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CIA Starts Hi-Tech Venture Capital Firm
Your Mama writes "Hoping to insure that the nation's spies have the latest information technology in the rapidly changing Internet age, the Central Intelligence Agency has established a venture capital company to nurture high-tech companies..." The NY Times has the story. The reference to Major Boothryod alone makes it worthwhile to get your free NYT registration if you don't already have one. Isn't that right, Mr. Bond?
Do you know anything about venture capitalists? Anything? They are the most ruthless, heartless people in the world. The CIA doesn't even come close.
If congress makes a mess of crypto legislation, it hardly follows logically that since the CIA is also government, it will mess things up. CIA doesn't do crypto anyway (that's NSA out of the states, FBI and secret service in).
The CIA isn't a typical venture capitalist (it won't get rid of the founders when the company gets big), so I think it would be a pretty good deal. Otherwise, why would you be on the board if you spent your whole lives making toys!
A lot of people here are saying a lot of stuff about the CIA -- implying that they are trying to take over Silicon Valley or somesuch.
It just ain't so.
Look... The CIA is basically just a bureacracy nowadays. Seriously. They are divided into two groups: operations and analysis. The operations group has grown smaller and smaller over the years, and the analysis group has concentrated more and more on relatively benign sources of information such as satellite imagery.
So they chose to waste $28Million trying to lam their way into the secret plans of Silicon Valley startups. Do you really think that they will pick the right startups, or that the startups will be inclined to give them the time of day?
Don't worry about it -- we waste more than $28 Mil every day. Just let them play their games.
-- Slashdot sucks.
They own the hardware and content you would be using and viewing. They have ever right to track your usage of it. Do you also object to AT&T (or whoever your LD carrier is) tracking to whom you place phone calls? What about your credit card company tracking who you purchase from?
Y'know in the Road Runner/Wiley Coyote cartoons, when Wiley's always using some kind of gear or supplies from the Acme Co.? Now I know who Acme really is...
"How many light bulbs does it take to change a person?" --BMcC-->
As I have predicted the government will continue to act more and more like a private corporation. It really has no other choice. Privatization is a means of survival in our new world of extremely rapid change. The public too must privatize. There should be family corporations that exist to nurture the family's investments. The corporate form will continue to proliferate at a fast pace. Those who do not take advantage of the benefits of the corporate form will endure increasing liabilities, i.e., privacy intrusions.
Try using slashdot_effect/slashdot... I've been using it for months.
superblog.org: all your favourite blogs on o
Well, I do. I have been a political activist almost as long as I have been a computer nerd. I've chatted with ex-CIA guys over beers, including a few that have left the 'Company' to renegade against them.
All I really have to say is, isn't this a wonderful chance for them to insert backdoors into every product hard and soft? Full access to all company data, schematics, code, and so on. It is a BAD idea to do business with the CIA (jezuz, they specialize in destabilizing other countries' goverments). I'm sure some slimey individuals and companies will do business with them, but I hope the marketplace shows that they have no place in the private sector, and they shrivel up and die.
I will boycott any product produced in conjunction with them, but I fear, what if they strike a deal with chip manufacturers or OS producers?
Does anyone know any way we can stop this? Is it legal for the govt. to start a private enterprise like this? They are unrestricted in the private sector...
I'm not sure how this will play out, but I would be weary to let an organization like the CIA own part of my business. It seems that in the current climate, if you have a decent idea/product, you can get venture capital anyways (at least in Silicon Valley that theory seems to hold). So why turn to the CIA?
Sure the CIA will give you money to fund research/development, but they will also own part of your company for it. Looking at the mess the US government made (and is making) with crypto legislation, I sincerely doubt that the CIA will simply sit on the sidelines. Government institutions often seem rather paranoid and don't want to relinquish control of any worthwhile technologies. I'd rather have to report to venture capitalists who want to spread/sell the technology (or products) then government institutions who classify anything moderateley modern/interesting as a national secret.
Here's a few points on which this bothers me:
1. VC is not like SBIR grants. We're talking about the Federal Government *owning* a piece of some of the best and brightest technology firms in the country (if they invest correctly, which may or my not happen).
2. VC is notorious for having too much of a hand in company growth. What happens if the CIA decides that companies that they own a stake in should not be "wasting" their money lobbying for pro-crypto laws? Is that even constitutional? Does the spirit of the Consititution even concieve of such a thing? Love the checks-and-balances here.
3. What happens when the "right thing" for a company to do financially, is open a semi-indepencant European branch in order to interact with their laws (e.g. crypto, patents, etc) which differ from ours? Will this be used as a way to curtail such action?
This is just off the top of my head. Longer thought will amost certainly yeild further problems with the scheme. Oh my head.
The Federal Government has been subsidizing tech for many, many years; for instance, (D)ARPA funds vast amounts of research at universities and other institutions, and a lot of that is for developing technology that is useful for both civillian and military usage. Mobile computing, overhead imagery databases, autonomous highway-capable cars...
There are just two twists here. One is that it's the CIA (and behaving unusually openly for them, but perhaps there are regulations about companies revealing investors?). The other is that they've picked up on venture capital as a method of funding, in constrast to the old ways of research subsidies, specific contracts and so forth. This means that they can indirectly fund different companies, but not lock either themselves or their beneficiaries into a specific system.
This means that Joe, Angie and Fred, Inc., a hypothetical new startup, could -- even before having a clear application that's ready to ship and fulfills a specific niche -- be eligible to receive seed money, presumably in exchange for a stake in the company. Then, this stake can be later sold and re-invested elsewhere, if they (the CIA's VC firm) hold to the idea of their being non-profit and self-sustaining. That's the theory, anyway.
In that regards, the CIA's interests are multiple. One, it gets an idea of who's around. No doubt they're always interested in getting people who can help them analyze the information they bring in, and they get enough that they need automation. Two, it lets them boost domestic tech, which is a Good Thing to stay competitive with other nations that do the same, only often moreso. The CIA would rather not depend upon the graces of foreign governments to import superior tech. Three, it's cleaner-looking than direct contracts and subsidies, and lets people realize that not everybody at the CIA is a spook trying to latch on to informed Muscovites or find-and-forward Saddam's current whereabouts to the Mossad.
The obvious downsides? One is that they might, if they find particularly nifty tech, try to appropriate it or at least make it non-exportable. It also does raise conflicts of interest questions, but these could be resolved if the VC firm is set up intelligently (read: if it's managed anything like a blind trust. Difficult, 'tho.).
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
PS: I did an April Fools joke on Congress back in the early 90s involving a fake press release from "UIP" that droned on and on in technocrat-babble about "the national transportation vehicle initiative" whereby the Feds would build this enormous fusion powered truck for "national competitiveness". In it, I portrayed Craig Fields as having nothing but glowing praise for "the public private partnership" from his new position as President of gallium arsenide technology leader, Cray Computer Corporation where he had replaced Seymour Cray who, my fictitious story went, "died in a jeeping accident in the Rocky Mountains". This "joke" was sent to every congressional office years before Seymour Cray died in a jeeping accident in the Rocky Mountains. "Funny" how Cray died shortly after he violated his own historic avoidance of direct architectural service to the spookshops.
Seastead this.
Does anyone know why the US government is allowed to own part of a private company? Is there any way in hell this is ethical, moral, or even legal? (Of course, they're the government. Nothing's really illegal for them.) Does this not represent a conflict of interest?