As the Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown, private corporations consider it their right to use our data (and by extension, us) which ever way they see fit. Tempted by their appealing organisational and diagnostic tools, we have allowed private internet corporations access to the most intimate corners of our lives. But the internet was developed, from the outset, as a weapon.

Looking at the hidden origins of many internet corporations and platforms, Levine shows that this is a function, not a bug of the online experience. Conceived as a surveillance tool by ARPA to control insurgents in the Vietnam War, the internet is now essential to our lives.

Without this book, your picture of contemporary society will be missing an essential piece of the puzzle.

'A masterful job of research and reporting about the military origins of the 'world wide web' and how its essential nature has not changed in the years since its creation during the Cold War.' Tim Shorrock, author of Spies For Hire