The Secret Military History of the Internet (w/ Yasha Levine) | The Chris Hedges Report
Apr 2, 2025
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Yasha Levine, an investigative journalist and author of Surveillance Valley, delves into the internet's hidden military origins, tracing its roots back to the Vietnam War as a surveillance tool for the U.S. He discusses how this initial purpose has influenced today’s massive data collection practices. Levine highlights the historical awareness among early internet users regarding its implications for privacy and state control. The conversation also addresses the relationship between technology companies and government, examining the internet's evolution from a means for liberation to a potential threat.
The Internet was originally developed by the military as a surveillance tool during the Vietnam War, reflecting its foundational purpose of control.
Despite its modern perception as a liberating technology, historical critiques reveal the Internet's deep ties to military and corporate interests.
The alignment of major tech companies with governmental power has raised significant concerns about civil liberties and the future of democracy.
Deep dives
Origins of the Internet and Military Surveillance
The Internet's origins lie in military applications designed for surveillance during the Vietnam War. Early technology prototypes were created to monitor guerrilla fighters and anti-war activists, establishing a surveillance framework that has evolved into today's vast private data collection industry. The U.S. military's Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA) was pivotal in this development, focusing on counterinsurgency techniques that required an understanding of civilian populations. As a result, the Internet was created as a tool not only for communication but also for behavior tracking and intelligence gathering, with the military's interests deeply engrained in its architecture.
Data Collection and Global Surveillance
Today, every online action contributes to a staggering amount of data that can be collected, analyzed, and utilized for surveillance. Major tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon profit from mining user data, often sharing it with government agencies, leading to unprecedented levels of personal privacy invasion. This has transformed society into one of the most monitored populations in history, where sensitive information, including personal correspondence and financial records, is constantly at risk. The vast troves of data collected by both corporations and the government form the backbone of a potentially dystopian future, undermining the principles of liberty and privacy.
Public Awareness and Historical Critiques
While many now view the Internet as a liberatory medium, historical criticisms during its inception highlight awareness of its surveillance capabilities. Students and activists in the 1960s and 70s, particularly at institutions like Harvard and MIT, protested against the military's connection to the technology. Their sophisticated critiques recognized that the Internet and its underlying technologies were primarily tools of power and control, intended to pacify dissent both abroad and domestically. Forgotten over time, these historical critiques have resurfaced, prompting contemporary discussions about the Internet's real purpose and consequences.
Commercialization and the Utopian Myth
The commercialization of the Internet led to a rebranding that portrayed it as a transformative and democratizing force in society. Figures like Stuart Brand contributed to this image, promoting the belief that the Internet could create a global democratic village and render governments obsolete. However, this idealistic narrative often obscured the reality of corporate interests, which intertwine with military and intelligence agencies, undermining true democracy. The marriage of tech companies and American imperialism has led to a complex relationship where corporate power often supersedes public interest in policymaking.
Current Landscape and the Rise of Tech Power
In the current political landscape, tech companies have shifted from presenting themselves as benign entities to openly aligning with governmental power. The election of Donald Trump saw Silicon Valley embracing a more assertive role, manifesting in their desire for less regulation and more integration into state affairs. As these companies increasingly influence policy, they seek to establish themselves as central players within the American socio-political framework. The convergence of technology and political power raises concerns about freedom and civil liberties, as the actions of these corporations directly shape the future landscape of democracy.
The internet, from its inception, was created to be a tool of mass surveillance. It was developed first as a counterinsurgency tool for the Vietnam War and the rest of the Global South, but like many devices of foreign policy naturally it made its way back to U.S. soil. Yasha Levine, in his book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, chronicles the linear history of the internet’s birth at the Pentagon to its now ubiquitous use in all aspects of modern life. He joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to explain the reality of the internet’s history.
Levine describes the early concept of the internet as “an operating system for the American empire, an information system that could collect all this data and that could provide useful, meaningful information to the managers of the world.”
This was understood by university students with close proximity to the internet project as well as domestic critics. Far from its coy, modern day interpretation of the internet as a mere communication technology, Levine makes clear the originator’s plans as well as the surprising resistance to them that followed. Levine explains that at the height of the Vietnam War, when much of America’s youth were protesting and seeking to understand the American empire, people were aware of the large amounts of capital it took to purchase and run computers, capital that only the most powerful in America had access to.
“This history or this understanding [was repressed] and people have been propagandized to view computers in a totally different light, in a benign light, in a utopian light, which was not the case in the 1950s, in the 1960s, in the 1970s and even up into the 1980s,” Levine tells Hedges.
Today, the internet’s omnipresence vindicates the skepticism of those early skeptics. Even the supposedly privacy-advocating technologies developed in response to the internet project, Levine explains, came out of the Pentagon for military purposes. Levine reveals the Tor browser, Signal messaging app and other tools that were meant to help ordinary people hide themselves from American surveillance spies were actually developed to help the spies these same applications claim that they are subverting.
“Jacob Appelbaum and Roger Dingledine, who was also the head of the Tor project back then…these guys were on the payroll of the US government.”
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