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Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts
- carlosrg 8y agoMeanwhile, regimes like China, North Korea or even Russia won’t have this kind of issues.
- PostOnce 8y agoWell, the neighbor beats his wife, so I might as well beat mine. What kind of logic is that? We don't necessarily need to match lock-step with terrible regimes to ensure our own security, and our own security is the only argument for matching them in the military field. For example, if someone else uses gas or landmines, we can use masks and airplanes to defeat them, without having to resort to those things that can't pick their targets, and remain on the field, where children play, decades after the war ends.
- carlosrg 8y agoRiiiight. For example, USA could abandon nuclear weapons, while letting others continue to develop them. That would work fine, both for them and their allies. If Hitler had them and the allies didn’t, that would have worked fine.
- PostOnce 8y agoWell, we are literally fighting Iranian nuclear weapons with computer viruses.
- ionised 8y agoI feel like you think this somehow proves a point.
- jeffreyrogers 8y agoThe point is that if you have a weak military you have to bow to will of the country with the stronger military if an altercation is imminent.
- pixl97 8y agoI'm guessing his point is "Taking a stand against war is great, right up till the enemy jackboots are stepping on your face"
- pofilat 8y agoWhy do I care what color are the jackboots? Why do you say China is wearing jackboots?
- izacus 8y agoNon-trivial number of Googlers are Chinese or Russian. ;)
- lihaciudaniel 8y agoDon't be evil
- ForHackernews 8y agoGood for them! I tend to be cynical about Google's advertising business, but it's nice to see some engineers sticking their necks out for their values.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- robin_reala 8y agoEvery company I apply to is told during the interview process that I will not work on military projects, and that I would probably leave the company if they chose to take on a military contract. If you have personal moral limits and you’re upfront about them then no-one is the worse off; I’ve yet to be turned down for a job over it and, somewhat the opposite, companies seem to appreciate frankness.
- dev_dull 8y agoIf you contribute to open source software then you’re contributing to military projects.
- robin_reala 8y agoThat’s the standard argument, and yes, it’s true. There’s a difference between actively working on a defined project and putting some stuff out into the open though, and that at least for me is a reasonable border.
- ethbro 8y agoTo me this is a non-trivial distinction. Especially with dual-use technology, e.g. open source infrastructure, open accessibility moots some qualms about empowering a specific military at the expense of others. (On the other hand, in terms of wars not happening and pure global peace and stability, there are arguments for elevating between 1 and 5 powers above others)
- berti 8y agoA side-effect, rather than the primary goal. There is a not-so-subtle difference.
- smcl 8y agoSo this person shouldn't have any quandaries working on military projects, because they might have contributed a bugfix to some code in libcurl or some other library that is used somewhere in the vast US military? Seems like an awfully weak argument.
- dagaci 8y agoOk but why was air-gap so controversial ? Is it more than having isolated servers ?
- barrystaes 8y agoCould be. This article certainly raises that eyebrow. It stipulates the problem back then was a feature called "airgap" which (in the normal meaning of the word) is rather trivial and usually is for defense and not offense. But to me it all reads like a per-usual politics BS story to discredit a group and downplay a problem.
- rurounijones 8y agoInteresting when a multi-national company says things like "We are still doing everything we can within these guidelines to support our government, the military and our veterans," It may be the government of the company, but it ain't the government of a significant chunk of employess at Google, wonder how they feel about statementsl like this.
- walshemj 8y agoWhat do you mean like it or not (and I don't) the current president was elected so it is their government. I doubt many expat H1B's from the subcontinent will have any qualms about military work.
- brown9-2 8y agoYou’re missing the point - which is that Google does business and has offices in many countries that are not America.
- walshemj 8y agoAnd that makes what difference? those offices are just their to support the main business or for tax reasons. Google wouldn't have all those people in Eire unless it was for tax and access to a cheap English speaking labour force. And if google local offices started to diverge from the US norm they would quickly have there senior mangers replaced - for example if a local google office faced a recognition ballot from a union.
- pofilat 8y agoThe USA employees are also there just to support the main business. So? Some offices only exist because an influential individual wanted to live in that location. Do you think Google is largely in Mountain View because they have a deep allegiance to Mountain View, or because that's where they can get lots of employees and (historically) cheap real estate?
