WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reveals his bizarre Google conspiracy theory

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has outlined a conspiracy theory accusing search and online services giant Google of being part of the US military industrial complex, during a video address delivered to the 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art. According to The Register, Assange accused Google of selling out its original ‘don’t be evil’ business philosophy. […]

Andrew Sadauskas 18 June, 2013

According to The Register, Assange accused Google of selling out its original ‘don’t be evil’ business philosophy.

“Google started out as part of Californian graduate school culture, which is a very nice, gentle, humane, somewhat naive and privileged culture around Berkeley in the Bay Area, which is pretty decent. Californians at that level are much like Australians, it’s a pretty flat society,” Assange said.

“But as Google dealt with the big bad world, it leaned very heavily on the State Department and entered into its systems, so that there are very close interconnects, where you have a former advisor to Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice [named Jared Cohen] working as head of Google Ideas.”

Assange goes on to accuse the company of attempting to integrate itself into the US military industrial complex.

“Google wants to ingratiate itself in the national security complex of the US and [establish] itself as a new geopolitical visionary. You might think this meeting is evidence that the big boys at Google are secretly on the side of WikiLeaks. That’s not true; they have a much more complex agenda,” Assange said.

Referring to himself in the third person, Assange accuses Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt and Google Ideas director Jared Cohen of passing on information from a 2011 visit to the US State Department. WikiLeaks has since published a full transcript and audio recording of the conversation.

“What had happened was that the Google guys – who are really kind of State Department guys – came and paid an unofficial State Department visit to Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks crew, while I was under house arrest, then went back and reported that information at the highest level,” Assange said.