Who was behind Gates, Jobs and Zuckerberg

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

The USSR was several years ahead of the United States in creating the Internet. We could really be ahead of the rest of the world in virtual. But the fateful project of Academician Glushkov was deliberately ditched. And the first computer network was tested in 1969 by the Pentagon.

Where is the money

“At all times, the main engine of technological progress has been war and arms costs,” says Elena Larina, an expert on competitive intelligence. - Both in the USA and in the USSR, a lot of money was spent on science. But in the States, unfortunately, they were spent more efficiently. And now we need to catch up.

- We're trying. Skolkovo was created, a Russian analogue of Silicon Valley.

- The creators of Skolkovo should carefully study the history of the famous valley, which has largely shaped the second reality of today's world - the Internet and the computer industry. The vast majority of world famous computer companies came from Silicon Valley.

- Everyone knows that.

- Much less known is the fact that for decades the US government has purposefully pumped money into the valley. The trick was that it was not purely military research that was funded, but civilian projects. Then projects that survived, withstood the competition, paid off, and found military use. Silicon Valley was created hand in hand by the state, universities and the private sector, which was gradually getting on its feet thanks to the orders of the government.

Let's start with billionaire Bill Gates. The son of a simple school teacher Mary Maxwell Gates, as legend has it. In fact, Gates' mom was a member of the board of directors of reputable financial and telecommunications companies, including the president of the national council of UnitedWay International. There, under her leadership, sat two monsters of the computer market - IBM presidents of different years, John Opel and John Eckert. It so happened that IBM commissioned the development of an operating system for the first personal computer of an unknown company, the "son of a simple teacher" Microsoft. Gates bought the QDOS system from the programmer Paterson for $ 50 thousand, called it MS-DOS, sold the license to IBM, retaining the copyright for Microsoft. This is how the first Microsoft operating system was born. PC computers, which have become the standard for the entire global personal computer industry, have become firmly attached to Microsoft. In 1996, with contracts with IBM and operating systems behind him, Bill Gates went public and became incredibly rich overnight. For our topic, the fact is extremely important: since the 1960s, IBM has been the leading manufacturer of "complex hardware" for the NSA and other intelligence services.

The story with Google began in the heart of Silicon Valley - Stanford University. There, students Larry Page and Sergey Brin worked on the Stanford Digital Library Project. The library needed a search engine. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation (by status - the US Federal Agency, closely associated with the intelligence community and the Pentagon). The first $ 100,000 for Google for the two students came from Andy Bechtolsheim, a contractor for a number of projects funded by the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Technologies Agency (DARPA).

The first serious money in Google was invested by Sequoia Capital - one of the most successful venture capital funds in the world. The head of the foundation, the famous Don Valentino, was one of the executives at Fairchild Semiconductor, the largest contractor for the Pentagon and the intelligence community.

In the mid-90s, the company's leaders came to Russia to create the "Silicon Taiga" on the basis of the universities of Novosibirsk or Tomsk. Seeing that everyone in "Taiga" is only interested in sawing up the former Soviet property, after a year of torment, they returned to America not salty.

Well, for a snack - Mark our Zuckerberg. Facebook was the social networking site of the Ivy League, the universities where the American elite study. The brand needed money for business development and promotion. The first $ 500 thousand was given by Peter Thiel. Within four months, Facebook has amassed its first million users and is growing rapidly. Before investing in Zuckerberg, Thiel created the PayPal payment system, which he positioned as a means of fighting national payment systems, a kind of step towards the world currency. But now Peter Thiel is not known for PayPal or even Facebook. For five years, he bit by bit collected and funded a team of the best mathematicians, linguists, analysts, specialists in systems analysis, data access, etc. Now this is the favorite brainchild of the American intelligence community - Palantir. Her boss Thiel is a member of the Bilderberg Club (considered the secret world government. - Ed.)