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- ta1234567890 8y agoGreat for the people that protested and stood their ground, hopefully that kind of behavior and mentality towards war becomes more wide-spread. Although it's hard not to be skeptical given... > It's unclear if Google has abandoned air gap technology or is still planning to build it over employees’ objections. The feature is not technically very difficult, so Google could easily find other engineers to do the work. And > For now, Google falls short of rivals. Both Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have “High” certificates that authorize them to hold sensitive or classified data and sell to bodies like the Central Intelligence Agency. To do so, both companies had to set up a separate service called a government cloud.
- kelukelugames 8y agoMicrosoft had a blog post bragging about their work with ICE. But only 300 employees have signed a petition to denounce it. https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/21/17488328/microsoft-ice-employees-signatures-protest https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/21/17488328/microsoft-ice-em...
- robin_reala 8y agoGovernment cloud isn’t purely for nefarious purposes. I’ve worked in the past on GOV.UK Verify: an identity verification scheme for logging into government services. We wanted all the benefits that cloud providers give you, but we also needed additional assurance levels above and beyond the norm for our users’ protection.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- iainmerrick 8y agoOne thing I find strange about this is why Google is so keen to get this government business in the first place. They’re amazingly profitable already, one of the most successful companies of all time; is defense work really something that could become another major revenue stream? Given the obvious conflicts with their company culture (obvious to rank and file employees, anyway) it doesn’t seem like a very appealing trade-off. Or is the leadership looking to other potential benefits, like increased leverage for lobbying?
- dev_dull 8y agoI want them to have these contracts because I want the smartest people on the planet working to defend our country. This is such a weird and controversial concept to so many people here.
- mark_edward 8y agoMaybe "many people here" feel that what our military does has little to nothing to do with defending our country, and often puts us at more risk and/or makes the world a worse place. This is such a weird and controversial concept to so many people here.
- manigandham 8y agoFeelings rarely ever help in these situations. Why would a defense force put you more at risk? The world is not a gentle place and it takes less than 30 seconds of browsing international headlines to see that. The chaos is kept in check through violence and the military has a direct impact on the peace and freedoms enjoyed by the populace. Two major nations are rapidly growing powerful tyrants with Putin and Xinping. Do you think these situations just magically go away? Military action has already been brewing in recent years and you either have an answer when it comes to blows or prepare for a lot of misery. I've come to find that most people (in the US anyway) who think that the military only does harm have never really witnessed or experienced any violence or unrest to see how bad things can be, which is good for them and proof that it works, but it does lead to a strange disconnection as evidenced by the comments and votes.
- jath 8y agoMy personal hunch is Google will still work on ‘air-gapped’ technology as this is critical for many non military applications as well. Google is eyeing to catch up with AWS in its cloud business and will take a leaf out of AWS’s GovCloud service and the money spinner it is for Amazon.
- chibg10 8y agoThese employees are free to exercise their right to (not) work for whomever they want, but the certainty they express (as well as most commenters here) in their own self-righteousness seems misplaced to me. There's certainly a case to be made that a strong US military is in the world's best interest. In fact, I would wager that a majority of Americans (and a majority of citizens of democratic countries across the world) hold the belief expressed in the previous statement. Given that society created the environment for these tech companies (and their employees) to acquire their skills and thrive, does not society have some moral/ethical lien on how those skills are applied? Granted, as stated in the first sentence, I'm not in favor of compelling anyone to work for any purpose, let alone military ones. But to pretend such a lien doesn't exist strikes me as somewhat selfish/narrow-minded in its own right. For that reason, I think the ostensible certainty that these employees (and their abundant proponents here) have in their convictions seems a little naive to me. There's also a real chance (though perhaps small) that an industry-wide refusal to cooperate with the US military could have disastrous consequences for the world, and that alone should give one pause before being so self-assured about such a decision. I agree that there is also a real chance (also perhaps small) that the US military could use the technology with disastrous consequences for the world, but--again--that makes this a difficult ethical conundrum, not the clear right/wrong moral issue as I often see it portrayed as in the industry.
