
"Secret" History of Silicon Valley (2008) - cushychicken
https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
======
drmpeg
I was part of this history, working for a military contractor from 1983 until
1992. From 1985 until 1990, I was project engineer for a complete rebuild of
the DSP satellite system (NORAD missile warning) ground communications
network.

I consider it the peak of my engineering career. I got to go inside Cheyenne
Mountain, got yelled at by a General when the system did something bad and he
was called back from his vacation in Hawaii, got yelled at by a base captain
for inadvertently giving orders, went to awesome Denver strip clubs with base
officers and master sergeants, and found out that my system was sending early
warning to Patriot anti-Scud batteries during the the 1st Gulf War.

After George H.W. Bush became president, the military budget was slashed and
small contractors like the one I was working at were decimated. I ended up
pivoting into digital video compression, which was an excellent move (and
provided another 18 years of career).

I think I still have the 80186 assembly language code for the communications
processors used on the system. They implemented a protocol called ADCCP, which
is the same thing as HDLC. With all the interest in retro computing, I should
publish it on Github (assuming the 5.25" diskettes are still readable). It was
never classified, so that shouldn't be a problem.

~~~
davee5
I was part of this history, when I graduated in 2003 (marginal timing) I took
a gig at Northrop in Sunnyvale. I grew up in Silicon Valley as the grandkid of
folks who lived in orchards (long gone by the time I showed up) and between
this not- _that_ -secret history of SV and idolizing the Skunk Works as a kid,
I was pretty sure that I needed to be in the military industrial complex when
I grew up.

I consider it the nadir of my engineering career. I got to stare at an aging
brown cubicle wall for 8 hours a day twiddling my thumbs, literally. I had
joined a group of old timers (only) who had designed the Trident D5 submarine
missile launcher 25 years earlier and had basically just been generating
paperwork since. Along the way they had "cleverly" learned how to earn
quarterly bonuses by just barely overspending their budgets, ~5% over, which
then got renewed at whatever got spent. Over a few decades that's a lot of
compound interest you gotta spend to get those bonuses, especially if you're
_doing absolutely nothing_ all day. You couldn't even read a book or check the
net because it was a classified area and everything was locked down. Just you
watching your life ebb away. The machine they created to burn cash was a
paragon of government waste, it represented everything that's wrong with that
industry and I hated it.

After George W. Bush realized that what he wanted was more tomahawks and fewer
nukes, the military budget for strategic weapons was decimated. (If you're
gonna blow up Afghans in caves you should mete our force more judiciously,
don't just turn the Himalayas into irradiated slag.) I got called into the
bosses office and told "davee5, our budget got cut and you're the newest guy
here, so unfortunately this is your 30 days notice." I was mad I got laid-off,
but later profoundly grateful to be shoved out the door. I ended up pivoting
into consumer electronics, which was an excellent move (and has since provided
another ~18 years of career).

I still have a pretty cool diagram of the [redacted] that I'm 90% sure was
never classified and a Zip drive disk that I definitely should destroy,
because it means nothing to me and I'm not sure if it would be a problem.

~~~
WalterBright
> The machine they created to burn cash was a paragon of government waste, it
> represented everything that's wrong with that industry and I hated it.

Government operations always operate by fairly rigid bureaucratic rules, which
can always be gamed like this.

Free markets, on the other hand, always have a corrective factor applied -
people have to be willing to spend their _own_ money to buy your product.

~~~
ido

        people have to be willing to spend their own money to 
        buy your product.
    

I would like to introduce you to the depressing world of Enterprise Software.
Do you remember the old saying "nobody got fired for buying IBM"? Think about
its origin & implications, all of which outlived the status IBM had at the
time of that saying.

~~~
WalterBright
I remember those days. Those people got punished by accounting reality, and so
IBM is just another vendor today.

Which is my point.

~~~
watwut
Except that those people did not got punished. Their careers went up just
fine. Those people changed jobs to different companies long before any
accounting reality happened.

And accounting reality did not happened to companies that were buying IBM, it
happened to IBM. That is difference.

~~~
WalterBright
If a company promotes/hires people who make decisions deleterious to the
company's financials, that company will be less profitable and the stock price
will be less.

I.e. the market corrects for things.

~~~
watwut
First, that does not make those people punished. At best it make the company
punished.

Second, it does not seem like those companies were punished in any measurable
way.

