On September 11, 1973, a military junta violently took control of Chile, which was led at the time by President Salvador Allende. Allende had become president in a free and democratic election. After the military coup, General Augusto Pinochet took power and ruled Chile as a dictator until 1990.

The military regime dissolved the congress, took control of the media and went about dismantling the socialist and democratic institutions that Allende’s government had built.

In the midst of this takeover, the military discovered a strange room in a nondescript office building in downtown Santiago. The room was hexagonal in shape with seven white fiberglass chairs arranged in an inward facing circle.

This “operations room” (or: opsroom) was the physical interface for a complex system called Cybersyn.