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Oracle started as a CIA project (2014)

by mantiq on 8/25/22, 5:20 PM with 90 comments

  • by mikece on 8/25/22, 5:24 PM

    Through In-Q-Tel, the CIA invested in a LOT of companies who were aiming to solve the problems they had. Google was another very early investment by In-Q-Tel on behalf of the NSA because Google's stated goal -- to collect, organize, and make sense of all of the world's data -- overlaps with what the NSA's goal is (and it's possible that Google might come up with better ideas and tech for doing it than the NSA's brain trust).

    If these agencies were NOT investing in potential technical solutions that would be a cause for concern.

    Read more about In-Q-Tel and their investments here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel

  • by jongjong on 8/25/22, 5:47 PM

    US startups seem to have it so easy compared to companies in other parts of the world. It seems they may have been getting a little extra help from government agencies.

    I'm starting to realize how difficult it is to compete in the tech sector without government assistance. I thought it was a free market, but it's looking increasingly like a giant clusterfuck of government intervention. It looks nothing like a free market, it looks more like a battlefield and everyone is competing for who can get the most free weapons and ammo from their respective governments (in the form of grants, contracts and beneficial regulations). That would explain why smaller companies cannot compete against the big ones in many sectors; the big players are flush with free government money; how can any small startup compete against that.

  • by dang on 8/25/22, 6:13 PM

    I feel like this has had more threads on HN but here are the related ones I found:

    Larry Ellison's Oracle Started as a CIA Project (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28386824 - Sept 2021 (4 comments)

    Larry Ellison's Oracle Started as a CIA Project - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8342091 - Sept 2014 (1 comment)

  • by photochemsyn on 8/25/22, 5:52 PM

    All the infrastructure is in place to convert the United States to an East German STASI system. Most of the individual personal data that an outfit like STASI would use to control popular opinion (media job opportunities), academic and governmental job opportunities, 'social credit' scores, etc. is already stored the data archives of Google, Facebook, Oracle, ISPs, Apple, the NSA / FBI / CIA files, etc.

    The only real fix is data privacy laws, which would force the private and public outfits to discard most of their stored data (and enforceable criminal and civil penalites for not doing so).

  • by strictnein on 8/25/22, 5:54 PM

    Weird to see an old [2014] snarky Gizmodo post show up here, but I digress.

    Slightly more interesting than this is the "Project Oracle" project description from the CIA, thanks to a FOIA request:

    https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80-01794R0001002...

  • by chasil on 8/25/22, 5:59 PM

    "What books you bought on Amazon is stored in an Oracle database."

    This has not been true for some time.

    https://www.theregister.com/2019/10/16/amazon_ditches_oracle...

  • by mulmen on 8/25/22, 6:57 PM

    The VOIP telco I worked at literally named our CALEA [1] database "CIA". Ironically we couldn't afford another Oracle license for it so it ran on MySQL.

    [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communications_Assistance_for_...

  • by kkfx on 8/25/22, 6:59 PM

  • by atemerev on 8/25/22, 5:37 PM

    So did Google Earth. The Internet itself was funded by ARPA, a DoD agency. I think it is a good thing: the military will always be doing military research, but at least in the US its fruits often become available to the public.

  • by solarkraft on 8/25/22, 7:36 PM

    > I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Vox didn't highlight Oracle's CIA origins or its never-ending relationship with governments at all levels.

    The reason is missing: There's a high likelihood that it was a sponsored article, at least inofficially. Some journalists love to write nice stories about companies - pre-dictated by those companies.

    I don't have any specific insight here, but Vox aiming to be a "modern" media company seems to be an especially good candidate for such marketing.

  • by dboreham on 8/25/22, 8:58 PM

    Perhaps we should discuss the origins of web search?

    And just to give a random data point: I saw the equivalent of Google Earth/Maps demonstrated at a government contractor (to which my company was a supplier of high performance hardware), in 1989.

  • by treebeard901 on 8/25/22, 10:06 PM

    It probably would not be all that surprising to learn just how many companies are like this. Especially tech companies. It goes a lot deeper due to regulatory capture. Then companies that exist for long periods of time, like the many ones started during and after WW2 have largely merged with the Government just naturally over time. Then consider all the companies that are either too big to fail or exist just because of quanitative easing free money. Many companies are just wholly controlled front companies by the FBI, CIA and other agencies.

    Then all of the rest are at the mercy of all these other agencies to even operate independently.

    Capitalism indeed.

  • by midislack on 8/25/22, 7:07 PM

    All big tech companies were created by the CIA and then "blessed."

  • by agumonkey on 8/25/22, 7:37 PM

    If only Oracle put as much effort into their stock management

  • by euroderf on 8/26/22, 6:31 AM

    "In-Q-Tel" sorta sounds like... the question ("Q") at the heart of "Intel".

    Is this some sort of obscure reference to a trojan installed in Intel processors ?

  • by ProAm on 8/25/22, 5:59 PM

    Technically so was the internet itself.

  • by 2OEH8eoCRo0 on 8/25/22, 6:51 PM

    Outdated stories about the CIA have been on the front page basically every day now. I wonder why?