AI Summary
5 min readIn 2013, a former DARPA director told journalist Sharon Weinberger a half-joking story: he believed the intelligence community had saved Steve Jobs by buying a huge number of Next computers in the late 1980s. Weinberger spent a decade scratching at that rumor, and it turned out to be true—though the real buyer wasn't the NSA, as the DARPA director had heard, but the CIA using the NSA as cover, with the National Reconnaissance Office as the end customer. That discovery became the launching point for her new book, Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War, which examines the radically shifted power dynamics between Silicon Valley and the national security establishment.
The CIA's Quiet Lifeline to Steve Jobs
The story begins in the mid-1980s, after Steve Jobs was forced out of Apple. He founded Next, building beautiful, ahead-of-its-time computers with built-in networking and superior graphics. The problem was that they were too expensive for the consumer and university markets he was targeting. The company was struggling, kept afloat largely by investment from Ross Perot.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:03) **Introduction & Episode Setup** - David McCloskey introduces a bonus episode centered on a Wall Street Journal article about the "hidden debt Apple owes the CIA," framing it as a jumping-off point for a larger conversation on tech and national security.
- 2 (03:55) **The Origin of the CIA & Steve Jobs Story** - Sharon explains how she first heard the apocryphal tale of the intelligence community saving Steve Jobs in the 1980s and began a decade-long investigation.
- 3 (07:11) **The Breakthrough: A LinkedIn Post Reveals the CIA's Role** - A random LinkedIn post leads Sharon to a contractor who worked on the deal, revealing the true, convoluted customer was the CIA, using the NSA as cover.
- 4 (08:53) **The Context: Steve Jobs in Exile at Next** - Sharon describes the state of Steve Jobs and his company, Next, in the mid-1980s, when the computer was technologically brilliant but commercially failing.
- 5 (10:49) **What the CIA Needed from Next Computers** - The CIA's Joe Romella saw Next's advanced graphics and processing power as a solution for analysts interpreting satellite imagery.
- 6 (12:11) **The Contract's Impact: Did It Save Steve Jobs?** - Sharon confirms that the federal contract was absolutely essential for Next's survival, providing the runway Jobs needed to return to Apple.
- 7 (15:50) **The Power Shift: From Government Patron to Customer** - The conversation widens to the present day, describing a massive influx of venture capital into defense tech, giving Silicon Valley far more power than the Pentagon.
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Show Notes
Why are Silicon Valley billionaires developing defence tech? Could Elon Musk build a nuclear bomb? And why did Steve Jobs owe his early success to the CIA?
Listen as David is joined by national security journalist Sharon Weinberger to discuss her new book, Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fuelling the Future of War.
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Buy Valley of Death: https://guardianbookshop.com/valley-of-death-9781399831673/
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Producer: Becki Hills
Head of History: Dom Johnson
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