The CIA’s Venture Capital Arm (In Q Tel P1) | 009 CargoCult Podcast

Transcript

local defense Nets Minute Men and Subs skynet's fully operational processing at 60 teraflops per second what the hell is going on okay what are you doing here [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome back to cargo cult friends today we're talking about inq town the quote-unquote Venture Capital arm of the CIA right what the heck is in q-tel and why does the CIA have a venture capital firm that's what we're going to be getting into today the Spooks are going to Silicon Valley the Spooks are putting on their quarter zip fleeces and they're heading to Silicon Valley and they're like what if we had an Uber for drones it's not viable to invest in your own drone because how often are you really going to need that you have to look for drone parking you have to pay for that on a monthly basis instead use one of our Uber drones and drone anyone you at any time we do surge price when we get busy but hey that's capitalism baby yeah and you just want to really get the precise coordinates of your ex-boyfriend and then listen hey do you think you may be the target of an Uber drone strike now introducing Uber Shield put it over your home is your ex-girlfriend a little cuckoo nuts Cocoa Puffs it's just not financially smart to build your own Shield just use our Shield when you get into fights with her and that way you only need it for when you need it and when you're not using it others will use it they really do not like being called The Venture Capital arm of the CIA they're always like actually I listen to their own podcast iqt you can check it out and I mean it is the most boring podcast with corporate language but they had like listener questions and it was like clearly the FAQ that they want on their website it's just like are you actually the Venture Capital arm of the CIA and they're like actually no we work with different intelligence firms but apparently the fund is reviewed by the cia's Inspector General and they report directly to the Senate select committee on intelligence but they're like we work with other intelligence agencies they don't want to be the Venture Capital arm of the CIA because nobody wants to be related to the CIA because I mean they kind of have a bad ride what's the real difference between saying we are investing in firms whose technology advances the cia's mission needs and we're investing in technology that advances the mission needs of the entire intelligence Community not just the CIA who gives a [ __ ] which agency is doing what it's still the United States federal government intelligence agencies and we all know that the CIA runs the show Even though technically speaking the CIA like will answer to the Director of National Intelligence and they also have oversight over the NSA the FBI everybody it's like an Open Secret that the CIA runs the show that they don't answer to any other agency that they are the top yeah and I mean if we look at what the CIA is up to now it's just like whenever the CIA in the news is in the news it's it's bad news it's like they're being dragged to court to talk about the torture program um I mean most recently they're um kind of cleaning up a drone strike that went wrong in Afghanistan in 2021 um Havana syndrome you know where their workers were complaining about weird headaches that they were getting yeah and the cia's own internal um review said that they were probably crickets yeah the express mission of the CIA is we're advancing the national interest and if that were the case who gives a [ __ ] let the CIA invest in technology that serves their mission needs that sounds great but we know that it's not really the national interests of the general public the CIA serves multinational corporations interests corporate interests that have enough power to get their interests represented in the federal government so when we're overthrowing another country in a CIA coup it's usually because there's corporate interest that stand to benefit from that overthrow when our intelligence Community censors information either abroad or at home it's not because they feel like that information is dangerous it's usually because it's dangerous for corporate interests yeah so I feel like we have to start to synonymize our federal agencies with the idea of corporate interests at best where it's government waste at the very best at the very best you have you know people coming from Lockheed Martin to incutel selling um you know Silly goggles that won't that won't uh do much and are gonna cost billions of dollars and at worst it's yeah information manipulation that's um you know toppling governments or Court you know um convincing the population um to do something politically not in our interests yeah so there are a lot of ramifications for what we're talking about it's very important yeah and I'm surprised that in that podcast they were acting like they weren't because in all the literature and interviews that I've listened to they're very open about this they even say we are investing in startups whose technology aligned with the cia's needs so inkytel was was stood up in 1999 uh uh by the CIA who realized um that that technology was was kind of uh Innovation was shifting from government labs and large companies uh to these small startups in Silicon Valley and so uh some really smart people uh got together and figured out a way to to uh have have a platform that allows uh the government to have access to and leverage uh and really benefit from all that Innovation that was occurring but profit like most Venture Capital firms this is a quote unquote Strategic investment firm so financial gain sure it's important but it's really secondary iqt exists to invest in Tech that advances the mission needs of the US government and like if we make a little money on this side so what yeah but the main mission is to advance