On December 18th, 2007 Steve Blank gave a presentation in Google campus about how World War II set the stage for the creation and explosive growth of Silicon Valley, and the role of Frederick Terman and Stanford in working with government agencies ( including CIA and NSA ) to set up companies in this area that sparked the creation of hundreds of other enterprises.

It’s part of Google Tech Talks serie, and has interesting anecdotes and facts about WW2 and SIGINT.

Entire 56 minutes long presentation can be watched here.