In-Q-Tel: The CIA's Venture Capital Investment Firm - Part 1

Transcript

from ufos to psychic powers and government conspiracies history is riddled with unexplained events you can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know [Music] and we're back now before we continue on i want you to do something if you're not driving and you can do this head on over to youtube and search for iqt we're in qtel it's got dashes in between so in dash q dash tell find their youtube channel look up look it up then know that on that channel there's an unlisted video titled iqt celebrates 20 years of innovation and you can find it through their website check out that video like watch it before we we go into this because it's just gonna it's gonna give you a corporate speak version of like what we're about to tell you in their own words it's worth it just so you guys know they'll say uh i think inquitel is the only vehicle that sits at the intersection set of government venture capital and the startup community and then the other guy says sitting at the intersection of these two worlds that don't know each other and don't really talk to each other and being trusted by both of them that's really the secret sauce of inquitel so those statements sound fine you know shiny utopian intersection secret sauce all the hits all the good ones but it doesn't answer the question from before the break so to reiterate what is the cia actually doing through in qutel here's where it gets crazy you might not have heard of inquitel before today and that's fine you know it's not a top secret thing but it is sort of obscure unless you live in one of these venture capital tech startup worlds but whether or not you've heard of them it is highly likely that if you have used some of the tech that they have funded you might already be familiar with their mapping technology iqt back in the day invested in something called keyhole incorporated i remember this you remember this yeah yeah yeah it was it was later acquired keyhole that is by google by big g itself in 2004 and today you know iqt's investment as google earth that's the one i remember this from my days producing jonathan strickland's show tech stuff uh and he talked about keyhole and that whole kind of um development into what we now know as google earth that's why it rang about hey do you guys remember what keyhole actually refers to the satellite system the spy satellite system yeah and that's and with that that is true folks matt is correct and what's fascinating about the keyhole satellite uh operations is i'm still i'm still so surprised and i have to admit objectively impressed by how that worked they were using satellites to take photographs from space of of places where they couldn't you know get a human spy or uh have a traditional aircraft fly over but the technology of the time when keyhole and corona were in play the technology of the time was not super advanced they couldn't just remotely send or electronically send these images they had cameras on the satellites the cameras used film like actual rules of film for anybody of a certain age who might remember those and then they would just they would drop the canisters from space how who who is the hapless incredibly incredibly intelligent person who had to go out and find those film canisters like how how how accurate were they able to be was it was it like okay be on third and 72nd at 4pm and just hold your hand up to the sky or is it like somewhere in utah what are you doing this weekend we think it's somewhere in on the left side of utah and then they say do you mean the western side and they go i don't know it's 4 30 man it's a friday just just deal with it you're right you're right so kiehl's google earth that's only one example can we just jump to a quick a little more information on that just because it is so fascinating and it's a great this is a great entry point for you if you're interested in learning more about this like go down the keyhole inquitel google uh rabbit hole and you can really start there and start to see other things um there's a guardian article titled google google's earth how the tech giant is helping the state spy on us it was written in 2018. and if you look through there it describes the i think it was the investment was finalized in 2003 according to this article and it was made in partnership with the national geospatial intelligence agency uh that is one of the intelligence agencies or the apparatus that the united states has um and their job was to deliver satellite-based intelligence to the cia and the pentagon and essentially they incorporated this new company keyhole in the software they were creating this version of earth this virtual earth and were able to use it for their needs um and then of course google comes along and makes it public-facing uh and there's a whole other story we could get into there about data collection and why google may want to have something like that but we don't have to go into that now well we're already a part of that everybody listening is already part of it even if you've never touched google somehow sorry really really quickly is the implication here that like keyhole was meant for something greater and then ultimately kind of got co-opted into something that has ultimately become kind of an internet parlor trick like i mean i know there's there's uses for google earth but at the end of the day people more use it for doing scavenger hunts and marking it up for blogs and things like that or sharing it doesn't seem like what its intent initially was using these high-tech satellites it's now become a bit of a almost a gimmick well i'll tell you what it was used for in the early 2000s around 2003 because what happened around 2003 we invaded iraq it it was used as an intel an extra set of intelligence to monitor the movements around certain bases in iraq around you know certain strategic points in iraq they were using keyhole to do that or the you know the thing that was keyhole and this uh again this is only one example we could do as a matter of fact i was thinking about it a few years ago doing just like a a mini series a limited podcast where we just go episode by episode weird companies and their government ties and how frequently it happens and how seldom it is publicized or admitted right i and maybe maybe i would always i'd love to do a stuff that once you know limited series on something cryptids i don't know let us know because we have tons of free time and it is true you could make a series about just this because there you know google earth is one one