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One 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 th

One 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Maybe "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 ago
    Feelings 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.
    - dnomad 8y ago
      Strange. I've come to find that most who think the modern military is primarily a "defense force" are wholly deluded about what the history actually does and its history.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        Sure, it acts in the interests of the state, and as a citizen of that state, it acts in my interests, one of which is my defense. It's a complex definition but I'm interested in what you think is so deluded?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - throwaway2048 8y ago
        Its arguable that the US military has never fought a defensive war in its entire history.
        opless 8y ago
        You might have forgotten WW2?
        FearOfReprisal 8y ago
        To be fair, America didn't really win WW2, we hardly even fought, mostly we just supplied Hitler with arms, and when that wasn't fashionable anymore, we supplied the allies with arms.. Then we swooped in at the end to take all the credit and the fat construction contracts.
        jcranmer 8y ago
        That is wrong on just about every level. In the 20s and the early 30s (that is to say, before Hitler rose to power), the US brokered efforts to reduce the burden of WWI reparations, as well as inject loans into Germany to help its moribund economy. FDR was opposed to Hitler, and would have brought the US into the war earlier, but US public opinion was firmly isolationist. Even then, the US was neutral really in name only, as it devised conditions for selling weapons that amounted to "only the UK can buy them." Yes, the US logistical support to the Allies was crucial both to keeping them collapsing and actually decisively winning the war, but the US military did prove superior to both Axis and other Allies in several regards, most notably artillery, amphibious assaults, and carrier operations.
  - XalvinX 8y ago
    The one time our country was attacked in recent memory was on 9/11/2001 and despite our ridiculously large "defense" we couldn't even get a F-16 or two scrambled to protect our biggest and richest city after the first plane hit? It was like 45 minutes later, and <<crickets>> .... Our military is simply not lined up around the border defending our country one bit, it is much too busy building and defending an empire around the world that, honestly, doesn't do that much for Main Street, USA. And I suppose you think that our invading soveriegn nations and causing civilian deaths in the 6-figures doesn't piss off the next generation and lead to more terrorists? Oh, and we have a bad habit of losing weaponry in countries all over the world too...what happens to all that, whose hands does it fall into? I could go on. and on. and on. and on. What is weird about these logical thoughts?
- berti 8y ago
  It's a little sad when you have to divert your best and brightest away from advancing the state of civilization, to merely defending what you already have. Obviously that will still advance the state of the art in some areas.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    The military has been behind most of the technological advances in society, and is directly behind the birth of Silicon Valley itself.
    - codeisawesome 8y ago
      I don’t have facts on hand to back this up, but I think even the space race which advanced everyone so much, was a result of militaristic competition
      - manigandham 8y ago
        Yes, that is well known now. The cold-war is the only reason we went to the moon and we are still benefiting from that technology today.
  - FearOfReprisal 8y ago
    's/defending what you already have/stealing what others have/g'
- adrianN 8y ago
  If the "smartest people on the planet" decide they'd rather not work for the military, maybe there's a good reason.
- JackCh 8y ago
  The problem here for many is a perceived disconnect between "defend our country", the actual actions of the DoD, and making MY life safer.
- iainmerrick 8y ago
  This is a very tricky issue. I’m certainly no anti-government Libertarian or Tea Partier. But I think there’s a lot of value in keeping institutions separate, so they can act as checks and balances on each other. Just as the different branches of government are separate, and news organizations are independent, corporations should be independent (including from each other -- competition, not cosy cartels). Google already does a fantastic job protecting their users from hackers, including those from nation states like China and Russia. Rather than cosying up to the US government, they should keep a wary eye on whether to protect their users from US government hackers too. Also, I’m pretty sure there are already plenty of exceptionally smart people working at the NSA. I’ll freely admit I’m not totally consistent on this, as I strongly support some big government-run organizations like the NHS (I’m from the UK).
- lexs 8y ago
  don't you think there are better uses for "the smartest people on the planet" other than defense work?
  - gaius 8y ago
