Radio War Nerd EP #120* [REPOST]—Secret Military History of the Internet, with Yasha Levine
Recorded February 4, 2018
Guest: Yasha Levine, author & journalist
We're reposting a free unlocked version of our interview with Yasha Levine on his new book "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" . . . Levine dives deep into the origins of the Internet, designed by Pentagon researchers to create an all-seeing counterinsurgency weapon in wars abroad, and against protest movements home in the USA. Fifty years ago, student radicals protested the early Internet as a Big Brother weapon of oppression; today, young "radicals" in the Internet Freedom movement promote this Pentagon weapon as a force for liberation and revolution against the same Big Brother state. Levine explains how these paradoxes came to be—and why Snowden's revelations about government spying on the Internet revealed not a bug in the system that can be "fixed", but rather the whole purpose of the Internet system from the start. Grim, hopeless & fascinating.
This open free repost of episode 120 comes courtesy of our Radio War Nerd subscribers, who make our weekly podcast possible. Freedom isn't free, and neither is Radio War Nerd...Sign up here on the patreon page for the Radio War Nerd podcast, the newsletter, the RSS feed, and more...
Buy Yasha Levine's book "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet"
Comments (6)
8 short years later and the answer to this podcast is : Palantir.
Great interview, can't wait to read the book. It was frustrating though that you guys came so close to realizing the truth about Snowden before dismissing it as conspiracy theories (just like the people dismissed the people protesting ARPANET in 1975). His support of Tor could have been a coincidence but his support of Zcash sealed the deal for me. You should also look into the NSA/CIA's involvement in Bitcoin and Zcash. Oh, and there has been blowback from Tor - the opiate crisis. China said "if you want our citizens to get around the Great Firewall we'll give your citizens some fentanyl to play with using your tool you designed to subvert us."
A friend of mine would note that while these were certainly honeypots, in the case of drug markets they were made much more effective by targeting drug dealers. Said friend would argue that the DEA had much more interest in capturing a few big players, and general mid level dealers, than the average person ordering. Not to mention they made a fair amount off the cryptocurrency they were then able to auction off.
I'm trying to find the name of the great sci-fi story referenced at 47:00 about a machine on a planet that can answer any question. Any ideas?
It's Asimov - I think this is it: <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiArKG4t8LZAhXGU7wKHWBvAqYQFghKMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.physics.princeton.edu%2Fph115%2FLQ.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1ytnZ3qflCHZg9CdHyndOf" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiArKG4t8LZAhXGU7wKHWBvAqYQFghKMAI&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.physics.princeton.edu%2Fph115%2FLQ.pdf&usg=AOvVaw1ytnZ3qflCHZg9CdHyndOf</a>
Some extra material related to the discussion. Here's a presentation from the 2017 Chaos Communication Congress about how British intelligence services created blogs, social media accounts, and their own URL shortener to target Iran and Syria. <a href="https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9233-uncovering_british_spies_web_of_sockpuppet_social_media_personas" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-9233-uncovering_british_spies_web_of_sockpuppet_social_media_personas</a>#t=1093