and that sniper tower -- it is still there. i do not acknowledge it now when i walk by. i keep my head low and headphones against my ears i walk in a fashion similar to that of all of the other black women with who i cross paths every night as i return to my apartment. i wonder what kind of secrets they're holding in their bodies. what kind of experiences they are bury ared to protect someone else at their own expense whom they can run to for help. thank you. >> you can watch this and other programs online, at booktv.org. >> thank you all so much for being here. my name is edward the curator of lectures at town hall seattle on behaver of town hall and our partners at the university bookstore who is set up in the back of the room over there and pleased to welcome you with lavigne presented by town hall is part of our civics series part of the wind coat foundation northwest. captain foundation, the true brown foundation, the boeing

foundation. real next and kow all a of the infrastructure of -- [laughter] of supporting both internet and town hall. and all of town hall work with author as this year is supported by amazon lit partnership so in a moment welcome to the microphone with presentation should be 40 minutes after which k and a with audience. when we get to q and a use this microphone here on the side of the stage to line up on the side there to pick you up in the rooming and for the after recordings that are made tonight and after all of that there will be a book signing. you can pick up a copy at the university bookstore table in the back and heel be signing -- at the table right here in the corner of the room. before turning mic over to him announcementses of events, obviously, we're not at town hall but at the space one of our homes during our inside out season while historic building over on first undergoes a major top to bottom wren vawtion.

we're producing a lot more events here in other venues arranged seattle. this is -- this is wild week tomorrow night for valentine's day david lynch on stage, of the hill talking about limitation, and a great political double header that i think some folks interested inning toed of tonight's event with historian jeremy in conversation with the american institution of the presidency. followed at 7:30 by veteran journalist steve cole on the war in afghanistan. the cia war in afghanistan. so this is a history of the afghan war that is special focused on cia and particular role in that conflict and ongoing america's longest war. add to that a bunch more event it is they're adding to our calendar all of the time more events on technology and politics. some great music and cultural programs next few months. and that's what we did here at town hall you can see all of

these on our website town hall seattle.org and sign up to our memory thanks to members in the room. all right now on to tonight's program. lavigne is an investigative journalist for daily a sphrik bissed news magazine focused on covering the politics and power of big tech. he's been an wired nation, slate, new observer and orr o mc and work profiled by vanity fair and verging among others he's here tonight to discuss his book. valley secret military history of the internet. and a look at the -- little disgust background of so much what we see as free market internet and its relationship to the military and surveillance states. very important for us in the community like seattle to hear and it is a subject of talk. please join me in offering warm welcome to lavigne. [applause]

>> hello. thank you for the kind introduction. put this here? i'm glad to be in seattle. i'm really appreciate that i was invited to speak here tonight. about the internet -- so the internet and i think we all know e what the internet is. we all talk about it all of the time and we all use it all the time clearly. but increasingly we're also freaked out by it. and we're scared by it especially after -- president donald trump won the

election. i was in d.c. just a few days ago, and speaking to people there. well you get the sense that everybody or just about everybody in d.c. is convinced that vladimir putin took what was normally a -- a glorious democratic technology, the internet. right? and turned it into a weapon of influence. a weapon of influence that then he trained on the american people and then used it to help elect donald trump. and if you have -- turned on mnbc you'll found an analyst talk about what happened during the election with the internet was unprecedented. never before in the history of the technology has the internet been used to influence people and especially by a government. right -- that's the sense that you get. and this, there's a panic about

this. about the weaponnization of the internet. and to counter this weaponnization, our senators and capitol hill have been pressuring silicon valley companies like google, facebook, and twitter to work even more closely with intelligence agencies, in order to secure the internet and to protect it from malign foreign influence. now if you know anything about the history of the internet, this naive outrage would be comic -- but the problem is that -- it comeses with danger right this outrage because -- what it is pushing people to do is to handover even more power in silicon valley company and more control over pot internet even more control that they already have. but there's another aspect to this story.

