NOW WE KNOW – AT 11:01 A.M. ET:  It's so important to clear things up, and enhance our level of education.  From AP:   

MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Thursday called the Internet a CIA project and made comments about Russia’s biggest search engine Yandex, sending the company’s shares plummeting.

The Kremlin has been anxious to exert greater control over the Internet, which opposition activists — barred from national television — have used to promote their ideas and organize protests.

Russia’s parliament this week passed a law requiring social media websites to keep their servers in Russia and save all information about their users for at least half a year. Also, businessmen close to Putin now control Russia’s leading social media network, VKontakte.

Speaking Thursday at a media forum in St. Petersburg, Putin said that the Internet originally was a “CIA project” and “is still developing as such.”

To resist that influence, Putin said, Russia needs to “fight for its interests” online.

COMMENT:  Well, Vladimir isn't that far off.  The internet actually began, at least in part, as a Defense Department project called ARPANET.  ARPA stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency, which was renamed Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1972.  It did important early work to establish what we now call the internet.

I have not seen any credible evidence to suggest that the internet is a CIA project. 

Al Gore once claimed that the invented the internet.  That is not correct.  He invented snow.

The Russian government is becoming increasingly like the old Soviet regime, which Putin served.  We ignore the trend at our peril, but we will ignore the trend. 

April 25, 204