How Silicon Valley Took Over National Security
The Rest Is Classified
This episode of The Rest Is Classified explores the deep and often hidden ties between Silicon Valley tech giants and national security, focusing on how intelligence agencies have shaped
Key takeaways
- The CIA played a crucial role in saving Steve Jobs' career through secret contracts for Next Computers, which helped stabilize Apple's future.
- Intelligence agencies like the NSA and CIA used covert procurement strategies—such as disguising CIA-funded purchases as NSA projects—to avoid scrutiny.
Main topics
- CIA's role in Steve Jobs' career
- Government contracts and tech startups
Notable quotes
"I saved Steve Jobs. Maybe the NSA saved Steve Jobs, but we saved Steve Jobs." – Former DARPA director Vic Reese
Conclusion
The episode reveals that Silicon Valley's rise to power in national security is not accidental but
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:03) For exclusive interviews, bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, first look at live show tickets, a weekly newsletter, and discounted books, join the Declassified Club at therestisclassified.com. Speaker 2 (0:17) This episode is brought to you by HP. In Speaker 1 (0:20) intelligence, you quickly learn that you are only as strong as the network around you. It's rarely a single major event that undermines an operation. It's the gaps between systems. That's where information leaks. It's the same in Speaker 2 (0:32) business. Leaders face a constant battle against strict timelines, mismatched tools, and the worry their security isn't as tight as they think it is. Which is why HP approaches technology not as a collection of gadgets, but as an integrated system. And crucially, that protection is built in at hardware level. It runs quietly in the background, blocking threats without requiring constant specialist Speaker 1 (0:57) oversight. With a team of business advisors, HP helps businesses of all sizes find technology that fits their needs and budget. To see how HP Speaker 2 (1:07) helps businesses work securely and productively, visit hp.com forward slash classified. Trick listeners also benefit from 10 % off HP Business Technology with the code TRICK10. Speaker 1 (1:25) This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. Think about all those everyday habits we have to keep safe. They're second nature now. But these days, we do those same habits online too. Speaker 2 (1:35) Especially when you consider how much of our lives exist on screens. David, how much of your life do you reckon you've spent online? Well, just the best parts with you, Gordon. Well, David, NordVPN has actually mapped this out. And in the UK, we spend just over a... third of our lives online. That is 27 years. That's a whole parallel life that needs protecting. And that's where NordVPN comes in. Much more than just a VPN, they're built-in next-gen antivirus. acts as your first line of defence. To get our exclusive discount on your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com slash rest is classified. It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. That's nordvpn.com slash rest is classified. And the link is in the episode description. Speaker 1 (2:38) Welcome to The Rest is Classified. David McCloskey here. We have a very special bonus episode today on an absolutely wild article that was recently published in the Wall Street Journal, all about the hidden debt that Apple owes the CIA, which... immediately got my interest because I love any story about someone owing a debt to the CIA. It is a great story on its own, but it's also a great jumping off point for a much bigger conversation about the intersection of tech and espionage and national security. We are very lucky to have with us today the author of that article and a terrific new book on this topic. And we're also lucky that Gordon is still gone on vacation. So I am running the show here all by myself. We are joined today by Sharon Weinberger, who has covered the intersection of technology and national security for more than 25 years. She has been the national security editor at the Wall Street Journal and The Intercept. She's the author of wonderful books on DARPA, the Pentagon's very strange weapons program. She is now the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. And her new book is called Valley of Death, How Big Tech is Fueling. the future of war. And I have read it. It is absolutely essential reading for people who want to understand what is going on in national security today. So Sharon, thank you so much for being with us today. Speaker 5 (4:07) Hey, thanks so much for having me. I Speaker 1 (4:09) want to start with the article because it's this absolutely fascinating story about the CIA saving Steve Jobs' bacon back in the 1980s. So I'm wondering if you could just, if you could set that. that story up for those of us who maybe haven't read the article? Speaker 5 (4:26) Sure. So I think like a lot of journalists, you