Yasha Levine is the author of the book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (2018) which was recommended by Whitney Webb, documenting the hidden military-contracting relationship of Big Tech.
I'm only 15% in the book, and it's one of those books I can't put down. The book is tracing the origins of the internet within the US military in the late 50s after the whole Sputnik debacle, from the early inceptions of what eventually led to Arpanet; CoIntel Pro, etc.. Not only is it a chilling account of the dark underbelly of military-industrial-complex at the dawn of the Vietnam War era, but it makes the case that the Internet was from the get-go designed to become a mass-surveillance network.
Even worse, anything designed/used by the military sooner-or-later makes its way home and is turned against the local population.
I enjoy that he doesn't come from a conspiratorial background, and still does meticulous investigations citing numerous historical artifacts and books on the subject (in other words, he's not preaching to the choir). There are fascinating enigmas worth digging at every page turn.
His Twitter account also features great content. Anyhow, I had to mention him and the book, and think he'd make for a great guest about the cyber-state of affairs.
Peace
Related:
Early punch-card computers used by IBM for classifying/documenting concentration camps populations in Germany (documented by Edwin Black in his book). A good example of how from the get-go, the potential for computing was used to control the herd:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyrbDnes5ZY
(Video on the rise of tabulator machines)