    Sure. But if they weren’t doing that they wouldn’t be curing cancer, they’d be working on more adtech, etc. The people making a big moral stand here were all perfectly OK with mass surveillance for commercial interests remember.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - kimdotcom 8y ago
      Unfortunately, I agree.
- greyman 8y ago
  But there are also people outside of your country. Google is a global company, and I am also their customer... It doesn't feel right to support a company, which in turn supports military of another country than mine.
  - XalvinX 8y ago
    I'm sure if you dug down a little, you would see that you have supported companies that are involved in building weapons for the US...some of those conglomerates have tentacles in everything, all over the world.
- musage 8y ago
  Don't assume because someone isn't partaking in your game they're not good enough for it -- it might not be good enough for them. The smartest people on the planet wouldn't go anywhere near the advertisement industry or the military of a country involved in wars of aggression. Okay, maybe "smart" people would, but intelligent and wise people wouldn't, not from what I have sampled so far. They all seem to look right through and begin after what is the impenetrable zenith of "smartness" for you.
pmontra 8y ago
It can be not to leave all of that cake to its main competitors: if Google takes a slice from Amazon and Microsoft, they will grow a little less faster. This applies to every sector, not only government and military. If you ever played boardgames (especially German style) maybe you'll remember some games when only one player developed some resource unchecked by the other ones. This usually leads to an easy win for that player. Not easy to notice it in the earlier turns but then the differential in income (whatever it is in that game) is so obvious that everybody understands the game is over well before the end.
- throwaway2048 8y ago
  We Must Not Allow a Tunnel Gap!
  - codeisawesome 8y ago
    This comment taken along with the parent makes it so much more clear to me why everything has to be a competition between world powers... especially in far, far away lands.
- musage 8y ago
  Yeah, and when someone asks you for directions, don't tell them the truth, lead them into a trap that is profitable for you if possible, otherwise at least lead them into a wrong direction; else you might be giving them an easy win. It's not actually a board game, and if you ever read about any totalitarian "philosophy" (especially German style), you'll come across this same reasoning. Of course it applies to every sector, because that's just how life is. When will people stop shooting the messengers, right? > Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological". On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal". But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society. -- Noam Chomsky
afsina 8y ago
Or, they were (softly) forced.
JackCh 8y ago
Just a guess, but perhaps being extremely rich and extremely powerful gives you a relatively small social circle, considering the grand scheme of humanity at almost 7.5 billion people. Consider also the allegations of Google being a de facto branch of the state department in When Google Met Wikileaks (2011). It may be the case these people are all friends or acquaintances and enjoy the opportunity to work with each other.
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  I still get a bit tense when I remember reading The New Digital Age. (Written, not coincidentally, by Schmidt and Jared Cohen - ex State Department staffer, current Google visionary.) It is, to an impressive degree, a love letter to the US government. It shows absolute faith in the ability of technology experts to help remake the world, spreading information worldwide for the benefit of all - but only the right information. As Assange put it in a cutting review: "...this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances." I don't think it's particularly hard to understand Google's high-level engagement with the US government; it represents a chance to diversify revenue while supporting ideological positions Schmidt has openly embraced for years. Nor is it surprising that government-aligned leadership is facing dissent in a professional that's historically been somewhere between suspicious of and allergic to government and surveillance.
  - pofilat 8y ago
    Jared Cohen is the driver behind YouTube censorship and making Google/Internet an arm of the US government's propaganda effort. Schmidt has been trying to push his way into world politics as an unelected guru for about a decade. https://www.wired.com/2016/09/inside-googles-internet-justice-league-ai-powered-war-trolls/ https://www.wired.com/2016/09/inside-googles-internet-justic...
onion2k 8y ago
They’re amazingly profitable already That isn't enough. Due to the frankly idiotic way corporate investors think 'any company that isn't growing must be dying'. Google will need to continue to demonstrate growth forever despite that being impossible. Growing in the ad market is hard because they're already the biggest player, so Google are looking at new things to do. This is just one of them.
- B-Con 8y ago
