medium | INSURGE INTELLIGENCE,
a new crowd-funded investigative journalism project, breaks the
exclusive story of how the United States intelligence community funded,
nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world
through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google
was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups
co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’
The
origins of this ingenious strategy trace back to a secret
Pentagon-sponsored group, that for the last two decades has functioned
as a bridge between the US government and elites across the business,
industry, finance, corporate, and media sectors. The group has allowed
some of the most powerful special interests in corporate America to
systematically circumvent democratic accountability and the rule of law
to influence government policies, as well as public opinion in the US
and around the world. The results have been catastrophic: NSA mass
surveillance, a permanent state of global war, and a new initiative to
transform the US military into Skynet.
The origins of the Pentagon’s new innovation initiative can thus be
traced back to ideas that were widely circulated inside the Pentagon
decades ago, but which failed to take root fully until now. Between 2006
and 2010, the same period in which such ideas were being developed by
Highlands Forum experts like Lochard, Zalman and Rendon, among many
others, the Office of Net Assessment provided a direct mechanism to
channel these ideas into concrete strategy and policy development
through the Quadrennial Defense Reviews, where Marshall’s input was primarily responsible for the expansion of the “black” world: “special operations,” “electronic warfare” and “information operations.”
Marshall’s pre-9/11 vision of a fully networked and automated military system found its fruition in the Pentagon’s Skynet study
released by the National Defense University in September 2014, which
was co-authored by Marshall’s colleague at the Highlands Forum, Linton
Wells. Many of Wells’ recommendations are now to be executed via the new
Defense Innovation Initiative by veterans and affiliates of the ONA and
Highlands Forum.
Given
that Wells’ white paper highlighted the Pentagon’s keen interest in
monopolizing AI research to monopolize autonomous networked robot
warfare, it is not entirely surprising that the Forum’s sponsoring
partners at SAIC/Leidos display a bizarre sensitivity about public use
of the word ‘Skynet.’
On a Wikipedia entry
titled ‘Skynet (fictional)’, people using SAIC computers deleted
several paragraphs under the ‘Trivia’ section pointing out real-world
‘Skynets’, such as the British military satellite system, and various
information technology projects.
Hagel’s
departure paved the way for Pentagon officials linked to the Highlands
Forum to consolidate government influence. These officials are embedded
in a longstanding shadow network of political, industry, media and
corporate officials that sit invisibly behind the seat of government,
yet literally write its foreign and domestic national security policies
whether the administration is Democrat of Republican, by contributing
‘ideas’ and forging government-industry relationships.
It
is this sort of closed-door networking that has rendered the American
vote pointless. Far from protecting the public interest or helping to
combat terrorism, the comprehensive monitoring of electronic
communications has been systematically abused to empower vested
interests in the energy, defense, and IT industries.
The
state of permanent global warfare that has resulted from the Pentagon’s
alliances with private contractors and unaccountable harnessing of
information expertise, is not making anyone safer, but has spawned a new
generation of terrorists in the form of the so-called ‘Islamic
State’ — itself a Frankenstein by-product
of the putrid combination of Assad’s brutality and longstanding US
covert operations in the region. This Frankenstein’s existence is now
being cynically exploited
by private contractors seeking to profit exponentially from expanding
the national security apparatus, at a time when economic volatility has
pressured governments to slash defense spending.
According
to the Securities and Exchange Commission, from 2008 to 2013, the five
largest US defense contractors lost 14 percent of their employees, as
the winding down of US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan led to lack of
business and squeezed revenues. The continuation of the ‘Long War’
triggered by ISIS has, for now, reversed their fortunes. Companies
profiting from the new war include many connected to the Highlands Forum, such as Leidos, Lockheed Martin, Northrup Grumman, and Boeing. War is, indeed, a racket.
No more shadows
Yet in the long-run, the information imperialists have already failed.
This investigation is based entirely on open source techniques, made
viable largely in the context of the same information revolution that
enabled Google. The investigation has been funded entirely by members of
the public, through crowd-funding. And the investigation has been
published and distributed outside the circuits of traditional media,
precisely to make the point that in this new digital age, centralized
top-down concentrations of power cannot overcome the power of people,
their love of truth and justice, and their desire to share.
What
are the lessons of this irony? Simple, really: The information
revolution is inherently decentralized, and decentralizing. It cannot be
controlled and co-opted by Big Brother. Efforts to do so will in the
end invariably fail, in a way that is ultimately self-defeating.
The
latest mad-cap Pentagon initiative to dominate the world through
control of information and information technologies, is not a sign of
the all-powerful nature of the shadow network, but rather a symptom of
its deluded desperation as it attempts to ward off the acceleration of
its hegemonic decline.
But
the decline is well on its way. And this story, like so many before it,
is one small sign that the opportunities to mobilize the information
revolution for the benefit of all, despite the efforts of power to hide
in the shadows, are stronger than ever. READ PART ONE
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