[ih] Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet -- Some Questions

[Vint Cerf]

joe did end up at CIA in the office of Research for some time as I recall.

v


On Sun, Apr 15, 2018 at 7:04 AM, David Walden <dave.walden.family at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yes, my memory as I wrote an earlier message was wrong.  The second CTSS
> system was at Project MAC, not IBM Cambridge Scientific.
>
> (Regarding reference 1 below, Joe Markowitz was at BBN in 1968 while the
> proposal to do the IMP development was being written; he was an active
> reviewer of what was being written.)
>
> On April 15, 2018, at 6:06 AM, John Klensin <jklensin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi, while I'm on this list, I don't routinely follow it, so it took a
> while for me to be pointed to this thread and longer to find the
> energy to respond.
>
> For context, I was involved with the Cambridge Project from the time
> an early draft of the proposal started to be circulated to relevant
> researchers within MIT, through the summer study, and then ended up
> with lead responsibility for among other things, the software that was
> intended to hold everything together, was a member of the small
> steering committee (I don't remember what it was called, but that
> wasn't it) that had practical oversight of the Project.  I worked
> closely with Lick and more closely with those who were running the
> project on a day-to-day basis.   Lick was actively involved (more than
> I think Waldrop realized) but was leading the Dynamic Modeling work at
> the same time and almost certainly more involved there on a daily
> basis.   When I decided to do work leading to a Ph.D a few years after
> the Cambridge Project wound down, Lick ended up on my somewhat-strange
> committee.  If I recall, he was one of those who helped convince me I
> should do the degree.  I'm happy to answer specific questions to the
> extent that I have time and remember --the Project did zero classified
> research--  but it has been a long time and MIT has, at least IMO, a
> bad institutional memory problem for activities that are not linked to
> active departments and/or sources of funds..   I have no idea whether
> the original idea for what became the Cambridge Project originated
> with Lick or de Sola Pool -- I worked closely with both, the latter
> even earlier than I first met Lick, but, by the time I heard about the
> idea, it was described very much in "joint effort" terms.  I also knew
> (and know) enough about the interests of each to guess where some
> ideas came from but find it difficult or impossible to try to
> attribute most of the ideas to either independently.
>
> I'll try to describe what it was all about, but it is probably
> important that those trying to understand the effort (and almost
> anything else related at MIT or Harvard at the time, especially if
> there was DoD money involved, was that the late 1960s and first half
> of the 1970s were times of great tumult in the academic and research
> communities, with large differences in style among institutions about
> how those things played out.  I don't believe we had anyone killed in
> Cambridge, but there were a lot of loud demonstrations, marches, etc.,
> There were some unpleasant confrontations between demonstrators and
> the Cambridge Police and I can remember the smell of tear gas
> Because it involved social and behavioral science research and
> researchers, including some whom some of the most active of the
> antiwar community were suspicious of for other reasons and because it
> involved DoD (whether specifically ARPA or not, and it was ARPA)
> funding) which meant to them that something nefarious was going on,
> Some of those stories were on a par with some things we hear today
> about the "real" reason the ARPANET work was funded; some were, at
> least in my opinion, far worse.  The times were troubled enough that I
> had some people who were working for me by day (because they were
> comfortable with what they were doing and what they could see)  and
> picketing us by night (some because of the principle of DoD funding
> and others because of what "must" be going on elsewhere in teh project
> although they could never find any sign of it).  The noise was loud
> enough that, if one looks through contemporary articles, one can
> probably find a lot of things that were the result of those kinds of
> thinking (i.e., without strong connections to reality) and find then
> with great ease.   We are a lot more interested in getting work done
> than in trying to hold debates with those who were not willing to
> listen and who, in many case, felt that anyone who disagreed with
> them, their positions, or their truth should not be allowed to speak
> at all.