~~~
WalterBright
> Second, it does not seem like those companies were punished in any
> measurable way.

Less profit adds up.

------
nibepins
"More details emerged from a Freedom of Information Act request in 2014, which
revealed that Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt were not only on a first name basis
with then-NSA chief General Keith Alexander, but that Google was part of a
“secretive government initiative known as the Enduring Security Framework,”
and that this initiative involved Silicon Valley partnering with the Pentagon
and the US intelligence community to share information “at network speed.”

The Enduring Security Freedom initiative is just one window into how Big Tech
can reap big dollars from their relationship with the NSA. In 2013, it emerged
that the participants in the PRISM program—the illegal surveillance program
which allowed the NSA backdoor access to all information and user data of all
of the Big Tech companies—were reimbursed for the program’s expenses by a
shadowy arm of the agency known as “Special Source Operations.”"

[https://www.corbettreport.com/siliconvalley/](https://www.corbettreport.com/siliconvalley/)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqvRzRj9tHE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqvRzRj9tHE)

Silicon Valley is a story of government funded tech development where
taxpayers foot the R&D bill while VCs and white Executives reap the profits of
taxpayer funded inventions.

~~~
dredmorbius
Corbett Report is an extraordinarily low-quality information source:

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Corbett_Report](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Corbett_Report)

~~~
nibepins
One of the great things about the Corbett Report is that you don't have to
believe it, you can just look at the sources because every source is
referenced.

The case in point over Google's Sergey Brin and the NSA comes from a Freedom
of Information Act request fulfilled by the NSA:
[https://archive.fo/V0fdG](https://archive.fo/V0fdG). The second point about
backdoor data collection through PRISM comes from the Snowden leaks and the
reporting from the Guardian:
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-
giants...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-
data).

In the video lecture of this post, Steve explains that military funded
research from WWI all the way through the Cold War led to the birth of Silicon
Valley as we know it today. After making Stanford the "MIT of the West" by
bringing hundreds of million dollars of taxpayer money to Stanford for MIL
research, in the mid 1950's Fred Terman "encourages his students to leave and
start companies" and "professors to leave and consult for companies", and
makes his position clear that "I don't want to build production systems for
the military, I want to do research. I want other people to start companies
and have the military fund them."

[https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://youtu.be/ZTC_RxWN_xo)
[https://steveblank.com/2009/10/26/the-secret-history-of-
sili...](https://steveblank.com/2009/10/26/the-secret-history-of-silicon-
valley-11-the-rise-of-%E2%80%9Crisk-capital%E2%80%9D-part-1/)

Some of Silicon Valley's biggest companies today are the product of tax payer
money through the same mechanism which privatizes profits from taxpayer funded
MIL research. A prime example is Google.

Sergey Brinn and Larry Page had been doing research and building Google at
Stanford with taxpayer MIL research money since at least 1995:

"In 1995, one of the first and most promising MDDS grants went to a computer-
science research team at Stanford University with a decade-long history of
working with NSF and DARPA grants. The primary objective of this grant was
“query optimization of very complex queries that are described using the
‘query flocks’ approach.” A second grant—the DARPA-NSF grant most closely
associated with Google’s origin—was part of a coordinated effort to build a
massive digital library using the internet as its backbone. Both grants funded
research by two graduate students who were making rapid advances in web-page
ranking, as well as tracking (and making sense of) user queries: future Google
cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.

The research by Brin and Page under these grants became the heart of Google:
people using search functions to find precisely what they wanted inside a very
large data set. The intelligence community, however, saw a slightly different
benefit in their research: Could the network be organized so efficiently that
individual users could be uniquely identified and tracked?"

[https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-
ci...](https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-
research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/)

As the Corbett Report explains, that relationship ensured Google's growth long
after the company was founded:

"In 2003, Google signed a $2.1 million contract with the National Security
Agency, the US intelligence community’s shadowy surveillance arm that is
responsible for collecting, storing and analyzing signals intelligence in
foreign intelligence and counterintelligence operations. Google built the
agency a customized search tool “capable of searching 15 million documents in
twenty-four languages.” So important was this relationship to Google that when
the contract expired in April 2004, they extended it for another year at no
cost to the government."

[https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/sites/default/files/2017-09...](https://www.consumerwatchdog.org/sites/default/files/2017-09/GOOGGovfinal012411.pdf)

And as Corbett explains with cited sources available for reference, taxpayer
money funded early R&D or provided direct investment in Facebook and Palantir
as well. These are but a few examples.

