Information Wars April 7, 2019
American Internet Companies are Privatized Instruments of American
Geopolitical Power, and They're Not Even Hiding It
Perhaps the one positive thing that's come out of RussiaGate is that no one
believes Silicon Valley's global utopianism anymore.
By Yasha Levine
Originally published at Yasha Levine's Influence Ops
I was in the New York Public Library recently doing research in the archives
when I stumbled on a 1944 pamphlet from Western Electric, the old American
techno-telephone monopolist. It's called "Circuits for Victory" and its 40
glossy, slickly produced pages are dedicated to one thing: celebrating all
the ways that the company's telecommunication technology helps the United
States government fight and win wars.
The pamphlet is a historical document, but if you squint at it right and
replace "Western Electric" with, say, "Facebook" or "Google" or "Amazon,"
you actually get an accurate sense of what Silicon Valley monopolies are
today: privatized extensions of American Empire.
Since the dot com boom, Silicon Valley has been selling itself to the world
as a new breed of global corporation - neutral platforms that sit on top of
the world, unconcerned with and totally removed from American geopolitical
and national security interests. The public believed it. Even Silicon Valley
people believed it. It was the dawn of a new depoliticized corporate
internationalism. It was all about a utopian technological revolution that
would connect and empower people, regardless of their nationality or
language. Indeed, Silicon Valley was supposed to make "the nation" obsolete.
Of course, this was always a transparent sham.
And perhaps the one positive thing that's come out of RussiaGate - and the
ridiculous mainstream belief that Russia attacked American democracy with
Internet memes - is that no one believes this Silicon Valley global
utopianism anymore.
RussiaGate forced Silicon Valley to publicly admit something that I've been
saying for years - something that is at the core of the thesis of my book,
Surveillance Valley: American Internet companies are not abstract global
platforms, but privatized instruments of American geopolitical power.
It's out in the open now. Even Google CEO Sundar Pichai admits it - and
Donald Trump blasts it out to the world:
Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump
Just met with @sundarpichai, President of @Google, who is obviously doing
quite well. He stated strongly that he is totally committed to the U.S.
Military, not the Chinese Military..
March 27th 2019
16,890 Retweets89,698 Likes
These days, the industry's corporate utopian internationalism is being
gradually replaced with something much closer to the politics that have
always been in the background: a politics of patriotism and militarism.
And our political and media class is right along with them, and driving this
change:
Democrats, Republican, diplomats, intelligence officials, journalists, and
thinktankers of all types are now in full agreement: the Internet is a
dangerous weapon that needs to be restricted. It is too dangerous to not be
regulated under a National Security regime.
Not that long ago, Senator Dianne Feinstein berated attorneys from Google,
Facebook and Twitter for allowing "the Russian" to turn the Internet into an
anti-American weapon: "What we're talking about is a cataclysmic change.
What we're talking about is a major foreign power with the sophistication
and ability to involve themselves in a presidential election . You bear this
responsibility. You've created these platforms.and you have to be the ones
to do something about it." And she followed up with a threat: either Silicon
Valley finds a solution voluntarily, or the government will.
Or, as Fred Kaplan - Slate's national security man - put it: "Openness
allows the free exchange of ideas and expression of dissent but also leaves
the system, and everyone in it, prey to criminals, terrorists, and, in this
case, foreign spies and propagandists: all of them shrouded in anonymity .
It may be time to impose some regulations on this system."
Censoring the Internet because it's too free and doesn't protect us from
"the Russians" - this is the acceptable elite opinion in American politics
today.
And Silicon Valley has done exactly that.
On top of racking up military contracts, they've started opaquely
self-regulating and policing their platforms like the geopolitical tools
that they are. They've increased cooperation with intelligence agencies and
are now partnering with all sorts of shady national security thinktanks and
outfits - including New Knowledge, Atlantic Council, and the German Marshall
Fund. They censoring and "moderating" their platforms in defense of American
"national security" - which, in today's political reality, means going after
"the Russians" and silencing voices that oppose America's corporate and
military power. That includes American anti-fascist groups:
So that's where we are today.
It's pretty clear that the way things are trending, it won't be long until
Facebook and Google start putting out public relation materials filled more
and more with the proud militarism on display in Western Electric's
"Circuits of Victory." And they should. It would be the honest thing to do.
Today, in the full tide of victory, men and women of Western Electric are
engaged in their greatest job-producing the communications weapons of war,
the radios, radar, the switchboards, telephones and cable that help our
fighting men win battles, help save American lives and help maintain the
vital home front communication network. . This book tells you something of
what we of Western Electric have contributed toward victory in this war.
-Western Electric's President, Clarance G. Still.
Check it out:
"Communications - One of the Foremost Military Tools"
Replace "COMMUNICATIONS" with "THE INTERNET" - and you basically get Google,
Amazon and Facebook.
"The Telephone - Basic Communications Weapon of War"
When I interviewed former ARPA Director Stephen J. Lukasik, who oversaw the
build-out of the ARPANET in the 1970s, he explained to me the meaning of a
military command and control system: "Command means you will do what I say.
Control means don't do what I don't want you to do." And you can't do either
of those without a telephone! Now, you can't do any of that without the
Internet.
"How Military Communications Works"
This is actually all about radio and telephone communication, but it might
as well be a chart of the secure Internet that the Pentagon uses today to
link up into a single fighting force. Looking at this chart, you could see
why the military began to develop digital networks not long after WWII and
why the Internet was ultimately built and deployed. How else you gonna run a
complex modern fighting force?
"Cable - Heavy-duty Word Carriers of War"
Today, it's Internet backbones and satellites.
"Switchboards - Nerve Centers for War Messages"
This is what a pre-Internet router looked like. Two shirtless recruits
punching cables.
"Radio - In the Air .On Land .At Sea"
A hint at why the U.S. is fighting China on 5G tech deployment.
Yasha Levine
Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist and a founding editor of The
eXiled Online. His latest book is, "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military
History of the Internet."
