Surveillance Valley

Levine reconstructs the history of the internet that the Silicon Valley origin myth prefers to forget. ARPANET was not a project to survive nuclear war — it was a counterinsurgency tool, funded by ARPA to help the U.S. military process data from the field in Vietnam and monitor domestic dissent at home. The book follows this surveillance thread from the 1960s through Google's early contracts with intelligence agencies, the Tor network's origins as a Naval Research Lab project, and the structural entanglement between the tech industry and the national security state. Levine's reporting is solidly documented and serves as a necessary antidote to the countercultural narrative popularized by Stewart Brand and Fred Turner. For product leaders, the book raises uncomfortable questions about the institutional origins of the platforms they build on. Understanding where your infrastructure comes from is part of understanding what it can and cannot become.