the yeah how are we going to serve National Security and what they do is they basically shop around just like any Venture Capital firm would and identify startups right and then fund those startups throw money at them explain what Venture Capital funding so yeah very briefly I mean probably the high profile cases of venture capital funding you've probably heard of like theranos the fake blood tests we work that just crashed FTX that imploded um those were all venture capital backed companies the way it works is that these companies are not listed on public exchanges they um they can't be on the stock market because they're so new they don't have any cash for debt so they get these Venture capitalists to to invest through private equity which is much much less transparent and you can do a lot you can throw a lot more money at a company that way as of 2022 the U.S Venture Capital industry has a market size of 63 billion dollars and so the last couple of years we've seen like some very small startups with um you know almost just an idea on a napkin suddenly be worth one billion dollars right that really is the purpose of a venture capital firm like generally if you start a business and do it let's call it the traditional way it's going to take you some time to turn a profit it's going to be slow it's going to be steady Venture Capital basically allows you to get into the carpool lane the Fast Lane right you get a ton of money from a VC and they'll nurture your entrepreneurial idea or whatever after they make a return on their investment they exit out yeah they exit out and then you're coming you get the benefit of having that like influx of cash right up top yeah that's just awaiting you know what could be decades to turn a profit exactly and then later your company can go public and then you can get all kinds of investment as we'll see so there was such an explosion of venture capitalists in Silicon Valley kind of shopping around for startups like which Stanford grad has the best napkin idea and you know has the best Vibes a lot of I don't know a lot of other podcasts would call it like The Vibes economy because they're not really going off of how practical an idea is they're really going by like the energy of the my Venture Capital firm and I saw you from across the bar and really liked your Vibe and we'd like to give you uh two billion dollars and yeah also wondering if you're into group sex but anyways we've seen such an explosion of venture capitalist funding that it turned around whereas like Venture capitalists were competing for startups rather than startups kind of doing the shark take thing and pitching to investors so you see in succession season one when Kendall comes in and he's like trying to fund this startup that's like the Amazon for local artists and he comes in with these new sneakers and he's trying to impress him and he's just really really cringe and and the women are like yeah no no not for us you know basically uh you buy a painting from some art student in a basement jack up the price sell it to some Morgan Stanley sex Pest and you me and the student I'll get rich right so we've worked out a playlist year after the launch I'm sorry can I just say something uh so I I I I got these sneakers on the way down here because uh I thought I don't know what I thought I thought you'd all be dressed like [ __ ] Bjork and uh I wanted to uh make an impression um so I'm a jackass um the truth is I I don't know anything about art what I do know is how to monetize your concept and achieve the scale it deserves don't sell your soul to some monolith we're Boutique we're light on our feet we're not the gang of four we're the [ __ ] Rebel Alliance I'm a good guy who knows the bad guys I've got reach and I will fight for you every [ __ ] day I'm the [ __ ] who can be your world and uh yeah I just thought of that so apparently I do know a little bit about art so what talk to me talk to me what do I need to do I need to take off my Dopey sneakers no yeah well seriously I'll throw the [ __ ] window right now I'm taking them off here come on have them they have the power yeah as the startup yeah yeah because the Venture Capital fund will take you know 25 to 50 of your company they're gonna really direct the direction of of where your investments will go where your product development will go so you don't want a a bad investor so now we're seeing it becoming a little more difficult for startups to sell themselves in Silicon Valley because of the crash of theranos and FTX and Silicon Valley Bank so you might have seen an article recently that was like you can't fake it in Silicon Valley anymore you have to have real deliverables but there's still this Market especially for AI people are throwing so much money around the VC world is a very poignant flash point in like the general fakeness of the economy yeah yeah it's just like capitalism like it's it's all fake it's all about projections of future profits and venture capital is like one of the most extreme ways that we see that happen where you could literally just have a PowerPoint and a nice you know bean bag set up in your offices and you could get a billion dollars for that right yeah and and you know it makes you diminish the the effort it takes to make a good PowerPoint because I've I've spent three or four hours on those transitions just like the rest of us yeah I know we went on with them when those words spin around you know I was up all night with Adderall I love a baseline text entrance that's just a little background before we get into inqutel to kind of explain the world of venture capitalism basically you get a bunch of money because you have an idea the money helps you enact the idea and if it's successful everyone gets money in the end in an Ideal World the best idea wins but in order to spend your time pursuing the goal of getting money from a VC in order to spend most of