Zuckerberg needed more money. Bill Gates helped a couple of million. Accel Partners managed to get 13 million, which is not enough for the super-fast growth of Facebook. The investment was organized by James Breuer, former head of the National Venture Capital Association, in collaboration with Gilman Louis, executive director of the official In-Q-Tel Foundation for the American Intelligence Community. So strangers and casual do not walk in Silicon Valley.

Behavior management

- You forgot about the late rebel Steve Jobs. I hope he wandered there on his own?

- Everyone knows about the famous SIRI voice assistant installed in iPhones today. It was inspired by the new type of software Calo. The name comes from the Latin word Calonis - officer's servant. The project was funded by the same Pentagon agency DARPA. You can give more examples from computer gurus, but I don't want to tire the readers.

"Is the rebel an officer's servant?" Class! It turns out that Google, Microsoft, Facebook are branches of the Pentagon or the NSA? This is why intelligence agencies have access to their servers to electronically spy on Internet giants' clients, which Snowden exposed.

- In no case! These are not affiliates. Moreover, government intervention is limited by certain rules and laws. And it is not necessary, on the basis of Snowden's revelations, to assume that the special services can do whatever they want with any American company. The truth is, high-tech businesses, universities, the American intelligence community are all from the same backyard. A kind of "military-information-industrial complex". They are engaged in one thing - they collect, process individual and corporate data, that is, information about each of us. Some - for the sake of profit. Others - for the sake of national security or what is behind it.

There is a textbook story. The father, who works for a computer company, found out about his daughter's pregnancy even before she herself confessed to him. Each of us, depending on desires, needs, moods, etc., searches for something on the Internet, visits different portals, leaves messages. And on the Internet - remember! - nothing is ever lost. If you summarize the visits, messages, then you can understand what is happening with a person or with an organization. And if you know what is happening to someone, then you can offer him at the right time the necessary goods, services, etc. And he will definitely purchase them. This is called behavior management. Now imagine that you are not selling goods and services on the Internet, but certain political beliefs, views, points of view of the world, etc. This is National Security. A very serious topic. More - sometime next time.

Big Brother

The British satirical portal The Daily Mash has launched a witty story. Say, the secret services have specially spread the World Wide Web. We knock on the keys, and the invisible Big Brother reads everything, delves into everything.“Earlier, the guys from the NSA (US National Security Agency) were on duty for days at the house of the subject of interest, tormented with telephoto lenses, tape recorders, choked on coffee with sticky buns. To save time and stay healthy, they came up with the Internet. Knowing that the people will lay out everything about themselves. And so it happened."

Pure British humor. But there is some truth in every joke. Now the special services do not have to suffer with equipment, earn gastritis in ambushes. Thanks to the revelations of Snowden's former clerk, everyone already knows that NSA employees in comfortable offices are quietly looking after the whole world. With the help of the largest Internet providers, telephone operators. Under the hood are presidents, politicians, businessmen, ordinary citizens … In Brazil alone, judging by Snowden's revelations, the NSA listens and reads 2.3 billion phone calls and e-mails a month. In Germany - 20 million telephone calls daily. But Russia, along with these countries, is included in the priority list of the NSA! The scale of Big Brother's surveillance in other parts of the world is hard to imagine.

And in the state of Utah this fall the largest "Data Center" of the NSA will go into operation. Here ALL electronic information from the WHOLE planet will be stored and analyzed.

Although, in fact, the Internet was born in the bowels of the American Department of Defense. And only then he was taken over by the special services.

In 1958, after the launch of the first Soviet artificial Earth satellite, the Pentagon created the Agency for Advanced Defense Research Projects - DARPA. To prevent the Russians from overtaking America in space and on earth. The cold war threatened to turn into a hot, atomic one. The Pentagon has ordered a reliable communications system capable of withstanding a nuclear attack. The agency created the ARPANET computer network. Later it grew into the Internet. The first test took place on October 29, 1969. But such a network could appear in the USSR, and even earlier than the American one!