>
> Organizationally, the project was originally intended  to be a joint
> MIT-Harvard effort. It was also intended, from the beginning, to be
> organized the way Project MAC was originally organized (in retrospect,
> probably unsurprising given Lick's involvement in shaping both), i.e.,
> some centrally-funded and managed core activities, support from the
> Project for complementary activities of various faculty and
> departments, and some more independent activities with their own
> independent (e.g., non-DoD) support that were nonetheless
> collaborating (the latter group of activities was important with
> Project MAC but was never significant with the Cambridge Project and,
> as far as I can remember, never came together),   There were many
> protests and some debate about that at Harvard.  The _Crimson_ article
> cited was part of that fabric; perhaps something about its balance and
> dedication to reasoned debate can be inferred from such balanced and
> objective comments as " M.I.T. is the Defense Department's house
> whore,...". Others may remember actual details of the Harvard
> discussions better than I do, but Harvard eventually decided that
> there would be no formal Harvard-as-University participation, but that
> interested departments and researchers at Harvard were free to
> participate and accept funding.   Many did -- there were at least
> three Harvard senior faculty, from at least Schools on the internal
> advisory committee and far more on a large faculty (and probably some
> students -- don't remember offhand) advisory group.   So, we ended up
> with a central staff at MIT with work focusing on a general
> architecture and software substrate for a wide range of applications,
> integration of a variety of tools, data representation issues, design
> and construction of a researcher-friendly and statistically-oriented
> database management system, and a good deal of work what was necessary
> to apply different kinds of tools and models to the same underlying
> data.  Wrt the latter, a common attitude, and arguably the state of
> the art, at the time was that people would build highly integrated
> "statistical packages" with a particular view of data and that
> researchers should design their work and hypotheses around what could
> be done with one of those packages.  One of the key ideas behind the
> Cambridge Project was that it was important to have an environment in
> which data, models, and hypotheses should drive analysis not the
> available tools (not at all z new idea, but one that was hard to
> realize at the time).[1].[2]
>
> It may also be relevant that the Cambridge Project was funded out of
> ARPA Behavioral Sciences (sometimes Human Resources, IIR), not IPTO.
> There were certainly some conversations at/with RADC about command,
> control, and intelligence functions but they were more about the
> applicability of our work to those functions than any focus of the
> work on those topics.  Mostly or entirely after the Cambridge Project
> as such ended, a company that was more or less spun off from MIT
> provided support for the systems that the Cambridge Project was
> developed to several universities and commercial enterprises in the US
> and Europe (and maybe elsewhere, but I don't remember) and to parts of
> DoD, notably what was then OSD Program Analysis and Evaluation (main
> application there was the DoD budget, not, e.g., warfare)..  As with
> many other things funded by ARPA, there was far more effort to explain
> possible specific military applicability of the research work rather
> than its justification as research after the Mansfield Amendment (and
> the transition to "DARPA") than earlier.  Like many other ARPA
> activities at the time, the explanations changed more than the actual
> work,  It occurs to me that some of those explanations might be the
> foundation for the NBC reporting referred to below.
>
> A few other things to add a bit of data and help parse facts from
> misunderstanding or fantasy (I'm running out of energy and this note
> is already too long or there would be a much longer list):
>
> (1) I have no idea where Levine got his list of "data banks" that the
> Project was going to acquire, maintain, and distribute.  I don't
> remember such a list from any of the early proposal drafts, nor do I
> remember any discussion of them during the summer study.  In any
> event, while individual researchers almost certainly had their own
> data of interest and saw some of the work of the Project as providing
> better tools for analysis and modeling of them, there was never any
> central archive or effort to build one -- I'm quite confident about
> that because it almost certainly would have been in my area of
> responsibility.
>
> (2) The document at http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=AD0783626
> was one of a collection of annual and them semi-annual reports.  They
> are all public; they were all available through NTIS and probably
> still are, although some of the scans were, IIR, even worse than this
> particular one.   In any event, I have the MIT-produced paper versions
> of all of them.  If the NTIS copies are no longer avaialble and
> someone has appropriate scanning resources, I'd be happy to make them
> available.
>
> (3) There was never any "Project CAM" or something referred to that
> way, at least in conjunction with the Cambridge Project.  The only
> times I remember hearing that term during the Cambridge Project's
> existence were in conjunction with a conspiracy theory (whose details
> I don;t remember) involving "MAC" spelled backwards.