your time doing that and not working you have to kind of be independently wealthy or have some sort of starting point of money in order to invest all your time in that yeah being in the comedy world it's kind of funny because it's like when you're pitching in a Silicon Valley world you're like it's like uber meets an airplane I mean it's a helicopter or whatever but like in in the TV pitching world it's like Euphoria meets uh Seinfeld and trying to like Coast off the cloud that existing brands have makes sense so unlike most VCS inqutel like I said is a Strategic investment firm so it's not just about the money it's actually about quote unquote National Security right David Petraeus while he was the director of the CIA in 2012 once said that the partnership that the CIA has within qtel is quote essential to helping identify and deliver groundbreaking Technologies with Mission critical applications to the CIA and to our partner agencies also so interesting about inqutel as a VC employees and trustees of nqutel can actually profit from the Investments That in qtel makes and in 2016 The Wall Street Journal found that nearly half of inkytel's Trustees had a financial connection with a company that the corporation was funding exactly and so they're also looking at these companies to be commercially successful so I guess that is a little bit of incentive to invest in companies that actually do make something in the end but it's also a way for these individuals to profiteer over the decisions that they make at in qtel using government money right but it's funny because unlike the rest of the VC world you put in the money but then you actually become the customer so like ink utel will provide the Venture Capital funding for I don't know let's say the company for example is called palantir yeah um so they invest in palantir as a company from a VC perspective they're giving CD funding whatever they get out as an investor but then the CIA also becomes palantir's client and is the reason that palantir is successful so in the rest of the VC world as fake as it is at least you have to have other customers for the startups let's say you have a startup called sure microphones a venture capital fund gives you money then you have to find podcasters or musicians or whoever to buy your product in order to turn a profit but in the case of ink utel the CIA actually becomes the customer and is the reason that a company can be successful so it's like it's like the worst of Both Worlds right because you're getting this taxpayer money to fund these private companies but the taxpayer is not benefiting so the CIA like is the Venture Capital firm but then it's also the customer yeah you have a lot of startups pitching to nqutel but you also have inqutel approaching startups which may be kind of threatening in some kind of way like if you have something that's sensitive to National Security we don't want you to sell it to China I mean there's not a whole lot of transparency about this process there's a whole lot that is transparent and we know which companies that they are funding they do show their portfolio online but as mentioned like it's possible that there are more companies that we don't know about but go ahead yeah but it goes back to uh 1951 law The Invention secrecy act so basically if the U.S government gets wind of something that you're building in your garage that could be used to uh drop little bombs you know you're training pigeons or whatever that patent is belongs to the government now and they they have a like a kind of pay scale how sensitive it is to National Security 30 if it's a 10 you get this many million dollars if it's a one we'll give you five dollars for it so um and these startups once they sign withinqtel they have to sign a state secret contract and if they breach that contract it's like a 20-year prison sentence it's very serious for these startups to get involved so right nqutel can kind of scare startups into submission into some in some ways right the CIA approaches you and it's like we love what you're doing here it's like how did you even know what I was doing I wasn't even public about it but yeah should we talk a little bit about um the origins yeah the origins let's start with the name in queue tell and you'll see that they get an inspiration from a lot of different movies but Q is from the James Bond movie [Music] Q was the head of research and development at the fictional Q branch of the MI6 or the British version of the CIA and he oversees top secret field Technologies so in other words for ladies those gadgets and gizmos so he would be the guy in the movie who comes with the shoe phone is like no you idiot the receiver is the heal you know A supplier of Technology who also calls him an idiot yeah okay okay not always but he doesn't always calling it speak down to him maybe I'm thinking of get smart more so armed with this nerdy movie reference name the CIA launched in cutel in 1999 at the peak of the.com Boom this started as an idea by then CIA director George Tenet uh George Tennant is the second longest serving director of the agency right behind Alan Dulles probably the most influential single you know American political figure oh yeah Dulles we love Dylan you know the guy who um you know sheltered Nazis after World War II may have orchestrated the Kennedy assassination of that lovely figure and uh the Bay of Pigs is his uh brainchild so okay so see I director George Tennant hero probably most known for his role in the cia's torture program which is very uncontroversial and now he's like how can we get AI right yeah torture exactly like how can we um use technology to torture people when they when yeah when people try to get AI to write stand-up comedy that's torture for me yeah I mean also like CIA torture program we should mention like Not only was it you know in contravention of international law and you know brutal and