Cross on the Soviet Internet

Here are the memoirs of Academician Viktor Glushkov, one of the most brilliant mathematicians and computer scientists in the history of the twentieth century: “The task of building a nationwide automated economic management system (OGAS) was posed to me by AN Kosygin in November 1962. By this time, our country already had the concept of a unified system of computing centers for processing economic information. We developed the first draft design of the Unified State Network, which included about 100 centers in large industrial cities and centers of economic regions, united by broadband communication channels.

Beginning in 1964 (the time when my project appeared), economists began to openly oppose me, many of whom later left for the United States and Israel. Kosygin became interested in the cost of the project. Roughly it was estimated at 20 billion rubles. We have provided for cost recovery. In three five-year plans, the implementation of the program would have brought to the budget at least 100 billion rubles. But our would-be economists confused Kosygin … They put us aside and began to be wary.

In the late 60s, information appeared in the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers that the Americans had made a preliminary design of the information network back in 1966, that is, two years later than us. But unlike us, they did not argue, but did.

Then we got worried too. I went to Kirilenko (secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, in charge of industry. - E. Ch.) And handed over a note that it was necessary to return to the ideas of my project. A commission was created. It would be better not to create it …

Meanwhile, the orgy began in the Western press. The Americans were the first to worry … Of course, any strengthening of our economy is the worst thing for them. Therefore, they immediately opened fire on me from all calibers. The Washington Post has published an article entitled "Punch Card Controls the Kremlin", designed for the leadership of the USSR. "The tsar of Soviet cybernetics, academician V. M. Glushkov suggests replacing the Kremlin leaders with computers."The article in the English Guardian was intended for the Soviet intelligentsia. They say that Academician Glushkov proposes to create a network of computing centers, more advanced than in the West. In fact, this is an order of the KGB to hide the thoughts of Soviet citizens in data banks and to keep an eye on every person. This article was transmitted 15 times by all the "voices" in different languages to the Soviet Union and the countries of the socialist camp. (The same two newspapers fanned the worldwide Snowden scandal. Why would that be? - E. Ch.)

This was followed by a series of reprints of these libels in other leading capitalist newspapers, a series of new articles. Then strange things began to happen. In 1970, I flew from Montreal to Moscow. An experienced pilot sensed something was wrong over the Atlantic and returned back. It turned out that something was poured into the fuel. Thank God, everything worked out, but it remained a mystery who did it and why. And a little later in Yugoslavia, a truck almost ran into our car - the driver miraculously managed to dodge.

And all our opposition, in particular the economic one, took up arms against me. In early 1972, Izvestia published an article "Lessons from the Electronic Boom". In it, the author tried to prove that in the United States, the demand for computers has fallen. In a number of memorandums to the Central Committee of the CPSU from economists who have visited the United States, the use of computer technology to manage the economy was equated with the fashion for abstract painting. They say that capitalists buy cars only because it is fashionable, so as not to seem out of date. All this disorientated our leadership."

Russian Windows

Judging by the memoirs of the academician, there were many other intrigues, intrigues, attempts to embroil him with the leaders of the USSR. In the fall of 1981, Viktor Mikhailovich fell ill. He was treated for a long time in Kiev, from there he was transferred to Moscow at the Central Clinical Hospital. He died on January 30, 1982. The great mathematician, cybernetics was only 58!

“So they put an end to the Soviet Internet,” says Elena LARINA, an expert in competitive intelligence, who introduced me to the academician’s memories. - But in addition to what Glushkov was talking about, competitive servers and personal computers were made in the USSR. There were also protocols for transferring information, and even, surprising as it may seem today, friendly interfaces (a modern example of such systems is Windows. - E. Ch.). They would allow ordinary Soviet managers, designers, and scientists who do not know programming to work with computers. In the same way, everyone who is at least a little familiar with computers uses the Internet today. By the way, all in the same Soviet Union, the scientist M. M. Subbotin first created hypertext - a system of links that underlies the Internet.

Alas…

Evgeny Chernykh