten percent of the
subsidiary Amazon Web Services’ profits come from
government contracts. Departments include the State
Department, NASA, Food and Drug Administration and the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2013,
Amazon won a $600m Commercial Cloud Services (C2S)
contract with the CIA. C2S will enable deep learning and
data fingerprinting. Amazon’s second headquarters will
be built in Virginia, the CIA’s home-state. Despite
repeated requests, the company refuses to disclose how
its personal devices, like Amazon Echo, connect with the
CIA.</p>
<p>But Amazon is just the tip of the iceberg.</p>
<p>According to one thorough <a
href="https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e">research
article:</a> In the mid-90s, future Google founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin used indirect Pentagon and
other government funding to develop web crawlers and
page ranking applications. Around the same time, the
CIA, Directorate of Intelligence and National Security
Agency–under the auspices of the National Science
Foundation–funded the Massive Data Digital Systems
(MDDS) program. A publication by Sergey Brin
acknowledges that he received funding from the MDDS
program. According to Professor Bhavani Thuraisingham,
who worked on the project, “The intelligence community …
essentially provided Brin seed-funding, which was
supplemented by many other sources, including the
private sector.” The Query Flocks part of Google’s
patented PageRank system was developed as part of the
MDDS program. Two entrepreneurs, Andreas Bechtolsheim
(who set up Sun Microsystems) and David Cheriton, both
of whom had previously received Pentagon money, were
early investors in Google.</p>
<p>Like Bezos, Brin and Page became billionaires.</p>
<p>The Pentagon’s Project Maven (or Algorithmic Warfare
Cross-Function Team) was <a
href="https://gizmodo.com/google-is-helping-the-pentagon-build-ai-for-drones-1823464533">launched
in 2017</a> as a machine-learning application to help
drones differentiate humans from objects. Technology and
staff were provided by Google, many of whom <a
href="https://gizmodo.com/google-employees-resign-in-protest-against-pentagon-con-1825729300">quit
in protest</a> after it was revealed that the project
had targeted Iraqis and Syrians for death.</p>
<p>In 1999, the CIA established a venture capital firm,
Peleus; later In-Q-Tel. One of In-Q-Tel’s companies was
the mapping firm Keyhole, <a
href="https://www.wired.com/2012/03/pentagon-google/">bought</a>
by Google in the mid-2000s and developed into Google
Earth. Within a few years, military personnel were using
Google Earth to target sites in Afghanistan. In 2005,
In-Q-Tel <a
href="https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-google-e836451a959e">invested</a>
$2.2m in Google. In 2010, the CIA and Google both <a
href="https://www.wired.com/2010/07/exclusive-google-cia/">invested</a>
in Recorded Futures, a social media tracking company.</p>
<p>Another billionaire, Peter Thiel, created both PayPal
and Palantir. With $2m of In-Q-Tel investment, Palantir
was launched in 2004 and provided data analysis for the
CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. Recently, it was <a
href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd">tested</a>
in New Orleans as part of local law enforcement’s
“predictive policing” program. Palantir creates digital
webs of citizens whose personal data are gleaned from
various sources. Palantir’s <a
href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190101192221/https:/www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/">webs</a>
show police images of alleged, potential, future
suspects along with captions such as, “Colleague of…,”
“Lives with…,” “Owner of…,” “Sibling of…,” and “Lover
of…”. Palantir is also <a
href="https://www.openthegovernment.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/CDW-Report_FINAL-_Government-Inc.-Amazon-Government-Security-Secrecy-1.pdf">used</a>
by US immigration authorities. For all the accusations
of Russian meddling in both the US elections and Brexit
referendum in the UK, mainstream Western media have
underplayed Palantir employees’ <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy">role</a>
in working with Facebook to create psychographic
profiles of potential voters.</p>
<p>These and other examples show that in addition to
trying to shape the world in the interests of American
elites, the Pentagon’s ulterior motive is to fund
hi-tech industry to stimulate new economies. That same
hi-technology, which exists in a so-called system of
“free enterprise,” not only creates monopolies, it does
so with taxpayer money. Spied on and manipulated by the
technologies they fund, the public, as consumers, then
pay for services provided by those tech giants. Talk
about a vicious cycle…</p>
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