  > That isn't enough. Due to the frankly idiotic way corporate investors think 'any company that isn't growing must be dying'. I despise it when I see large companies make business moves purely to "grow". The big ones are roughly the size of the first world, excuse them for not growing a full 20% like they did last year. Investors are in a bubble of "bigger is better". Who cares if you have a monetization strategy or how good your product is, how big are you? Who cares about the quality of interaction, how much did you get? You see the social media giants like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc, make UX moves that their dedicated userbase displakes purely because they're trying to tap into the long tail of users. Sometimes it feels like they would prefer 3x the userbase at 1/5 the average interaction quality because moar unique active accounts/month!!111 I would bet this ridiculous obsession with QonQ growth is responsible for half the irritating garbage UX we experience. It tests better for engaging the long tail so it ships. It's why your timelines/feeds refuse to sort chronologically, the casual masses only do drive-bys and need to be hooked/engaged every micro-chance that presents itself. It's why they want to curate your feeds, because most people are turned off by a raw firehose and the best content needs to be front and center when they do glance past it. It's why Twitter literally runs ads literally telling people how to choose a username[0], because if you have a phone then please create an account, like seriously omgplzcreateanaccountwehavetogrowlikethisquarter!!! Sorry, sore spot for me. [0]: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/comedian-romesh-ranganathan-rescues-befuddled-tweeters-twitters-new-ad-campaign/1452784 https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/comedian-romesh-ranga...
  - rusk 8y ago
    Yes, it seems that the traditional "stocks and shares" approach to funding is only suitable for a particular phase of the development of a business. Past a certain point it's actually bad for the business, employees and customers. I wonder why businesses don't just seek a more stable funding model once they get there. Pardon my ignorance but this sounds like just the kind of thing that "Bonds" are for. Long term, slow steady growth. It also sounds like specifically the kind of investment opportunity Warren Buffet seeks out, so there must be some logic to it.
ma2rten 8y ago
It's like this: Google has to keep growing to justify it's stock price. In order to do that it has to expand beyond search and ads. Google's technical infrastructure is the best in the world in many aspects, so they decided to open it up to other companies. However, other companies don't just come by themselves. That is why Google hired a bunch of sales people. Now these sales people do what they were hired for, they sell including to the government.
- jopsen 8y ago
  Tech companies tends to not just take over an existing market. But to grow it, by opening opportunities that didn't exist before. Like how smartphones created a market for apps, inventing a need that wasn't there before. I don't see how that's likely to happen with military contracts. What beneficial need are they going to invent?
  - pixl97 8y ago
    I think you misunderstand military contracts. Google wants in so more senators lobby for them. Anytime you talk about cutting military budgets a whole load of people get on the news and talk about how you're hurting Americans with jobs. Google just wants in on the political action and guaranteed income.
jiggliemon 8y ago
Google isn’t “Google”. It is a series of siloed business units. One of those units is encentivised to win government/doj contracts. Google as a whole is wildly profitable. It’s ad platform ensures that. But the unit that is required to win multi-million dollar contracts from the government is less profitable. And that unit needs to justify its overhead just like any business does.
Yokohiii 8y ago
There is an worldwide AI hyteria ongoing. Google wants to monopolize and governments will be big customers.
dnomad 8y ago
There's nothing wrong with Google wanting as many people as possible to use their cloud offering. I suspect the engineers would be happy for most government agencies to use their offering and it makes sense for Google to pursue government contracts. Governments are the ideal cloud consumers, needing to operate at scale and happy with generic solutions as they're not so interested in squeezing out some competitive advantage. Clouds can save governments a lot of money and this is indisputably a good thing. (Even in those case where they might not be happy with a particular agency using the offering they may at least know that they're not implicated as the cloud offering is a general solution that likely does more good than harm.) Where the balance tips and they become complicit is when they offer customized and specialized solutions that further a particular mission. Here I think good engineers will draw the line as a matter of conscience.
rifung 8y ago
