How a Deal With the CIA Changed the Future for Steve Jobs and Apple

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
AI adoption is growing real wide. AI is redefining what's possible.

**Sharon Weinberger** (0:03)
The future is AI.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:04)
We've all heard it, and somehow your AI still isn't delivering. No context for how your business actually runs. Broken integrations, stalled pilots, enough.
Enterprises deserve AI that works. Not someday, not theoretically, today. Real outcomes, already running in real enterprises. Publis is sapient, AI that's built to deliver.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (0:34)
Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Friday, September 4th. I'm Isabelle Bousquette, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal Leadership Institute. This week marked the beginning of a new era for Apple. CEO John Ternes officially took the reins from Tim Cook, who became Executive Chairman of Apple's Board of Directors after 15 years as Chief Executive. It was a period of transformative growth for the company, which went from a market capitalization of about $350 billion to more than $4.5 trillion.
While it might be hard to imagine our lives without the tech giant, its success wasn't a guarantee. After being ousted from Apple in the 1980s, Steve Jobs' new company, Next, was struggling until it struck a key deal that gave it the funding it needed to stay afloat until Jobs ultimately returned to Apple to shape the foundational operating code of the iPhone. That deal was with the CIA.
Over the years, leading edge Silicon Valley tech companies and the US government have had a complicated relationship. The standoff between the Pentagon and leading AI lab Anthropic earlier this year is just the latest example. But the gulf between the two isn't actually as wide as many people think. That's according to Sharon Weinberger, former National Security Editor for the Wall Street Journal, and the author of a new book, Valley of Death, How Big Tech is Fueling the Future of War. Today, we're sitting down with Weinberger to talk about how much of debt Apple actually owes the CIA, and whether we have it to thank for the iPhone.
Sharon, take us back to 1986 Where was Steve Jobs and what was he doing?

**Sharon Weinberger** (2:30)
He had been essentially banished from Apple, kicked out after co-founding it, and had gone on to form a new company called Next.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:39)
Hi, I'm Steve Jobs and I make computers.
As humans, we're all tool builders. We create tools that amplify inherent abilities that we have. Tools like the bicycle, telescope, language, mathematics. But the neatest tool we've ever created is the computer.

**Sharon Weinberger** (2:54)
He could pursue exactly what he wanted to do, which was this very beautiful, very high-end computer with amazing graphics and processing and innate networking capabilities. It was also super expensive and hard to sell.
That's where we were around 1986

**Isabelle Bousquette** (3:14)
And Next was approached by some agents from the CIA. What did they want?

**Sharon Weinberger** (3:19)
There was a senior CIA official by the name of Joe Romelo and a colleague of his, Jeff Harris, who went on to lead the nation's secret satellite agency, the National Reconnaissance Office. They were very interested in what was going on in the computing revolution, and they had followed Steve Jobs' career. I mean, he was still very famous at the time. What they were specifically interested in for the intelligence community is, what could these computers with their capabilities offer for sharing satellite imagery and interpreting satellite imagery?
They were on a scouting trip. They were out in California because they were working with other companies out in the Bay Area, and they literally just dropped in at next headquarters and they couldn't say what they were after. They just said they wanted to meet with Steve Jobs.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (4:06)
Okay, and did they eventually meet with Steve Jobs?

**Sharon Weinberger** (4:10)
They did. They didn't give a lot of details, and Steve Jobs at the time did not have a security clearance and said to them, well, don't tell me anything I shouldn't know. I don't want to have to remember what I'm not supposed to remember. They just wanted a certain number of computers for the intelligence community, and they wanted to be able to make modifications to them. Next was still relatively new in production capabilities. How many, how fast could they produce?
And it was certainly very enticing for Steve Jobs because the company was having serious problems.

**SPEAKER_5** (4:41)
His new computer, called Next, is a $6,500 workstation aimed at higher education, students and teachers. And while it may be revolutionary, today's unveiling was 10% science, 90% hoopla.

**Sharon Weinberger** (4:54)
The computers, the cubes as they were called, were just too expensive for most of their target customers.

**Isabelle Bousquette** (4:59)
We know Steve Jobs is sort of this counterculture figure almost. He practiced Buddhism. What was it that actually made him say yes to this?