Bonum Certa Men Certa

Declassified 6-8 Years Ago: Thomas Watson Jr. (Son of IBM Founder) as Politician Navigating Cold War Politics

Earlier this week: Meet the IBM Watsons: Sponsors of Richard Nixon and Abusers of Women (the brother)

Watson with Jimmy Carter, January 20, 1978 (Public Domain)
Watson with Jimmy Carter, January 20th, 1978 (Public Domain)



Summary: While studying the full (and real) history of IBM we've stumbled upon interesting bits of diplomatic documents, declassified for public access only as recently as several years ago

LAST week we started researching a bunch of old material for a big piece or a short but very detailed series, which will be 100% factual. Accuracy is the priority. In our endeavour (slow research) we came across all that Holocaust stuff (sort of 'old news'; there's literature and films [1, 2, 3] about IBM's role in Holocaust machinery/implementation). We don't see the need to cover in depth issues that were already covered properly, as well as in great depth, before. A long time ago (two decades in the past) millions of people became aware of this dark chapter in IBM's history. We don't have additional or unique insight in that area.



"Shortly after the father (IBM founder) died Khrushchev decided to go to IBM of all places..."Conspicuously but not mysteriously, not much is said about IBM and "the bomb" (or bombs, as the US has loads of nuclear weapons now). IBM was the dominant force in technology throughout the Cold War era, but a lot of it was understandably shrouded in secrecy. It was -- and still is -- a sensitive subject (maybe more so because of the current administration). But now in 2020 we know that IBM, being a "patriotic" company in service of supremacist agenda (since its early days, even eugenics), also did nukes. One ought not be shocked that IBM profited a lot from nuke assessment/nuclear simulations, nukes C&C (they still used floppies last year; there are many reports like this one from last year, following up on embarrassing revelations [1, 2, 3] dated 3 years earlier), and nuclear munition recovery. As History.com put it (article updated this year): "Using an IBM computer, experts tried to calculate where the [nuclear] bomb might have landed, but the impact area was still too large for an effective search..."

"Perhaps it's not too shocking that the 'Watson sons' of IBM both eventually entered politics, just like their father."There's more to be found regarding the trip of Nikita Khrushchev (Никита Хрущёв) to IBM (video here and here); "During his American tour in 1959, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev toured the IBM factory in San Jose, California," the latter says and there's a lot of footage (photography and motion film). Shortly after the father (IBM founder) died Khrushchev decided to go to IBM of all places...

"This is not about 'bashing' IBM; it's about understanding what we're dealing with."Perhaps it's not too shocking that the 'Watson sons' of IBM both eventually entered politics, just like their father. That's why he was getting to meet all sorts of people including Hitler. The military angle of it never helped IBM. IBM is still very close to the US Army and Red Hat's Chairman of the Board was introduced to GNU/Linux when it helped his 'regime change' in Haiti, by his very own admission. IBM now owns Red Hat, which is a close DoD and NSA partner. A match made in Heaven? IBM's projects that deal with American nuclear arsenals (to this date) go beyond supercomputers; as noted before, many systems responsible for dealing with real nukes -- not mere simulations -- are IBM systems.

We recently studied documents about Thomas Watson Jr. (the son of the founder) as a US diplomat, representing the US in the Soviet Union (USSR) at a time the Cold War persisted but was no longer at its peak. Using these old documents, which were only declassified some years ago, we gain a slightly better understanding of IBM's political gameplay and its role in ultimate power games (determining perhaps the fate of human civilisation as a whole; there are enough nukes in each superpower's arsenal to wipe it all out). We're going to show transcripts and originals; we'll abstain from speculation. These documents aren't easy to find, but they are searchable in Wikileaks and are catalogued sensibly enough for digestion.

This is not about 'bashing' IBM; it's about understanding what we're dealing with. Corporations and governments have long been connected.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
For the Second Time in a Few Weeks Microsoft Lunduke Makes False Accusations Against Senior Red Hat Staff to Incite a Despicable 'Troll Army'
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Plagiarism, Fake Articles, and FUD About Linux
not a day goes by without Google News feeding FUD from slopfarms
Gemini Links 01/10/2025: Chat Control and End of Life
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: Long Covid Risk Reiterated, "Bitcoin Queen" Caught
Links for the day
Links 01/10/2025: EA $55 Billion Deal is Debt and Slop "Raises Vishing Risks"
Links for the day
Bluewashing at Red Hat Means Redundancies
The man who sold Red Hat to IBM meanwhile became a Microsoft Mono booster
After Killing OpenSource.com, IBM ('Red Hat') and OSI Told Us OpenSource.net Would Replace It (But That Didn't Happen)
Now it's time to move on, perhaps tarnishing the "Open Source" label some more (for whatever sponsor wants this)
Linux is Not a Community Project, It's a Wall Street Product
The core goal should be freedom
Bad Actors Abusing the Free Software Community, Vandalising It Using Rogue Politics and Old Tactics
Oil giants have long attempted to do this; now, the digital equivalent of Big Oil does this in technology
Social Control Media Isn't the Future, The Federation or Fediverse Isn't Growing, People's Accounts Vanish for Good
users' accounts will get deleted, not just become inactive
IBM is Failing, This Helps Show Wall Street is Entirely Detached From Actual Commercial Performance
IBM is unable to grow, it's just constantly shrinking
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 30, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Clerical Aspects of Publishing and Development
In Free software, the management aspects are considerably reduced
Slopwatch: Fake Articles and Google News Promoting "Linux" Spam or Bot-Generated Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt (FUD)
These slopfarms help misplace blame
Third Wave of Microsoft Layoffs in September, This Time Many in Liverpool Affected
Be ready for more waves of layoffs ahead of the so-called "results" in late October