> One 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? Why bother with any new products when search and ads are extremely profitable? I think it makes sense to look at this from the perspective of Google Cloud since I imagine that's where the contracts are. Google Cloud isn't a leader in this space. In cloud, having more customers is a competitive advantage both because of marketing and also because of technology/cost. With more users, you can share costs more and have better forecasting since any given customer's specific usage will should not affect your total usage assuming customers are fairly similar in size (not true in reality..). Then hopefully you can run closer to capacity, lower prices, and then gain even more customers. > 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. I don't agree with this to be honest. At least, I certainly wouldn't consider it "obvious". I'm a rank and file employee and I was surprised at the outrage. I still don't really see anything wrong with supporting the government or military but I can understand how this makes some people uncomfortable, especially if they are not US citizens.
- pavelludiq 8y ago
  > still don't really see anything wrong with supporting the government or military As a non-American(but citizen of an allied nation), the fact that the US is currently involved in something like 12 regional conflicts(that we know of), some of which could be considered illegal wars of aggression if the US wasn't on the UN security council, in places who's combined wealth is a fraction of just one US state is very worrying to me, and the fact that few, if any Americans share that concern is certainly very disappointing. I had thought Americans better than that in my younger years, apparently not.
  - trophycase 8y ago
    Most americans don't know or don't care. I don't know if you've seen the news in our country but it is horrifying. They are more focused on what Trump tweeted or what Melania is wearing than actual geopolitics.
StreamBright 8y ago
Companies do not have a conscience or moral considerations.
dilyevsky 8y ago
They're keen on advancing their cloud business. And government is potentially large client with deep pockets.
pmorici 8y ago
Amazon and Microsoft are certainly pursuing the defense market for their computing products. Defense is a half trillion dollar market. It's surprising that anyone is confused why a company would want to be in it.
- jopsen 8y ago
  If all they need is generic services with various certification and isolation, I see no reason not to sell that. And the "air gap" mentioned in this article doesn't seem controversial. Doing AI for drones, however, could easily become controversial.
  - sidr 8y ago
    The air gap itself is so that the military can use Google cloud to run computations that require a higher level of clearance. Those high clearance level computations are more likely to be directly related to combat and AI for drones. Air gap itself is no biggie, but the only reason they're building it is to enable the use of Google cloud for drone AI.
    - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
      Those high clearance level computations are more likely to be directly related to combat and AI for drones. No. The closer you are to a bullet the further you are from JWICS. Aside from the most compartmentalized of special operations, which typically will fall within the purview of an IC member, the majority of the military works either in the open or at the "Secret" level.
walshemj 8y ago
Google is CNI so playing nice is part of the political game they have to play.
nosequel 8y ago
I worked for a company who lost money on their government contracts or at the most broke even. The CEO said that no matter what happened, they'd keep the Government business side moving because large companies need the Government of their city/state/country to look favorably on them. So Google might not make any money on the contract, but it is a pretty great lobbying tool the next time say some radio spectrum comes up for sale by the government. Way back in 2007, Google was bidding $4.6 billion for 22MHz block in the 700MHz range. I can't imagine what 22MHz of bandwidth is going for these days.
XalvinX 8y ago
FWIW, Eric Schmidt is a member of the Bilderberg Group....AND the Trilateral Commission too.
- jeffreyrogers 8y ago
  I am only vaguely familiar with these groups, but it seems they exist to bring influential political and business people together to discuss current issues. This doesn't seem so bad, so why whenever they're brought up is it always suggested it should be shameful?
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    It's a very weird criticism - the membership list for these things is extensive, and it would honestly have surprised me if Schmidt wasn't a member of some of them. The Bilderberg conspiracies are especially funny, because so many of them amount to whispering darkly about stuff that's literally posted on the Bilderberg Meeting website. It's an off-the-record meeting of the rich and power to talk about the issues of the day, you say? Well yes, that's the stated intention! On a related note, the parent comment would be way better off looking at Schmidt's co-author on The New Digital Age. Jared Cohen came out of the Department of State, headed up Google Ideas, and is now looking at technical issues around censorship and "countering extremism". It's hard for me to understand how a vague reference to the Bilderbergs could possibly be more meaningful than the very open "hiring State Department staffers" connection.
  - ionised 8y ago
    Keeping the proceedings/minutes entirely secret doesn't exactly inspire a lot of trust.
  - pofilat 8y ago
    Why aren't any representatives from the 99.9% of humanity invited to these meetings? Many (most?) would prefer a more democratic sort of world leadership.

