National security oriented capital venture firms have become the nexus between Silicon valley startups on the one side and the Pentagon and the CIA on the other. According to a Nov. 4 article by Zach Dorfman, Yahoo News national security correspondent who is also with both the Aspen Institute’s Cyber and Technology program and the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, a “budding group” of venture capital firms have made themselves the link between Silicon Valley firms that produce “innovations useful for national security” with an included aim of keeping Chinese money out of these firms. Dorfman calls this new world “spooky finance,” adding: “The new world of ‘spooky finance’ reveals an increasingly tight relationship between venture capital firms and U.S. spy and military agencies, which have long sought to tap into Silicon Valley’s technology base.”
Ronald Marks, a visiting professor at George Mason University and a former CIA officer, calls this an “intelligence-industrial base,” not unlike the military industrial base. “Why? Because, let’s face it: All the intel stuff together now is, like, 86 billion dollars. It’s the third-largest part of the discretionary budget of the United States,” he says. “That’s a lot of money; that’s a Fortune 100 company.”
At the center of this nexus of Silicon Valley firms and the Pentagon is a woman named Heather Richman, who runs something called the Defense Investor Network. Richman has worked for about 15 different employers over the last 25 years, including working for Senator Chuck Schumer from 1999 to 2004.
