How the CIA Spawned Google
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American tech giant Google has faced regulatory scrutiny on numerous occasions amid accusations of antitrust violations. Google's relationship with the CIA, ranging from early financial support to collaborative efforts have been decried as undermining privacy rights and free speech in the digital landscape.
Google's creation played a crucial role in the US intelligence community's scheme to attain global dominance by controlling information.
How it Started
The Pentagon founded its private sector project the Highlands Forum during the Clinton administration in 1994, according to the INSURGE INTELLIGENCE project.
Together with defense contractors, the group hammered out a strategy for “network-centric warfare.”
The 9/11 terrorist attacks were seized upon by US spy agencies to justify not only military invasions across the Muslim world, but also mass surveillance of civilian populations.
CIA Steps In
The CIA's Massive Digital Data Systems (MDDS) program, which originated in the 1990s, was designed to enhance query techniques and track users' digital footprints.
To better serve its goals, in 1999, the CIA established its own venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, to invest in potentially useful technologies.
Ph.D. students at Stanford University, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were working on precisely such a tech start-up.
The design of the search engine and algorithms that ultimately evolved into Google was funded by CIA grants through a program aimed at enhancing mass surveillance capabilities.
🧵GOOGLE’S DECADES-LONG GLOBAL TRACK RECORD OF BREAKING LAWS
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) February 4, 2025
China is launching an investigation into Google for suspected antitrust violations. The US tech giant is no stranger to regulatory scrutiny. Here’s a list of the most notable cases. (1/6) https://t.co/5HFvtBWAZB pic.twitter.com/HLOy7SFTKS
PRISM
Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA had direct access to Google's systems through its secret PRISM program, enabling the agency to harvest vast amounts of data on American citizens, Washington's allies, and foreign nationals.
Ex-CIA spooks are employed in almost every department at Google, according to a 2022 report based on the analysis of employment websites.
Google has been slapped with multiple lawsuits stemming from its history of data misuse and privacy violations.