the outrage about russia internet is based on a deeply flawed premise. it's this idea that there was ever a point in the internet's history when it wasn't used as a weapon. the notion the popular notion that the internet is some kind of magic democracy machine is a myth. the internet was signed by the pentagon to be it a weapon of influence. the weapon of surveillance and weapon of social control. from the very beginning going back to the 1960s, when it was developed by arpa the wing of the pengt begun that we know now know as arkansas arp airings. it was an information weapon then and it remains information weapon today in its privatized in commercial form. more powerful than in the 60s and 70s could've imagined yet for years we've instead --

many this about the origin of the internet. we've learned and been told about its supposed utopian democrat potential -- and it's supposed to lead to better world to equalize power, between average citizens and average people and most powerful corporations and most powerful entities in the world -- and it was supposed to lead to global direct democracy. it was supposed to erase corruption and erase need for government talk together to come together as a people. on a global level and decide our fate individually but collectively mediated by this technology. it has been a very clever and extremely successful marketing campaign because you can't really call it anything else but that. and this cane has rebranded what

has always been a military technology and technology built by military contract is something democratic and egalitarian and kind of amazing once you go back to look at it the fact that this is a -- they pulled it it off. that we have actually been convinced that this is true. and i remember the beginningings of this because i was born in the soaive soviet union and my family and i eventually ended up in sphrik at start of the billion and we fled a -- a utopia. my homeland, communism had failed right and the ideas of communism they were no more. it was dead and turned into this very dark, dark place. and so -- it we fled that.

but when we with came to san francisco, we found out that a new utopia was at hand. that -- commune pism was dead but the internet was about to take its place. and -- that the internet an silicon valley and market economy would bring into being all of the things that communism could not achieve. it would hunger poverty to equalize power relations it would end in equality to destroy corruption. because it is kind of a system fully transparent to fully -- fully direct dmngs so no democracy because we would all be working together on this platform. of course, the ewe pope i can promise was internet did not come true. today it is less equal than it was 30 years ago.

right, there's more poverty, there's more unemployment even the average life-span of americans has been dropping. and the the internet itself is also not very egalitarian democrat it's a private telecommunication system that's dominated by a mentally powerful corporation that have -- turninged this platform into a fore profit surveillance machine, and extracting credible amount of money out of it. so the question is, what happened? right? how did this technology or supposedly technology go astray? how do we make sense of it? well, to understand what the internet is and what the internet has become, you have to go back to the very beginning. back to the 1960s when the internet was being create ared by the pentagon. that is an america relatively new global empire facing an

increasingly chaotic and violent world. there was the vietnam war. that was central. but the u.s. is facing insurgencies arranged the world from latin america to southeast asia. it was also facing an increasingly -- volatile and violent domestic environment. you had the antiwar movement. you had -- militant black activism. you had groups that weather underground that were setting out bombs seen daily in cities all across the country. and -- you had race right and major cities in america's paranoid generals looked at this right and they saw vast communist conspiracy, of course. they saw the soviet union expanding globally underwriting insurgencies around a the world backing countries that were post

america at the same time they were underwriting opposition movements in america. and they saw this as a new kind of war that was happening. this is not this is not a war this is in the a traditional war that you could fight. with traditional weapons this is not a war that you could drop in yukon this was not a war to send a tank division into. because the combatants did not wear uniforms and they did not march information. they were part of this civilian population. of the conflict that they were taking part in so as a new kind of war and new insurgency a global insurgency. and a certain -- verified -- in the military people who were -- familiar with a new kind of computer technology being developed, they believed that the only way to fight and win this new war was to develop new information weapons.

computer technology that could ingest data on people and political movements. that could combine opinions and economic data, criminal histories, draft histories, with photographs, telephone conversation intercepted by security services and put that all into a database that could allow analysts to perform sophisticated analysis on it. and to run predictive surveys the idea was that you have to find out who the enemy is and isolate is from the general population and then take that enemy out. and at the time some even dreamed of one day creating a global system of management that could watch the world in real time and intercept right before they happened and much to the same way that thing morning system did for hostile aircraft. this is the general background from which the internet emerged.

today it's counterinsurgency origins that of the internet have been obscured they've been lost for the most part. very few histories like even mention even mention even in a little bit -- but at the time that it was being created in the 1960s, the origin oens of the internet and origins of this technology -- as a tool of surveillance and as a tool of control where it is very obvious to the people back then -- ed a time people did not see computers and computer networks -- to the liberation or -- or technology but a social control and that specifically included the arpon network to later grow into the internet. so -- my book surveillance valley is

an attempt to recover some of the this lost history. this history is important not just from a historical perspective but because you can draw a straight line from the insurgency origins and to the internet technology that we use today from google to facebook and even privacy technology like the tore project which most people just know as the dark web. and so -- tonight i'm going to read a couple of excerpts from the book to give you a sense of this lost history that, that -- that our culture has lost right and culture has forgotten. and then -- open the floor for comments. deal?

