Google oligarchy ranks filled with CIA agents: ‘national security’ search engine

“The United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by US intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.“

Google now almost completely dominates on-line search engine technology, as well as online advertising, cloud computing, and related computer software. It is one of the largest and most influential US oligarchies in the today’s world order – and it is filled with “ex”-CIA agents.

Studying employment websites and databases, MintPress has ascertained that the Silicon Valley giant has hired dozens of professionals from the Central Intelligence Agency in recent years. Moreover, an inordinate number of these recruits work in highly politically sensitive fields, wielding considerable control over how its products work and what the world sees on its screens and in its search results.

Similar trends were recently reported in relation to Facebook, another US social media oligarchy.

Chief among these is the trust and safety department, whose staff, according to then Google trust and safety vice president Kristie Canegallo, “decide what content is allowed on our platform”– in other words, setting the rules of the internet, determining what billions see and what they do not see. Before Google, Canegallo had been President Obama’s Deputy White House Chief of Staff for Implementation and is currently Chief of Staff at the US Department of Homeland Security.

Many of the team helping Canegallo make calls on what content should be allowed in Google searches and on platforms like YouTube were former CIA employees. A recent investigation published by MintPress News has exposed the sheer scale of integration of Facebook with US intelligence agencies

This latest article documents at least 2 dozen “former” intelligence agents employed by Google in key positions. A former CIA agent said that Google benefited from hiring “former” spies, as such individuals are highly trained and likely have a security clearance which is something that is exceptionally difficult to attain in civilian organizations.

Google’s long history with the CIA

The MintPress News article also pointed out how the CIA and the NSA funded the development of Google, revealing that “senior U.S. intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.”

In their 2013 book, “The New Digital Age,” then Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Director of Google Ideas Jared Cohen wrote about how companies like theirs were fast becoming the U.S. empire’s most potent weapon in retaining Washington’s control over the modern world. As they said,

Part of defending freedom of information and expression in the future will entail a new element of military aid. Training will include technical assistance and infrastructural support in lieu of tanks and tear gas—though the latter will probably remain part of the arrangement. What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber-security companies will be to the twenty-first.

Their prediction has turned out to be accurate. But few people know that Google, from its very inception, was fundamentally intertwined with the CIA. As journalist Nafeez Ahmed’s investigation found, the CIA and the NSA were bankrolling Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin’s research–work that would later produce Google.

Not only that, but, in Ahmed’s words, “senior U.S. intelligence representatives including a CIA official oversaw the evolution of Google in this pre-launch phase, all the way until the company was ready to be officially founded.” He concluded that,

The United States intelligence community funded, nurtured and incubated Google as part of a drive to dominate the world through control of information. Seed-funded by the NSA and CIA, Google was merely the first among a plethora of private sector start-ups co-opted by U.S. intelligence to retain ‘information superiority.’

As late as 2005, In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist arm, was a major shareholder in Google. These shares were a result of Google’s acquisition of Keyhole, Inc., a CIA-backed surveillance firm whose software eventually became Google Earth. By 2007, Google was selling the government-enhanced versions of Google Earth that it was using for targeting in Iraq, as well as secret search engines that spy agencies were using for surveillance, according to The Washington Post. By this time, the Post also notes, Google was partnering with Lockheed Martin to produce futuristic technology for the military.

In the 21st century, warfare is far more than just bullets and tanks. But Google’s attempts to feed from the trough of the military-industrial complex have proven controversial. In 2018, it faced an employee rebellion after securing Pentagon funding for a project designing lethal weaponry systems. That same year, the company dropped its longstanding motto, “don’t be evil.” Since then, it has also become a huge CIA contractor. In 2020, it secured part of a CIA cloud services contract reportedly worth “tens of billions of dollars.”

Therefore, while the company, for the longest time, presented itself as a group of outsiders attempting to make the world a better place, from the very start, it has been closely connected with the halls of power. Indeed, in 2016, The Google Transparency Project identified at least 258 examples of a “revolving door” between Google and various branches of the federal government as individuals moved from one to the other.

Schmidt and Cohen are two of those individuals. Schmidt was chairman of both the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence and the Defense Innovation Advisory Board, bodies created to help Silicon Valley assist the U.S. military with cyberweapons. Meanwhile, Cohen left his high-powered job at the State Department to work for Google. Schmidt had served as an advisor (particularly on the Middle East) to both Secretaries of State Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. He even participated in an unsuccessful 2009 regime change attempt in Iran, successfully pressuring Twitter to maintain services to the country during a U.S.-backed uprising aimed at toppling the government.

While this article is not trying to claim any of the individuals named are nefarious CIA plants, the way in which Google and the CIA have worked so closely together raises national security questions for all other nations, especially those attempting to pursue foreign policies independent of the United States. Ultimately, the line between big tech and big brother has been blurred beyond recognition.

Murray also warned that this hand-in-hand relationship also endangers individual freedoms, meaning that the Google/CIA connection should worry everybody. “All of this threatens individual rights to privacy, free speech, freedom of expression. Once they have your data, the U.S. government can use it against you at any time,” she told MintPress, “It’s really quite frightening.”

The full article can be found at the source link below.

Source: Mint Press News, 25 July 2022. https://www.mintpressnews.com/national-security-search-engine-google-ranks-cia-agents/281490/

Author: Dr Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published recently.