Hitting the Books: When the military-industrial complex came to Silicon Valley
’s plan was simple but ambitious: to harness the best and brightest ideas from the tech industry for Pentagon use. Carter’s premise was that new commercial companies had surpassed the Defense Department’s ability to create cutting-edge technologies. The native Pennsylvanian, who had spent several years at Stanford University prior to his appointment as defense secretary, was deeply impressed with the innovative spirit of the Bay Area and its millionaire magnates.
In March 2016, Carter organized the Defense Innovation Board , an elite brain trust of civilians tasked with providing advice and recommendations to the Pentagon’s leadership. Carter appointed former Google CEO Eric Schmidt to chair the DIB, which includes current and former executives from Facebook, Google, and Instagram, among others.
The problem they [CIA leaders] were trying to solve was: How to get technology companies who historically have never engaged with the federal government to actually provide technologies, particularly in the IT space, that the government can leverage. Because they were really afraid of what they called at that time the prospects of a “digital Pearl Harbor” Pearl Harbor
By channeling funds from intelligence agencies to nascent firms building technologies that might be useful for surveillance, intelligence gathering, data analysis, cyberwarfare, and cybersecurity, the CIA hoped to get an edge over its global rivals by using investment funds to co-opt creative engineers, hackers, scientists, and programmers. The Washington Post reported that “In-Q-Tel was engineered with a bundle of contradictions built in. It is independent of the CIA, yet answers wholly to it.
Official sources never revealed how much In-Q-Tel invested in Keyhole. In 2004, Google purchased the start-up for an undisclosed amount and renamed it Google Earth. The acquisition was significant.
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