all right. september 6th -- it september 26th, 199 wases a mild day at harvard university but all was not well. several hundred angry students dpattered on campus in march down the office a of harvard seen. they piled inside and refused to leave. a day earlier 500 students marched through campus in a small activist, from students for a democrat society to broken up into the schools. office of international affairs and forced administrators out on the street. similar troubles were afoot across the river at m.i.t. where students were holding protest and teachings. pliers posted on both campuses railed against computerized people manipulation and prostitution of social scientist from the war machine and one

warned until the military social science conflict is eliminated. social scientists will aid enslavement rather than liberation of mankind. what exactly were the students protesting? the arp on at the network to later grow into the internet. er yerl they got their hantsdz on a arp a of proposal written by jcr, the religion dare mit scientist who set the program in 1962 the document ran to almost 100 pages and jot is lined creation of a joint harvard mit program that would directly aid the mission called the cambridge project. once complete, he would allow any intelligence analyst or military planner connected to the arpon to upload dos area opinion survey, welfare role, criminal reported history and any other kind of data to analyze that da it and all sorts of sophisticated way.

sifting u through information to genetic maaing out socials and running simulations to predict human behavior. project emphasized to study third world country and left wing movements. students saw cambridge project in bigger arpon as a weapon. they explained the whole kiewrt set up and the computer network will enable the government for the first time to consult relevant data rapidly enough to be used in policy decisions. and that result of this will be to make washington international police or more effective and oppressing popular movementings arranged the world. and another beak that featured mock advertisement with a official representation to these fears -- featured the computer, the computer shaped like an octopus that tentacles reaching every sector of society.

so activists, cambridge project part of a network system of surveillance, political control and military conquest being quietly assembled by engineers and that college campus around the country. the college kids had a point. now i'm going to go to a segment six years in the future. on june 2nd nbc correspondent appeared on eek news to report a stunning ex he spoke straight into the camera told viewers that military was building sophisticated computer network using to spy on americans to share surveillance data with a cia and he was talking about the internet. i mean, the the network later to become the internet. our sources say the army's information on thousands of american protesters in girch the cia and some of it in the cia computers now. we don't know who gave order to

copy to files but what we know is once files are computerized the defense department new technology make it is incredibly easy to move information from one computer to another e grow and reported. this network links this computer of the cia to defend intelligence agency, national security agency, more than 20 universities and a dozen research centers like the corporation. spent months piecing the story together. and for three days after the initial broadcast, he and his colleague at nbc news, they wrote -- excuse me -- they're several more reports more closely at surveillance network and shadow agency that had built it. it was phenomenal was built from pentagon, ci arks, secret service and key insiders so many of whom concerned about creation are of the network to so seemlessly link government systems. and in 1970s, the historic

significance of the arpon not yet apparent but what they uncovered more relevant in hindsight. it would take more than -- 20 years for the internet to spread into most american homes. and four decades of past before they leak made the world aware of the massive amount of government surveillance happening on the internet. today, people still think that striels is something foreign to the internet. something imposed on it from the outside by paranoid government agencies. reporting from 40 years ago telling different story. it shows how military intelligence agencies use the network technology to spy on americans in a very first version of the internet. in other words, surveillance is big from the very beginning. this is an important fact in the history of the internet yet down a collective memory hole crack any popular history of the internet today and there's no mention of it.

even former historian don't know what it occurred. i want to go -- 40 years into the future. i've got a time machine here. all right in 2011 less than a year after it broke on to the world stage and middle east and north africa exploded by a power keg. out of nowhere it swept through the region. it started in tunisia where one lit himself on fire to protest humiliated extortion at the hands of the local police.