Silicon Valley is product of taxpayer money, where the gov. has been picking
white men, usually of privileged birth and position, to be winners by funding
their research and their companies with taxpayer money.

So instead of attacking the messenger and committing a fallacy, are you
willing to debate the message?

~~~
dredmorbius
In which case, cut out the (biased, unreliable, deceptively narrated, and
ultimately detracting-from-the-point) middle-man, and cite sources directly.

The problem with fabulatory conspiratorialists isn't that they are always
wrong. It's that they are so indifferent to truth that teasing fact from
fiction is far more effort than reward. Citing them directly and credibly only
feeds the bullshit cycle. See Harry Frankfurt:
[http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-
_on_...](http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-
_on_bullshit.pdf)

I realised this some years back watching a 3h40m epic conspiracy fantasy which
does, yes, contain numerous actual, verifiable facts. It also contains
numerous uttlerly unsubstantiated claims, and in either case draws supposed
conections between individual items --- the narrative --- that are entirely
invalid. One key tell was about 20 minutes in, where a fact (Kennedy's "Secret
Society" speech, referring not to some hazy/hazing Ivy League drinking club,
as claimed, but the Soviet Union:
[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy#.27Secret_Soci...](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy#.27Secret_Societies.27_speech))
was both utterly falsely narrated _and_ very selectively edited. Going a few
lines outside the cited bits makes this clear. Lather, rinse, repeat _ad
nauseam_ for another 3h20m (and there were likely earlier whoppers I didn't
catch).

The reward for my sunk time cost was a realisation of the distinction and
relationship between facts and narrative. These can be thought of as a graph
or network, whose nodes (facts, real or claimed) and links (narrative
relation) can occupy almost wholly separate truth worlds. False facts may fit
within a true narrative (an essentially true though fictional novel or film,
say, such as _Sophie 's Choice_), true facts, possibly with or without false
or invented ones, within a false narrative (a key element of fabulist
conspiracies, though often also popular cultural mythologies), both may be
entirely invented (usually seen as entertainment fiction, or mad ramblings).
The case where both facts and narrative are largely true makes for the most
compelling accounts.

There are other dimensions to this: Facts void of narrative or relation are
raw data tables. Relationship diagrams tend to narration without facts. There
are the various storytelling elements and techniques which strengthen
narrative and make it more compelling. All these still seem to work best
within the fact-narrative-truth relation I've described above.

The problem with fabulists is that your time is very poorly rewarded, and your
own views become slowly warped. Again, going straight to sources, or following
more credible narrators (Surveillance-InfoTech ties are not hard to find,
recent example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435499)
) is a much better use of your own, and your audience's, time.

Again, it's not that Corbett is uniformly wrong, and the directive would be
far simpler were he. It's that he's indifferent to, or incapable of
distinguishing, fact from fiction.

Use a source that is.

------
dredmorbius
Excellent, and something of an HN perennial favourite:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=581255)
(2009, w/ "sblank" commenting).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17600305](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17600305)
(2018) 43 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8980498)
(2015) 45 comments.

Numerous others:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=Steve%20Blank%27s%20"Secret"%20History%20of%20Silicon%20Valley&sort=byDate&type=story)

~~~
jmchuster
There definitely is an aspect of "today's lucky 10,000", or I guess it would
be "this year's lucky 3,650,000".

------
082349872349872
Strategic bombing is a good example of network analysis of national economies.
I don't know if anyone was doing this in 1914-1918[1], but an under-
appreciated aspect of 1939-1945 is how much it was about nodes and links.
Ford-Fulkerson wasn't published until 1956, but someone must've been doing
similar analyses to pick allied bombing targets[2]. And linear programming,
courtesy Kantorovich, helped save Leningrad during the siege.

(Strategic bombing requires strategic bombers which require airframes, which
would explain the some-markets-are-freer-than-others deviation of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950#Cold_War)
)

[1] apart from the poor fellow who ran railroad operations for the german
army, who wrote a whole book afterwards about how it wasn't "too late" to
recall the troops and he could've stopped mobilisation before the french
border if anyone had actually bothered to give the order. (edit: found a name,
Staab [https://www.historynet.com/kaisers-
question-1914.htm](https://www.historynet.com/kaisers-question-1914.htm) )

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bombing_during_World_War_I)
suggests it wasn't developed to the extent it would be, mid-century.

