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Comment by bitwize | Hacker News Reader

Literally all of Silicon Valley and most of the computing research of the 20th century was built on funds the US government plowed into industry, in the hopes of developing tech that would help us nuke the Russkies while preventing them from doing the same to us.

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Sounds even more lame when you frame it like that. Are you supporting my point of view?

I think you mean 'figuratively'. If it was literal there would have been no private industry at all, which is complete nonsense.

I believe the above commenter was being hyperbolic, but plenty of government money has supported private industry. That's not just defense contractors, either. Where would Silicon Valley be without ARPANET?

That's why I said figuratively. Some support doesn't mean the whole valley is running on government money.

Where would ARPANET be without the discovery of electricity or the massive railroad expansion throughout the US that resulted in a large telegraph network? It's pretty stupid to tie the valley to one particular invention supported by the government when it depends on essentially all of history until this point.

The Silicon Valley economy were established to develop radar and comms equipment for the military -- before digital computers even became the boom industry they are today.

So when I say "literally all", I'm exaggerating -- but only slightly. Not every dollar in the fucktons of VC money sloshing around out there can be traced back to defense funding, but an awful lot of them can.

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