within weeks massive antigovernment cities spread to egypt, libya and syria. the arab spring had arrived. in tunisia and egypt protest movements top along standing dictatorship from within and libya opposition forces depose and savagely killed gadhafi knifing him after extensive bombing campaign from nato forces. and syria, protests were met with brutal crack down from bashar al-assad government and led to reclaim thousands, hundred of thousands of lives triggered the worse crisis in history pulling in saudi arabia, turkey, israel, cia, russian air force and special operations teams, al qaeda, isis, arab spring turned into a long winter. the underlying causes of these opposition movements were deep, complex and varied from country to country. unemployment, corruption,

drought, high food prices -- political repression, economic stagnation, and long standing geopolitical aspirations or just a few of the factors. to a young -- and digital savvy state develop and foreign policien players they have one thing in common they arose because of the power of the internet they saw social media sites like facebook, twitter, and youtube as democrat multipliers to allow people to get arranged official state control sources and organize o political movements quickly and efficiently. of the 21st century is network alex ross state department official in charge of digital policy under secretary of state hillary clinton gushed in the nato review the official magazine of the north atlantic treaty organization. his reference perhaps ignorance afterall executed backed by the united states in particular the cia.

but the idea that social media could be weaponnized against countries and governments deemed hostile to u.s. history wasn't a surprise for years the state department and partnership with the broadcasting board of governor in companies like facebook google worked around world how to use interkt tolls and social media to organize opposition, political movements. countries in asia, middle east and latin america as well as former states like ukraine all on the list. and indeed the knock times was surprised to find that many of the activist who played leading roles from egypt to syria to yemen it man part in train aring sessions. egyptian leader led protest in cairo told the paper, quote, we learn how to organize and build coalition this certain helped during revolution. a different view of activist that participated in yemen uprise equally enthusiast egg

about state department social media training. quote it helped me very much because i used to think that change only takes place by force abbey weapons. staff from the tore profit tool that powers the dark web played a leading role in some of these training sessions. activists from -- tunisia, jordan, lebanon bahrain all involved -- activists put skills together to use in the arab skin arranged internet blocks that their government put up to organize o protests. as one activist explained, there would be no access to twitter or facebook in some of those places you didn't have tore. all of a sudden you have exploding under their noses and down the road you have a revolution tore rengdered futile and didn't know thousand to kowct counter this move.

the tore project was a wild success. u.s. government had been funding for years and it had matured finally into a powerful foreign tool with uses and benefits. it had spy and military agent as on internet enabling them to carry out missions without leaving trace. it was used by u.s. government as a -- persuasive regime change as well. a digital crowbar from exercising sovereign control over their own internet infrastructure and tore off merge as focal point for antigovernment privacy activist and organizations. a huge cultural success that made it that much more effective by drawing fans helding shield project from scriewt nying. and tore was just the gung. beginning. arab spring provided the u.s. government with a confidence and confirmation it was looking for social media combined with technology like tore cap captivd

under streets to trigger revolutions. diplomats in washington called it democracy promotion critics called it regime change. but it didn't matter what you are called it. the u.s. government saw that it could leverage the internet to sell discourt to inflame political instability in country it is consideredded hostile to u.s. interest. gods or bad it could rep are nice social media and use it for insurgency and it wanted more. in the wake of the arab spring u.s. government directed more internet freedom technologies the plan was to go beyond tour and launch all sorts of l toos to leverage power of social media to help foreign activist build political movements and organize protests. and chapter app and secure is systems designed to prevent governments from spying on activist anonymous whistle blowing platform to have corruption in networks to be deployed instantaneously. anywhere in the world to keep activist connected even if their government turn off the internet.

strangely enough, these efforts are to be a get a major credible boost from a unlikely source nsa contractor by nail of edward snowden. i think that's it. [laughter] [applause] ... i have a question concerning the dark web.there have been a bunch of minutes going around for the past bloop years. i don't how to put this, i know

-- detective for the tenure void google by using the dark web? >> is a two-part question. the first part is, is the dark web immune to military control? no because the military funds the dark web. that is the dark web. anywhere from 90 to 99 percent funded by the us government. one third of the funding comes from the navy. another third of that comes from the state department. another third from the broadcasting board of governors which is very closely tied to the state department. broadcasting is the arm of the federal government that funds basically american propaganda that radio free asia, radio free europe. if the government wanted to control it or if it was a threat to american power, and

government power, there would be a very easy solution to deal with it. you just pull the funding. and so that is the first part of the question. the second part of the question is, can you protect yourself from google by using the dark web we met no, you cannot. in very narrow circumstances you can but say that you never log into any google service. then you can protect yourself but as soon as you have a phone that is tied to your identity, as soon as you log into gmail, as soon as you log into any of the services that google offers, login services, they do nothing to protect you. because it doesn't matter which dark hole you emerge out of pure you're still logging in with your personal information. in certain narrow situations, you cannot hide who you are.