dev_dull 8y ago

I 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 ago
Maybe "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 ago
  Feelings 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.
  - dnomad 8y ago
    Strange. I've come to find that most who think the modern military is primarily a "defense force" are wholly deluded about what the history actually does and its history.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      Sure, it acts in the interests of the state, and as a citizen of that state, it acts in my interests, one of which is my defense. It's a complex definition but I'm interested in what you think is so deluded?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
    - throwaway2048 8y ago
      Its arguable that the US military has never fought a defensive war in its entire history.
      - opless 8y ago
        You might have forgotten WW2?
        FearOfReprisal 8y ago
        To be fair, America didn't really win WW2, we hardly even fought, mostly we just supplied Hitler with arms, and when that wasn't fashionable anymore, we supplied the allies with arms.. Then we swooped in at the end to take all the credit and the fat construction contracts.
        jcranmer 8y ago
        That is wrong on just about every level. In the 20s and the early 30s (that is to say, before Hitler rose to power), the US brokered efforts to reduce the burden of WWI reparations, as well as inject loans into Germany to help its moribund economy. FDR was opposed to Hitler, and would have brought the US into the war earlier, but US public opinion was firmly isolationist. Even then, the US was neutral really in name only, as it devised conditions for selling weapons that amounted to "only the UK can buy them." Yes, the US logistical support to the Allies was crucial both to keeping them collapsing and actually decisively winning the war, but the US military did prove superior to both Axis and other Allies in several regards, most notably artillery, amphibious assaults, and carrier operations.
- XalvinX 8y ago
  The one time our country was attacked in recent memory was on 9/11/2001 and despite our ridiculously large "defense" we couldn't even get a F-16 or two scrambled to protect our biggest and richest city after the first plane hit? It was like 45 minutes later, and <<crickets>> .... Our military is simply not lined up around the border defending our country one bit, it is much too busy building and defending an empire around the world that, honestly, doesn't do that much for Main Street, USA. And I suppose you think that our invading soveriegn nations and causing civilian deaths in the 6-figures doesn't piss off the next generation and lead to more terrorists? Oh, and we have a bad habit of losing weaponry in countries all over the world too...what happens to all that, whose hands does it fall into? I could go on. and on. and on. and on. What is weird about these logical thoughts?
berti 8y ago
It's a little sad when you have to divert your best and brightest away from advancing the state of civilization, to merely defending what you already have. Obviously that will still advance the state of the art in some areas.
- manigandham 8y ago
  The military has been behind most of the technological advances in society, and is directly behind the birth of Silicon Valley itself.
  - codeisawesome 8y ago
    I don’t have facts on hand to back this up, but I think even the space race which advanced everyone so much, was a result of militaristic competition
    - manigandham 8y ago
      Yes, that is well known now. The cold-war is the only reason we went to the moon and we are still benefiting from that technology today.
- FearOfReprisal 8y ago
  's/defending what you already have/stealing what others have/g'
adrianN 8y ago
If the "smartest people on the planet" decide they'd rather not work for the military, maybe there's a good reason.
JackCh 8y ago
The problem here for many is a perceived disconnect between "defend our country", the actual actions of the DoD, and making MY life safer.
iainmerrick 8y ago
This is a very tricky issue. I’m certainly no anti-government Libertarian or Tea Partier. But I think there’s a lot of value in keeping institutions separate, so they can act as checks and balances on each other. Just as the different branches of government are separate, and news organizations are independent, corporations should be independent (including from each other -- competition, not cosy cartels). Google already does a fantastic job protecting their users from hackers, including those from nation states like China and Russia. Rather than cosying up to the US government, they should keep a wary eye on whether to protect their users from US government hackers too. Also, I’m pretty sure there are already plenty of exceptionally smart people working at the NSA. I’ll freely admit I’m not totally consistent on this, as I strongly support some big government-run organizations like the NHS (I’m from the UK).
lexs 8y ago
don't you think there are better uses for "the smartest people on the planet" other than defense work?
- gaius 8y ago
  Sure. But if they weren’t doing that they wouldn’t be curing cancer, they’d be working on more adtech, etc. The people making a big moral stand here were all perfectly OK with mass surveillance for commercial interests remember.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - kimdotcom 8y ago
    Unfortunately, I agree.
greyman 8y ago
But there are also people outside of your country. Google is a global company, and I am also their customer... It doesn't feel right to support a company, which in turn supports military of another country than mine.
- XalvinX 8y ago
  I'm sure if you dug down a little, you would see that you have supported companies that are involved in building weapons for the US...some of those conglomerates have tentacles in everything, all over the world.
musage 8y ago
Don't assume because someone isn't partaking in your game they're not good enough for it -- it might not be good enough for them. The smartest people on the planet wouldn't go anywhere near the advertisement industry or the military of a country involved in wars of aggression. Okay, maybe "smart" people would, but intelligent and wise people wouldn't, not from what I have sampled so far. They all seem to look right through and begin after what is the impenetrable zenith of "smartness" for you.