- bad_user 8y agoGoogle is at this point not just some US company, but a multi-national one. I'm not a US citizen, so for me the US having a strong military isn't necessarily in my best interests, depending on circumstance. So what stops me, as a Google customer (which I am), to stop doing business with them, given that I see proof after proof that they are working against my interests? This is the same problem as with the Snowden leaks. I don't care if Americans feel more safe with the NSA secretly watching their emails via gag orders, if my privacy as a non-US citizen is being violated, therefore at this point absolutely all US companies are suspects, starting with a negative ranking in my book; at this point I always prefer European ones. Also the usual arguments that countries collaborate with each other is bullshit, because in the EU I can sue companies, or my government, for cheap too, whereas in the US I have no rights. And if you find that acceptable, then maybe balkanizing the Internet isn't such a bad thing after all, lets start with ICANN. > There's also a real chance (though perhaps small) that an industry-wide refusal to cooperate with the US military could have disastrous consequences for the world There's also a real chance that I might get hit by a brick and die tomorrow, yet that doesn't stop me from going out. If you don't have an assessment done by experts of what might actually happen, then such arguments are bullshit.
- gok 8y agoI wonder how many engineers refused to build tools to sell ads for counterfeit medicine.
- cbg0 8y agoI don't know if you're trying to imply that they're being hypocritical or not, but those engineers built tools to sell ads in general, not to sell specific ads, so there's probably a lot of reprehensible stuff being advertised for with these tools, things which those engineers might not agree with. You wouldn't blame a knife maker for people stabbing each other.
- kimdotcom 8y agoI always thought is was for AdCouncil ads and non-profits. Not flash ads that hijack the browser, or acai berry that bills me monthly (how do I cancel), or simply tracking me across the internet.
- sheepmullet 8y agoHow is that any different than our military mostly being used to keep us safe but occasionally being used to harm others?
- pofilat 8y agoHow is drone warfare keeping us safe?
- gok 8y agoWell it never went to court, so we may never know the details, but the FDA claims it went way beyond that. https://www.seattletimes.com/business/google-settles-over-online-drug-ads/ https://www.seattletimes.com/business/google-settles-over-on... > An undercover investigator informed Google employees creating the advertising for the products that they were manufactured overseas and did not require customers have a valid prescription, she said. “In each instance, despite this knowledge, Google employees created a full advertising campaign for each of the undercover websites,” Martin-Weis said.
- mankash666 8y agoSoftware engineers in the valley seem disconnected from reality. Maybe they believe politically correct fairies drop from the heavens and secure the US, it's borders and interests. Or maybe the Taliban and ISIS don't deserve drone attacks. Whatever their delusion, it's for the good. Military and defense funding yielded everything from the transistor to the internet. Let the next wave of innovation happen outside the smug cesspool of hypocrisy that's silicon valley. FYI - I'll gladly work for the defense forces sworn to protect our borders as against companies whose very existence relies on slicing axnd dicing personal, private information and interactions, and serving ads against them. Or worse, selling it to the highest bidder and colluding with adversarial powers. Fuck off silicon valley
- FearOfReprisal 8y agoHey what's your name? I keep a blacklist of patriotic amurrikkkans like yourself so I can make sure that if your resume comes across my desk, I'll get to mock you on Instagram before round-filing your application.
- sctb 8y agoNo matter what you're responding to, you need to make your comments more civil and substantive than this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mankash666 8y agoI doubt you'd have the time, what with all the fellating you provide ISIS.
- chrisbennet 8y agoUS (wholly avoidable) intervention in Iraq led to the rise of ISIS. The world is not safer when you go around wacking hornets nests.
- Viff 8y agoWhat lead to ISIS was the US pulling out too soon, leaving a huge power gap that the Iraqi government could not fill. Nation building takes decades. Germany and Japan were not rebuilt overnight to become the US' top allies after WWII: they were fully occupied by Allied forces for at least a generation before control was handed back to their respective local governments.
- smsm42 8y agoSo, looks like it's not some bad feature. It's just because it's for the military. It's unacceptable to contribute to the military. And ICE. And police. And any law enforcement at all. What's next? Licenses refusing use of software to political opponents? Firing people because they have wrong political opinions? Oops, that's already been done. Refusing to work on software which is being used by companies that didn't fire people with wrong political opinions? Refusing to cooperate with somebody who ever ate at Chik-fil-A? Where does it stop?
- sidcool 8y agoI really want a cogent argument of not working on Military projects. Isn't it almost like other businesses? I am really looking for a discussion.
- bigbluedots 8y agoLet's see: The military's job is partly to kill people. Some people have a moral objection to being involved in that, surprisingly.
- sidcool 8y agoNot trying to defend the killing, but military is important for a nation. Even if the US military is very ethical, the foreign militaries may not be. Hence the US military has to be on an offensive all the time. There is no dearth of countries who would want to see the fall of US, or any other western nation. (Having said this, US military has done their share of mass murder in Cambodia, Iraq etc.)
