Runaway Zebra

I was running late for an appointment. As much as I despise it, I had to use the highway to make it on time. The scariest part of the highway for me is entering and exiting. This day I pushed past my…

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Satellites and iPads

According to experts like Edward Snowden, the world changed after 9/11. Now we’re at a new tipping point.

At the end of the last millennium, a special investment fund was established. It was 1999, the name ‘Al-Qaeda’ didn’t ring a bell with most people and Bill Clinton did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky. Norm Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed Martin, joined forces with a video game designer called Gilman Louie — it almost sounds fiction, but it’s reality.

Together they launched Peleus, later renamed In-Q-Tel, a ‘nonprofit strategic investment firm that supports U.S. national security’. In case you never heard of In-Q-Tel, you might know its parent company: the Central Intelligence Agency. A the time CIA had lots of data but didn’t know what to do with it. That’s why they turned to tech entrepreneurs, who they backed with lots of money.

You probably don’t know many of those companies, although developers might recognize Gitlab. Maybe there’s a chance you’ve heard of Palantir. However, there is a very good chance that you will come into daily contact with technology developed by In-Q-Tel’s investments. Google Earth, for example, or the touch-screen technology used in iPads.

One of the things that differ In-Q-Tel from other investment firms, is that fact that it’s a nonprofit. Instead of focusing on making huge profits, it acts as a catalyst for the development of technology that can help the CIA for intelligence gathering.

In the end, these are still private companies that perform important public tasks. Should we trust them? Some governments are less strict with this than others. In Europe, for instance, governments would be less eager to hire private military companies, while Blackwater has been working for the CIA for decades.

Runaway Zebra

Satellites and iPads

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