In-Q-Tel: Big Tech & the Surveillance State
“Sauron has regained much of his former strength…. Concealed within in his fortress, the Lord of Mordor sees all. His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh. You know of what I speak: a great eye, lidless, wreathed in flame.”
“The Eye of Sauron.”
“He is gathering all evil to him. Very soon he will have summoned an army great enough to launch an assault upon Middle Earth.”
“You know this? How?”
“I have seen it.”
So spoke Saruman — the sellout wizard who betrayed Middle Earth and joined forces with the evil Lord Sauron — to Gandalf in Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. By what means did Saruman “see” the growing power of Sauron? He possessed a palantír, one of the ancient “seeing stones” that enabled users to see things from afar.
Like Saruman, the sellouts of our civilization have their own palantír. Palantir Technologies was launched in 2003 as a joint venture of billionaire techie Peter Thiel (of PayPal and Facebook fortunes) and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Thiel chipped in $30 million and the CIA, operating through its venture-capital arm In-Q-Tel, reportedly put up $2 million. If you didn’t know the CIA was in the venture-capital business, you’re not alone. Probably few Americans are aware that the CIA has an outfit called In-Q-Tel, and fewer still realize it has been very busy financing tech startups with tax dollars for more than two decades.
But the $2 million In-Q-Tel invested in Palantir is only part of the Thiel-CIA story. The mega-rich Thiel, quite obviously, did not need In-Q-Tel’s relatively paltry sum of taxpayer money. No, the partnership involved much more than that. As to be expected, the details are spy-world murky, but the deal involved close collaboration between Palantir’s Palo Alto geeks and Langley’s scientists, spooks, and technicians. The CIA collaboration and imprimatur has been more important than the In-Q-Tel cash infusion. An investment by the CIA is viewed by many venture capitalists as a good indicator that the new startup has an open pathway to government contracts and, hence, a steady (and expanding) revenue stream. Every dollar In-Q-Tel invests in a company is seen as a stamp of approval that can be counted on to bring in another $12 to $15 from other venture capitalists, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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