In the early 1970s, two revolutionary computer networks were taking shape on opposite sides of the Americas. Both aimed to connect distant points for rapid information sharing. Both used cutting-edge technology. Both would transform how we think about communication and control. Yet their fates could not have been more different.

ARPANET, developed under the protective umbrella of the U.S. Department of Defense, would evolve into today’s internet. Project Cybersyn, Chile’s experiment in economic cybernetics, would end in flames during Pinochet’s coup. The key difference wasn’t technological – it was political legitimacy.

The Power of Military Cover

ARPANET enjoyed a crucial advantage: military backing provided both resources and legitimacy. When you’re developing technology for the Defense Department, questions about control and surveillance take on a different character. They become matters of national security rather than political power.

This military cover allowed ARPANET to develop largely shielded from political scrutiny. Its potential for surveillance and control was present from the beginning, but the military context made such capabilities appear necessary and appropriate rather than threatening.

Cybersyn’s Fatal Transparency

In contrast, Project Cybersyn wore its civilian nature openly. Stafford Beer’s vision of cybernetic management for Chile’s economy was explicit about its aims to redistribute economic control and enable worker participation. This transparency, while admirable, made it vulnerable.

The context is crucial here: Nixon’s disastrous Vice Presidential trip through Latin America in 1958 had left deep scars in U.S.-Latin American relations. Nixon himself, a toxic racist, was deeply convinced non-whites were too primitive to be capable of self-governance, even before he was elected President. When Allende’s socialist government began developing an advanced nationwide computer network for economic management, it triggered immediate alarm for Nixon. Without the protective shield of military classification, Cybersyn’s capabilities for coordination and control during the Cold War were seen as purely political threats.

The Hidden Legacy of Wartime Cybernetics

What’s often overlooked is how both projects drew from the same well: wartime developments in operations research and cybernetics. The core ideas about network architecture, feedback loops, and distributed control had been developed during World War II for military purposes. Many of the key figures had wartime experience in these fields.

The difference was in how this military heritage was acknowledged. ARPANET maintained its explicit military connection, which paradoxically made its civilian applications appear less threatening when they emerged. Cybersyn, by transparently adapting military-derived techniques for civilian use, found itself more vulnerable to political attack.

The Pattern Continues

This dynamic – military cover providing political legitimacy for transformative technologies – wasn’t unique to ARPANET. GPS, another technology that enables unprecedented tracking and coordination, followed a similar path. By remaining under military control during its development, it avoided many of the political questions that might have surrounded a civilian positioning system.

Even today, we see this pattern continuing. Many surveillance and control technologies face less scrutiny when developed for military or national security purposes than when proposed for civilian use. The military origin serves as a kind of political shield, even as these technologies inevitably find their way into civilian applications.

Learning from History

The parallel stories of ARPANET and Cybersyn offer important lessons for understanding how transformative technologies gain social acceptance. The political legitimacy conveyed by military backing can be crucial for a technology’s survival and evolution, even when its ultimate applications are primarily civilian.

This history should prompt us to question our different reactions to similar technologies based on their institutional origins. When we celebrate ARPANET as the precursor to the internet while dismissing Cybersyn as an authoritarian fantasy, we’re not just making a technological assessment – we’re revealing deep-seated assumptions about legitimate and illegitimate forms of control.

The next time we encounter a new technology that promises to reshape social organization, we might ask ourselves: Would our reaction be different if this came from the military rather than civilian sector? The answer might tell us more about our political assumptions than about the technology itself.

The Lesson for IT Pros Today

The stories of ARPANET and Cybersyn aren’t just about the past – they’re a warning about how institutional control can be seized through technical means. When Pinochet’s forces moved against Cybersyn, they understood that controlling these networks meant controlling Chile’s infrastructure, economy, and ultimately, its people. The system’s designers and operators faced a stark choice: hand over the keys to power, or resist.

Today, American technical professionals face eerily similar choices. When demands come down to centralize access to critical systems – whether they’re financial networks, health databases, or communication infrastructure – these aren’t merely technical requests. They’re potential preludes to institutional capture. The separation between these systems isn’t bureaucratic inefficiency; it’s a deliberate firewall against concentrated power.

The technical professionals who manage these systems aren’t just administrators – they’re the last line of defense for institutional independence.

Every request for master access, every demand to break down system isolations, every push to centralize control should be viewed through the lens of Chile’s experience. The question isn’t whether such access is technically feasible – it’s whether it preserves the separations that protect democratic governance.

For those who work in American institutions today, Cybersyn’s fate offers clear lessons: Technical architecture is political architecture. System access is institutional power. And sometimes, protecting democracy means having the courage to say “no” to those who would dismantle its safeguards in the name of efficiency or security.

The choice between being a mechanism of control or a guardian of democratic institutions isn’t just a historical artifact of the Internet origin; it’s an ever-present reality.