4 ms·

Government contracts are extremely lucrative and usually long term, most companies would accept this work.

by ProAm 9y ago

pdeuchler 9y ago
Most companies are run by people with souls, so I doubt this. Most corporations though, there you might have a point.
- parent5446 9y ago
  Not sure what you consider the difference between a "company" and a "corporation", but I know a lot of people who work for small government contractors that definitely have "souls". Not everybody has the same ethical standpoint on military technology.
  - pdeuchler 9y ago
    I know many people who work for large multi-national defense contractors that definitely have "souls" as well, but hiding behind moral relativism won't save you from the fact that in the real world moral bright lines exist within societal contexts. And that said, I'm fairly confident how history will see our current drone program.
    - kridsdale1 9y ago
      How does history see the Enigma crackers? Thousands of nonconsenting Germans were no doubt killed by the “good guys” as a result of the work done by our computer science heroes.
    - EggsOnToast 9y ago
      I'm not sure why you're so dismissive of moral relativism in this context when it's incredibly relevant. Someone who believes that developing and exploring this technology will enable us to save the lives of soldiers and better prepare to encounter the technology in the wild is going to have very different opinions than someone who views it as yet another tool to oppress the third world with. Both people hold ethical beliefs that consider and value humanitarian consequences. Edit: I was slowed down for posting too fast so I'm adding my reply to IntronExon here: It's an interesting hypothetical but I'd argue its appeal is mostly in its simplicity with little evidence to support the claim. The instances you've cited happened either due to a failure of accurate intelligence or because intelligence indicated the structure was being used by enemy combatants. It's very possible to arrive at the conclusion that any unnecessary casualties which occurred happened as a result of poor military intelligence which better reconnaissance drones could help with. It's equally possible that someone working on this kind of technology could see its field use against groups like ISIS as evidence that weaponized drones are a useful tool in fighting terrorist organizations. Obviously neither of these will be true in every instance, but without strong evidence it's hard to believe that the matter is as simple as "some people are just unemphatic".
      - IntronExon 9y ago
        Maybe the real difference is that some of us lack the empathy and imagination to consider the plight of some poor bastardized having their wedding, school, or hospital drone-striked, and some of us do. For those who can’t, this is never an emotional issue, just a sterile cost/benefit analysis. Formthe rest of us, worlds die in those blasts, and were partially responsible, and that matters.
- kridsdale1 9y ago
  The Darwinian nature of international violent struggle selects against ‘souls’.
aoki 9y ago
indeed - i'm not clear on the basis for the outrage here. from what the article here says (i don't know more about it than that), it's not clear to me that google is doing more than selling their cloud video analysis products to a customer for experimental use on unclassified data. and this kind of sale necessarily comes with offers of (paid) support and consulting services because customers need help. one might object to this customer, certainly - but if so, one might ask, to which customers is google's cloud business not supposed to sell services on this basis? google has never pretended that it didn't sell its products to the defense and intelligence agencies at all; keyhole (google earth) was for many years a major product in the GEOINT sector [0]. if one's objection is to folks working on anything relating to a military or intelligence problem, well, a very large fraction of US senior faculty have taken funding from defense agencies to work on unclassified versions of applications: tracking, image/video/text analysis challenges, etc. etc. etc. [0] http://trajectorymagazine.com/genesis-google-earth/ http://trajectorymagazine.com/genesis-google-earth/
- tclancy 9y ago
  >i'm not clear on the basis for the outrage here. Rough guess, it might be that we're less than 10 years removed from "Do no evil" being part of Google's motto. While completely unsurprising, it's still disappointing to see how money wins versus ethics. But hey, shareholder value!
  - somecontext 9y ago
    "Do no evil" has never been part of Google's motto. "Don't be evil" was and still is: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html
throwaway84742 9y ago
Google officially doesn’t care about opportunities less than $1B in size. I very much doubt this is anywhere near a billion dollar opportunity. My educated guess: they’re trying to sell cloud to government and need a good use case. Cloud deal_could be_ a billion dollar opportunity.