pmontra 8y ago

It can be not to leave all of that cake to its main competitors: if Google takes a slice from Amazon and Microsoft, they will grow a little less faster. This applies to every sector, not only government and military. If you ever played boardgames (especially German style) maybe you'll remember some games when only one player developed some resource unchecked by the other ones. This usually leads to an easy win for that player. Not easy to notice it in the earlier turns but then the differential in income (whatever it is in that game) is so obvious that everybody understands the game is over well before the end.

throwaway2048 8y ago
We Must Not Allow a Tunnel Gap!
- codeisawesome 8y ago
  This comment taken along with the parent makes it so much more clear to me why everything has to be a competition between world powers... especially in far, far away lands.
musage 8y ago
Yeah, and when someone asks you for directions, don't tell them the truth, lead them into a trap that is profitable for you if possible, otherwise at least lead them into a wrong direction; else you might be giving them an easy win. It's not actually a board game, and if you ever read about any totalitarian "philosophy" (especially German style), you'll come across this same reasoning. Of course it applies to every sector, because that's just how life is. When will people stop shooting the messengers, right? > Of course it's extremely easy to say, the heck with it. I'm just going to adapt myself to the structures of power and authority and do the best I can within them. Sure, you can do that. But that's not acting like a decent person. You can walk down the street and be hungry. You see a kid eating an ice cream cone and you notice there's no cop around and you can take the ice cream cone from him because you're bigger and walk away. You can do that. Probably there are people who do. We call them "pathological". On the other hand, if they do it within existing social structures we call them "normal". But it's just as pathological. It's just the pathology of the general society. -- Noam Chomsky

afsina 8y ago

Or, they were (softly) forced.

JackCh 8y ago

Just a guess, but perhaps being extremely rich and extremely powerful gives you a relatively small social circle, considering the grand scheme of humanity at almost 7.5 billion people. Consider also the allegations of Google being a de facto branch of the state department in When Google Met Wikileaks (2011). It may be the case these people are all friends or acquaintances and enjoy the opportunity to work with each other.

Bartweiss 8y ago
I still get a bit tense when I remember reading The New Digital Age. (Written, not coincidentally, by Schmidt and Jared Cohen - ex State Department staffer, current Google visionary.) It is, to an impressive degree, a love letter to the US government. It shows absolute faith in the ability of technology experts to help remake the world, spreading information worldwide for the benefit of all - but only the right information. As Assange put it in a cutting review: "...this isn’t a book designed to be read. It is a major declaration designed to foster alliances." I don't think it's particularly hard to understand Google's high-level engagement with the US government; it represents a chance to diversify revenue while supporting ideological positions Schmidt has openly embraced for years. Nor is it surprising that government-aligned leadership is facing dissent in a professional that's historically been somewhere between suspicious of and allergic to government and surveillance.
- pofilat 8y ago
  Jared Cohen is the driver behind YouTube censorship and making Google/Internet an arm of the US government's propaganda effort. Schmidt has been trying to push his way into world politics as an unelected guru for about a decade. https://www.wired.com/2016/09/inside-googles-internet-justice-league-ai-powered-war-trolls/ https://www.wired.com/2016/09/inside-googles-internet-justic...

onion2k 8y ago

They’re amazingly profitable already That isn't enough. Due to the frankly idiotic way corporate investors think 'any company that isn't growing must be dying'. Google will need to continue to demonstrate growth forever despite that being impossible. Growing in the ad market is hard because they're already the biggest player, so Google are looking at new things to do. This is just one of them.

