The Canadian military built its own internet. My new journal article explores how its design was shaped by Canada’s pursuit of national identity amid fears of US influence & rising demands for self-determination within Indigenous & Québécois nations 🧵
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Drawing on unpublished and declassified documents of the Canadian Armed Forces at Ottawa’s Directorate of History & Heritage, this article investigates the history and significance of SAMSON (Strategic Automatic Message Switching Operational Network), an early Canadian internet
First conceived in 1965 as a distributed network to protect from a Soviet nuclear attack, its design shifted toward internal threats: civil unrest, labour disputes, subversion. This was during the FLQ crisis, growth of American Indian Movement & expanding US economic investment
The federal government mandated that all parts of SAMSON must come from within, even though the technology didn't yet exist in Canada. Fears of US back doors & foreign investment took precedence. Costs ballooned, deadlines were missed. The project wasn't completed until 1985.
This is not the internet we use in Canada today. Our internet began with NetNorth, a network of Canada's universities that opened to the public, adopting the TCP/IP standard developed in the US. But if SAMSON had become our internet, would it be a better place than it is today?
Before it was even built, SAMSON was imagined as another nation-building project against those who were seen to stand in the way: Indigenous peoples, Quebecois, left organizers. Becoming another militarized surveillance machine like the internet today would have been likely
The overall aim is to better understand how communication networks in Canada are militarized. Much research has been focused on the US context, but unique legacies & currents of security, surveillance and violence persist in Canada as well
If you'd like a free PDF, send me a DM!
If you'd like a free PDF, send me a DM!
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