Eugenics and Silicon Valley: The Gates Family, Stanford University and William Shockley, Father of Silicon Valley, PROMOTED Eugenics.

"Before you trust someone with the future, look at what they did with the power they already had." - Dianne Emerson

Eugenics and Silicon Valley: The Gates Family, Stanford University and William Shockley, Father of Silicon Valley, PROMOTED Eugenics.

Silicon Valley wants us to trust its most powerful technology leaders with artificial intelligence, personal data, communications, surveillance, defense, jobs and technologies capable of reshaping human society. But before asking where the Tech Bros want to take humanity, perhaps we should ask a more basic question: Who are these people, how did they acquire so much power, and why should we trust them?

This episode investigates the history behind the Silicon Valley mythology, beginning with Stanford University and its disturbing connections to the American eugenics movement. From Stanford's founding president David Starr Jordan and psychologist Lewis Terman to Frederick Terman and the creation of the Stanford-centered technology ecosystem, the story follows an extraordinary intersection of eugenics, intelligence testing, military research, government funding, universities and private industry.

The semiconductor family tree raises another remarkable connection. Nobel Prize-winning transistor pioneer William Shockley founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory and later became one of America's most notorious public advocates of eugenics. Eight Shockley employees left to establish Fairchild Semiconductor, and Fairchild's Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce later founded Intel. The history of Silicon Valley is far more interconnected than the familiar stories of independent geniuses starting companies from nothing.

The investigation also follows Bill Gates, Microsoft and the IBM deal; Mary Gates's connection to IBM chairman John Opel; Bill Gates Sr.'s involvement with Planned Parenthood; Microsoft's landmark antitrust case; government support behind Elon Musk's Tesla and SpaceX; taxpayer-funded research that became the foundation for enormous private fortunes; and the continuing influence of Stanford, SRI, Fairchild, Intel and other institutions on the technologies that now dominate our lives.

Google, Palantir, Tesla, SpaceX, Theranos, WeWork, Uber, Airbnb and other celebrated technology companies raise the same fundamental question: How much of the Silicon Valley success story actually belongs to the billionaire standing onstage, and how much was created behind the curtain by taxpayers, government agencies, milit