Bonum Certa Men Certa

IBM and the Bomb - Part I: How IBM Played a Technical and Diplomatic Role in the Cold War

Not a bombshell, but certainly a lesson in diplomacy and history (recently declassified, as our introduction noted)

Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., IBM chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), then U.S. Ambassador to Russia from 1979 to 1981. Public Domain, American Embassy, Moscow.



Summary: IBM's role in US (domestic) and international politics, especially in light of political appointments acquired by Thomas Watson (the father) and his two sons

THE BIGGEST money is to be found where the government invests the most. In the United States nothing has a budget anywhere near as high as the military's. Historically this has been the case because of the World Wars and imperialism; some US Presidents warned about this. The 'death industry' (Department of War rebranded "Defence") does not just willfully shrink itself or goes away. It is always looking to grow, expand, to influence and control everything it can. One need not be a cynic to grasp all this.



"...speaking of self-serving charities, the IBM Watsons have their own."IBM was highly involved in the Cold War and it became rich in the process. Contrary to the PR slant (1% of the profits etc.), IBM loves war and segregation; it has long profited from US imperialism in particular. One might as well swap the "I" in IBM with "Imperialist" (not "International"). When corporations and governments are almost inseparable it is inevitable that oftentimes businesspeople (active or 'retired') will enter politics, representing their own interests/ideologies and/or business interests. Money (profit) and policy (rules of power) are closely connected, for one can be leveraged to attain the other. We see a lot of that in Bill Gates, who for over a decade disrupted politics all around the world for personal agenda; he has investments to which he wishes to funnel taxpayers' money in every country. It's a racket. It's not a charity, it is only disguised as such. And speaking of self-serving charities, the IBM Watsons have their own. In fact, formed in 1979 was the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs (coinciding with the political career of Thomas J. Watson, Jr.).

Watson's political career wasn't without opposition. Consider the following (notice the subject in particular):

watson-opposition

In early 1979 he was already meeting with Soviet officials (it used to be classified "SECRET").

watson-meeting

It may all seem shallow and boring. Some of it remains "SECRET" and the following has redactions labeled "SECRET" (still, to present):

plenary-watson-1

plenary-watson-2

Here's the text:

1. ON FEBRUARY 2, 1979, THOMAS WATSON, CHAIRMAN OF GENERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON ARMS CONTROL AND DISARMAMENT AND WILLIAM JACKSON, GAC EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, VISITED EMBASSY BERN, CALLED ON DCM CROWLEY, JOINED ASAT DELEGATION IN WORK IN PREPARATION FOR AFTERNOON PLENARY, AND DISCUSSED STATUS OF ASAT TALKS WITH SECRET SECRET

PAGE 02

BERN 00682 051005Z

BUCHHEIM AND BRADBURN.

2. WATSON, JACKSON, BUCHHEIM AND BRADBURN WERE JOINED AT LUNCH BY KHLESTOV. CONVERSATION WAS GENERAL IN NATURE. CROWLEY

Sheryl P. Walter Declassified/Released US Department of State EO Systematic Review 20 Mar 2014

Sheryl P. Walter Declassified/Released US Department of State EO Systematic Review 20 Mar 2014 SECRET

NNN

Sheryl P. Walter Declassified/Released US Department of State EO Systematic Review 20 Mar 2014

Sheryl P. Walter Declassified/Released US Department of State EO Systematic Review 20 Mar 2014


Page 2 is still all blanked out. Notice the decaption and disposition dates. Those are still considered too sensitive (even half a decade ago).

plenary-watson-3

In short, what we have here is the IBM dynasty meeting Soviet officials and deciding at a diplomatic capacity how to handle the Cold War.

"In short, what we have here is the IBM dynasty meeting Soviet officials and deciding at a diplomatic capacity how to handle the Cold War."This sort of matters because nowadays Microsoft is the same. "Bill [Gates] has high political ambitions for his cult," a person told yesterday, "and staying out of the [police] report was just one small maneuver, as was avoiding having Microsoft testify in congress this week."

