Surveillance capitalism: Monopoly-finance capital, the military-industrial complex, and the digital age

Monthly Review

Volumn 66, Issue 3, 2014, Pages 1-31

  Foster, John Bellamy ^a   McChesney, Robert W ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF OREGON   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA CHAMPAIGN   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84905045705     PISSN: 00270520     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.14452/MR-066-03-2014-07_1     Document Type: Review

References (145)

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3. Dean Acheson, quoted in William Ap-pieman Williams, me Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: Dell, 1962), 235-36.
4. General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Memorandum for Directors and Chiefs of War Department General and Special Staff Divisions and Bureaus and the Commanding Generals of the Major Commands; Subject: Scientific and Technological Resources as Military Assets, April 1946. Published as Appendix A in Seymour Melman, Pentagon Capitalism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1971), 231-34.
5. "No Such Agency Spies on the Communications of the World, Washington Post, June 6, 2013, http://washing-tonpost.com .
6. U.S. State Department, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1950. National Security Affairs; foreign Economic Policy, vol. 1, http://digital. library.wisc.edu, 258-61,284-86.
7. S. Nelson Drew, ed., NSC-68: Forging the Strategy of Containment; With Analyses by Paul H. Hitze (Washington, DC: National Defense University, 1994), 117;
8. The Narcissism of NSC-68," November 12, 2009, http://econospeak. blogspot.com.
9. Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), 377;
10. Thomas H. Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis, Containment: Documents on American Policy and Strategy, 1949-50 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), chapter 7;
11. Institute for Economic Democracy, "NSC-68, Master Plan for the Cold War," http://ied.info;
12. Fred Block, Economic Instability and Military Strength: The Paradoxes of the Rearmament Decision, Politics and Society 10, no. 35 (1980): 35-58.
13. Business Week, April 15, 1950,15
14. quoted in Harold G.Vatter, The U.S. Economy in the 1950s (New York: W.W. Norton, 1963), 72.
15. Harry Magdoff, Tne Age of Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), 200-201.
16. Lynn Turgeon, Bastard Keynesianism: The Evolution of Economic Thinking and Policymaking Since World War II (West-port CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), 13;
17. Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions [boston: South End Press, 1989), 183.
18. Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1966), 152.
19. Scott Nearing, "Wodd Events," Monthly Review 16, no. 2 (June 1964): 122.
20. Quoted in Fred J. Cook, The Warfare Stare(NewYork: Macmillan, 1962): 165-66.
21. WPB Aide Urges U.S. to Keep War Set-Up," New York Times, January 20, 1944;
22. Charles E. Wilson, "For the Common Defense," Army Ordnance 26, no. 143 (March-April 1944): 285-88.
23. Slichter and US. News and World Re-port, quoted in Cook, The Warfare State, 171.
24. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 161, 207-13;
25. John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, A New New Deal under Obama?" Monthly Review, 60, no. 9 (February 2009): 1-11;
26. Hannah Holle-man, Robert W. McChesney, John Bellamy Foster, and R. Jamil Jonna, The Penal State in an Age of Crisis," Monthly Review 61,no.2Uune 2009): 1-17.
27. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 191,206,213-17.
28. For an excellent discussion of this, see Andrew J. Bacevich, Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2013),48-79.
29. Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of folly: From Troy to Vietnam (New York: Random House, 1984), 326.
30. See Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, "Some Theoretical Implications," Monthly Review 64, no. 3 (Jury-August 2012): 45-58;
31. John Bellamy Foster, me Theory of Monopoly Capitalism, new edition (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2014), xiv-xviii.
32. Thorstein Vehlen, Absentee Ownership and Business Enterprise in Recent Times (New York: Augustus M. Kelley, 1964), 300.
33. Martin Mayer, Madison Avenue (New York: Harper, 1958), 13-14.
34. See Michael Dawson, The Consumer Trap (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005).
35. On the concept of the cultural apparatus, see John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, The Cultural Apparatus of Monopoly Capital," Monthly Review 65, no. 3 (July-August 2013): 1-33.
36. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 118-28.
37. Advertising spending, as noted above, was $10 billion in 1957, while annual military spending in the Eisenhower administration was $40-$50 billion. On the latter figure see Turgeon, Bastard Keynesianism,M.
38. Baran and Sweezy, Monopoly Capital, 115-17.
39. Dennis Daye, "Great Moments in Branding: Neil McElroy Memo," June 12, 2009, http://brandingstrategyinsider.com;
40. Mayer, Madison Avenue, 26;
41. Editors of Advertising Age, The House that Ivory Built (Lincoln, II: National Textbook Co., 1988), 20-21,158;
42. Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 14.
43. Herbert I. Schiller, Mass Communications and American Empire (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 8-9.
44. See the detailed critique of the Federal Communications Commission in this respect in Monthly Review in the late 1950s: Leo Huberman and Paul M. Sweezy, "Behind the FCC Scandal," Monthly Review 9, no. 12 (April 1958): 401-11.
45. Hafner and Lyon, IWiere Wizards Stay Up late, 14-21,255;
46. L Parker Temple III, Shades of Gray: National Security and the Evolution of Space Reconnaissance (Res-ton, VA: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, 2005), 132-33, 142, 146,192-200,208-18,233,242.
47. Helen Bury, Eisenhowerand the Cold War Arms Race (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 205;
48. William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships; Part IV: July 1965-January 1968 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 3-4.
49. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "President Eisenhowers Farewell to the Nation." Published as Appendix B in Melman, Pentagon Capitalism, 235-39;
50. Charles E. Nathanson, The Militarization of the American Economy," in David Horowitz, ed., Corporations and the Cold IVar(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1969), 209.
51. Christopher H. Pyle, Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, 1967-1970 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1986), 69-81
52. "Military Intelligence Overkill," in Sam J. Ervin, et. al., Uncle Sam is Watching You: Highlights from the Hearings of the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1971), 74-147;
53. Christopher H. Pyle, Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid, of Spying by U.S. Army," December 5,2002, http://bintjbeil.com;
54. Seth F. Kreimer, "Watching the Watchers: Surveillance, Transparency, and Political Freedom in the War on Terror," University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 133 (September 2004): 138-44;
55. Frank J. Donner, The Age of Surveillance (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), 287-320.
56. "Computers Carried Army Files; MIT Investigation Underway," The Tech, April 11, 1975, http://tech.mitedu;
57. Hafner and Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late, 231;
58. Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, 854.
59. "Ervin Discusses Privacy," The Tech, April 11,1975, http://tech.mit.edu.
60. Arthur R. Miller, The Surveillance Society," in Ervin, et al., Uncle Sam is Watching You, 25-26.
61. FBI COINTELPRO documents quoted (and displayed) in Noam Chomsky, "Introduction," in Nelson Blackstock, ed., COINTELPRO: The FBIs Secret War on Political Freedom (New York: Pathfinder, 1988),15-16,25-33.
62. Matthew M. Aid and William Burr, "Secret Cold War Documents Reveal NSA Spied on Senators," Foreign Policy, September 25, 2013, http://foreignpolicy. com.
63. William Blum, Rogue State (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 2005), 271-74
64. "Anti-Empire Report 1118," June 26, 2013, http://williamblum. org.
65. See John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, The Endless Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012).
66. William Safire, "You Are a Suspect" New York Times, November 14, 2002, http://nytimes.com;
67. Shane Harris, The Watchers: The Rise of Americas Surveillance State (New York: Penguin, 2010), 194-235
68. and Total Recall," Foreign Policy, June 19, 2013, http://foreignpolicy. com;
69. "Threats and Responses," New York Times, July 29,2003, http://nytimes.com;
70. "Pentagon Prepares a Future Market on Terror Attacks," New York Times, July 29, 2003;
71. Whitfield Diffie and Saul Landau, Privacy on the Une (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998), 66-67;
72. "Chief Takes Over New Agency to Thwart Attacks on U.S.," New York Times, February 13,2002;
73. White House, National Security Decision Directive Number 145, National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Security Systems," September 17, 1984, http://fas.org;
74. Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire (New York: Henry Holt 2010), 104-5.
75. Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, "Stagnation and Financialization: The Nature of the Contradiction," Monthly Review bb, no. 1 (May 2014): 9.
76. Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy, "Production and Finance," Monthly Review 35, no. 1 (May 1983): 1-13;
77. Paul M. Sweezy, "More (or Less)on Globalization," Monthly Review 49, no. 4 (September 1997): 1-4.
78. See Nomi Pnns,Alllhe PresidentsBankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American ftwer(New York: Nation Books, 2014).
79. See Michael Lewis, Flash Boys (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014).
80. Christian Parenti, The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America (New York: Basic Books, 2003), 91-92,96.
81. Dawson, The ConsumerTrap, 51.
82. CBS 60 Minutes, "The Data Brokers: Selling Your Personal Information," March 9, 2014, http://cbsnews.com;
83. "Never Heard of Acxiom?, Fortune, February 23,2004, http://money.cnn.com.
84. Alice E. Mar-wick, "How Your Data Are Being Deeply Mined," New York Review of Books, January 9,2014, http://nybooks.com.
85. "What Chase and Other Banks Wont Tell You About Selling Your Data," Forbes, October 17,2013, http://forbes.com.
86. Harris, The Watchers, 322-29.
87. "Financial Terrorism: The War on Terabytes," Economist, December 31, 2011, http://economist.com.
88. Mortimer Zuckerman, "How to Fight and Win the Cyberwar," Wall Street Journal, December 6, 2010, http://on-line.wsj.com.;
89. James Bamford, "The Secret War," Wired, June 12,2013, http://wired.com.
90. Haftner and Lyon, Where WizardsStay Up Late, 242-56;
91. Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect (New York: New Press, 2013),102-4.
92. On the Telecommunications Act of 1996, see Robert W. McChesney, The Problem of the Media (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), 51-56.
93. John Bellamy Foster and Hannah Hol-leman, "The Financial Power Elite," Monthly Review 62, no. 1 (May 2010): 1-19.
94. Bill Gates, The Road4head(New York: Viking, 1995), 171, 241-42
95. and "Keynote Address," in OReilly Associates, ed., The Internet and Society (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 32;
96. Michael Dawson and John Bellamy Foster, "Virtual Capitalism," in Robert W. McChesney, Ellen Meiksins Wood, and John Bellamy Foster, eds., Capitalism and the Information Age (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998), 51-67.
97. McChesney, Digital Disconnect, 103-37.
98. McChesney, Digital Disconnect, 158.
99. Beatrice Edwards, The Rise of the American Corporate Security State (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2014), 41 (reprinted in this issue, 54);
100. Mark Karlin, "Six Reasons to Be Afraid of the Private Sector/Government Security State" (interview with Beatrice Edwards), Truthout, May 16,2014, http://truth-out.org.
101. Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (New York: Henry Holt, 2014),114.
102. Luke Harding, The Snowden Files (New York: Vintage, 2014), 202.
103. "Revealed: The NSAs Secret Campaign to Crack, Undermine Internet Security," ProPublicalNew York Times, September 5, 2013, http://propublica. org;
104. "Microsoft Handed the NSA Access to Encrypted Messages," Guardian, July 11, 2013, http://theguardan.com;
105. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 112-15.
106. "Exclusive: Secret Contract Tied NSA and Security Industry Pioneer," Reuters, December 20,2013, http://reuters.com.
107. "CIA Is Said to Pay AT&T for Call Data," New York Times, November 7, 2013, http://nytimes.com.