morally wrong and all that it was also literally ineffective yeah so even if you're like the biggest war hawk or like National Security State supporter or whatever like yeah all the information they got from um people captured the FBI got it all just you know conversing with the people as soon as they were caught and being like hey Habibi what's up [Laughter] just talking nicely to them and that is the uh that's the way that interrogation works the best if you're if you're making the person comfortable and believing otherwise you'll get false intelligence if people if somebody put a gun to my head and they're like where's Dino I'd be like oh uh I don't even know a dino but I'd be like oh he's around the ball you could have asked like any sixth grader with experience like lying to their mom and they would have told you that a torture program like this would give you not reliable Intel yeah but they got basically two like military psychologists to design the program great and just out of it so anyway what what better use for the guy who authorized that than to um come up with this idea of having the CIA uh seed tech companies I'm gonna read from one of nafiz ahmed's article now where he talks about some of the origins of inqutel so he says in 1999 CA created its own eventual Capital firm and qutel it's a fund promising startups that might create Technologies useful for intelligence agencies but the inspiration for inqutel can earlier when the Pentagon set up its own private sector outfit known as the highlands Forum sounds so sexy right it kind of does yeah this private network has operated a bridge between the Pentagon and Powerful American Elites outside the military since the mid 90s yeah and I think this is part of uh iqt's Mission I'm going to be using iq2 and the QT incutel and Highlands Forum they do have kind of an operation where they're making these mixer events where military officials and and Silicon Valley types can kind of mix and yeah The Intercept has been like trying to get into those meetings here and there and they're like they've denied us again but sorry go on Highlands Forum despite changes in civilian administrations the network around the highlands Forum has become increasingly successful in dominating U.S defense policy giant defense contractors like buzal and Hamilton and science applications international corporation are sometimes referred to as the shadow intelligence Community due to the revolving doors between them and the government and their capacity to simultaneously influence and profit from defense policy so yes side note like the shadow government Shadow intelligence Community deep State all this stuff Security State steady state like all these terms are basically reference to the idea that like you know as Democrat Republican administrations these these people they come and go but who stays there the whole time the defense Military Intelligence apparatus the revolving door between these companies and the government the leadership at these companies and the leadership of the agencies that contract these companies and one of the founders of incutel is a former Lockheed rnco right that's right um that is Norm Augustine former CEO of Lockheed Martin he co-founded inqutel with Gilman Louie but it's not like these two people just like getting together like any other startup and deciding to start eventual Capital fund like the CIA launched this right the highlands Forum has for 20 years provided an off-record space for some of the most prominent members of The Shadow intelligence Community to convene with senior U.S government officials alongside other leaders in relevant Industries currently incutel um company leadership is pretty much what you'd expect like the executive team has people hailing from Lockheed Martin the Harvard Kennedy School IBM the U.S Air Force and the Board of Trustees who um because inqutel is a non-profit the Board of Trustees like are the main decision makers the Board of Trustees led by Michael Crowe he's been there since the beginning since 1999 George tenant apparently personally asked him in my opinion he looks like Michael Pompeo but I'll leave that for the viewer to decide um then you also have um Safra Katz who's the former CEO and CFO of Oracle um who you'll remember from our last episode uh Cypher cats also current director at the Walt Disney Corporation and there's several other board members but obviously the most interesting one the most important one is George Tennant who does still have a seat on the board known for authorizing the brutal and ineffective CAA torture program yeah and one of those like early goals of uh inkutel and the pentagon's involvement with the highlands Forum was this idea of Skynet like it's the villain in Terminator it's crazy that they would pick the villain you know like a respect Q I salute q but Skynet I will not Bend Dany I would always get comments like whenever I would talk about surveillance all the comments would be like this is Skynet and I like never really understood what that meant but now I get that it's a movie reference it's a person it's a super computer okay it's like basically what you'd imagine to be the most developed stage of AI basically a super computer that is conscious and has a robot army and is trying to destroy the human race so yeah it's like self-fulfilling prophecy Vibes like for years and years I feel like popular media has depicted this kind of like dystopian surveillance State and now it's like oh it's inevitable you guys great idea and then there's the whole predictive programming school of thought where people say that like okay well if you look at who's uh financially backing a lot of these TV shows and movies yeah the CIA is trying to get in involved in the creative process they're like once we create the screenplay for this we can create it in a lab well remember when we talked about Oracle we talked about