Ever noticed how "GAFA" gets grilled but Microsoft is miraculously absent? As if Apple is a monopolist and Microsoft is not?

"At the moment the US President is enriching himself through his businesses and partners, blatantly misusing public office for personal gain. There's no lack of examples.""He can't position himself as candidate for VP this time," the person continued, "but my money is on him trying to run for the top office next round. Keep in mind he already even travels in convoys with decoy cars."

At the moment the US President is enriching himself through his businesses and partners, blatantly misusing public office for personal gain. There's no lack of examples.

The next part will talk about nepotism, perhaps even bribery, as we already know that Gates bribes a lot of politicians all around the world and we also know that the Watsons paid presidential candidates.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's Mass Layoffs (30,000+ in 2025) Not About "AI", Just Business Failure
"AI" is replacing... the old excuses for mass layoffs
EPO People Power - Part XVI - Berenguer Does Not Speak German, So What Did He Tell German Police That Busted Him?
based in Germany and does not speak the language
Challenges for EPO Insiders to Try to Tackle in 2026
Nothing will get solved as long as the circus that runs this show tries to keep the circus going
 
Starting a Book With a Flawed Premise or Weak Hypothesis
To me, Schneier is a sort of "RMS of sec"
"But Corruption is Everywhere"
"We'll always have Polio..."
Days Without Slop About "Linux"
It's time to move on
Links 27/12/2025: Canada Post Strike Called Off, Debate About Europeans "Working Over Christmas"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: Household Appliances and Flight Fright
Links for the day
Links 27/12/2025: US Cracking Down on Whistleblowers, Expanding Bombardment Campaigns Worldwide
Links for the day
Resuming EPO Coverage Today, Can António Campinos 'Survive' Cocainegate?
We said we'd continue in the weekend
Links 27/12/2025: More Attacks on Media (Meduza Co-founder Sentenced to Prison in Absentia), "What Owning Music Means To Me"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 27/12/2025: geminiprotocol.net Downtime and Capsular Gemlog Manager
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 26, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, December 26, 2025
Tossing Embarrassing News Under the Christmastime Bus
This isn't just some coincidence; those are conscious choices
Victim-Blaming in Debian
Verhelst previously did blame-shifting when Debian suicide clusters happened
IBM Cuts in Japan, Red Hat is Attached to a Sinking Ship
IBM, which controls Red Hat, is a rapidly shrinking company
Manchester United Dumped Microsoft Because Qualcomm Sort of Did
The Windows PCs were an utter failure
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Supported by Unconventional Digital Bartering Communities
But no strings attached
Geminispace: 5,000 Capsules in 2026
There are 4.8k now
Gemini Links 26/12/2025: Careful What You Eat and "My Secret Santa"
Links for the day
The Indigenous Community Versus Corporate AstroTurt and 'Cancel Culture'
Good people will recognise exactly what's happening here and respond to it tactfully
Richard Stallman: Epstein is a Serial Rapist. Bill Epsteingate: Epstein is a Friend.
Supporting the FSF (or Richard Stallman) is supporting those who asserted Epstein had serially raped women
The Paradox of GAFAM: Saying You Protect Women, Appointing Abusers of Women to Run the Company
older articles
Censored by FreeBSD Core Team Secretary, Reinstated After Talking About it in Public
FreeBSD misfiring a CoC?
Links 26/12/2025: Chatbot Toys Terrorising Children, US Undeclared "War on Terror" Unilaterally Extends to Nigeria During Holidays
Links for the day
Links 26/12/2025: French Postal Services Under Russian Attack, U.S. Cheetos Accuse People Who Obstruct Information Warfare by Russia of "Censorship"
Links for the day
Debian's Daniel Kahn Gillmor is Wrong, Signal is No "Gold Standard" (It's Also Promoted by Proponents of Back Doors)
I'm not too sure why Debian or the ACLU would wish to associate with this
Next Year Will be the Year of Quantum, Just Like 2020, 2015, 2010, 2005 and So On
"Quantum" is the future