- detaro 8y agoI'd guess many people would argue that the US military is not that ethical and actively involved in a lot of campaigns they shouldn't be in. See e.g. the discussions around the drone projects, where many argued that the drone program is used in a bad way, and thus shouldn't be supported, where a military that's less involved or work on technology that's seems harder to "misuse" might be seen differently. E.g. I'd expect a lot fewer people would argue that the US shouldn't be prepared to defend against China.
- gbajson 8y agoCan anyone explain what's their "air gap" technology, please?
- dchest 8y agoIt's explained in the linked article.
- Brotkrumen 8y agoNot really. Being "on a single piece of hardware" is not necessary for a system to be air gapped. Its not cutting edge tech either and questioning the requirement of some systems to be air gapped is... not smart.
- Brotkrumen 8y ago"Air gapping" just means not connected to the internet, directly or indirectly. Usually goes along with the air gapped system running in a small intranet you strictly control access to. Its not a bleeding edge technology as the article says (maybe the author made a joke?) but a standard security measure to protect highly sensitive or critical systems.
- dilyevsky 8y agoI don't have first-hand knowledge of this tech (if i did i probably wouldn't be able to comment) as i haven't heard anything about this during my time there, but if I had to guess, it's probably a silo'ed GCP environment on silo'ed Borg cell on silo'ed turtles all the way down to physical hardware and facilities.
- codeonfire 8y agoIt is simply isolated data center racks for government. Just like AWS gov cloud. Apparently the article author had never heard the term "air gap."
- allegedganon 8y agoThe many stories that have been appearing recently on Google's deep cultural changes point to a very basic fact of life: organizations, and even more so, their culture, aren't forever. As a matter of fact, organization cultural changes can happen very quickly, at the whim of leadership changes. The trust their users/customers extend these organizations (way too much in the cast of Google) rarely takes this basic fact of life into account. In the case of Google, the two strong voices of Larry and Sergey held fast the ethical compass of the company for quite a long time and that allowed Google to accumulate massive amounts of goodwill in the market: the average Google user still believes the company is "good" and "can be trusted" and are therefore willing to freely give them massive chunks of their personal data. Unfortunately, as is wont to happen, the two founders are now sitting on a mountain of money, have pretty much lost all interest in their baby (who wouldn't to be honest) and have for all intent and purposes surrendered the reins to a team of far less ethical-minded, far less principle-guided, far less charismatic, far more greedy set of leaders (Pichai, Green, Wojcicki, ...) Specifically, when Google hired Diane Green (who's behind the push to work with the military), they totally let the fox in the henhouse. That SVP has precious little regard for Google's historical cultural tenets (she does pay lip service to them when required, of course, she's smart enough to do that) and is busy doing within Google what she's done previously at VMWare: building a money-making juggernaut (Cloud) using all the tools at her disposal, with precious little regard for the company culture. She will take on any customers, independent of the ethical aspects of that decision, as long as she's operating within the law. Consideration such as good or evil (something which, for those who drank the Kool-aid when Google was still young and naive, mattered a whole lot) has exactly zero bearing on her business decisions. In conclusion: the laws of gravity are what they are, and Google is subject to them like every other corporations. Even if it took longer than for most, they are slowly becoming a standard run-of-the-mill, large, short-sighted, evil corporation with the sole purpose of turning in quarterly profits and making their execs into billionaires.
- pixl97 8y agoA TL;DR of this >Any data you give to a company, even if it is ethical now, will be used against you in the future.
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- gman83 8y agoI wonder if Silicon Valley refuses to cooperate with the military if it won't mean that America won't be able to compete with China and Russia strategically in the long term. Those countries presumably have no problems getting their tech industry to cooperate. Russia having an advanced form of AI-weaponry without any form of MAD-doctrine is probably not the best scenario.
- paganel 8y ago> Russia having an advanced form of AI-weaponry without any form of MAD-doctrine is probably not the best scenario. They're a very long way from there, see for example this: http://defence-blog.com/army/combat-tests-syria-brought-light-deficiencies-russian-unmanned-mini-tank.html http://defence-blog.com/army/combat-tests-syria-brought-ligh... (which also happens to be my latest separate post submission). People tend to over-estimate the technical prowess of the Russians, there's only so much that the military of a country with ~160 million people can do to technically compete against both the US and the EU.
