CIA NeXT order and clearance helped Jobs keep the company until 1996
Original title: How the CIA Gave Steve Jobs Top Secret Clearance and Helped Him Return to Apple
A hidden intelligence buy of modified NeXT workstations arrived when commercial sales lagged, according to people close to the contract.
Reporter Sharon Weinberger recounts a 1986 CIA approach to Steve Jobs at NeXT for workstations to process National Reconnaissance Office satellite imagery. The purchase was recorded under the NSA, machines left unfinished, and intermediaries installed faster chips and Intel graphics cards before shipment. Defense documents later showed Jobs held a Top Secret SCI clearance from 1988 into 1990, partly tied to Pixar rendering contracts. The account says the order was large and hidden but not the only reason NeXT survived until Apple bought it in 1996.
Unconfirmed: Scale and effect rest on interviews; the reporting does not claim the CIA order alone saved NeXT.
- Output reportedly rose from about 100 machines in month one to 5,000 a month.
- Jobs’ clearance was active from 1988 into 1990, documents released later show.
- NeXTSTEP later became the base of Mac OS X.
- Weinberger says other capital also kept NeXT going.
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From the original article
3 min read at brianroemmele.substack.com
Two men from the CIA’s Program B walked into NeXT headquarters in 1986 without an appointment. Joe Romello and Jeff Harris wanted to talk with Steve Jobs about defense-related issues, specifically intelligence. The Cold War was still open, and the agency needed better machines to turn satellite photographs into usable information for the National Reconnaissance Office.
By MaysonL · brianroemmele.substack.com
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