The Silent Power of Coercion Over Speech
The important thing is optics
Kazakhstan Doesn't Need GAFAM Datacentres (Spy Hubs)
Suffice to say, as far as we can gather nothing came out from the empty (false) promises of GAFAM's "data centers in Kazakhstan"
So Simple That You Can Touch and Feel It
In light of recent experiences
Christmas Music Project: Back to When Music Was Music
now Canonical (or Ubuntu) says we should make available tens of gigabytes of disk space
Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Under Attack by Cross-Network Spam Floods
So far we've been spared (our network has not been targeted at all) [...] Let's hope the spam won't discourage the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who still use IRC
An "AI-Infused" Windows
Microsoft Windows isn't becoming a worthless pile of garbage by accident
Microsoft Laid Off Over 30,000 People This Year, Coders Are "Too Expensive"
Go get some popcorn. Microsoft "slopware" is about to get real!
Critics Have Long Said Microsoft Produces "Slopware", Microsoft Wants to Prove Them Right
Slop instead of code is a step in the right direction?
The Top 8 Innovations of IBM in 2025
What innovations will come out from IBM in 2026?
And as the Year Turns...
The significance of new years isn't based on geology or astronomy or anything like that
Appliances Versus Computers
Replacing a computer inside an object of some kind or inside an appliance (which nowadays includes "modern" cars) isn't simple and isn't cheap
A Dark Side of Europe
They try hard to silence people who speak about these issues
Why People Love Techrights (and Also Loved "Boycott Novell")
I will continue to publish for many decades to come
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, December 25, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, December 25, 2025
Browsing Techrights With a GUI and 10 Megabytes of RAM Per Tab
Some people say it's not possible in 2025, maybe in part because they depend on very bloated software
A Tribute to Richard Stallman
It's about knowledge and sharing
Links 26/12/2025: Impermanence, Salt and Thermometer, Freetube
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/12/2025: Hibernation and TV Detox
Links for the day
Canonical is Making the Cost of PCs Very High, Due to Unnecessary Ubuntu Bloat
They say the reason for the price surge is LLM hype/frenzy
Canonical's Ubuntu is Bloatware
How did Ubuntu get so fat?
The EPO is a Very Vicious Organisation You Neither Wish to Join Nor Stay in for "Too Long"
Consider what the EPO thinks of its own workers, the staff that actually does real work
2026 Will Hopefully Turn Out to be Slopless
we seem to be starting the post-Christmas period on the right footing
Links 25/12/2025: Mail Carriers in "a Murky Future", Dihydroxyacetone Man’s "Chip Embargo Against China Backfiring Spectacularly"
Links for the day
The Register MS: All I Want For Xmas is Microsoft
they actually put effort into it
How to Win Nobel Prize for Peace
Do you get to Heaven (or peace platitudes) by sleeping with 72 virgins?
The Right to Repair (Especially When Products Are So Poorly Made)
Many electrical appliances fail often/quick and are nearly impossible to repair
Links 25/12/2025: Ample Cover-up Found in Jeffrey Epstein Files; ChatGPT Causes Psychosis, Not a Good Use Case
Links for the day
Giving Money to Free Software
In life, people must make sacrifices to do what's right and just
The Register MS: Don't Use Linux
That really says a lot about The Register MS
EPO People Power - Part XV - EPO Cocainegate to Resume This Weekend
The next installment (number 16) will probably come out this weekend
Microsoft: XBox is Going "Online", "Cloud"...
XBox as a console is pretty much dead
The Year of the Bubble
We hope that in 2026 the marketing liars will find some new buzzwords to latch onto and quit calling everything "AI"
Mozilla Firefox is a GAFAM Browser With Slop, Move to a Free Software Web Browser
on mobile the options would be more limited
libera.chat Was Under Attack Last Night
Several months from now libera.chat turns 5
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Raises Over $300,000 Before Christmas
the FSF made it past $300,000
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, December 24, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, December 24, 2025