Cyber-corporatism.

In recent years, the phrase "public-private partnership" has come into vogue as a description of nominally private corporate concerns that work intimately with the federal government. In such an arrangement, which is often described as "corporatism," government--which has the power to tax, regulate, subsidize, control, and ultimately to destroy--is invariably the senior partner. In Mussolini's Italy, such "partnerships" were called "consortia," and they provided the economic foundation for the Fascist regime.

The ongoing "war on terrorism" has accelerated and amplified a previously existing trend toward what could be called "cyber-corporatism." In-Q-tel, a "venture capitalist" outfit started by the CIA in 1999 to "accelerate the development of commercial technologies for intelligence gathering," offers a good case in point. On January 4, Amit Yoran, former chief of the National Cyber Security Division at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), was appointed CEO of In-Q-tel.

After graduating from West Point, Yoran was permitted by the Pentagon to forgo his military service commitment in order to develop cryptology and security technologies. Along with his brother Elad (also a West Point grad), Yoran created Riptech Inc., a computer security firm, in 1998, eventually selling it to Symantec for $145 million. His task at the DHS, he explained in an April 2005 interview with CSO magazine, was to "build bridges to the private sector" by establishing "interaction points of information-sharing" and "analysis centers." At the time he quit his DHS post, "We were working with some 36 associations and trade groups, with constituents representing literally all the critical [information] infrastructure of the nation."

As head of the CIA's taxpayer-subsidized venture capital company, Yoran can continue that "bridge-building" effort as Washington works to build its all-encompassing cyber-security web. The advertised purpose of that web is to protect our nation from foreign cyber-attacks. The flip side of that proposition, of course, is that Washington will develop the means to track everything Americans do while in cyberspace--for our own good, naturally.