108. Glenn Greenwald, NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily," Guardian, June 6, 2013, http://theguardian.com;
109. "CIA is Said to Pay AT&T for Call Data," New York Times, November 7,2013, http://nytimes. com;
110. Electronic Frontier Foundation, "NSA Spying on Americans," https://eff.org.
111. "Microsoft, Facebook, Google, and Yahoo Release US Surveillance Requests," Guardian, February 3, 2014, http://theguardian.com.
112. Larry Greenemeir, "The Drone Wars," Scientific American, September 2,2011, http://scientificamerican.com.
113. "Why Facebook and Google Are Buying Into Drones," Guardian, April 20, 2014, http://theguardian.com;
114. Denise Young, "The Edge of Possibility: Regina Dugan," Virginia Tech Magazine 35, no. 4, Summer 2013, http://vtmag.vt.edu;
115. Alan McDuffie, "Darpa Turns Aging Surveillance Drones Into Wi-Fi Hotspots," Hired, April 14,2014, http://wired.com.
116. "U.S. Marketing Spending Exceeded $1 Trillion in 2005," Metrics 2.0, June 26, 2006, http://metrics2.com;
117. John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, and Robert W. McChesney, The U.S. Imperial Triangle and Military Spending," Monthly Review 60, no. 5 (October 2008): 1-19;
118. U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, Survey of Current Business, May 2008,43, http://bea.gov.
119. Max Haiven, "Financialization and the Cultural Politics of Securitization," Cultur-al Politics 9, no. 3 (2013): 239-62.
120. Johnson, Dismantling the Empire, 104-5.
121. Frontline, "United States of Secrets," May 13,2014, http://pbs.org;
122. Ryan Lisa, "State of Deception," New Yorker, December 16, 2013, http://newyorker.com;
123. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 95-97;
124. Electronic Frontier Foundation, "How the NSAs Domestic Spying Program Works," https://eff.org.
125. Booz Allen, the Worlds Most Profitable Spy Organization," Bloomberg Business Week, June 20, 2013, http://businessweek.com;
126. "Booz Allen Executive Leadership: John M. (Mike) McConnell, Vice Chairman," accessed May 30,2014, https://boozallen.com.
127. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 101;
128. Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, "Boundless Informant" Guardian, June 11,2013, http://theguardian.com.
129. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 48;
130. "Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowdens Hiring at Agency, Booz Allen," Wall Street Journal, February 4,2014, http://online.wsj.com.
131. Greenwald, No Place to Hide, 108.
132. Harding, The Snowden Files, 197-99.
133. Harding, The Snowden Files, 204.
134. Harding, Tfie Snowden Files, 208-14.
135. "How We Know the NSA had Access to Internal Google and Yahoo Cloud Data," November 4, 2013, http://washingt.on-post.com ;
136. Electronic Frontier Foundation, "How the NSAs Domestic Spying Program Works."
137. Harding, TheSnowden Files, 203.
138. James Ridgeway, "Wesley Clark Remains Cagey on the Stump," Village Voice, January 13,2004, http://villagevoice. com;
139. Tiversa Advisory Board: General Wesley Clark," accessed May 30, 2014, http://tiversa.com;
140. "Ex-NSA Chief Details Snowdens Hiring at Agency, Booz Allen."
141. "Similarities Seen in Leaks by Snowden, Manning," Baltimore Sun, June 10,2013, http://articles.baltimore-sun.com .
142. On such groups see Heidi Boghosian, Spying on Democracy (San Francisco: City Light Books, 2013), 265-89.
143. John Nichols and Robert W. McChesney, Dollarocracy (New York: Nation Books, 2013).
144. On the global labor arbitrage see Foster and McChesney, The Endless Crisis, 137-54.
145. Adam Rawnsley, Can Darpa Fix the Cybersecurity Problem from Hell?," Wired, August 5,2011, http://wired.com.