>
> (4) During most of its existence, the Cambridge Project was on the 5th
> floor or what was then 575 Technology Square, across the plaze from
> 545 (before that space came together, there was a group in MIT
> Building 26 near the original MIT computer center facility, I
> continued to sit in 545 Tech Square, etc.   That is relevant to the
> Datacomputer discussion because we had the south side of that floor
> and they had the north side.   But, if I remember (and my memory is
> very vague about this), while Tom Merrill was PI on that project, I
> think CCA continued to do business out of their other offices (up near
> Fresh Pond and a few blocks from BBN).  Could easily be wrong about
> that, but IBM never had anything to do with the Datacompiuter -- it
> ran on PDP-10s, Ampex videotape drives, and some specialized hardware.
> What I do know is that, while the people involved knew each other
> (common elevator lobby and shared history among the more senior
> folks), no data ever moved between the two projects although Lick and
> others had a lot of fantasies about that if and when the Datacomputer
> work ever reached useful production status.  Also, IBM's Cambridge
> Scientific Lab was definitely in 545.     The only two CTSS systems I
> was ever aware of belonged to Project MAC and the MIT Computation
> Center.  They were networked via  the high-bandwidth method of people
> carrying magnetic tapes a block of two :-(  I don't think IBM every
> actually owned one, although I might not have known.    CP/CMS didn't
> speak SNA.  It did acquire RSCS although I don't remember whether
> before or after the transition to the VM/CMS product.   RSCS of course
> became the primary transport protocol for BITNET.  Almost certainly no
> ARPANET connections to the Cambridge Scientific Center, at least early
> on -- the Host-IMP protocols didn't exist for the machine and there
> weren't any spare ports on the obvious IMPs.   And the CIA office in
> 545 was a fairly open secret if it was a secret at all, at least by
> the time I had an office there around 1965-1966.
>
>     john
>
>
> [1[  Klensin, John C., J. Markowitz, D. B. Yntema, and R. A. Wiesen,
> “The Approach to Compatibility of the Cambridge Project Consistent
> System”, ACM SIGSOC Bulletin, Fall 1973.
> [2}  Klensin, John C. and Douwe B. Yntema, “Beyond the Package: A new
> approach to social science computing”, Social Science Information, 20,
> 4/5, (1981), pp. 787-815.
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 11:26 AM, Eric Gade <eric.gade at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Lick was my thesis adviser, and
> >> subsequently my boss when I was a member of the MIT research staff in
> >> his group.  So there is a lot of overlap between my personal experiences
> >> in 1969-1977 at MIT and the events and interactions chronicled in "Dream
> >> Machine".
> >
> >
> > Hi Jack, thanks for writing back. It's great to have a person who worked
> > with Licklider be a part of this email record.
> >
> > Also thank you to all the others for responding. I want to clarify a
> couple
> > of things, mostly because I don't want to be unfair to the book's author
> > despite my evaluation of his research. Levine seems to suggest that
> there is
> > some connection between counterinsurgency psychological/sociological
> > research in Vietnam and the origins of Licklider's research group(s) and
> > work in building the ARPA C&C/IPTO community. That is to say, he believes
> > there are common intellectual origins if not necessarily applications.
> What
> > has been covered by Waldrop and others -- and what is even apparent in
> the
> > oral histories recorded by Licklider and others -- is that to the extent
> > this is true, there was apprehension on the part of the interactive
> > computing researchers. Either way, this is a bold claim and my own
> feeling
> > is that it requires much more evidence to support it.
> >
> > The NBC reporting is -- to his telling -- evidence of similar tactics
> being
> > used on the ARPANET, although the Congressional Record testimony seems
> > pretty clear that the report confused a bunch of things. Again, it
> doesn't
> > seem to me that enough convincing evidence is presented, but these
> reports
> > are interesting nonetheless and I'd never heard of them before in my own
> > research.
