Well it has been.

But today’s announcement by Alphabet Inc. (Google… $GOOG $GOOGL) makes this ‘Digital Military-Industrial Complex’ even more ridiculously transparent.

In-Q-Tel: The Digital Arms Dealer

In-Q-Tel is a little known but very important Venture Capital Firm.

It is not-for-profit, based out of Virginia and it’s goal is:

Source: Wikipedia | Yep. Its’ sole purpose is to keep our government agencies (CIA, NSA, who knows…) ahead of the game in the IT game. The Q part is cute. It could easily be Bond-related, but it also might be a reference to Q-level security clearance (the clearance one down from POTUS).

Google and In-Q-Tel

Ok. So here’s where things get kinda funky.

In-Q-Tel invested in a company named “KeyHole Inc.”

“KeyHole Inc.” was acquired by Google and they turned it into Google Earth.

As an initial investor in KeyHole, In-Q-Tel received shares in Google.

It is reported that they sold 5,636 shares of GOOG in 2015 for $2.2 million (USD). [this and the above bullets are from Wikipedia as well.



In-Q-Tel invested $5 million into “Orbital Sight” in 2016. The company specializes in analyzing satellite imagery to observe things like commuter traffic…or to track people rather easily. Google Ventures threw in $15 million dollars shortly after that [source]

In-Q-Tel was an early round investor in the cyber-security company FireEye ($FEYE)

Today, FireEye ($FEYE) announced that it had been contracted by YouTube (Google/Alphabet) and FaceBook for their services in spotting “disinformation campaigns”. [source]

Ok, I think that’s enough to have you thinking. Since they do seed-round funding we have no idea how many shares they still own in these companies.

Then, obviously, I’m sure that funding comes with stipulations that they get access to the service whenever they need. Or maybe a backdoor, whatever, it doesn’t matter for this post today.

My point is that you should think about the use-case scenarios of these things. Think Orwell.

“fake news” much anyone?

There’s more to the story than that. There is a ‘conspiracy theory’ (that I’m inclined to believe), that links Google as well as Facebook’s initial funding coming from In-Q-Tel.

If you’re interested in that, check out this long-form investigative article on the subject: “How The CIA Made Google: Inside the secret network behind mass surveillance, endless war, and Skynet“

Since I am all conspiratorial and the such….

G O O G L E

The official story is that the is based on the number ‘googol’ ,which is 10^100.

Written out thats 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Moving on with the conspiratorial nature of myself….

I ran it through an anagram finder. One possible re-arrangement is EGO LOG. We all know they log data…but “ego” log? Don’t forget the definition of the ego. Yep. I’m about to the most cliche thing in writing.

So it’s logging how you interact and gauge yourself based on how you use all the Google services. That makes more sense to me than the massive number.

Facebook Anagram

For shits and giggles I ran Facebook through the same anagram tool and found a funny one.

“Cooke Fab” – Now if only Tim Cook ($AAPL CEO) had an e on the end of his last name.

You also get “kobo cafe”, kobo being a unit of currency in Nigeria. Or book face, which works for the facial recognition abilities can/does provide the government with.

Conspiracies are fun, take from them what you will. Just be aware of the stuff that’s in plain sight.

No article about the military industrial complex is worth anything without the following video, Eisenhower’s farewell address where he addresses the military-industrial complex.

I guess things have just gone digital now;, as the words still ring true.

Cheers,

-dros