The CIA's Psychic Army, How the Pentagon Built Silicon Valley, Grassroots Economics Empowering The People
May 22, 2025

In April of 1972, Russell Targ, a Columbia-trained physicist with an unusual interest in the paranormal, met with the Office of Scientific Intelligence, a secretive branch of the CIA that monitored biological warfare, nuclear weapons and guided missiles during the Cold War. Their Soviet enemies, who had likely been experimenting with drugs, hypnotism, yoga and black magic, were now reportedly moving inanimate objects with their minds. From a military standpoint, the implications were horrifying. So the U.S. government brokered a deal: For an initial investment of $874, or just under $7,000 in today’s dollars, Targ and his colleague, fellow physicist Harold Puthoff, would test the feasibility of using psychic spies at their Menlo Park lab. The operation, called Stargate, would go on to explore whether ordinary civilians could locate clandestine military facilities across the world using their hidden third eye. According to archived news reports, in total, officials spent $20 million on the secret program. Almost immediately, “curious” data started to emerge: Subjects began describing secret locations thousands of miles away with frightening accuracy. Others reportedly levitated small weights with their minds, while some allegedly controlled temperatures and read information inside sealed envelopes. One man, Patrick Price, who later became known as the SRI’s “psychic treasure,” was especially prolific. “We want to make it clear,” [Targ] told reporters in 1976, “that the functioning is ordinary, rather than extraordinary. It is a regular human capability.”

Department of Defense spending is increasingly going to large tech companies including Microsoft, Google parent company Alphabet, Oracle, and IBM. Open AI recently brought on former U.S. Army general and National Security Agency Director Paul M. Nakasone to its Board of Directors. The U.S. military discreetly, yet frequently, collaborated with prominent tech companies through thousands of subcontractors through much of the 2010s, obfuscating the extent of the two sectors’ partnership from tech employees and the public alike. The long-term, deep-rooted relationship between the institutions, spurred by massive Cold War defense and research spending and bound ever tighter by the sectors’ revolving door, ensures that advances in the commercial tech sector benefit the defense industry’s bottom line. Military, tech spending has manifested myriad landmark inventions. The internet, for example, began as an Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA, now known as Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA) research project called ARPANET, the first network of computers. Decades later, graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page received funding from DARPA, the National Science Foundation, and U.S. intelligence community-launched development program Massive Digital Data Systems to create what would become Google. Other prominent DARPA-funded inventions include transit satellites, a precursor to GPS, and the iPhone Siri app, which, instead of being picked up by the military, was ultimately adapted to consumer ends by Apple.

The US military may soon have an army of faceless suicide bombers at their disposal, as an American defense contractor has revealed their newest war-fighting drone. AeroVironment unveiled the Red Dragon in a video on their YouTube page, the first in a new line of 'one-way attack drones.' This new suicide drone can reach speeds up to 100 mph and can travel nearly 250 miles. The new drone takes just 10 minutes to set up and launch and weighs just 45 pounds. Once the small tripod the Red Dragon takes off from is set up, AeroVironment said soldiers would be able to launch up to five per minute. Since the suicide robot can choose its own target in the air, the US military may soon be taking life-and-death decisions out of the hands of humans. Once airborne, its AVACORE software architecture functions as the drone's brain, managing all its systems and enabling quick customization. Red Dragon's SPOTR-Edge perception system acts like smart eyes, using AI to find and identify targets independently. Simply put, the US military will soon have swarms of bombs with brains that don't land until they've chosen a target and crash into it. Despite Red Dragon's ability to choose a target with 'limited operator involvement,' the Department of Defense (DoD) has said it's against the military's policy to allow such a thing to happen. The DoD updated its own directives to mandate that 'autonomous and semi-autonomous weapon systems' always have the built-in ability to allow humans to control the device.

In 2003 [Alexander Karp] – together with Peter Thiel and three others – founded a secretive tech company called Palantir. And some of the initial funding came from the investment arm of – wait for it – the CIA! The lesson that Karp and his co-author draw [in their book The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief and the Future of the West] is that “a more intimate collaboration between the state and the technology sector, and a closer alignment of vision between the two, will be required if the United States and its allies are to maintain an advantage that will constrain our adversaries over the longer term. The preconditions for a durable peace often come only from a credible threat of war.” Or, to put it more dramatically, maybe the arrival of AI makes this our “Oppenheimer moment”. For those of us who have for decades been critical of tech companies, and who thought that the future for liberal democracy required that they be brought under democratic control, it’s an unsettling moment. If the AI technology that giant corporations largely own and control becomes an essential part of the national security apparatus, what happens to our concerns about fairness, diversity, equity and justice as these technologies are also deployed in “civilian” life? For some campaigners and critics, the reconceptualisation of AI as essential technology for national security will seem like an unmitigated disaster – Big Brother on steroids, with resistance being futile, if not criminal.