Government contracts are extremely lucrative and usually long term, most companies would accept this work.

by ProAm 9y ago

Government contracts are extremely lucrative and usually long term, most companies would accept this work.

pdeuchler 9y ago

Most companies are run by people with souls, so I doubt this. Most corporations though, there you might have a point.

parent5446 9y ago
Not sure what you consider the difference between a "company" and a "corporation", but I know a lot of people who work for small government contractors that definitely have "souls". Not everybody has the same ethical standpoint on military technology.
- pdeuchler 9y ago
  I know many people who work for large multi-national defense contractors that definitely have "souls" as well, but hiding behind moral relativism won't save you from the fact that in the real world moral bright lines exist within societal contexts. And that said, I'm fairly confident how history will see our current drone program.
  - kridsdale1 9y ago
    How does history see the Enigma crackers? Thousands of nonconsenting Germans were no doubt killed by the “good guys” as a result of the work done by our computer science heroes.
  - EggsOnToast 9y ago
    I'm not sure why you're so dismissive of moral relativism in this context when it's incredibly relevant. Someone who believes that developing and exploring this technology will enable us to save the lives of soldiers and better prepare to encounter the technology in the wild is going to have very different opinions than someone who views it as yet another tool to oppress the third world with. Both people hold ethical beliefs that consider and value humanitarian consequences. Edit: I was slowed down for posting too fast so I'm adding my reply to IntronExon here: It's an interesting hypothetical but I'd argue its appeal is mostly in its simplicity with little evidence to support the claim. The instances you've cited happened either due to a failure of accurate intelligence or because intelligence indicated the structure was being used by enemy combatants. It's very possible to arrive at the conclusion that any unnecessary casualties which occurred happened as a result of poor military intelligence which better reconnaissance drones could help with. It's equally possible that someone working on this kind of technology could see its field use against groups like ISIS as evidence that weaponized drones are a useful tool in fighting terrorist organizations. Obviously neither of these will be true in every instance, but without strong evidence it's hard to believe that the matter is as simple as "some people are just unemphatic".
    - IntronExon 9y ago
      Maybe the real difference is that some of us lack the empathy and imagination to consider the plight of some poor bastardized having their wedding, school, or hospital drone-striked, and some of us do. For those who can’t, this is never an emotional issue, just a sterile cost/benefit analysis. Formthe rest of us, worlds die in those blasts, and were partially responsible, and that matters.
kridsdale1 9y ago
The Darwinian nature of international violent struggle selects against ‘souls’.

aoki 9y ago

indeed - i'm not clear on the basis for the outrage here. from what the article here says (i don't know more about it than that), it's not clear to me that google is doing more than selling their cloud video analysis products to a customer for experimental use on unclassified data. and this kind of sale necessarily comes with offers of (paid) support and consulting services because customers need help. one might object to this customer, certainly - but if so, one might ask, to which customers is google's cloud business not supposed to sell services on this basis? google has never pretended that it didn't sell its products to the defense and intelligence agencies at all; keyhole (google earth) was for many years a major product in the GEOINT sector [0]. if one's objection is to folks working on anything relating to a military or intelligence problem, well, a very large fraction of US senior faculty have taken funding from defense agencies to work on unclassified versions of applications: tracking, image/video/text analysis challenges, etc. etc. etc. [0] http://trajectorymagazine.com/genesis-google-earth/ http://trajectorymagazine.com/genesis-google-earth/

tclancy 9y ago
>i'm not clear on the basis for the outrage here. Rough guess, it might be that we're less than 10 years removed from "Do no evil" being part of Google's motto. While completely unsurprising, it's still disappointing to see how money wins versus ethics. But hey, shareholder value!
- somecontext 9y ago
  "Do no evil" has never been part of Google's motto. "Don't be evil" was and still is: https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct.html

throwaway84742 9y ago

Google officially doesn’t care about opportunities less than $1B in size. I very much doubt this is anywhere near a billion dollar opportunity. My educated guess: they’re trying to sell cloud to government and need a good use case. Cloud deal_could be_ a billion dollar opportunity.