The internet was built by US Cold War counterinsurgency agencies

Evidence

The internet as we now know it today was created by the United States Armed Forces during the Cold War. The agencies that built its core structures were responsible for keeping groups like Students for a Democratic Society under surveillance and assisting counterinsurgency efforts in places like Vietnam. Domestically, the computers gave rise to a network allowing communications between researchers in the private and public sectors. Perhaps even more important than its roots in the US military-industrial complex, however, was the time and place that regular people began to move parts of their lives online. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 287

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Authoritarian states learned to use the internet for their own ends — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 297; The internet originated as state-built defense infrastructure outside market logic — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 285; The Internet emerged from US defense and NSF supercomputing infrastructure. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2548 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• The internet originated as state-built defense infrastructure outside market logic #corroborates (0.95) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 285
• The Internet emerged from US defense and NSF supercomputing infrastructure. #corroborates (0.92) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2548
• The internet’s military-industrial origins enabled a new economic and social order. #expands (0.90)
• The Internet was designed to decelerate war, not accelerate it. #contradicts (0.85) — Hartmut Rosa, Social Acceleration, 544
• Surveillance machinery built for the Cold War was repurposed against Muslim activists #expands (0.75)
• Counterterrorism surveillance technology crosses the domestic-foreign divide #expands (0.72)