Before signing its lucrative and controversial Project Nimbus deal with Israel, Google knew it couldn’t control what the nation and its military would do with the powerful cloud-computing technology, a confidential internal report obtained by The Intercept reveals. The report makes explicit the extent to which the tech giant understood the risk of providing state-of-the-art cloud and machine learning tools to a nation long accused of systemic human rights violations. Not only would Google be unable to fully monitor or prevent Israel from using its software to harm Palestinians, but the report also notes that the contract could obligate Google to stonewall criminal investigations by other nations into Israel’s use of its technology. And it would require close collaboration with the Israeli security establishment — including joint drills and intelligence sharing — that was unprecedented in Google’s deals with other nations. The rarely discussed question of legal culpability has grown in significance as Israel enters the third year of what has widely been acknowledged as a genocide in Gaza — with shareholders pressing the company to conduct due diligence on whether its technology contributes to human rights abuses. Google doesn’t furnish weapons to the military, but it provides computing services that allow the military to function — its ultimate function being, of course, the lethal use of those weapons. Under international law, only countries, not corporations, have binding human rights obligations.

Campaigners have accused Facebook parent Meta of inflicting “potentially lifelong trauma” on hundreds of content moderators in Kenya, after more than 140 were diagnosed with PTSD and other mental health conditions. The diagnoses were made by Dr. Ian Kanyanya, the head of mental health services at Kenyatta National hospital in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, and filed with the city’s employment and labor relations court on December 4. Content moderators help tech companies weed out disturbing content on their platforms and are routinely managed by third party firms, often in developing countries. For years, critics have voiced concerns about the impact this work can have on moderators’ mental well-being. Kanyanya said the moderators he assessed encountered “extremely graphic content on a daily basis which included videos of gruesome murders, self-harm, suicides, attempted suicides, sexual violence, explicit sexual content, child physical and sexual abuse ... just to name a few.” Of the 144 content moderators who volunteered to undergo psychological assessments – out of 185 involved in the legal claim – 81% were classed as suffering from “severe” PTSD, according to Kanyanya. The class action grew out of a previous suit launched in 2022 by a former Facebook moderator, which alleged that the employee was unlawfully fired by Samasource Kenya after organizing protests against unfair working conditions.

Careless People [is] a whistleblowing book by a former [Meta] senior employee, Sarah Wynn-Williams. In the 78-page document that Wynn-Williams filed to the SEC ... it was alleged that Meta had for years been making numerous efforts to get into the biggest market in the world. These efforts included: developing a censorship system for China in 2015 that would allow a “chief editor” to decide what content to remove, and the ability to shut down the entire site during “social unrest”; assembling a “China team” in 2014 for a project to develop China-compliant versions of Meta’s services; considering the weakening of privacy protections for Hong Kong users; building a specialised censorship system for China with automatic detection of restricted terms; and restricting the account of Guo Wengui, a Chinese government critic. In her time at Meta, Wynn-Williams observed many of these activities at close range. Clearly, nobody in Meta has heard of the Streisand effect, “an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information”. What strikes the reader is that Meta and its counterparts are merely the digital equivalents of the oil, mining and tobacco conglomerates of the analogue era.

Ever thought of having your genome sequenced? 23andMe ... describes itself as a “genetics-led consumer healthcare and biotechnology company empowering a healthier future”. Its share price had fallen precipitately following a data breach in October 2023 that harvested the profile and ethnicity data of 6.9 million users – including name, profile photo, birth year, location, family surnames, grandparents’ birthplaces, ethnicity estimates and mitochondrial DNA. So on 24 March it filed for so-called Chapter 11 proceedings in a US bankruptcy court. At which point the proverbial ordure hit the fan because the bankruptcy proceedings involve 23andMe seeking authorisation from the court to commence “a process to sell substantially all of its assets”. And those assets are ... the genetic data of the company’s 15 million users. These assets are very attractive to many potential purchasers. The really important thing is that genetic data is permanent, unique and immutable. If your credit card is hacked, you can always get a new replacement. But you can’t get a new genome. When 23andMe’s data assets come up for sale the queue of likely buyers is going to be long, with health insurance and pharmaceutical giants at the front, followed by hedge-funds, private equity vultures and advertisers, with marketers bringing up the rear. Since these outfits are not charitable ventures, it’s a racing certainty that they have plans for exploiting those data assets.

A $500 million lawsuit filed Monday in Washtenaw County Circuit Court is taking aim at the Michigan Department of Corrections, alleging that prison officials subjected hundreds of incarcerated women to illegal surveillance by recording them during strip searches, while showering, and even as they used the toilet. At the heart of the case is a deeply controversial and, according to experts, unprecedented policy implemented at Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility, the only women’s prison in Michigan. Under the Michigan Department of Corrections policy directive, prison guards were instructed to wear activated body cameras while conducting routine strip searches, capturing video of women in states of complete undress. The suit, brought by the firm Flood Law, alleges a range of abuses, including lewd comments from prison guards during recorded searches, and long-term psychological trauma inflicted on women, many of whom are survivors of sexual violence. Attorneys for the 20 Jane Does listed on the suit and hundreds of others on retainer argued that this practice not only deprived women of their dignity, but also violated widely accepted detention standards. No other state in the country permits such recordings; many have explicit prohibitions against filming individuals during unclothed searches, recognizing the inherent risk of abuse and the acute vulnerability of the people being searched. Michigan, the attorneys said, stands alone.

