Perhaps others knew all about this, but I hadn’t heard about it before. The WSJ yesterday ran a piece about how the CIA had reached out to Jobs during his tenure at NeXT in 1986 to acquire NeXTcubes that they then had equipped with classified custom graphics circuitry and some ESL software wizardry intended for high-res satellite image analysis at NRO. Apparently, they asked Jobs for 20,000 units per month at a time when NeXT was assembling about 500 per month. They signed an agreement and NeXT started shipping Cubes in huge numbers, apparently keeping NeXT afloat at a difficult time.
Link below should be share friendly and outside the paywall.
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