- jeffreyrogers 8y agoPlus their economy is about 1/15th of the US's and seems to be declining.
- klibertp 8y agoOn the other hand, North Korea got nukes in a few years, while being two orders of magnitude smaller. If anything, I'd say people tend to underestimate how much (money, effort) a totalitarian state can invest if they think it's needed. Basically - all of it, and then some. Dictatorships can be more efficient in selected categories than democracies, and they often are - it's "in the long run" and "across the board" that they are worse. If you remove all the "checks and balances", you risk having an un-removable psychopath to be a dictator for life; but you also unlock the "full power of the state" to work on a single thing, which - in some circumstances - can give you amazing results.
- ForHackernews 8y agoThe US could counter that by poaching most of the best talent from China and Russia, even more than it already does. Many promising young researchers from around the world earn their stripes at US universities, and loads of them would be happy to stay and become Americans. Unfortunately, the US immigration system makes that difficult and lots of them get sent home. The best part about that plan is they don't even have to develop their own AI weapons. They could deny that capability to adversaries just by allowing those workers to take up interesting & lucrative jobs in the American civilian economy. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-31/u-s-should-embrace-chinese-students-not-restrict-them https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-05-31/u-s-shoul...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- eksu 8y agoSomewhat related: I’d be thrilled to work on a contract with the U.S. Dept. of Defense, willing to seek clerences etc. Where should I be applying? Do the companies offering these jobs compensate comparably to companies working on other stuff?
- DanielBMarkham 8y agoThis reminds me of the Simpson's episode where Homer leaves the nuclear power plant and gets a job with a new, great company. Great pay, lots of vacation, plenty of benefits, a great boss, and so on. The gag was that the boss was a super villain, and all through the show there was a James Bond kind of attack on his hidden base while Homer worried about work-related matters. The thrust of the joke was that you can be doing anything -- as long as your employees are happy at what they think the situation is. There's a hard, cold fact that we technology people hate to keep in our heads: once you make or record something, you lose control over how it's used. Whether user telemetry from you app or some code Google puts together to help users, once it's created, it's gone. The only reasonable thing to assume is that whatever we create or record will be used in the worst way possible. To think otherwise, at least to me, looks like a fool's game. We fool ourselves -- probably because the alternative is too difficult to contemplate. Applying a Simpon's joke to a real-world situation is probably dumb, but the lesson here seems pretty clear: tell people what they want to hear and build what you want. The world ends up in the same exact situation as being a true believer and building what you want. There's no effective difference between all the big tech companies tracking you like lab rat and then intelligence services stealing the data -- and the big tech companies giving the data freely to the intelligence services. Yes, one may feel good inside better than the other, but hell, if something I disagree with is going to happen, I'd much rather the people involved be honest about it than preach to me how good their motives were. You make it or record it, you're making and recording it for everybody. The only mystery is how long it takes to get out.
- walshemj 8y agoI cant quite see what this supposed military tech is "air gap technology". From the article it seems to be setting up a separate air gaped clone of google infrastructure for use on DoD contracts. This isn't exactly improving image recognition for drone strikes or identifying cars containing brown skinned kids near the Mexican border for Donalds child catchers to intern in the camps.
- pofilat 8y agoYeah, it's not a "cutting edge security feature", it's quite the opposite -- it's decades old Luddite security: "unplug the device".
- Doyniish 8y agoAm I the only who finds working on military projects fun and rewarding?!
- marcoperaza 8y agoI hope these engineers stop and rethink what they’re doing. I’m sure they think they’re doing the right thing, but they should expand their outlook and consider that one day America may be in another war for its life or for the survival of freedom in the world. Do not be overly comforted by the relative peace since WW2. It was built by American military dominance, quickly fading as China becomes a formidable power. It is also fragile. A century is nothing in the grand scheme of things. If history is any guide, this period of extraordinary (but still relative) peace is an aberration that will pass. How will you feel when your sons and daughters are fighting for their country’s survival or against an expansionary tyranny, and all you ever did for the effort was try to leave your own military in as weak a position as possible.
- johnday 8y agoI'm not sure you've been paying attention. By most accounts, the USA in the next war will be the bad guys.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- JakeAl 8y agoGiven Google's role in surveillance through advertising and frameworks when they could actually redesign the whole system to be as private, secure and distributed as possible, I don't think they have any moral ground to stand on. IT's obvious to me why they had to drop the 'Don't Be Evil' motto. They can't help but be evil unless they give up the control that gives them all of their power and profits.