In many parts of the world, building a house or farming a field means taking out loans. But in Kenya, a time-tested system of mutual aid ... has long been the foundation of local economies. Now, Grassroots Economics Foundation is bringing this age-old practice into the digital age. At the helm of this transformation is Njambi Njoroge, Operations Director at Grassroots Economics. Grassroots Economics is built on a concept called "commitment pooling," inspired by indigenous economic systems. Traditionally, in Kenyan villages, neighbours would come together to build houses, farm land, or provide childcare, repaying each other in labor rather than money. These informal debts balanced themselves over time, ensuring that no one was left behind. "We're not inventing anything new," Njoroge says. "We're automating what has always existed." Using blockchain, Grassroots Economics formalizes these commitments into digital vouchers—secure, trackable tokens that represent labor, goods, or services. The blockchain-powered system functions as a local exchange, where people contribute their skills and pull from a shared pool of community resources. The technology ensures that every commitment has a unique digital signature, preventing fraud and allowing real-time tracking of transactions. "On our platform, Sarafu.network, you can see all the transactions happening in a village—how many houses were built, how many farms were tilled, how much labor was exchanged," Njoroge explains. With blockchain, communities can see tangible data showing how much work they've accomplished together.

Thessy Mehrain founded the Women in Blockchain community in 2016. One of Mehrain’s most consistent messages is that gender equity in blockchain—and tech in general—isn’t a women’s issue. "Men become allies once they understand the benefits," she says. "Most companies, especially in the early blockchain days, were run by men." ETHDenver ... hosted a session featuring Njambi Njoroge, Operations Director of Grassroots Economics Foundation in Kenya. The organization has been pioneering community-driven economies by digitizing traditional mutual-aid systems with blockchain. "Njambi talked about how collaboration has always been at the core of Kenyan communities," Mehrain explains. "For centuries, people have come together to build houses, till land, and share resources. Now, with blockchain, they can track these commitments and scale them beyond their immediate community. In the West, our economies are increasingly relying on central authorities—where ‘trusted middlemen’ own everyone’s data and hold the power. But in many places, economies are rooted in collaboration. One of the features of technologies like blockchain is to add a trust infrastructure that allows to remove central entities, and create cooperative economies." "It’s not about gender—it’s about mindset," she explains. "The masculine principle is about domination—the winner is who gets there first at any price. The feminine principle is about collaboration—winning is defined by getting there first as well but accounts also for the impact on others. You only win together.

On July 7, 2022, days after Chad LaVia was freed from a year of incarceration at the jail in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, the county sent him a bill for $14,320 in “room and board” fees — $40 for each of the 358 days he’d spent inside. The invoice also reminded LaVia that he owed another $2,751.46 in fees from previous jail stints there, which brought his total debt to just over $17,000. LaVia had only two months to pay off the debt, the invoice warned, until it would be turned over to a collection agency. In September, Dauphin County’s commissioners voted to forgive the nearly $66 million in pay-to-stay debt looming over formerly incarcerated people and their families. The move, championed by a commissioner who won in 2023 after running on jail reform, followed a 2022 decision by the commission that ended pay-to-stay fees but had not erased people’s previous debts for jail stays. LaVia Jones said the decision to finally forgive the outstanding jail debt will help her son move on with his life, calling it “a huge relief.” “The longer you sat in jail, the more debt you incurred, the more debt your family incurred. People sit there pretrial for one year, two years. It’s so wrong,” she said. “So this really helps him to move on with his life.” Local groups ... argued for years that the pay-to-stay scheme worked against efforts at successful re-entry for people released from jail, who are typically poor and who are almost always more concerned with basic survival and staying free than with settling debts.

Emerging in the 1950s, preppers were animated by a variety of often overlapping fears: some were troubled by the increasingly networked, and therefore fragile, nature of contemporary life. Early adopters ... went off-grid; hoarded provisions, firearms and ammunition, and sometimes constructed hidden bunkers. They championed individual fortitude over collective welfare. Not all of them are conservatives. Liberals make up about 15% of the prepping scene, according to one estimate, and their numbers appear to be growing. Some ... [are] steeped in the mutual aid framework of the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: a rejection of individualism and an emphasis on community building and mutual aid. The question is less whether we survive than how we maintain our humanity in the face of calamity, how we cope with loss, and how we use the time we have. Elizabeth Doerr, co-host of the Cramming for the Apocalypse podcast, agreed: “Researchers talk a lot about how your ability to survive a disaster or thrive post-disaster is contingent on really knowing your neighbors – because when they don’t see you, they’re gonna come check on you.” Rather than an effort to defend ... against a nightmare future, it’s a part of a commitment to living meaningfully in the present. Genuine prepping requires not only “outer resilience”, as [community organizer David] Baum puts it, but an inner kind as well. “Survival is not the goal,” he told me afterward. “The relationship and the wisdom and the love that one discovers by approaching nature with respect – that’s the goal.”

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