you can hide your traffic history and stuff like that but this does not threaten googles business model. it is not threaten facebooks business model because in order to use the services for the most part, you have to log into them. unless you create throwaway accounts and -- [inaudible] >> if you never log into anything on the internet, you can protect yourself. it is serious. you asked a serious question. it is the only case in which you can protect yourself. and so, google and facebook both supported financially and in various ways. and the reason they support tort because this is not

threaten the business no -- their business model. so they don't think about what google is doing. right? they think about using this to protect their privacy. it is to redirect peoples attention to the surveillance that is happening as a matter of routine when you are using these platforms. >> hello. >> a few weeks ago i was sitting home alone mumbling to myself as i often do. and i realized some of what i have been saying would probably be disturbing to another person. >>. [laughter] i find myself in that situation. >> i looked down and realize i was carrying my own personal --

which means i may not have been alone at that moment. use the term memory hole. just coincidentally, is it a conscious decision that they using as a model? >> i think -- is a great model. he didn't predict the future. future is not centralized government. it is actually not a centralized government. there is no big brother. we don't know who it is there is not a space. i don't know if they were, a

plan from them but apple /brother 84. i don't know -- look, i don't think there is a grand conspiracy this year and i think if you look, if you read my book i trace the path of how we got this amnesia or how culture completely forgot something that is not that long ago. one of the things that was really surprising and shocked me was how obvious -- was as a surveillance tool to people back then. 1969 this is the first, this the year that they went online. the year between ucla and

stanford. as a technology of surveillance and social control then it is allowed to grow and expand, it would become this surveillance tool and be used to control us. the forgetting part i think that goes along with the commercialization of the technology. when they became lucrative and you can make a lot of money and marketing kicked and. and it really transformed the way we look at technology. there was a cultural shift. and driven back by a lot of money and commercial interest. unless there was a big brother conspiracy to make us forget. i think it is actually much more than that because memory,

you get when you look at history, you get a sense that memory traps the power. so people remember things that are that they want you to remember. because those things don't get funded. the ideas are not given space. because things are funded. you can make living as a journalist as an author. our memory checks the power self silicon valley is the victor. >> hypothetical is someone switch i burn out phone and switched to wi-fi, with that protect them? >> who are you protecting yourself from? >> the government. >> why are you worried about

that? -- because if you are then you are screwed. just don't do it. [laughter] left, is a serious question because there is this fear of being watched. but the question is who is watching you? to what end? i know really wealthy people are always very freaked out about the irs watching them. it is something they hate because they are watching their money. because i don't care because i usually don't have that much to declare. so that -- i know a lot of people have that fear. it is the most prominent fear. they're not ring the nsa, they're worried about the irs. so also, the coke industry worries about the epa. and surveillance. that agency. there are all sorts of forms of

surveillance. and in a democratic society or any society with laws and rules, there has to be methods of making sure that people follow these. and process is in place that surveilled people. people are worried about surveillance you say what you worried about. what is the thing that scares you. and if it is some kind of very vague and very hazy idea of just some big brother watching you -- but i mean, when you walk down the street, do privacy? people watch you. >> and if you use this are you likely to the watch by the government? >> yes. it would stone documents a couple of slides that he release that suit even if you go to the website, just go to the website you will be tracked

much more severely, and much more closely and of course. it is a self-selecting mechanism. if you use this not many people use a very obvious is he who uses it. he's makes you more obvious. the question is who are you hiding from? i think that this is the key point to think about -- i mean i am a journalist. and i report, i made or started my career reporting out of russia. and i knew i was being surveilled. i was seeing people jump out of a car in a giant telephoto lens and snapping a picture. and so, that is something that you accept with the territory. you know you're being surveilled. there is nothing to do to stop that. you just know that it is part of the job. >> if they condemn and answer the defusing and blockers? >> i don't know. they are okay i guess.

