We're reposting a free unlocked version of our interview with Yasha Levine on his new book "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet" . . . Levine dives deep into the origins of the Internet, designed by Pentagon researchers to create an all-seeing counterinsurgency weapon in wars abroad, and against protest movements home in the USA. Fifty years ago, student radicals protested the early Internet as a Big Brother weapon of oppression; today, young "radicals" in the Internet Freedom movement promote this Pentagon weapon as a force for liberation and revolution against the same Big Brother state. Levine explains how these paradoxes came to be—and why Snowden's revelations about government spying on the Internet revealed not a bug in the system that can be "fixed", but rather the whole purpose of the Internet system from the start. Grim, hopeless & fascinating.
Radio War Nerd episode #120: Secret Military History of the Internet, with Yasha Levine
Yashas book Surveillance Valley is great. Thinking of the internet as a weapon makes a ton of sense