how the Oracle like Family Trust has these two big production companies um one quote unquote run by the Sun and one quote-unquote run by the daughter um and between the two of them you had like virtually every you had Mission Impossible you had Star Trek Top Gun Terminator Jack Ryan World War Z Gemini man Transformer Zero Dark 30 Vice all these movies talk about defense or intelligence you know and so they're just creating this like very visual blueprint of what they want to do kind of and also just like uh how they want to be seen like I actually haven't seen any of these movies but I know like the we will have amazing criticism of like Zero Dark Thirty is that it's it's like shows the CIA in a positive light or like when people talk about Jack Ryan which is that show with the guy from the office um I think that also depicts the CIA in a positive light and quote-unquote enemy states of the US in a negative light like exactly how the CIA wants us to see them let's talk a little bit about iqt's portfolio let's talk a bit about some of the technologies that inkyutel has supported and what their applications are so some of them would be what you'd expect technology that um the intelligence community you can use the CIA can use so anything from like standard software to satellite technology for them to get Imaging across the globe so so some of it is what you'd expect so like satellite stuff there was a social media company right they're investing in firms that mine tweets and Instagram photos all kinds of data mining they're going to be interested in and those tools are a data minor geophedia pathar transvoyant all of these are trying to get a picture of individuals that I mean I'm sure a lot of data firms already have and there's also like maybe a secret Facebook that where you go to your own profile and there's all the information possible about you as an individual and only the government people can access it yeah yeah it would be similar to Facebook and that like you have profile but yeah not connected to Facebook but yeah The Intercept did a well actually Lee Fong we should say at The Intercept because he's really the only good intercept reporter they have anymore okay shots fired but praise fired towards him yeah but he did an investigation for The Intercept called the cia's investing in firms that mind your tweets and Instagram photos he found that among 38 previously undisclosed companies receiving CIA Venture Capital funding several are developing tools to mine social media and this is kind of what you'd expect the CIA to be doing right yeah but it's interesting that they're doing it by seeding other private technology companies as opposed to developing that technology in the CIA itself again this is a theme I'm always going to be saying this because this is the deal with fascism this is the deal with having the private and public sectors intertwine in this way and I'm gonna always say this when it comes up but like it's the worst of Both Worlds it's the worst of the public sector in that you have the technology being developed to further an imperialist agenda or whatever let's say you love the CIA and you you know support you know Western hegemony or whatever it without a doubt is furthering the cia's agenda right so it's that but then it's also private in that it's not accountable to anyone this company like these data mining companies it's not technically the government right even though it's getting our taxpayer money so it's not transparent to anyone but it's investors it's not transparent to the US taxpayers who are effectively funding these companies yeah I mean the question comes up like why not just develop these Technologies in-house in the government it's an issue of transparency you're going to be able to get get away with much more stuff when you're like um yeah this is this is a private algorithm that we can't share with you and we can't tell you how we're collecting all of your location data and putting it in this one place like right and you know the government can use that to crack down on protesters and while they might be saying over mining social media for Isis messages like like um you know the few the few Public Accounts that Isis has they don't need to mine social media to find out what Isis is doing they could just go across the hall yeah across the hall and say hey did you tweet anything today yeah and they have but it's just infiltrated and I mean Isis is done I assist Isis served its purpose it destabilized Syria actually in the fees I'm at the same journalists we were talking about earlier did a lot of good work on Syria and he was nice he uh brought to like some documents that showed that the US was working against a democratic Syria because they were more focused on Quagmire you might have heard like pentagon-backed Rebels are fighting um cia-backed rebels in Syria and you that might have been a Whoopsie Daisy but also it worked for us because we're just like yeah we just want to throw more weapons at it and create a mess yeah it's only a Whoopsie Daisy if you start at the starting point of they are just trying to be bring peace to the region but that's not what it is we had oil interest there we had geopolitical interest there it was never about you know stopping terrorism which is a shitty and fake word that was created to further our imperialist agenda but anyway like most intelligence agency reasoning it's always about National Security right where it's like oh we have to protect our people we're under attack and other countries are developing this technology so that's why we need to and you see that with the example of the Holograms that this that I think you tell invested in recently yeah Brooklyn based brooklyn-based it's on the water I've never been but I did follow them on Instagram and I might have to unfollow them now he said I know that that in qutel provided some Capital Looking Glass