Technology & Power
NewsOnScale Staff
October 25, 2026
The internet was built by DARPA. Google was partly funded by the CIA and NSA. Amazon runs the CIA's cloud infrastructure. Facebook's founder went to Harvard on the strength of a prep school that already had its own version of Facebook. The social networks, the search engines, the cloud platforms, and the payment rails that define modern American life were almost all seeded, funded, or built with government and intelligence community involvement.
This is not a theory. It is documented history that the founding myths of Silicon Valley are specifically designed to obscure.
The question worth asking is what happens when someone builds competing infrastructure without any of those connections. Without the DARPA grant. Without the CIA seed funding. Without the elite university network. Without the $250,000 check from parents. Without the prep school that already had a version of the product.
The answer is documented too. Just not in the founding myths.
What the permitted infrastructure looks like
Google controls search. Its origin includes CIA and NSA research funding through the MDDS program, a CIA official overseeing Sergey Brin's presentations until launch, and DARPA infrastructure at Stanford that made the research possible.
Facebook controls social communication for three billion people. Its origin includes Phillips Exeter Academy — $60,000 a year in tuition — private coding tutors at age 12, Harvard's institutional network, and a concept directly inspired by the prep school's own student directory called The Facebook.
Amazon controls commerce and the cloud infrastructure the US government and CIA run on. Its origin includes a Wall Street VP salary saved before launch, $250,000 from his parents, and a grandfather who was a senior official at DARPA and the Atomic Energy Commission.
These companies did not emerge from a level playing field. They emerged from the most privileged access points in American society — elite universities, government research programs, intelligence community seed funding, and generational family connections to the institutions that built the internet itself.
They then used that head start to build platforms, networks, and infrastructure that became so dominant that competing with them requires either duplicating their institutional advantages or building without them entirely.
What building without permission looks like
No DARPA grant. No CIA seed funding. No elite university network. No parents with $250,000. No prep school inspiration. No Wall Street salary saved up. No grandfather at a government agency.
A social platform built from scratch — competing with Facebook and its three billion users and its Phillips Exeter-to-Harvard-to-government-data-pipeline origin.
A payment rail built from scratch — competing with Visa and Mastercard whose relationships with the Federal Reserve and the banking system go back decades of government-sanctioned monopoly.
A meme coin launchpad built from scratch — competing on a blockchain whose own infrastructure was developed with significant institutional backing that independent builders don't have access to.
A news platform built from scratch — competing with six media companies that control 90% of American media and whose ownership overlaps with the defense contractors, government cloud providers, and platform owners that the news is supposed to cover independently.
All of it built without asking permission from the institutions that were built with government money and now act as gatekeepers for everyone who comes after.
What happens next
The people who built without permission in consumer industries — fashion, food, retail — mostly got to build. The playing field in those industries, while not perfectly level, does not have a government-seeded incumbent sitting at the top with intelligence community connections and classified infrastructure contracts.
The technology industry is different. The infrastructure was seeded by the government. The companies that commercialized it have since built relationships with that same government — cloud contracts, data sharing agreements, surveillance programs — that create a mutual interest in protecting the existing infrastructure from competition.
When someone builds a social platform without permission they are not just competing with a company. They are competing with the commercialized output of the American intelligence and defense establishment. When someone builds a payment rail without permission they are not just competing with Visa. They are competing with a financial infrastructure that the Federal Reserve and the banking system have spent decades making legally dominant.
The suppression of independent builders in the technology industry is not random. It is not algorithmic coincidence. It follows a consistent pattern — the platforms built with government infrastructure protect themselves from competition by the people who built without it.
The platforms that suppress independent builders were built with public money
The internet that independent social platforms run on was built by DARPA with taxpayer money. The search engine that indexes independent news platforms was partly funded by the CIA and NSA with taxpayer money. The cloud that hosts independent products was built by companies whose first major contracts were with the CIA and the federal government — contracts funded by taxpayer money.
The American taxpayer funded the infrastructure. The companies that commercialized it now use that infrastructure to suppress the independent builders who didn't get a seat at the original government funding table.
That is not a free market. That is a government-seeded oligopoly protecting its position from people who had the audacity to build without asking permission from the institutions that were built with everyone's money.
The founders who built without permission don't get origin stories in business school case studies. They get suppressed accounts, denied bank accounts, and platform bans.
That is the system working exactly as it was designed to work.
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