know, we hear stories, especially in national security, intelligence, you hear stories, sort of urban tales, apocryphal stories, some of them are true, some of them are not true. And a lot of what we do is trying to run them down. So about 10 years ago, shortly after I had published my last book on DARPA, The Imagineers of War, A former DARPA director named Vic Reese had dropped in to see me at my office and we were just chatting and catching up. And he starts telling me this story about meeting with Steve Jobs when he was the director of DARPA back in the early 1990s. And he said sort of half jokingly, he's like, you know, I saved Steve Jobs. And I'm like, what? He's like. I bought a whole bunch of next computers for DARPA, which of course makes perfect sense because DARPA had been behind ARPANET, early internet computer networking. And then he's like, okay, I bought maybe a few dozen. But I heard from someone at DARPA who had come from the National Security Agency that the NSA had bought a whole lot of Next computers. And he's like, so, you know, maybe I saved Steve Jobs, maybe the NSA Steve Jobs, but we saved Steve Jobs. And I'm like, that's fascinating. I wonder how I track that down. And, you know, I've dealt with the NSA a lot from my days working at the Intercept when we were publishing on the Snowden Archive and had, you know, a very good relationship with NSA public affairs as much as one can have. Speaker 1 (6:01) It's a very forthcoming organization in my experience, right? Yeah, but I knew it Speaker 5 (6:06) wasn't going to be like, can I call up the NSA? And like, did you really, you know, buy, you know, millions and millions of dollars worth? So I kind of put it on what I call an informal list of back pocket stories, you know, things that I kind of scratch away at. So when I have interviews with other people, this is 10 years ago, I asked people about it every once in a while, I Google, I look through FOIA archives, looking for any clue because like, where do you? even start because even the DARPA director, he knew was probably true, but he couldn't be a firsthand confirmation of the intelligence community part of it. Speaker 1 (6:40) Did you think it was true at that time? Or did you think it was this kind of like apocryphal sort of exaggerated made up story? Speaker 5 (6:46) Both. Meaning I thought it was certainly true. I Speaker 1 (6:48) mean, Speaker 5 (6:48) obviously it was true that DARPA had bought some. Speaker 5 (6:52) Vic Reese, the DARPA director, had heard about it. It was from an employee at DARPA who had come from the NSA. So it was definitely true that NSA had bought a larger number than DARPA had, but that it saved Steve Jobs, which was the whole point of the story, that it saved Steve Jobs and by extension, Apple, enabling Steve Jobs to go from Next back to Apple. So that part I was a little bit dubious on. And then I think it was about three or four years ago, I was on LinkedIn and I see a random post from a guy I didn't know talking about the NSA and Steve Jobs and saving Western civilization. And I'm like, okay, that is a little too weird that some, I mean, random in the sense that I didn't know this person was not a person currently in the intelligence community. And so I immediately emailed the guy and I'm like, I'd love to talk to you about Steve Jobs and the NSA. And this gentleman was named Dane Ehring. And so it turns out two things. A, he worked on the contract. And B, even more bizarre, the NSA was just a cover for the CIA. Which for me was very sort of weird. Like, why would you, I mean, you know, NSA, no such agency. Why would you use that to cover for a CIA contract? It gets even more convoluted. But I called him up and he talked about, you know, he had worked at the time as a contractor for the National Reconnaissance Office. So it turns out the NRO, the agency that controls our strategic spy satellites, that they had been the end customer. But as you probably know better than me, there used to be Program B in the CIA, which managed reconnaissance programs. So the CIA was the buyer of these. But it was a CIA contract. The NSA was used as cover and the end user were spies in the NRO. And Dane opened the doors to his former boss, Joe Romello, who had worked at the CIA. And from there, that was a real breakthrough. So that began to sort of unspool the threads of the story. Speaker 1 (9:05) Jobs at this point, what is he doing? We think of the black turtleneck Jobs launching the iPhone, but at this point in time, he's not at Apple. Right. He's he's preparing to return. But yeah, Speaker 5 (9:17) so he had been exiled from Apple. And, you know, as often happens in these management disputes instead of in fact, there's another great book out called Steve Jobs in Exile, which covers little bits of this as well. And it's a great book for people very interested in next. So. Steve Jobs had been thrown out of Apple and formed his own company called Next that was building, and even people who are not into