4 ms·

Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley [0] is worth reading, an in-depth introduction to the crucial contributions to the development of semiconductor d

Steve Blank's Secret History of Silicon Valley [0] is worth reading, an in-depth introduction to the crucial contributions to the development of semiconductor during the Cold War made by secret military projects. Edit: I do not understand the downvotes. This blog series was once submitted to Hacker News with 188 upvotes, 48 comments, and a largely positive response [1]. The topic is well-researched by Steve Blank to allow him making a presentation at the Computer History Museum. Recognizing the roles played by military projects in semiconductor history does not imply that the military-industrial complex is the greatest blessing of humanity ever, just like recognizing the scientific contributions of Manhattan Project to nuclear science does not mean that a nuclear war is great to have. To the contrary, one is free to criticize the uncomfortable violence behind today's technology that is not often discussed, like many authors did in recent years. [0] https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569184 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23569184

cushychicken 3y ago
More people need to read this Steve Blank presentation. There's a ton of people on HN who post about their roles in software engineering as though their internet-spawned livelihood just magically appeared out of some pacifist commune in Berkeley. Not true in the slightest. Almost every piece of tech that the tech community builds on - semiconductors, the internet, satellite mapping, GPS - was paid for first by the military, who needed it back when nobody ever thought there'd be a commercial use for it. We owe the military industrial complex a bit of a debt in that regard, even if we don't like to admit it.
- segfaultbuserr 3y ago
  > magically appeared out of some pacifist commune in Berkeley. [...] Not true in the slightest. My point of view is that both are true to a certain degree. Many Berkeley pacifists indeed did pioneering work in the history of personal computing. But it's also true that many were largely supported by the military-industrial complex, more often than not with direct funding. Both parties were well aware of the dual-use nature of the research output. For example, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie chose to do his seminal research on public-key crypto, partially to avoid the Vietnam War draft (and according to a book by John Markoff, the interviewer accepted him partially because he was a hippie familiar with LSD). In spite of the military funding, he accepted the project because he was personally a strong believer on the civilian use of cryptography to protect civil liberty from state overreach ever since - famously attacking the weakening of the DES cipher to 56 bits under NSA influence in the 1980s. This coexistence remains to this day. Many innovative research papers in infosec are still funded by DARPA and US Navy Research Lab, even though quite a few researchers involved are personally critical of the US government's infosec policies. This is often interpreted as a conspiracy to people who have just realized it, but it's a counterintuitive but logical outcome that has already occurred since the 1970s.
  - cushychicken 3y ago
    I agree with everything you just wrote. I find that a lot of discourse about the military industrial complex gets very black/white - to the point that a lot of people seem willfully ignorant of the ways that the MIC has enabled their livelihoods. The MIC certainly isn't all good. But it's kept a lot of people fed and generated a ton of research and technology that has, on net, made the world a better place. The reality is a lot more nuanced than most of these comments lead you to believe.
- carapace 3y ago
  I like to point out that computers are war machines. First use of computer: help win WWII. Second use of computer: simulate atomic bombs. And so it goes...

cushychicken 3y ago

More people need to read this Steve Blank presentation. There's a ton of people on HN who post about their roles in software engineering as though their internet-spawned livelihood just magically appeared out of some pacifist commune in Berkeley. Not true in the slightest. Almost every piece of tech that the tech community builds on - semiconductors, the internet, satellite mapping, GPS - was paid for first by the military, who needed it back when nobody ever thought there'd be a commercial use for it. We owe the military industrial complex a bit of a debt in that regard, even if we don't like to admit it.

segfaultbuserr 3y ago
> magically appeared out of some pacifist commune in Berkeley. [...] Not true in the slightest. My point of view is that both are true to a certain degree. Many Berkeley pacifists indeed did pioneering work in the history of personal computing. But it's also true that many were largely supported by the military-industrial complex, more often than not with direct funding. Both parties were well aware of the dual-use nature of the research output. For example, cryptographer Whitfield Diffie chose to do his seminal research on public-key crypto, partially to avoid the Vietnam War draft (and according to a book by John Markoff, the interviewer accepted him partially because he was a hippie familiar with LSD). In spite of the military funding, he accepted the project because he was personally a strong believer on the civilian use of cryptography to protect civil liberty from state overreach ever since - famously attacking the weakening of the DES cipher to 56 bits under NSA influence in the 1980s. This coexistence remains to this day. Many innovative research papers in infosec are still funded by DARPA and US Navy Research Lab, even though quite a few researchers involved are personally critical of the US government's infosec policies. This is often interpreted as a conspiracy to people who have just realized it, but it's a counterintuitive but logical outcome that has already occurred since the 1970s.
- cushychicken 3y ago
  I agree with everything you just wrote. I find that a lot of discourse about the military industrial complex gets very black/white - to the point that a lot of people seem willfully ignorant of the ways that the MIC has enabled their livelihoods. The MIC certainly isn't all good. But it's kept a lot of people fed and generated a ton of research and technology that has, on net, made the world a better place. The reality is a lot more nuanced than most of these comments lead you to believe.
carapace 3y ago
I like to point out that computers are war machines. First use of computer: help win WWII. Second use of computer: simulate atomic bombs. And so it goes...