B-Con 8y ago
> That isn't enough. Due to the frankly idiotic way corporate investors think 'any company that isn't growing must be dying'. I despise it when I see large companies make business moves purely to "grow". The big ones are roughly the size of the first world, excuse them for not growing a full 20% like they did last year. Investors are in a bubble of "bigger is better". Who cares if you have a monetization strategy or how good your product is, how big are you? Who cares about the quality of interaction, how much did you get? You see the social media giants like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc, make UX moves that their dedicated userbase displakes purely because they're trying to tap into the long tail of users. Sometimes it feels like they would prefer 3x the userbase at 1/5 the average interaction quality because moar unique active accounts/month!!111 I would bet this ridiculous obsession with QonQ growth is responsible for half the irritating garbage UX we experience. It tests better for engaging the long tail so it ships. It's why your timelines/feeds refuse to sort chronologically, the casual masses only do drive-bys and need to be hooked/engaged every micro-chance that presents itself. It's why they want to curate your feeds, because most people are turned off by a raw firehose and the best content needs to be front and center when they do glance past it. It's why Twitter literally runs ads literally telling people how to choose a username[0], because if you have a phone then please create an account, like seriously omgplzcreateanaccountwehavetogrowlikethisquarter!!! Sorry, sore spot for me. [0]: https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/comedian-romesh-ranganathan-rescues-befuddled-tweeters-twitters-new-ad-campaign/1452784 https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/comedian-romesh-ranga...
- rusk 8y ago
  Yes, it seems that the traditional "stocks and shares" approach to funding is only suitable for a particular phase of the development of a business. Past a certain point it's actually bad for the business, employees and customers. I wonder why businesses don't just seek a more stable funding model once they get there. Pardon my ignorance but this sounds like just the kind of thing that "Bonds" are for. Long term, slow steady growth. It also sounds like specifically the kind of investment opportunity Warren Buffet seeks out, so there must be some logic to it.

ma2rten 8y ago

It's like this: Google has to keep growing to justify it's stock price. In order to do that it has to expand beyond search and ads. Google's technical infrastructure is the best in the world in many aspects, so they decided to open it up to other companies. However, other companies don't just come by themselves. That is why Google hired a bunch of sales people. Now these sales people do what they were hired for, they sell including to the government.

jopsen 8y ago
Tech companies tends to not just take over an existing market. But to grow it, by opening opportunities that didn't exist before. Like how smartphones created a market for apps, inventing a need that wasn't there before. I don't see how that's likely to happen with military contracts. What beneficial need are they going to invent?
- pixl97 8y ago
  I think you misunderstand military contracts. Google wants in so more senators lobby for them. Anytime you talk about cutting military budgets a whole load of people get on the news and talk about how you're hurting Americans with jobs. Google just wants in on the political action and guaranteed income.

jiggliemon 8y ago

Google isn’t “Google”. It is a series of siloed business units. One of those units is encentivised to win government/doj contracts. Google as a whole is wildly profitable. It’s ad platform ensures that. But the unit that is required to win multi-million dollar contracts from the government is less profitable. And that unit needs to justify its overhead just like any business does.

Yokohiii 8y ago

There is an worldwide AI hyteria ongoing. Google wants to monopolize and governments will be big customers.

dnomad 8y ago

There's nothing wrong with Google wanting as many people as possible to use their cloud offering. I suspect the engineers would be happy for most government agencies to use their offering and it makes sense for Google to pursue government contracts. Governments are the ideal cloud consumers, needing to operate at scale and happy with generic solutions as they're not so interested in squeezing out some competitive advantage. Clouds can save governments a lot of money and this is indisputably a good thing. (Even in those case where they might not be happy with a particular agency using the offering they may at least know that they're not implicated as the cloud offering is a general solution that likely does more good than harm.) Where the balance tips and they become complicit is when they offer customized and specialized solutions that further a particular mission. Here I think good engineers will draw the line as a matter of conscience.

