Military Origins of the Internet

After the successful mission of Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, the United States feared that the Soviet Union was capable of launching a nuclear attack from space. Within months, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which funded research that could be applied to military technologies. Today, ARPA is known as DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Among the agency’s projects was a system of computer networks through which the U.S. government could conduct military surveillance and control infrastructure. This project was the predecessor to our modern Internet, which civilians now use daily to communicate and access information. Although Internet surveillance is a hot-button topic today, it has been an integral function of the Internet from the very beginning. Since the end of the Cold War and the events of September 11, 2001, the military has used the Internet as part of the ongoing War on Terror.

In the 1960s, experimental psychologist and computer scientist J. C. R. Licklider, "Memorandum for Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network," Advanced Research Projects Agency, April 23, 1963, accessed July 15, 2020, http://shannon.usu.edu.ru/Papers/Lick/.J. C. R. Licklider directed an ARPA project called Command and Control, to which he contributed his theory of the “Great Intergalactic Network.” Licklider envisioned a universal system of interconnected computer networks. This concept informed the creation of the ARPA network, or ARPANET. ARPANET was the first network to use Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), a suite of protocols that allowed different networks to interconnect and communicate with one other. ARPANET’s first node went live on October 29, 1969; by 1973, development was underway for ARPANET 2.0, the “network of networks” that would form the technological basis for the modern Internet.

The DOD funded these activities as part of its investment in the burgeoning field of cybernetics, the science of biological and mechanical “thinking” systems. Cyber warfare and cyber security became national priorities as hacking, viruses, and worms posed greater threats to nations’ computerized communications, finances, and infrastructure. Shane Harris, @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2014), 142.In 2007, President George W. Bush likened cybernetics research to “another Manhattan Project,” comparing it to the nuclear research project which produced the first atomic bomb. Indeed, cyberspace had come to be regarded as the “fifth domain” of warfare, joining the domains of land, sea, air, and space. Cyber warfare has been decades in development. In the Cold War years, the United States used computer networks to defend against and engage in nuclear activity. ARPANET was used to conduct military surveillance, to access the infrastructure of nuclear sites, and to perform nuclear detonation tests.

ARPA worked with contractors like the RAND Corporation to conduct military and intelligence research. In the 1950s, ARPA and RAND contributed to U.S. nuclear projects. In the 1960s, however, their attention shifted to counterinsurgency efforts. ARPA developed Project Agile to combat insurgencies by dissident groups in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America. In 1975, an NBC exposé revealed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) were also using ARPANET to spy on American citizens. Student protestors who opposed the war in Vietnam were particular targets. Domestic surveillance and counterinsurgency have continued into the twenty-first century, now justified by the War on Terror. This has been demonstrated by incidents like the NSA’s conducting of warrantless surveillance in the aftermath of 9/11.

Stephen Wolff of the National Science Foundation privatized ARPANET in the 1970s, and it was this, coupled with Americans’ increased ownership of personal computers, which gave rise to the Internet as we know it today. Although the network of networks has since entered into the civilian sphere, it has not ceased its function as an instrument of the U.S. military. In fact, the military’s cyber tactics are evolving with civilians’ use of the Internet, as evidenced by its current engagement in psychological operations (psy ops) to sway public sentiment through social media.

Sources

Fielding, Nick, and Ian Cobain. “Revealed: U.S. Spy Operation That Manipulates Social Media." The Guardian, March 18, 2011 [last updated]. Accessed August 1, 2020.

Harris, Shane. @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2014.

Licklider, J. C. R. "Memorandum for Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network." Advanced Research Projects Agency. April 23, 1963 (originally published December 11, 2001 on http://www.kurzweilAI.net). Accessed July 15, 2020.

Levine, Yasha. Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet. New York: Public Affairs, 2018.

Naughton, John. “The Evolution of the Internet: From Military Experiment to General Purpose Technology.” Journal of Cyber Policy 1, no. 1 (2016): 5-28.

Rosenzweig, Roy. “Wizards, Bureaucrats, Warriors, and Hackers: Writing the History of the Internet.” The American Historical Review 103, no. 5 (December 1998): 1530-1552.