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Jobs might have never made iPhone without the CIA
Published : Friday, 21 August, 2026 at 5:21 PM
Shahman Abir
Steve Jobs would never have returned to Apple and iPhone might never have existed without the secret backing from the US intelligence community during the Cold War.
According to an American journalist and writer named Sharon Weinberger, a report was published by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on August 19. The excerpt was taken from the book Valley of Death: How Big Tech Is Fueling the Future of War, by the same author.
WSJ reported, Steve Jobs, shortly after being ousted from Apple, founded NeXT in 1986. At the time, CIA was actively searching for young entrepreneur under its classified satellite reconnaissance unit ‘Program B.’
Steve Jobs was convinced by the CIA officials that the technology NeXT is trying to build for academia, could serve the intelligence community as well behind closed doors.
As CIA started financing NeXT, it rapidly scaled its production.
Later, by 1996, Apple bought NeXT, effectively bringing Jobs back to the steering wheel of the company he co-founded.
The software tech of NeXT, which was actually developed by Jobs, ultimately reshaped Apple’s technological landscape. In 1997, NeXTSTEP (later OPENSTEP) started making the core foundation of all modern Apple operating systems - which evolved into modern day iOS devices.
Job’s team at NeXT invented advanced Unix-based operating system, featuring a Mach kernel, BSD components, object-oriented frameworks (Foundation and Appkit) and Objective-C.
Apple used this core technology to develop Mac OS X, which later was renamed as macOS. It replaced the aging classic Mac OS architecture. The core OS, known as Darwin/XNU, alongside the Cocoa frameworks, are the direct descendant of NeXTSTEP.
Apple subsequently adapted this shared foundation across its entire device ecosystem:
iOS and iPadOS: Built on the identical Darwin/XNU kernel and core libraries, featuring the UIKit framework which evolved directly from AppKit concepts tailored for multi-touch interfaces.
watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS: Developed as specialized platform variants utilizing the same underlying kernel, runtime, and framework architecture.
For this reason, Apple’s full lineup of Operating Systems (OS) share a consistent security model, core code base, and developer toolset till this date.
Thus, without the backing of the CIA, Jobs might never have made his triumphant return to Apple, transforming it into a global tech giant.
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Editor : Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury
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Published by the Editor on behalf of the Observer Ltd. from Globe Printers, 24/A, New Eskaton Road, Ramna, Dhaka.
Editorial, News and Commercial Offices : Aziz Bhaban (2nd floor), 93, Motijheel C/A, Dhaka-1000.
Phone: PABX- 41053001-06; Advertisement: 41053012; 01793317829, 01550707291, E-mail: [email protected], [email protected] Online: email: [email protected] 41053014; 01550707297 Advertisement: 01550707296
