Apple's Secret Debt to the CIA
CIA funding helped keep NeXT afloat in the 80s
A new book excerpt reveals how Steve Jobs' company NeXT, which later became the foundation for Apple's resurgence, was secretly funded by the CIA. The intelligence agency invested $100,000 in NeXT through a venture capital firm to gain access to its technology, a fact that remained hidden for decades. This revelation sheds light on the covert relationship between the tech industry and intelligence agencies during the Cold War era.
The CIA's investment in NeXT was a closely guarded secret, known only to a handful of people at the agency and at the company.
- Alien1Being
Apple :
"In 2012, Apple joined the PRISM data collection program run by the National Security Agency (NSA)."
"The firm added that between 1 December 2012 and 31 May 2013 it received between 4,000 and 5,000 requests from US law enforcement for customer data, involving between 9,000 and 10,000 accounts or devices. It did not say with how many it had complied."
- mrhottakes
CIA funding helped keep a lot of industries afloat in the 20th century.
- newsoftheday
I worked at a federal contractor in the mid-1990's with one customer. They bought a ton of NeXT machines.
- jnaina
I did not know until now, that I bought a cold war spy artifact from ebay 20 years ago, and shipped it all the way to Singapore.
- jongjong
It's pretty obvious now that governments have been propping up the tech sector in many countries. It's a weird industry. Look at the biggest tech companies. They all start out with apparently legitimate products but slowly lose market share over decades, end up doing nothing and yet more profitable and more valuable than ever. Look at companies like Oracle, Microsoft, Palantir, SpaceX, Salesforce... Their main business is extracting money from the government.