- giancarlostoro 8y agoI don't understand why Alphabet (parent of Google) does not just start a new government contracting firm, they should of done that or started a new division within Google dedicated to the matter. Don't expect engineers to switch their entire career tract just because you tell them to because they work for you, that's just not a good idea. They would clearly have the resources to hire talented people who've already done government contracts or are willing to, people who already have the necessary government clearance. Disclaimer: I do work for a government contracting company.
- finnthehuman 8y agoI like the idea that Google's employees can have some backbone about what they're building. It's still comically stereotypical to see every exercise of Google's corporate power rationalized away left and right even though they're more economically powerful than many nation-states; but then they gain perspective when their "military = bad" mental filter can finally override "I trust us."
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- kjgkjhfkjf 8y agoFWIW if someone were to build AI technology to classify militants vs civilians in images from drones then I'd prefer it to be a competent company such as Google, since presumably an accurate well-engineered classifier would reduce collateral damage.
- ocdtrekkie 8y agoOur drone warfare already has exceptional ability to classify militants vs. humans and we has massive collateral damage anyways: Our government would rather get the target even if it means civilian casualties. If you were to build AI technology to do this, you want it to be as incompetent as possible, so the military doesn't use it.
- pofilat 8y agoWhy do you think the tech in question is for classifying militants vs civilians, vs just classifying humans vs trees? AI wishful thinking is not helpful.
- verelo 8y agoI struggle with this. Generally I’d rather be involved so at least i know the decisions being made were made by someone not trying to achieve a pure evil outcome. I trust myself, but i certainly do not trust most others. Having said that, yes i wish there were no military contracts to win and that no one was working on tools for groups like this.
- eruci 8y agoWhy?
- johncole 8y agoI wonder if the same engineers also refuse to work on the strategic partnership with the PRC?
- commandlinefan 8y agoHow many of Google's engineers _come from_ there?
- pofilat 8y agoGoogle is building consumer Android phones with Huawei, not weapons.
- nova22033 8y ago>Known as “air gap,” Does anyone know what this is? My guess: This is a one way low to high side transfer device.
- sseveran 8y agoIt's an isolated cloud region(s) not connected to the internet and connected to a private government network. AWS built one of these for the CIA.
- kadenshep 8y agoMy employer knows two things about me: A) I will not work on/for military/defense products/clients, unless there is some blatantly obvious noble characteristic about the project (I come from a background in video analytics). B) I will not work on/for conservative products/clients. Luckily I'm in a job and industry where both of these are pretty unlikely. I've done the latter (B) once and I really, really regret my role in it to this day. It only took once, just once, but it just happened to be one of the of the worst offenders in the U.S. political landscape. Knowing that I basically optimized disinformation campaigns and built media platforms for some of these people eats at my soul, especially when I see the current state of the U.S. -- I helped some jackass convince a whole slew of people that electing a fraud was the Right (TM) choice. Now we have concentration camps for children (with no reunification process), our healthcare is even worse than it was somehow, we're in multiple trade wars, and we definitely don't give a single shit about the environment (look at today's news feed about the U.S. drilling policies). And I helped it happen. Sorry for the rant. But engineers have a moral duty to be selective in who they're aiding. I was all too happy to watch pretty graphs go up, and up, and up. I was foolish. I just cared about the project and how challenging it was. Good on the engineers at Google for being principled.
- bayfullofrays 8y agoI am with you on this. I am a recruiter for a large tech company in Seattle and with the recent political environment, I have asked my team to take it upon themselves to ask if the person they are going to bring into our team and our community is going to help us progress as a whole. I get angered when people tell me to look at just their CV, but there is so much more there. If I know that someone on their Facebook profile liked some Alt-Right podcast or calls themselves a "Libertarian" on their Twitter profile, I know that there is a good chance that they are not going to work well in an inclusive environment. So I save us both the trouble and move past the candidate. We have an obligation to stand up for our beliefs if we are going to see the change we need.
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- XalvinX 8y agoI'm proud of them for taking this stand.
- ggambetta 8y agoI'm confused. When engineers from a company who deals with the military (or some other ethically objectionably client) don't refuse to work on these projects, HN questions their values and urges them to make a stand, refuse, find another job if necessary, etc. When the engineers do refuse, HN criticises them for beign self-righteous, virtue-signalling, and unpatriotic because countries with a lower ethical bar (Russia and China are the usual ones) are going to surpass the US in cyberwar. So... which is it?
