"[Yasha Levine] calls out big tech firms as arms of the surveillance apparatus. Amid increasing dismay about technology’s influence on contemporary life, such forceful questioning is salutary." —The New Yorker

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"Yasha Levine's bold and sweeping history of the Internet-from its shadowy inception as a military contrivance for counterinsurgency and domestic surveillance, to its current incarnation as a commercialized tool for everyday communication that turns everyone's life into an open book-tells a gripping story of our algorithmic way of life in the making. Defying common Internet tropes that present a battle between valiant and independent rebels versus omnipresent state and corporate powers, no one comes out of this book looking clean. Whatever your thoughts about our digitized world, this book will challenge them." —Stuart Ewen, Distinguished Professor of History, Sociology and Media Studies at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center

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"The Internet will never be the same after you read Surveillance Valley. Yasha Levine has done a masterful job of research and reporting about the military origins of the 'world wide web' and how its essential nature has not changed in the years since its creation during the Cold War. I especially applaud his courage in unraveling the connections between the so-called 'deep state' and its economic allies in Silicon Valley with the big guns of the 'privacy' movement, who have scoffed at virtually every attempt at making their operations transparent to the public." —Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing

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"In this fast-paced, myth busting expose, Yasha Levine documents how a collection of spooks, cybernetic fanatics, and libertarian oligarchs have exploited the internet to promote regime change abroad and establish a totalistic spying network at home. Surveillance Valley is an unprecedented journalistic achievement, revealing the untold history of the anti-democratic regime that rules our lives from behind a glossy LED screen." —Max Blumenthal, author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, senior editor of AlterNet's Grayzone Project

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"Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley is an important and not well known history of computers and the internet. In our tech driven culture, history is ignored, yet it is only by knowing the history of technologies can we hope to create a much needed politics of technology. Without history, it is impossible to adequately understand any given technology's impact on society...If we want a democratic future, and those controlling and implementing the technology show little democratic inclinations, we need to develop a politics of technology. Levine's history of Surveillance Valley provides an essential first step." —Joe Costello, Author of Of, By, For: The New Politics of Money, Debt & Democracy

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"The future is hijacked, thanks to generals, Google and the government ... fascinating study of Potomac fervor from Vietnam to Silicon Valley." —Military Times Spring Reading Guide