Just watched this fascinating lecture on the "secret" history of Silicon Valley. One of the most spectacular facts revealed at the end of the lecture ( spoiler alert ) is that the godfather of the computer chip, William Shockley - whose proteges Bill Noyce and Gordon Moore founded Intel (full disclosure: I work for Intel) - was heavily involved in the signals intelligence community, working for the Army Air Force during WWII and later working on projects related to the development of ICBMs. The lecturer also discusses the incestuous relationship between Stanford University and the US intelligence agencies that developed out of WWII, spearheaded by Frederick Terman, a big electronics spook type in academic research. Both Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the founders of Google, were educated at Stanford University. I have another blog post discussing possible incest between Google and CIA here . Specifically, I am suspicious of this whole "the government was taken by surprise ...