A secret National Security Council (NSC) “decision memo” shows that the government began ingratiating itself with the tech industry, and ordering its agencies to figure out how to circumvent encryption software and access private data in consumer devices, long before its privacy fight with Apple began, according to new reporting by Bloomberg.

During a meeting in late November, senior national security officials ordered agencies to develop encryption workarounds to address the issue of users encoding messages to keep them private from government surveillance, the memo shows. Those workarounds could include forcing Apple to develop its own software to help law enforcement, or recruiting government hackers to find and exploit previously unknown vulnerabilities.

The memo also instructed the agencies to identify laws that would require changing, or to estimate additional budgets to enable them to access the data.

“My guess is you could spend a few million dollars and get a capability against Android, spend a little more and get a capability against the iPhone,” cyber security expert Jason Syverson told Bloomberg. “For under $10 million, you might have capabilities that will work across the board.”

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Other details from the memo reveal that the White House was seeking to establish a closer relationship with Silicon Valley, an effort that leaked into the public eye in January after top government officials held a private summit on encryption with the leaders of Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, and other tech giants—after reportedly inviting them to discuss terrorism, a tactic that one attendee said felt like a “bait and switch.”

The memo is revealed as the government now finds itself embroiled in an encryption battle with Apple, in what national security whistleblower Edward Snowden on Wednesday called “the most important tech case in a decade.”