basically crew takes a portrait and makes it 3D like a hologram and in qutel is interested in this because they are working towards a whole metaverse experience to train military with they're investing heavily in VR goggles that will use Holograms so yeah they took this little artistic shop Looking Glass Factory and just poured a couple million dollars into it they also uh invested in immersive wisdom which is connecting to a virtual Space video feeds real-time data but what is the difference between that and just video games as they exist right now but they're trying to they're trying to get real-time data I guess of an environment so somehow make satellite data real-time data within a virtual space and qtel is interested in again developing goggles that would help soldiers identify enemy combatants and friendly commands but the main problem is that when they put these VR goggles on is they're more confused so it might even be more dangerous on the battlefield to have these VR goggles it sounds like what they really want is a telescope but I don't know how much the binoculars the battlefield like I think it's more about propaganda so Looking Glass received 2.5 million dollars from inkyutel and now the CIA and the dod um have become customers of Looking Glass Factory which is this hologram company in Brooklyn um so there's the battlefield aspect of it which makes sense from the dod but then there's also the propaganda aspect of it which makes more sense from the CIA and if you look at some of what inkutel says about its investments in Holograms they say it's because we need to make sure other countries can't manipulate Holograms and 3D technology to satisfy their propaganda machinations we need to we need to bring Dulles back as a problem as propaganda explain to people why the Cold War was a good thing so here's what nqutel says about hologram technology quote events recorded in 3D could be manipulated to satisfy future propaganda and political machinations to tell our stories in 3D effectively we must immediately start building technology Stacks that limit their misuse just as we are beginning to wage Tech Wars to handle the threats of video deep fakes we need to begin to apply the same standards concerns and care to the Wild Frontier of 3D data that lies ahead we're going to need to be able to tell facts and fiction apart so they're saying we need to invest in this so that we can make sure it's not being misused yeah because the CIA would never misuse it them so ourselves um but do you know about project bluebeam have you heard about this no go on so Project Blue beam is one of my favorite conspiracy theories it's a conspiracy theory which claims that NASA is attempting to implement a New Age religion with the Antichrist as its head and to start a new world order via technologically simulated second coming of Jesus Christ all right Jesus came back everybody can just chill yeah yeah and by the way he said that you like you kind of got to listen to us yeah side note I guess if they have like another Waco situation they could be like David koresh is not Jesus I mean it just wouldn't work today because we all know what Holograms are but if if like a couple hundred years ago you know a hologram in the sky appeared and it was Jesus coming back like I bet half of the people on Earth would be like all right yeah period like the Jews would give up they would be like yeah you guys all right all right we'll give it to you never give up they would find a way to rationalize it like they they have rationalizations for everything like for dinosaurs they were like they were put there as a test yeah to test our to test our faith to test our loyalty to the Old Testament yeah they were like here's some bones yeah well because you don't believe in the Big Bang and they don't believe in dinosaurs anybody who's religious oh there's no evidence of of Jews being enslaved in the Egypt that is also attacked failing right now stop looking well that's I think Loki my conspiracy theory is I mentioned this on an earlier at but um Jews are like not supposed to go back to Egypt because we were slaves there but my theory is they don't want Jews to get into archeology and to be like what the [ __ ] yeah that's her questioning everything now yeah um they don't want them there they don't want them to realize that it probably is [ __ ] it's like like Larry Ellison I have a lot of respect to my friends who believe in the Bible Stories We Salute we salute to you um to my mom and dad yeah all right so that's the Hologram so the inqutel they're investing satellites computer technology social media data mining companies sorry with the Hologram so in the iq2 quarterly the the purpose of investing in Holograms they they clearly stay a perfect simulated reality that is indistinguishable from real life will ultimately take one of two forms it will either manipulate real light and real matter like the Star Trek Holodeck or it will remove the middleman of wearable VR inputs and instead directly manipulate our perceptions through a machine brain interface like that is envisioned in The Matrix they're like they have two movies that they're working with I think what we're learning is that this world is run by nerds yeah between those perfect simulations and the current state of the art we envision the emergence of hybrids such as the manipulation of real life Holograms combined with haptic gloves or the direct manipulation of the brain sense of touch combined with VR AR contact lenses so they want this simulated reality or this machine brain interface because the Matrix and Star Trek told them to so we've got satellite social media Holograms and then we also got a company an Australian company actually called cortical Labs oh man okay just reading this headline will make your skin crawl tell us cortical Labs raises 10 million dollars for its pong playing stem cells that could eventually