successful example of some of a process that occurs often and that i believe will accelerate in the future in the very near future by the way but now uh in the year like from the early 2000s to the current day you will find no shortage of rumors about iqt investment and one of the most popular claims is that iqt and therefore the cia had a big hidden hand in the creation of facebook at least the expansion of it right right this is this is pretty interesting uh but the claim itself unfortunately uh the claim itself gets a little bit tenuous when you dig into it walk through this really quickly so the cia has in qutel inquitel tries to you know throw money at tech startups incutel has a board of directors made up of people who have experience in this field its first ceo gilman louis used to once upon a time serve on the board of a place called the national venture capital association while he was on that board there was another guy on the board named james breyer and he ran a capital firm called excel partners and they invested in a lot of stuff one of the companies they invested in was facebook so that's kind of like a six degrees of kevin bacon association you know what i mean yeah it is it is but the one thing we do know and we're gonna get into a little later here is that inquitel is attempting to invest in anything that is cutting edge especially when it comes to data collection and analysis oh yeah like uh like early 2000s there would be there was significant investment in imaging technologies uh we'll and we'll we'll get into that that led to some criticism for them as well uh which is kind of valid but but you're absolutely right matt and it's weird because if we were if if the five of us on the show today you listening at home matt noel mission control knife we were like a little startup and we're working on something interesting related to this like we found a faster way to encrypt or decrypt things like that um or you know it's several years ago and we invented blockchain then according to the washington post we would get a call from inquitel they would cold call us their fingers are in a ton of figurative pies the washington post says that quote virtually any u.s entrepreneur inventor or research scientist working on ways to analyze data has probably received a phone call from inquitel or has at least been googled by its staff of technology watchers first off that sounds like a cool job you just watch technology you know you just find out what's new we do a bit of that a bit of this a bit of that ben i remember which makes me think of uh and i forget what the exact name of the law is but you know how the government can basically take your patent away from you if it's something that's threatening to national security is is this sort of in that zone is this not like we'll take your patent away but you got to do this thing for us is that well it's press you you're you're touching on something we do need to explore which would be the criticisms so there's no it should be no surprise to anyone that the cia and iqt have their fair share of critics uh we can we can walk through some of this uh and we'll get to the the law you mentioned here so iqt's explanation of their organizational setup and their partnership with the cia it seems contradictory to some people because they it's almost a sugar daddy situation because they say you know i iqt officials employees say okay yes the cia pays us money we have an annual contract with them we know what they like they know what we like but we are independent uh despite the fact that we run virtually all our investment decisions by uncle sam first for approval and despite the fact that we intentionally look for the stuff that they want and do what they tell us to do we are independent yeah we're independent but you heard you heard the you've heard the words from those folks i mean it's very odd if you go to their website and we keep talking about i'm just going to read you if you're if you can't get there for any reason i'm going to read you what it says at the top it says innovation on a mission visionary startups experienced vcs venture capitalists dedicated government professionals inquitel leads from the center of this matrix what they lead from the center of the matrix connecting cutting-edge technology strategic investments and purpose to enhance and advance national security for the u.s and its allies so it clearly has a mission that is government-facing right and it doesn't mean it's necessarily an arm of the government in that way the way you would think of the cia is but it is i don't know it's a finger yeah that's the thing so it's a valid question to ask is this just is it a private not-for-profit entity and it's it has one customer right which would be the cia or is it more should we think of it more like a like a quasi-quasi governmental organization similar to the fed i think that's what we're talking about because you do have people that run the show there like michael crowe who's chairman he's the board chairman of the board of trustees um who feels a little more independent that steve bau beaucher bauscher that we mentioned earlier in chris darby but then also sitting on the board of trustees the guy that ben mentioned much early on who used to be the director of the cia george tenet he is currently one of the he's on the board of trustees so like you know we know that that government officials jump to the private sector and private sector people generally don't jump to the government in that way and you know unless they're an elected official but it's um it's an you know it's an interesting thing to see that direct connective tissue to the guy that kind of started or one of the people that began the the show over there didn't quite yeah and that leads to a question i think a lot of us always wonder about a little bit how many business decisions are made unofficially you know how how many agreements happen while someone is at the same fundraiser or you know charity event or private club yeah at the barbecue you know what i mean at the country club drinking the she-crab soup and then you know by the time you leave you have made some important decisions that will go on to impact millions of people but nothing official ever happened you're just friends of friends talking to folks you accidentally run into it's beautiful it's terrified but it's a beautiful system in the way it's laid out you gotta respect it this is just the beginning of the concerns in fact i i propose we pause for word from our sponsors and dive into the in the escalating [Music] concerns [Music] you