- emaginniss 8y agoThere's probably more than one person on HN
- Bartweiss 8y agoTrue, but there's at least something to which comments end up at the top. My sense has been that "programmers need better ethics" almost always tops out the "programmers worked with the government" stories, and outside of this chain "programmers are being self-righteous and unpatriotic" has had basically all the top slots in this thread. I suppose the easy guess is just that people who disagree with a story are more likely to come argue in the comments than people who read it and agree, so every story gets its opposite upvoted.
- philip1209 8y agoAnother angle: Having to get security clearance affects your personal life and opens you to criminal problems you wouldn't otherwise have. I would think people could opt out for this reason if it wasn't a upfront requirement of the job.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y agoOT: it now takes two clicks to stop the obnoxious autoplaying video on this website. One to unmute it and access the controls, and another to stop it. I'm glad when ethics are as black and white as military contracts we're ready to stand up and refuse to write the code, but when it comes to smaller things like implementing dark patterns to bother users we'll step right up.
- omegbule 8y agoI feel for engineers that take on positions involving military contracts. It seems like another group of people that would be marginalized in SV.
- joyeuse6701 8y agoBack in the day, there was controversy over the idea of a standing army... the usual moral and economic issues. As war became a faster and larger affair the standing professional army made more sense. The speed at which cyber warfare could happen and cripple a nation and the chaos that would ensue has me lean on the side of the necessity of our civilian industries working with the military-industrial complex and government. This might be easier to do if we trusted our government institutions especially the clandestine ones, which I think we rightly question. Of course, if they don't develop the tech, someone else will, and it might come to bite them in the end. May as well have a say. edited: for clarity
- snowwrestler 8y ago"Cyber warfare" as you're referring to it ("cripple a nation") is a subset of total war: targeting the civilian population to achieve a military goal. In the physical version of total war, you can only provide defense with military tools. You need military anti-aircraft guns to shoot down military aircraft. You need tanks and artillery to stop enemy tanks and artillery. To provide defense against cyber total warfare, you don't necessarily need military technology. You just need secure civilian technology. Google is already doing a lot of work in that area. Examples include Project Zero to find and close security vulnerabilities; their work to normalize, monitor, and enforce proper use of TLS across the Internet; Chrome browser and OS security work; Gmail security work, etc. Government institutions can provide predictive surveillance that Google cannot. Only the Cyber Command, CIA, NSA, DIA, etc., and their international partners, have the ability to see inside the HQs of potential enemies. And those are the only agencies permitted to act in an offensive cyber capacity. Is Google under any obligation to support that work? I don't think so. Google can do, and is already doing, A LOT to help the U.S. defend against cyber warfare.
- bayfullofrays 8y agoYou can't be pro peace and work for a company that is supplying your code to a government that wants to kill brown people a half world away. I hope more engineers do the same when working with the American government and understand that something they may see as benign as Excel can be used to facilitate harm.
- oh_sigh 8y agoSure, but what government are you talking about? I'm fairly sure the USG doesn't 'want to kill brown people'.
- dpeck 8y agoQuite a bit of historical and contemporary evidence indicates otherwise. It may not be a goal, but it certainly isn’t a dealbreaker in achieving whatever aims of the time.
- mips_avatar 8y agoIt doesn't really help any military to kill non-combatants. The types of tools google was developing were for detecting terrorists in Afghanistan placing road-side bombs. Right now the video tapes from drones above Kabul are only analyzed after an explosion kills people. If project Maven had been finished by google these bombs could have been identified and civilians could be evacuated from the areas.
- skybrian 8y agoCan you be pro peace and work on open source code that anyone may use, including all governments?
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoAir gap stuff isn't all that cutting edge (as the article states) and is inherently a defensive technology. Google is basically critical infrastructure (think power grid) at this point. Why would anyone in their right mind not want a company that's basically critical infrastructure developing technologies that it can deploy in order to make itself (and everyone who depends on it) more secure? This is like the IT guy at a power plant quitting over being asked to integrate a bunch of systems to better track who is where and when on the property.
- filereaper 8y ago"Don't be evil" Culture is hard to kill, good on the "Group of Nine".
- sunstone 8y agoSee, this is what happens when you pay tech people too much. They get uppity and start dictating terms. :)