-- they are being blocked. >>. [multiple speakers] >> let's talk afterwards. i will help you out. >> in regard to surveillance, everything you've talked about is internet -based. we have a rise of camera surveillance. we publicly located cameras, their atms and traffic cameras. and due to inherent connectivity with the internet and how that information is captured and used by various entities just for their own normal purposes, what connection do you see with that

aspect all time together? whether it is for sinister purposes or just for marketing? where people visit places and have a target, seemingly unimportant things but everything you talked about was much more sinister sounding. >> i mean i think they are very much connected. of course. the internet is just an aspect of this. you have tying of all of the inputs. so the holy grail is to create a radar system for human society. it has been from the very beginning. a lot of people who went on to design this actually cut their teeth on building the first radar. early morning radar system. at lincoln labs. so from then on, the idea of

treating society like an airplane. you can monitor it, you can actually develop in a system that can monitor everything. that is the holy grail because then the ideas that you could plot in if you look at how airplane is moving you can see the vector and predict where it will be. at sometime in the future. in you know the limitations of how fast they're going and how, at which they can turn you can actually predict with some certainty where they will be in an area that they will be in the future. if you can do that for an airplane why can't you do that for a person? why can't you do that for a group of people, a whole country? and so, the idea, the internet is just massive, you have all the input they are. cameras, sliced by signals, things like that.

they are folly to a satellite. and yes, they all connected. the thing about the internet, was started out as a purely a system of transferring data and sharing among intelligence agencies and also being able to analyze that data. but the internet went commercial, it became much more than that. it wasn't just a tool that transfer data. it became the place where thing happened. it was no longer just, it became the field of battle. people actually are doing things on the internet rather than you having to go and collect data externally to the internet. and inputted there. it is already being input in real-time by people as they live. what do we do on the internet? we do not going to the internet to give our stuff to the nsa. we go on the internet to buy things, to date, chat with friends, share news stories.

please disclose defined direction and a good restaurant. things that we do normally but that enhances the surveillance capability of the system. they are connected and i think that you are coming from -- >> the follow-up is that everybody here is interested in this. thoroughly! >> yes. >> hey, there. i have two classes of questions. the first is more personal. how do you live your life with all of this information? and the second being, how has this impacted your use on the internet generally? >> not at all. >> knowingness? >> no, because i think that

look -- there is nothing i can do on an individual level to do anything about this. i do not believe, after edward snowden revealed that there was all of this happening on the internet, there are partnerships to work this into a big spy apparatus. everybody believe that there's going to be reform of some kind. but instead what happened was people got herded into this very narrowband politics with they are told to download an app, get things. people didn't get to get into anything. there is actually public consciousness and people really focused on this to do something to start some kind of reform.

and so i think that surveillance is a political issue. not a technical issue. surveillance always happens in a society. you walked down the street, you are being surveilled because other people are watching. privacy is something that we have come to see as almost some kind of fetish whereas in reality, we are not private animals. we are social animals. we want to be around people, we want people to look at us and we want to look at people. there are different kinds of privacy and surveillance. regulating that in finding out what it is is a political issue, not a technical issue. i think the same goes for the internet. if you want to have an internet that is not spying on people and dominated by giant corporations tracking everything we do and then of course, plugging the system international security, we have to have a society that doesn't do that. the internet is dominated by

spies and giant corporations because our society is dominated by these forces. the two are inseparable. me, downloading an app and hiding in my own little shell is not going to do anything. as a journalist if i tried to hide it will make me more obvious. i spend my life realizing that there's not much i can do. if someone hacked into my computer, you know, well -- they leak all of my emails and i am screwed. [inaudible] >> it depends who. people with the project, it was pretty serious there were death threats and only these things. but companies like google take a different approach for they ignore you and they just don't answer the phone.

and so they ignore you until they cannot ignore you anymore. so far they have been ignoring me. >> and then i have one technical question. if the dark web is funded by government and big business and hackers develop this why don't they do anything about it? >> tell that she -- his spinning two consecutive life sentences. he is the guy that invented the dark web marketplace. he is in jail so they are doing something about it. again, if you look at the history of the project and the dark web it is useful to the us government in many different ways. it is useful to have it around but it only works if all sorts of people who are using it.it isn't just spies, it isn't just revolutionaries that are backed by the us government and other countries. if it is like everybody's that, if you wait for a privacy, if

you are not running massive indigo businesses online, then it's like a busy marketplace or a square that hides all of the stuff that happened there. it is useful to the government. it is kind of hard to except one with the us government is funding something that is supposed to diminish its own power? it seems contradictory. but maybe because there is a simple answer. >> thanks. >> i feel like there should be another microphone here. i'm not looking at this part of the room. >> i was wondering if you can talk about your process of writing this book. when you came up with the thesis, before, during or afte ? >> this came after i started writing because i thought the book initially was going to be

