Strong ties bind spy agencies and Silicon Valley | Reuters
▻http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/03/us-usa-security-siliconvalley-idUSBRE96214I20130703
Former U.S. officials and intelligence sources say the collaboration between the tech industry and spy agencies is both broader and deeper than most people realize, dating back to the formative years of #Silicon_Valley itself.
#surveillance #silicon_army #plo
HISTORY OF SHARED INTERESTS
The close and symbiotic relationship between U.S. tech companies and government defense and intelligence agencies is frequently underplayed in the mythology of Silicon Valley. Defense contracts were its lifeblood through much of the 1950s and 1960s. Frederick Terman, who led Allied radio-jamming efforts in World War II, came to Stanford University with grant money and counted the founders of Hewlett-Packard Co among his students.
Varian Associates and other startups, many with ties to Stanford, got their start in the 1950s with military contracts for microwave and vacuum-tube technologies that were used in aerospace projects. In the 1960s, government space and defense programs, especially the Minuteman missile effort, were the biggest customers for the Valley’s expensive integrated circuit computer chips. Database software maker Oracle Corp’s first customer was the CIA.
“The birth of Silicon Valley was solving defense problems,” said Anup Ghosh, whose cybersecurity firm Invincea Inc was launched in 2009 with funding from the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
#DARPA, which initially funded what became the Internet out of a desire for a communications network that would survive a nuclear attack, has intensified its work on Internet security in recent years and recently launched a “fast-track” program to get smaller amounts of money to startups more quickly.
Federal cybersecurity spending is expected to reach $11.9 billion next year, up from $8.6 billion in 2010, according to budget analysts at Deltek.