Incidentally, Kissinger is well worth reading. Many think he's a war criminal.
Maybe he himself thinks he's a war criminal. But he does explain his
reasonings at length, and his justification for his counsels seems to have
been a desire to avoid situations like 1914, where entire empires fell due to
a cascade of stupidity. (whether we actually got any tasty omelettes from his
broken eggs is, I believe, still an open question)

[2] that some people still carry out these analyses is witnessed by the fact
that the US Department of _Homeland_ Security for some reason has been
tracking the price (volumes, really) of tea (and other goods) in China.

~~~
aspenmayer
It turns out everything has got something to do with the price of rice in
China, to paraphrase a saying my mom used to say. No disrespect meant to China
or Chinese people, just an observation about how interconnected our inputs and
outputs are, and how little slack there is in the system. Perhaps more slack
than we give ourselves credit for, but less slack for some than any of us
deserve.

I feel for those who are struggling right now, everywhere. Help those you can,
near and far. That’s the best diplomacy, living your ideals in a predictable,
consistent way. I think that was the genius and perhaps criminal aspect of
Kissinger. He was duplicitous, in my opinion, but he told the truth using a
lie, as an artist does.

------
giancarlostoro
The talks, the slides, the write ups are great. I hadn't known about this till
someone here on HN made mention of it. Definitely recommend at least watching
/ listening to a video of him doing the presentation on YouTube.

------
boringg
After watching the first 5 minutes I decided to crack a beer and watch the
rest (late 30s interests have changed). Definitely interesting - for me the
part that were most intriguing was the knowledge around how the air battle in
Europe was fought. I didn't realize how much a cat and mouse battle it was
around radar technology. The rest of the talk I enjoyed the details of the
storyline that I had an awareness of but didn't have the specifics.

Also, not sure the last slide was really worth adding - didn't add anything to
the talk. Rest was great - thanks for posting.

~~~
cushychicken
I thought the radar line-of-battle stuff was the wrong presentation for the
first part, but kept reading because it was so interesting.

At about slide 70, I realized - "Oh: SV came from _EWAR /ELINT technology_."

------
_aleph2c_
From the presentation:

1\. There was a 4-20 percent chance a bomber would be destroyed in an allied
bombing run over Germany in WWII.

2\. An American airman would have to fly 25 bombing runs before they could go
home.

------
loughnane
PBS did a great American Experience[0] on this topic as well. Doesn't hit all
the points but does spend a lot of time on the relationship between the
government and SV firms.

[0]
[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/silicon/)

------
magnusmagnusson
From what I've read, US war department and other associated
military/intelligence factions pumped billions into SV. Good times.

------
themark
Great post.

Promotes narrative that military/gov influence transitioned to risk/venture.

Is that really the case?

~~~
jonathannat
It has been most of the US history

------
jabl
This is a very interesting presentation.

On the topic of innovation policy, Mariana Mazzucato argues that governments
should take a more active role in driving innovation towards particular goals.
Be it electronic warfare / military electronics that begat Silicon Valley as
detailed in this presentation by Steve Blank, or getting to the moon before
the commies (Apollo program).

See her Ted presentation at
[https://www.ted.com/talks/mariana_mazzucato_government_inves...](https://www.ted.com/talks/mariana_mazzucato_government_investor_risk_taker_innovator)
or her book "The Entrepreneurial State"

~~~
_curious_
"Entrepreneurial State" is an oxymoron...source: Entrepreneur who worked w/
state for many years.

------
est31
Didn't know that radar was so advanced already in WW2. He's definitely right
in that it's not being told.

~~~
cushychicken
Isn't that incredible?! I think of Ghz radar being a recent innovation, but
that presentation mentions _several_ examples.

Granted, some of the equipment from WWII was so big it took _a whole B-17
bomber_ to carry one unit. So modern tech gets some credit for
miniaturization, at the very least.

------
dcl
I find this stuff super fascinating. Is there any good books that cover
similar/related topics?

~~~
jabl
If you're interested in the innovation policy aspects, see writings by Mariana
Mazzucato, particularly her book "The Entrepreneurial State".

------
foobar_
I've always associate computer history with Bell Labs and other systems
belonging to that era.

------
dustingetz
Which one book should I read to have fun while learning about SV history?

