Silicon Valley wasn’t supposed to happen.

A stretch of California orchard land somehow became the place that built the modern world: chips, PCs, the internet, the smartphone, and now AI. But the real story isn’t the garage myth. It’s a series of contradictions hiding in plain sight. So what actually built Silicon Valley, and what does that tell us about where it’s going next?

We'll unpack:

The Cold War military money that quietly funded Silicon Valley's rise, before anyone called it that.
How a Stanford dean's real estate gamble changed the course of American technology.
Why the Space Race is what made the microchip cheap.
How a generation of anti-establishment hippies built one of the greatest engines of corporate power on earth.

Guest: Margaret O’Mara, historian, professor at the University of Washington, and author of "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America."

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Credits:
A production of Rhyme Media for 1440 Media
Host: Sony Kassam
Producer: Nicolo Majnoni
Editor: Dan Bobkoff
Sound Designer: Jay Cowit
Executive Producers (1440): Sony Kassam and Drew Steigerwald
Executive Producer (Rhyme): Dan Bobkoff

About 1440: 1440 is a community for the knowledge-obsessed that helps curious people stay informed and inspired every day. We live in an age of limitless information but limited understanding. Algorithms decide what we see. Misinformation spreads faster than truth. And the tools meant to expand knowledge now distort it.

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Your iPhone Started With a Cold War Secret