rifung 8y ago

> One 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? Why bother with any new products when search and ads are extremely profitable? I think it makes sense to look at this from the perspective of Google Cloud since I imagine that's where the contracts are. Google Cloud isn't a leader in this space. In cloud, having more customers is a competitive advantage both because of marketing and also because of technology/cost. With more users, you can share costs more and have better forecasting since any given customer's specific usage will should not affect your total usage assuming customers are fairly similar in size (not true in reality..). Then hopefully you can run closer to capacity, lower prices, and then gain even more customers. > 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. I don't agree with this to be honest. At least, I certainly wouldn't consider it "obvious". I'm a rank and file employee and I was surprised at the outrage. I still don't really see anything wrong with supporting the government or military but I can understand how this makes some people uncomfortable, especially if they are not US citizens.

pavelludiq 8y ago
> still don't really see anything wrong with supporting the government or military As a non-American(but citizen of an allied nation), the fact that the US is currently involved in something like 12 regional conflicts(that we know of), some of which could be considered illegal wars of aggression if the US wasn't on the UN security council, in places who's combined wealth is a fraction of just one US state is very worrying to me, and the fact that few, if any Americans share that concern is certainly very disappointing. I had thought Americans better than that in my younger years, apparently not.
- trophycase 8y ago
  Most americans don't know or don't care. I don't know if you've seen the news in our country but it is horrifying. They are more focused on what Trump tweeted or what Melania is wearing than actual geopolitics.

StreamBright 8y ago

Companies do not have a conscience or moral considerations.

dilyevsky 8y ago

They're keen on advancing their cloud business. And government is potentially large client with deep pockets.

pmorici 8y ago

Amazon and Microsoft are certainly pursuing the defense market for their computing products. Defense is a half trillion dollar market. It's surprising that anyone is confused why a company would want to be in it.

jopsen 8y ago
If all they need is generic services with various certification and isolation, I see no reason not to sell that. And the "air gap" mentioned in this article doesn't seem controversial. Doing AI for drones, however, could easily become controversial.
- sidr 8y ago
  The air gap itself is so that the military can use Google cloud to run computations that require a higher level of clearance. Those high clearance level computations are more likely to be directly related to combat and AI for drones. Air gap itself is no biggie, but the only reason they're building it is to enable the use of Google cloud for drone AI.
  - AndrewKemendo 8y ago
    Those high clearance level computations are more likely to be directly related to combat and AI for drones. No. The closer you are to a bullet the further you are from JWICS. Aside from the most compartmentalized of special operations, which typically will fall within the purview of an IC member, the majority of the military works either in the open or at the "Secret" level.

walshemj 8y ago

Google is CNI so playing nice is part of the political game they have to play.

nosequel 8y ago

I worked for a company who lost money on their government contracts or at the most broke even. The CEO said that no matter what happened, they'd keep the Government business side moving because large companies need the Government of their city/state/country to look favorably on them. So Google might not make any money on the contract, but it is a pretty great lobbying tool the next time say some radio spectrum comes up for sale by the government. Way back in 2007, Google was bidding $4.6 billion for 22MHz block in the 700MHz range. I can't imagine what 22MHz of bandwidth is going for these days.

XalvinX 8y ago

FWIW, Eric Schmidt is a member of the Bilderberg Group....AND the Trilateral Commission too.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago
I am only vaguely familiar with these groups, but it seems they exist to bring influential political and business people together to discuss current issues. This doesn't seem so bad, so why whenever they're brought up is it always suggested it should be shameful?
- Bartweiss 8y ago
  It's a very weird criticism - the membership list for these things is extensive, and it would honestly have surprised me if Schmidt wasn't a member of some of them. The Bilderberg conspiracies are especially funny, because so many of them amount to whispering darkly about stuff that's literally posted on the Bilderberg Meeting website. It's an off-the-record meeting of the rich and power to talk about the issues of the day, you say? Well yes, that's the stated intention! On a related note, the parent comment would be way better off looking at Schmidt's co-author on The New Digital Age. Jared Cohen came out of the Department of State, headed up Google Ideas, and is now looking at technical issues around censorship and "countering extremism". It's hard for me to understand how a vague reference to the Bilderbergs could possibly be more meaningful than the very open "hiring State Department staffers" connection.
- ionised 8y ago
  Keeping the proceedings/minutes entirely secret doesn't exactly inspire a lot of trust.
- pofilat 8y ago
  Why aren't any representatives from the 99.9% of humanity invited to these meetings? Many (most?) would prefer a more democratic sort of world leadership.