ABC Updates
25 September 2020
Rocket Lab's
Newest Director: CIA, Laser Weapons, Space Militarisation
If there was any doubt that Rocket Lab is simply an American-owned
contractor for the US military/intelligence empire, further proof came
in September 2020 with the revelation that: “Rocket
Lab’s new board member headed the CIA’s venture capital firm and is a
proponent of deploying high-powered laser weapons in space. Michael
Griffin, who was until recently an Under-Secretary of Defense in the
Trump Administration, was welcomed onto the Board of the aerospace and
small satellite company in August…In the 1980s he held a senior role
in then-President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative
ballistic missile defence programme (“Star Wars”.), and later
headed NASA”.
“Griffin
also once served as the President of In-Q-Tel, which he described in a
2013 NASA oral history as the venture capital fund of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA). ‘I was running what was essentially a
technical venture capital fund whose purpose was to make products and
services available to the intelligence community’, he said”.
“In 2016, Rocket Lab Chief Executive Beck was among the speakers at a
summit for chief executives of companies associated with In-Q-Tel.
A programme from the summitindicated
Rocket Lab was among the firm’s portfolio companies at the time.
Rocket Lab is not currently listed as a portfolio company on
In-Q-Tel’s Website. A Rocket Lab spokeswoman would not say whether the
company remained on In-Q-Tel’s books. Nor would the company disclose
how much money it had received or what products it had developed for
the spy agency venture capital firm”.
“Griffin appeared at a 2019 summit focussed on
directed energy weapons – which include lasers, microwaves and
particle beams – hosted by US consulting giant Booz Allen Hamilton…He
was described in the
New York Times
as an ‘unabashed defender of American military and political supremacy’
and is also a proponent of hypersonic missiles” (Stuff,
18/9/20, “Rocket Lab’s New Hire Has Roots In the CIA, Laser Weapons
And Space Militarisation”,https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/300102583/rocket-labs-new-hire-has-roots-in-the-cia-laser-weapons-and-space-militarisation).
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