power Ai and the website says human neural networks raised in a simulation yeah so it takes like organic matter human neurons and tries to manipulate them with synthetic biology and creates organoid intelligence my stomach stomach just turned yeah they're combining like synthetic biology and human neurons to create this organoid intelligence which is like I guess they're claiming it's like a class of AI I really think they're probably far from what oh they need way more money they need way more money to do anything but they can get a stem cell to play Pong which is just a video it's not playing ping pong it's playing a video game yeah and like if you look at their website there's really not a lot going on um I guess they need even more money to to start uh building out the website but they're saying um this was in 2020 they say all this year and most of 2019 here at cortical Labs we've been in stealth mode working very intensely to develop prototypes and demonstrate the value of our Tech in other words we have nothing to show for anything yet but don't worry it's definitely coming so it is scary but we won't see petri dish brains for a little while I hope well it's interesting that the CIA is investing in stuff like this and as a side note like if you look at ink utel's website um they're investing a ton in biotechnology companies and this kind of um makes sense because the new era of technology is really about Bridging the digital and physical spheres bridging your physical body with your digital technology like wearable technology goggles that put you in the metaverse like everything becoming digitized or so we can be connected to Skynet and serve as some super computer okay so we're not going to go through inqutel's entire portfolio but we will if we get 100 patrons but yeah here are the types of companies that incutel has invested in so far so there's AI there's AR VR which is augmented reality virtual reality um robotics biotechnology technology Communications makes sense for the CIA microelectronics materials and Manufacturing so that also makes sense because the CIA needs that too power and energy sensors space and then trusted infrastructure and trusted infrastructure I guess is their way of saying critical infrastructure other space companies incutel invested in great names clear space constellar Morpheus space Stoke space trans Celestial heal robotics Fleet space onenav Capital space Morpheus space swarm Technologies orbital insight and gatter Technology well if I were to approach heavy into space if I were to approach in qutel with a pitch I'd be like here's red pill blue pill you know like something completely Morpheus they're like we love it we've been thinking about this ourselves how do we recreate Morpheus another funny company that if you tell put up some money for is skin sentio a skin company um that used to go by the name of clear Rista but the product is also clearest and now and it's basically a um you know three-step moisturizer that also exfoliates and gives you a glowing look but also can hand your DNA to the Central Intelligence Agency so it's like get ready with me hey guys get ready with me and then like the feds knock down the door we wanted to create a skincare line that was based on proven science and completely different from any resurfacing products out there [Music] ability of Science in the luxury of the med spa to give you an at-home solution unlike any other now for the first time our internationally patented formula developed by scientists from MIT and UC Santa Barbara is available to help you feel confident in your skin so as reported by The Intercept incutel has an interest in developing genetic analysis this is called physiological intelligence which in a 2010 article inkutel described as quote actionable information about human identity and experience that have always been of interest to intelligence communities this article according to the intercept is no longer available on nkutel's website but you can still read it like thanks to the internet archive and here's a quote the DNA contained in microorganisms in a person's gut or in a person's skin may contain sequences that indicate a particular geographical origin so it kind of makes sense that the CIA is interested in technology like this obviously they don't care if your Skin's clear or not but what they do care about maybe that is data collection right how to make Americans more beautiful yeah we can beat China on acne yeah so yeah all this biotech is kind of interesting and don't worry it is not the only uh biotech company that the CIA invests in we also have Lincoln vax we also have something called quandaryks something called opt gen something called arcsis not to be confused with arcterics uh fluidogym Seahawk uh and metabiota which if you know you know we're not going to get into that company today another company that the not the Venture arm of the CIA fund is the is colossal biosciences which may sound familiar they are involved in D Extinction so mapping extinct genomes and they're trying to bring back the woolly mammoth and uh it may remind you of another movie that we're discussing Jurassic Park you know I was thinking maybe they could partner with SpaceX and they can like be extinct all the endangered species that Elon Musk the shuttles are making extinct that's funny [Music] all right so that's a little taste of inkyutel's portfolio you can see that the technologies that the fund supports has a large range we'll be talking more about inqutel in our next episode where we dive into in cute tells role in a company we all know and love no [ __ ] way Google and in Q town I know what a shocker that one of the biggest companies on Earth has a relationship with the United States intelligence agencies we're gonna be talking about Google and in qtel's relationship in part two of this episode on it see you next time bye [Music] thank you