> >
> > One final note about the Cambridge Project. Waldrop also discusses the
> > Cambridge Project in "Dream Machine" -- he even recounts a story where
> > Licklider, surrounded by protestors who were attempting to burn copies of
> > his proposal, showed the youngsters that they needed to fan out the
> pages if
> > they wanted to get it to burn properly (and even lit his own report on
> > fire). At the time, this was a known project. The Harvard Crimson even
> > reported on it:
> > http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1969/9/26/brass-tacks-
> the-cambridge-project-pi/
> >
> > As I mentioned, I have not been able to get a copy of this proposal. The
> MIT
> > archives will almost certainly take their time getting back to me. The
> > citation Levine uses for the report is:
> > J.C.R. Licklider, "Establishment and Operation of a Program in Computer
> > Analysis and Modeling in the Behavioral Sciences" December 5, 1968. MIT
> > Institute Archives and Special Collections, MIT Cambridge Project
> records.
> >
> > Levine does not seem to quote from this proposal and only cites it once
> when
> > he lists the "data banks" that the Cambridge Project would create (and
> "make
> > available through ARPANET"):
> >
> > Public opinion polls from all countries
> > Cultural patterns of all the tribes and peoples of the world
> > Archives on comparative communism [...] files on the contemporary world
> > communist movements
> > Political participation of various countries [...] This includes such
> > variables as voting, membership in associations, activity of political
> > parties, etc.
> > Youth movements
> > Mass unrest and political movements under conditions of rapid social
> change
> > Data on national integration, particularly in "plural" societies; the
> > integration of ethnic, racial and religious minorities; the merging or
> > splitting of present political units
> > International propaganda output
> > Peasant attitudes and behavior
> > International armament expenditures and trends
> >
> > (It is unclear is Levine is listing these himself or quoting from the
> > proposal; without seeing a copy we cannot verify)
> >
> > My understanding is that the project ran for ~5 years. The only
> documentary
> > evidence for it that I've been able to find online is the following
> report,
> > presumably written near the end of the project:
> >
> > http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=AD0783626
> >
> >
> > Without some revelation from people on this list, I don't see enough
> > evidence to overturn the narrative clearly expounded by Waldrop,
> Weinberger,
> > and others that the ARPA computing community as established by Licklider
> was
> > a kind of lucky moment where lots of funds could be spent on risky/open
> > projects and that most of the rest of ARPA had little idea what these
> guys
> > were even doing, let alone others within the Pentagon.
> >
> > On Sat, Apr 14, 2018 at 7:15 AM, Dave Walden <
> dave.walden.family at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> Jack,
> >>
> >> My memory is that CCA (Computer Corporation of America -- Tom Merrill's
> >> company) did the DataComputer.  They might also have been at 545 Tech
> >> Square at the time but I am unsure of that.  IBM (the "Cambridge
> >> Scientific" lab?) was also there (as you note) and did other important
> >> things (my memory is vague, so I am uncertain of the following things
> >> ... the beginning of CP/CMS operating system, Script text processing
> >> system, creation of GML, I think they may also have had the other CTSS
> >> system, etc.) but I don't remember this group being connected to the
> >> ARPANET (IBM was pushing SNA -- proprietary networking).
> >>
> >> Dave
> >>
> >> On 4/14/2018 3:36 AM, Jack Haverty wrote:
> >> > Lick's group was part of Project MAC, aka LCS (Laboratory for Computer
> >> > Science),  It occupied part of 545 Technology Square, along with the
> MIT
> >> > AI Lab.  LCS had many subgroups.  In addition, the building complex
> >> > housed an IBM research group (that did the DataComputer, which was
> >> > attached to the ARPANET), and even a stealth office of the CIA
> (really -
> >> > but that's another story), which I accidentally "outed" one day while
> >> > trying to run computer cables up to the roof through the elevator
> shaft.
> >> >   Oops.
> >> >
> >>
> >> _______
> >> internet-history mailing list
> >> internet-history at postel.org
> >> http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> >> Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Eric
> >
> > _______
> > internet-history mailing list
> > internet-history at postel.org
> > http://mailman.postel.org/mailman/listinfo/internet-history
> > Contact list-owner at postel.org for assistance.
> >
>
> _______
> internet-history mailing list
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>



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