A history sheds light on venture capital’s ties to military-industrial complex | Hacker News Reader

A history sheds light on venture capital’s ties to military-industrial complex

bookforum.com

83 pointshhs10 comments

There seems to be a lot of confusion in the US about what military spending entails.

The WTO and other agreements largely limits what the US government is allowed to contract only from US companies. One of the exceptions is national security.

If something is national security related the US government can spend money and restrict the companies it does business with to US companies.

It's just a hack on Keynesian Economics.

I don't see this as an issue? Would we want our security software written by foreign interests. Especially places like Australia

War and the preparation for war is a feedback loop. The military industrial complex is a symptom of technology. The more tech we develop, the more things we have to protect and the number of ways we can be attacked increases non-linearly. Hence, this massive growing defense budget. If we stop developing new tech, history has shown that somebody else will gain an advantage and try to dominate us or an ally. Talk about tough nuts to crack.

If you're interested in learning more about the "early days" of SV, check out this video by Steve Blank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo [1 hour]

Lots of it goes back to WWII and development of advanced radar and anti-radar tech.

Anyone know how a good book or three about history of the military-industrial complex?

I'm especially curious how various economic ups and downs in the military may have influenced venture capital. I'm also interested in tracing back those ups and downs to various presidential mandates. Seeing the whole chain from presidential biography to consequence on the investor landscape. (Other than that it's generally good to know the history, I think it could also act as a source of amplified imagination about how things that's going on right now might produce similar effects.)

Not exactly what you described, but overviews DoD role in development of internet technologies and SV: https://www.amazon.com/Surveillance-Valley-Military-History-...

The book"The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade by Andrew Feinstein describes the "congressional-military-industrial complex" in the context of the world arms trade.

MITRE - The First Twenty Years - a History of the MITRE Corporation

There used to be a lot of juicy stuff shared on various .mil(.x) domains ~1990s, that provided a view in to the apparently significant transition to viewing the world as constantly at war, and the US and its allies' views during the initial phase of militarization of non-military information and communications networks and space. Probably some portion available on archive.org. Search using domains of military research organizations.

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