Technology giants before the "war on terror"... Where were they and how did they become?

The twentieth anniversary of the events of September 11, 2001, brings with it many different memories for everyone. , but on the other hand there was a rise in other things.

Where were the tech companies?

Technology giants may remember this great event that changed the course of events around the world and changed the fate of many peoples and countries, but the most important thing that changed is the fate of these major institutions and companies and their owners.

The founders of Google (Google), for example, cannot forget that they sought at that time to sell their company to Yahoo, which offered them $3 million, but they demanded $5 million to make the deal fail in 2002, just as Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon (Amazon) cannot forget how His company suffered poor financial results due to the dot bubble.

Net, which hit most Internet companies at the beginning of the current millennium.

And Bill Gates, whose company Microsoft had recently emerged from a monopoly case a year ago, because of which it was forced to relinquish its control over several sectors, and Apple, whose leader Steve Jobs had recently returned to take over, cannot forget this. The year it showed the world its first non-computer device, the iPod.

Of course, companies such as Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp were not yet born.

This was the case for the tech giants at the time, but how did they change after September 11, 2001?

Gates (right) and Bezos are among the winners in the war on terror, and Zuckerberg did not gain much (agencies)

Giants "War on Terror"

A team of researchers has published a new report detailing how Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter have benefited greatly from the "war on terror" over a 20-year period.

The report shows how technology companies have increasingly sought to pursue federal contracts and subcontracts with the US military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies after 9/11.

In fact, from 2004 to today, the number of contracts concluded between the federal government and major technology companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter has doubled.

From 2007 to 2019, Department of Homeland Security contracts and subcontracts with Silicon Valley giants increased 50-fold.

Amazon and Microsoft have benefited most from this increase. From 2015 to 2019, Amazon saw a 400% increase in all federal contracts, and Microsoft enjoyed an 800% increase.

The report also found that Google has collected $16 million in contracts with the Pentagon, another $2 million with the Department of Homeland Security, and nearly $4 million with the Department of Justice (mostly with the FBI).

Since 2004, five government agencies have spent at least $44.7 billion on services from these five technology companies.

The lion's share of the Pentagon (43.8 billion), followed by the Ministry of Security (348 million), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (258 million), the General Services Department (244 million) and finally the Ministry of Justice.

Silicon Valley owes its existence to efforts dating back to World War II and the Cold War, to take advantage of military spending, state intervention, and protection from competition in the form of government-backed grants, contracts, and monopolies.

And the sprawl of these companies that produce the technologies that dominate everyday life today—from semiconductors that power calculations to the proliferation of surveillance technologies such as facial recognition monitoring—is a product of US policy in the post-9/11 era.

Users lost their privacy in the war on terror (Reuters)

Users and people are the losers

The report stresses the relationship that has grown between major technology companies and intelligence, law enforcement, and military agencies.

The research found more than 200 individuals who moved between tech companies, government organizations or lobbyists such as Jan Kelly, a cloud technology strategist at Amazon since 2018 who has served the Department of Defense for more than a decade.

What the War on Terror has really done in the last twenty years has had a comprehensive impact on an entire society - especially Muslim societies - but also had a huge impact on other societies around the world whose lives have been affected by technologies.

These companies - using the technologies that they created - have created communities monitored by governments and states and even foreign and domestic intelligence, and the user of this technology has become highly vulnerable to several violations, starting with the violation of privacy and not ending with the violation of his humanity and his life in some countries.

The picture painted by George Orwell and other "Dystopian" writers in their novels about the watched cities, in which the older brother knows the dwellings and movements of their inhabitants, would not have been possible without this close alliance between states and technology companies in their war on what was then called terrorism.

The fall of the economy or privacy?

Many analysts attribute the targeting of the World Trade Center specifically to hitting the economic power of the United States, but after 20 years, we find that American technology companies have become trillions of companies and have provided the American economy with billions of dollars, through which the United States has taken control of the peoples of the world without firing a single shot.

On the other hand, the users of these companies' technology and those targeted with their various innovations - including the Americans - have become the biggest victim, as they paid the price of the "war on terror" from their privacy, security, and even their money.