4 ms·

> “While we regret that Google did not want to continue a long and fruitful tradition of collaboration between the military and technology companies, we are eve

> “While we regret that Google did not want to continue a long and fruitful tradition of collaboration between the military and technology companies, we are even more disappointed that Google apparently is more willing to support the Chinese Communist Party than the U.S. military,” they wrote. The amount of cognitive dissonance in this quote is ridiculous. When I originally read this qoute, I was expecting to find further down that Google is doing defense research with China. But nope. Google is contracting with a Chinese manufacturer to build cell phones, not performing weaponized AI research with the People's Liberation Army. Apparently, it's unpatriotic and borderline traitorous to say "you know what? I'd rather focus on building some decent cellphones instead of finding new ways to kill people from afar."

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
Miniaturizing electronics, increase battery, signal processing, improved cameras, ML on phones, voice and command recognition on phones, computational photography, object detection on phones - are just some of the stuff that can be used to improve phones, but are really easy to find military uses for.
- mark_edward 8y ago
  If google co-operates with teaching kinematics to Chinese teenagers, many of those teenagers may grow up to use them to shoot rockets at the US.
  - gisely 8y ago
    We can't help them to learn arithmetic either! They'll raise a generation of killer robot engineers and enslave us ;)
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  ...and all those things are developed by literally hundreds of other companies that often interact with Chinese businesses. The US could prohibit export of advanced battery technology or image processing or... This is not about national security. This is very explicitly a response to Google's desire not to cooperate with the US military on explicitly defense-related research. Two senators literally drew that line for us.
52-6F-62 8y ago
It's worth noting that US Senate Intelligence Committee members (specifically, Mark Warner (D)) have previously stated concern about the apparent closeness of Huawei to the Chinese Communist Party. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-device-partnerships-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-devic... https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/huawei-zte%20investigative%20report%20(final).pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/...
- gisely 8y ago
  Even assuming Huawei is wholly controlled entity of the CCP, Google's collaboration with them is for generally peaceful purposes. Obviously, widespread use of Android phones manufactured by Huawei could present a security risk. But peaceful collaboration inherently creates such risks.
  - 52-6F-62 8y ago
    Surely, give and take is the simplest way to put favourable global relations. This unfortunately doesn't seem to be the mode as of late. I'd wager the risk was recently increased with the tariff one-upmanship the US and China are currently engaged in.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

Miniaturizing electronics, increase battery, signal processing, improved cameras, ML on phones, voice and command recognition on phones, computational photography, object detection on phones - are just some of the stuff that can be used to improve phones, but are really easy to find military uses for.

mark_edward 8y ago
If google co-operates with teaching kinematics to Chinese teenagers, many of those teenagers may grow up to use them to shoot rockets at the US.
- gisely 8y ago
  We can't help them to learn arithmetic either! They'll raise a generation of killer robot engineers and enslave us ;)
throwawayjava 8y ago
...and all those things are developed by literally hundreds of other companies that often interact with Chinese businesses. The US could prohibit export of advanced battery technology or image processing or... This is not about national security. This is very explicitly a response to Google's desire not to cooperate with the US military on explicitly defense-related research. Two senators literally drew that line for us.

52-6F-62 8y ago

It's worth noting that US Senate Intelligence Committee members (specifically, Mark Warner (D)) have previously stated concern about the apparent closeness of Huawei to the Chinese Communist Party. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-device-partnerships-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/technology/facebook-devic... https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/files/documents/huawei-zte%20investigative%20report%20(final).pdf https://intelligence.house.gov/sites/intelligence.house.gov/...

gisely 8y ago
Even assuming Huawei is wholly controlled entity of the CCP, Google's collaboration with them is for generally peaceful purposes. Obviously, widespread use of Android phones manufactured by Huawei could present a security risk. But peaceful collaboration inherently creates such risks.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Surely, give and take is the simplest way to put favourable global relations. This unfortunately doesn't seem to be the mode as of late. I'd wager the risk was recently increased with the tariff one-upmanship the US and China are currently engaged in.