Wasn't BBN
Compuserves owner ? Ah, the good old days.
Mine' the one with reminesents in it.
Renowned techsploration company BBN - famed far and wide for inventing forerunner internet kit, and for giving the world the "@" symbol in email addresses - has been bought by US arms biz colossus Raytheon. The move illustrates growing aspirations on the part of arms firms to do business in the information systems sector. …
Alien, BBN never owned Compuserve. It did own the pioneering packet-switched carrier Telenet, selling it to GTE around 1980. It dabbled in all sorts of related technologies over the years.
BBN's biggest attraction to Raytheon was probably its Boomerang shot-spotter. BBN started as an acoustics company (1948) and still has serious military acoustics skill, including this system that uses an array of microphones and some fast computing to determine where a bullet was fired from. Its work is >90% federal, like Raytheon.
And Tel, bear in mind that the Internet evolved from a private Pentagon network. BBN built the ARPAnet starting in 1969. (ARPA=DoD) It became "Internet" in the early 1980s when MILnet became a separate operation, linked to the research (universities, etc.) ARPAnet. Peaceniks have never objected to making non-military use of this technology, regardless of its provenance.
"bear in mind that the Internet evolved from a private Pentagon network."
The first two nodes of what became TehIntraWebTubes were at SRI and UCLA, run by students and professors. With no Pentagon oversight. Money, yes. Oversight, no.
I haven't thought about it in years, but one of the first IMPs was cold, dark & gathering dust in a closet next to my office when I was at SAIL ... It was a highly modified Honeywell DDP 516, if I remember correctly. I should have "borrowed" it when I had the chance. I'll bet a nickle its still there, and nobody knows what it is ... I think I'll go look next time I'm at Stanford :-)
"defence giant" indeed.
Unless fighting off the incensed locals in the various countries which you are busy "introducing to democracy" counts as "defence" I guess.
Raytheon make their money from providing arms with which the US fights its various wars. Defence hardly comes into it.