somewhat much more limited in scope. less historical because i didn't, and of course the themes that was developed by the pentagon. but like a lot of other people thought that was something that happened and there was a transformation or privatization that occurred of some sort and transfer of that technology. and then, that is all there is to it. and then what we do to survive a nuclear attack. when i went into the archives and i started looking at declassified records in a study looking at old reports and contracts and proposals, i realized that there was this whole other thing. it was just on the surface, not even deep. that there is a counterinsurgency component. and it is something that isn't

really mentioned in any history of the internet.maybe just bits and pieces but not much at all. the prominent thing that you see when you go into the archives and look at the original documents, historical records. so the thesis of the internet is, i did not go into the book thinking that was going to be my thesis. i was going to sort of look at the interface between silicon valley and the national security state and to look at the relationship between the two entities and look at the business of silicon valley for-profit surveillance.and so, in the end it became a much smaller component of the book although it is there because it is part of the continuum. part of the narrative. but the counterinsurgency history became much later. it was a natural process.

again, what really astounded me was finding out how much dumber we are today the people were half a century ago. i mean there's just no way way to put it. we have actually, we've grown up with his internet. we have all around us. we think that we understand it and we think that we are savvy. yet, our concept of what it is and the history and the integration with political structures and politics. it is like -- when i went back and reread is an incredible booklet from democratic society produced in 1969. there was a whole bucket about this and they look at, in essence they predicted with the internet would become. of course it could not know

what would become because it became something much more. it is much more fractured. back then it was just a military contract. of course now is much more sophisticated. and things that i felt on top of it. but at the core, they predicted what the internet is and understood it very deeply. and so, when i came across that i was like, this is incredible. and it made me wonder how other historians that run into the same close, they came across these and how can they did not write about it? i mean i don't think it is a conspiracy, i just think that ideology is a powerful thing. and so, when ideology of the internet, this really powerful, in our culture to the point where we think democracy in the internet almost synonyms now.

when you go into write the history of the internet and you see that counterinsurgency told the people protesting, 50 years ago, and it is supposed to be democracy. and it is this great amazing thing that will free the world and empower. they clash. and i think it becomes hard to incorporate in hard to explain so it was just dropped. my book is the first glance at this dark history but i think it is not the last one. i think we'll see a lot more of this kind of thing. analyze because this is just like the tip of the iceberg. >> probably more than you bargained for their. [laughter] [inaudible question] >> i think politics were just different back then. people are much more critical

of a us empire and the interface corporations and the military-industrial -- this is sort of like the, my colleague lester called the american -- gorbachev had this period of openness that the soviet union had a late 80s. the archives are opened. restrictions on the press were lifted a little bit. there was a softening of control in the 70s will like the peer 60s and 70s in america like that. there was a freedom of a political i don't know how you call it. like an openness and much more, a lot more sophisticated to some degree. in the end, they fail. so couldn't have been that sophisticated or that effective but i think it was just

natural. and i think also a large part is that back then computers always talk to some powerful entity. some powerful corporation. you know a giant to take up a room. in order to have a computer you have to be very powerful institution. you usually tied to a corporation or a government agency. it was much easier to see this connection between the two. but when we have computers in our bedroom and amazing ads by apple, it is harder to see the underlying reality because still, if they giant corporation making the computer and owned by giant corporations. in a way it was easier because it was clear to see the power of that connection. >> i have just two quick yes or no questions in them the actual questions. my understanding is, is for

those to stay anonymous, is that true?>> i mean i think so, i don't know. they do use tour . >> what's not? [inaudible] >> some of them. the ones that got arrested. >> and there are some that are still at large. so if the government controls tour, why have the komsomol? >> i don't know. because they don't need to catch everyone all the time. they didn't doing think you are they need to be sought, what did he do? love, there is an anonymous activist that protested and

they got pretty screwed in the process but they did not use tour. it does protect to some degree but if you are an actual threat and you use it all the time, you will be unmasked. but it does work. it is not totally -- it is not completely transparent although, i don't know. again, when you're dealing with entities like the nsa we just don't know what goes on. because if you are funding a tool they want people to think works, you don't want to catch everyone who uses it. it doesn't make any sense. so it is hard to lead into the intention of these, and some of the most sacred agencies. we just don't know. but all that, all i can do is to look at, i can follow the money and look at the funding and i can also look at the interest that surrounds it to

see who benefits from it and how it is used in who is truly empowered. sure, naked city somewhere like you know, making jokes about scientology, is not a threat to anyone. but if you run these illegal marketplace like --, he is in jail. and if you look at the logs that he kept, as he was running this business. we would have liked right in. you know tour suffered a crash and it would happen all the time. and he knew that the fbi and the dea were actively looking for him. at that moment, two agents were like -- had infiltrated his organization. they were pretending to be his friends.

