CIA now a venture-capital firm, funding tech start-ups

I found this over at Kos the other day and wanted to spread the word.  Nobody else seems to be.

Turns out the CIA has now created a venture-capital arm, whereby it provides venture capital to high-tech start-ups whose enterprises might, uh, “benefit” the CIA.  

I am not making this up.

The company has the downright cutesy name of In*Q*tel.

They have a very nice website.  You can submit YOUR business plan and maybe get lucky!

Here is their “aim”:

Launched by the CIA in 1999 as a private, independent, not-for-profit organization, IQT was created to bridge the gap between the technology needs of the Intelligence Community and new advances in commercial technology. With limited insight into fast-moving private sector innovation, the IC needed a way to find emerging companies, and, more importantly, to work with them. IQT, as a private company with deep ties to the commercial world, is able to attract and build relationships with technology entrepreneurs outside the reach of the IC. In fact, more than 75 percent of the companies that IQT works with had never done business with the government before partnering with IQT.

Similar to a corporate strategic fund like those found at Intel Corporation, Motorola and Disney, IQT operates for the strategic – rather than financial – benefits to its customers in the IC. IQT targets its technology engagements based on a deep understanding of the challenges of our Intelligence customers to deliver solutions that will provide strategic advantage to the mission of intelligence.

To best serve its customers, In-Q-Tel plays multiple roles:

A technology accelerator, fostering development and introduction of technologies needed by the Intelligence Community

A capabilities builder, helping nascent commercial technologies mature into commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products the government can buy

An idea lab and forum for innovation, providing the Intelligence Community with insight and access to both new technologies and leading innovators and thinkers

A strategic investment firm, investing in companies and helping build businesses into reliable providers for the Intelligence Community …

Not for profit?  Are you kidding me?  How could this NOT be for profit?  

Or is the CIA now a charity, just trying to make the world a better place …?  A more profitable place, perhaps, for these deserving little mom-and-pop shops, such as this one called “Electro Energy”:

Electro Energy focuses on the development and ultimate commercialization of a concept for a bipolar nickel-metal hydride (BP Ni-MH) rechargeable battery. Since its founding, Electro Energy has developed and owns both the patented design of BP Ni-MH batteries and the patented production process for their manufacture. Electro Energy has produced and delivered prototype BP Ni-MH batteries for the U.S. Army (field radios and silent watch applications), NASA (satellites), Partnership for a New Generation Vehicle (hybrid vehicles), NAVAIR and U.S. Air Force (F-18 and F-16 Aircraft), National Institute of Health (NIH) (heart assist pumps), and the Department of Energy (DOE) (distributed energy and power quality), that have demonstrated performance advantages over existing technologies.

EEI’s fundamental bipolar packaging design is now being applied to other battery systems. Working with In-Q-Tel, EEI is extending this technology to lithium battery chemistry. The technology addresses a broad market mix including government and defense applications, power tools, distributed and directed energy applications, aerospace and automotive industries.

So let me get this straight.  The CIA is now using taxpayer money to provide venture capital to firms that will produce new forms of technology that will benefit (provides profits to) the power tool and automotive industries (among others)?  

Should the CIA really be in the corporate welfare business?  I thought that’s what the Department of Homeland Security was all about …

It does indeed seem like what Mussolini called fascism:  “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power”.

If this isn’t the merger of corporate and government power, I sure don’t know what is.  

Does this bother anybody else?