
The CIA’s Venture-Capital Firm, Like Its Sponsor, Operates in the Shadows - petethomas
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cias-venture-capital-firm-like-its-sponsor-operates-in-the-shadows-1472587352
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ryporter
The author seems to want to unearth some scandal about conflicts of interest,
but there's not much here. The final quote of the article pretty much nails
it.

“On the one hand, if you wanted really pristine independence, it means you are
going to need people who don’t have commercial ties to the industry,” Mr.
Gilson said. “On the other hand, if you have people without any commercial
ties to the industry, they are not much use.”

If there were no conflicts of interest at all, then we'd be discussing an
article about how horribly In-Q-Tel's investments performed, because they were
made by bureaucrats in D.C. who had no idea how startups worked.

~~~
kirubakaran
In John Doerr's words, "no conflict, no interest."

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s_q_b
In-Q-Tel is pretty explicit about their mission: to support the development of
private sector technologies that are of immediate use (within 36 months) to
their IC customers. Their investments are sometimes public and they invest in
pretty much what you'd expect: D-Wave, Facebook, Keyhole. Even their name is
taken straight out of the James Bond tech supplier branch/agent Q.

Nor do they have even particularly critical national security technology. In-
Q-Tel probably has less dark tech knowledge than your average building at NBP.

One of my startups was contacted by one of their employees (it's almost always
an employee, not the org directly), and they really just facilitated our data
analysis processes, and made some connections. It never got to the stage where
we accepted any money, and it was a lot less creepy than some of the
government contractors _cough_ Mitre _cough_.

Disclaimer: I have not, do not, and will not work on mass surveillance
technology.

~~~
T0T0R0

      ...than your average building at NBP.
    
      ...building at NBP.
    
      ...NBP.
    

Name Binding Protocol

National Biosolids Partnership

National Braille Press

National Broadband Plan

Neighborhood Broadcast Problem

Neutral Body Posture

NetBIOS Protocol

Network Binding Protocol

Network Bootstrap Program

Network Bridge Processor

New Black Panthers

Non-invasive Blood Pressure

Normal Blood Pressure

Normal Boiling Point

Northern Business Products

Namco Bandai Partners

Hmmm...

~~~
olalonde
And I guess IC stands for Intelligence Community?

~~~
s_q_b
Yes, the Federal government loves acronyms, and sometimes I forget these are
not commonly known in most of the nation.

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mindslight
This article makes it sound secretive and corrupt, but really this is a
surprising amount of transparency compared to other drug cartels.

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nickpsecurity
Whether I like CIA or not, In-Q-Tel is one of their best achievements. The VC
model in private sector had long been making better tech more cheaply and with
faster improvements. There was also lots of overlap between enterprise and CIA
needs. Funding dual-use tech through private sector is already win/win at this
point. That revenue from sales to private sector could reduce taxpayer burden
on any given tech is another win. Even if there was corruption, it's still
better than most US Govt actions because they produced useful stuff that
actually benefited Americans in some way.

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unethical_ban
Search for " we are all intelligence officers now" transcript by Dan Geer,
CISO of the company, who refuses to get a clearance.

Fascinating insights.

~~~
dmix
It only takes a moment to link to them...

Video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxLJExWk9GE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxLJExWk9GE)

Text: [https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/security-expert-dan-
geer-w...](https://www.theinternetpatrol.com/security-expert-dan-geer-we-are-
all-intelligence-officers-now-full-text-here/)

~~~
srtjstjsj
He unironically asks people to spy less, while working for the most famous spy
org in the world? Wow

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advisedwang
Most VCs put their own people on the boards of companies they invest in, and
then continue to invest in those companies. Doesn't this imply that the
"shares a board member" conflict of interest described is either rampant in
the industry or not actually a conflict of interest?

~~~
cloudjacker
Of course they are rampant, and of course they are conflicts of interest.

Industry and government standards state they simply have to be disclosed. You
disclose it and either all the investors moan, sigh and walk away or they
don't, if you have obtained a certain place in society, the investors don't
walk away and you still get the lucrative outcome.

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xxcode
Databricks is one the companies that raised money from In-Q-Tel. Given that
there are likely to be multiple Turing award winners from that company, I'd
say its money well spent.

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adrianratnapala
Some on this thread are saying it's very common for VC trustees to be closely
involved in the businesses they fund. But normal VCs must sink or swim as
private businesses. In-Q-Tel is a non-profit, kept afloat by the taxpayers.

This setup can easly be a nice channel for powerful people to funnel public
money their own way. For one thing, if In-Q-Tel has close links with the CIA,
they can steer contracts towards favoured companies.

Even without that, trustees can funnel VC money into businesses and then
funnel it out to their own selves. When the business fails, they shrug.
Failures happen.

That couldh appen in the private sector too. But even if In-Q-Tel keeps losing
money in total, the trustees (who just made nice personal profits) can also
shrug and say "this was never a for-profit thing anyway".

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drawkbox
MongoDB and Apigee are on their list of investments that are known.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Oracle's first customer was CIA. In-Q-Tel also has MemSQL, Tenable Network
Security, Cloudera, VeraCode, and BBN before acquisition. Also, they give HN
readers continued entertainment in form of Palantir and D-Wave.

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leroy_masochist
I'm quite surprised the article went into that much detail without mentioning
Palantir.

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ChuckMcM
I suppose it would be a scandal if they tried to hide who they were.

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sciguy77
It's In-Q-Tel, not Q-Tel. I actually interviewed there a few years back. Very
cool company.

~~~
nickstinemates
Agree. Very smart guys. Passion for open source. Contribute to a ton of
projects.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I didn't know that about them. Is there a list of what they contribute to
anywhere?

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vonnik
We're missing the "In" on "In" Q Tel in the title.

And I have to add, IQT serves a ton of govt agencies, not just the CIA.

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Zach_the_Lizard
The title is misspelled; it's In-Q-Tel, not Q-Tel.

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binarray2000
I hope someone knowledgable will help me here.

Do I get this right: US taxpayers are giving their hard earned dollars so that
a government agency CIA can take it and, throu their venture capital firm (!),
invest it into something that might, but also might not, work?

Is this actually fiscally responsible? Is it in the job description of an
intelligence agency to be a VC fund, not with private money, but with the
money of the shrinking US middle class?

~~~
bbctol
The fact that it may or may not work is hardly a reason to not spend tax
dollars on it... the government sends lots of money towards academic research
and other scientific projects that individually have a low chance of amounting
to much.

