In the context of new military purpose, the digital capabilities that were aimed toward the advocacy-oriented values of the behavioral value reinvestment cycle flowed toward surveillance without impediment. Surveillance assets thrived without risk of sanction and attracted surveillance capital. Revenue followed. The situation recalls the auto, steel, and machine tool industries at mid-century, when military orders kept plants operating at full capacity. In the end, however, this turned out to be more curse than blessing. Military demand distorted and suppressed the innovation process and drove a wedge between these industries and their civilian customers, leaving them vulnerable to foreign competitors in the globalizing markets of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 386