he was being actively sought. his server was crashing all the time licking his ip address and that is how he was caught in the end. i look at that and i think that is crazy. he believed in it so much that even reality did not stop him. knowing that his server crashed and leapt his ip address and his identity. he still used it and still believed it. you know, again, ideology is a powerful thing. it makes you ignore the facts and ignore things that are pretty apparent to other people. i don't know if that answers your question. >> thank you so much! [applause] [inaudible] we will be signing over here in just one minute. thank you.

also on thursday will be in new york city at the new school for the 2018 national book critics circle award. present leisure to honor the best books published in the united states according to the organization which is composed of nearly 1000 critics and members of the publishing world and then they will report on the barriers for women while

seeking medical care. sunday we are hosting a live program in washington d.c. that looks for the bibles influence on literature.that is a look at some of the events booktv will be covering this repair many of these events are open to the public. look them to air in the near future. i'm booktv on c-span2. >> until really quite recently in fact, the new drones in the last few years achieves a kind of thing that the air force thought they had at the beginning of world war ii. >> there is collateral damage. >> and there still is. that is the current situation. back then, it took them a while to realize that when they were

with these high altitude daylight bombing against aircraft, there was heavy wind, it took great courage and many crews were killed. they were not hitting what they were aiming at. really there was nothing much you can hit except whole sections of cities. you cannot hit the factors that that that they could mother flying in arizona. and so forth. you do not have that kind of thing at all. and you are losing your -- more and more we did with the british had done for the same reasons early on. which was to fly at night or in clouds using radar which was not precise at all. pretty much the same as with the british were doing and

using incendiaries basically what the british started 42 which was aiming at the buildup areas. not because of the workers but because the houses were closer together. and the fire would spread better. or if you dropped a high explosive bomb when hit something down there. whatever people also at first, our efforts called the british baby killers, civilian killers, this is a war crime, terrible. we came more and more to do that and in japan when we discovered the jet stream, the air went made it impossible to hit anything accurately. they decided to adopt fully the ability to cause a firestorm as demonstrated in hamburg and by the british which is a widespread fire that

simultaneously, not just sequentially but all at the same time, by dropping a lot of incendiaries. so the air would rise very fast creating a low pressure in the area bringing in the wind from blowing on changing the wind pattern basically. like bellows. the temperatures would now rise to extremely high temperatures, 1200 degrees fahrenheit, 1500 degrees fahrenheit. people being asphyxiated in the shelters or as -- put it, peoples bodies shrunk in the shelters like gingerbread people. basically. but in tokyo, while in hamburg, tokyo, this was put to great effect on the night of march 9

and 10th 1945. how many people here, insured is relative, not schoolkids here. how many know what i'm talking about? and how many do not honestly? okay. they caused a firestorm. enormous temperatures. an asphalt on the streets or be melting and burning so that people that came out of the shelters would be caught in the asphalt and it was the enormous wind that would cause, hurricane wind basically. i am sorry to give these details but i put in the book because he felt it had to be understood. many people reported babies being snatched out of the arms of mothers and into this inferno of fire by the wind.

chilcote was crisscrossed with canals. the people that are the asphalt and out of the shelters went toward with their families into the canals to escape from the fire. but the canals were boiling and tens of thousands boiled to death in the canal. the winds were bouncing aircraft. almost flipping them over in some cases, the b-52s. and in some cases thousands of feet above the city, the crews had to put on their oxygen mask to escape the burning lash which was making them sick. so as -- was in charge, tells

it in his book, it was the greatest man-made killing in the history of the world. >> need to watch this and other programs online at booktv.org. [inaudible conversations] >> good evening! i am bradley graham, co-owner of politics and prose along with my wife. on behalf of the entire staff you're welcome, thank you for coming. it really is quite a treat to have steve coll with us to talk about his new book,