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Peter Thiel Reportedly Says the FBI and CIA Should Investigate Google

38 points by jonbaer 7y ago

SpikeDad 7y ago
Fox News says the FBI and CIA Should Investigate Google in 3...2...1 followed closely by Trump saying in his own words "The FBI and CIA Should Investigate Google".
- filoleg 7y ago
  HN in a nutshell: everyone in the comments advocating for Google to be investigated, right until the point when Peter Thiel suggests it. At that point, slam the breaks and turn 180.
  - burk96 7y ago
    What Thiel wants investigated and what the general HN user wants are very different things I would imagine. Personally I'm more concerned with what Google is doing with my data, and how much they are sharing with a PRISM like program than anything involving China. Thiel's basis for this is also rather weak. A censored search engine and sharing AI with the military are two entirely different things. I oppose both for the record, but just because they are both bad does not equate them.
    - remarkEon 7y ago
      The censored search engine would be de facto controlled by the Chinese military, so no they are not entirely different things.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    I'd argue that 'HN' is not a monoculture, and opposing viewpoints come up from time to time in response to new information, from people who might otherwise have kept their thoughts on the issue to themselves.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      I agree, it isn't a monoculture. But on some topics, HN seems to have a bit more uniform response than on others. I remember GDPR being highly polarized with both sides represented about 50/50, maybe slightly leaning towards anti-GDPR. On others, however, like investigating Google or SF housing crisis/zoning issues, the opinion breakdown seems to be much closer to at least 80/20.
  - cjhopman 7y ago
    I don't know man, the surveillance conspiracy theory is kinda at least a smidge more believable than the treason conspiracy theory.
  - traderjane 7y ago
    Peter Thiel wants Google to be investigated for spy infiltration and treasonous behavior. Are you pointing out that HN is so hypocritical for not following along? It must be breathtaking to be so sure that Google should be investigated for spies and to see HN just turn its back to the issue. I also personally think the spies have gone too far and the CIA needs to do its job and clean Google's house. I am also speechless as to how the HN community, which sees the need to regulate for mere privacy issues, would then turn around on the serious matter of espionage.
  - happytoexplain 7y ago
    I see plenty of opinions on HN from both sides on both typical Google concerns and on this one specifically, so I don't agree that the HN community had some kind of politically hypocritical bias. It's also likely that any given person could want Google more regulated in some way, but disagree with Thiel's hateful, politicized ramblings here, where he suggests much more extreme tactics.
neom 7y ago
"He singled out Google for agreeing to work closely with China, trying to get its search engine back into the Chinese market, while deciding to let lapse a U.S. defense department contract that gave the military access to its artificial intelligence tools. Thiel suggested the actions were “seemingly treasonous,” as he delivered the opening speech Sunday at the National Conservatism conference in Washington. He asked whether Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s AI research program or senior management had been “infiltrated” by foreign intelligence agencies. “These questions need to be asked by the FBI and the CIA,” Thiel said, “And I’d like them to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner.”"
burk96 7y ago
Honestly I think this is a ridiculous take. Google's military contracts have been extremely controversial both publicly and inside Google. The thing is, if Google wants to exist in China, they must follow some orders. The US government agencies do not force that kind of control (that we know of) so they are more easily rejected. Project Butterfly and Project Maven are not even directly comparable projects also, they have very different goals and implications. All that said I do believe Google and others need to face some sort of regulations and audits. But hunting for Chinese intelligence officers seems like a waste of time with little evidence to actually warrant such an investigation. Apologies if this is written weirdly, I desperately need sleep.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- iameli 7y ago
  I remember Project Maven was the drone AI targeting contract. What's Project Butterfly?
HouseLannister 7y ago
I'm pretty close to equivocating this kind of shit with the concept of "Russian Oligarchs" as a sort of extrajudicial conceptual model for the intersection of the older notion of the military industrial complex and the newer notion of technocratic mass panopticon hell, as focused through the entrepreneurial lens of post dot com smartphone data scientist global unicorn faangs. Intellectual Deep Web indeed...
bradknowles 7y ago
I think the FBI and CIA would be much better served if they were to investigate Peter Thiel.
mindslight 7y ago
It would be disappointing, if it weren't so formulaic - despite all his interesting views a decade ago Thiel is just yet another intellectual prostitute who talked a good libertarian game when confined to being inert opposition, yet given a whiff of stature he drops into repeating the bog standard authoritarian scaremongering of his latent team.
- kodz4 7y ago
  :) cool phrase - "given a whiff of stature" - 0 hits on google.
gorbachev 7y ago
...says a man who is a vocal supporter of a President with conflicts of interest with multiple foreign Governments.
warmfuzzykitten 7y ago
He's internet rich, so we should all listen to his random political opinions.
- ralusek 7y ago
  His political opinions are pretty interesting in their own right. You have to at least give him some degree of credit for anticipating many of the conversations we're only just beginning to seriously contend with right now, in 1996: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKL0Xc46nQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKL0Xc46nQ
- rchaud 7y ago
  I think that applies more to people like Mark Cuban, who are "internet rich" in the sense that they haven't overtly tried to use their wealth to push a dystopian anti-privacy vision of the future. Thiel on the other hand owns Palantir, which is a service designed for governments and law enforcement to analyze volumes of surveillance data that are being collected about the citizenry with or without their knowledge. Right now it seems like its main clients are US organizations, including USMC operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I imagine there's plenty of interest among foreign governments in implementing those solutions in their countries as well.
adolph 7y ago
Notes from Peter Thiel’s speech at the National Conservatism conference on July 14, 2019 https://medium.com/@bonniekavoussi/notes-from-peter-thiels-speech-at-the-national-conservatism-conference-on-july-14-2019-6a51b26b202 https://medium.com/@bonniekavoussi/notes-from-peter-thiels-s... Twitter thread https://mobile.twitter.com/foggyanabasis/status/1150628829565718528 https://mobile.twitter.com/foggyanabasis/status/115062882956... MarginalRevolution comments https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/some-points-from-peter-thiel.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/so...

38 points by jonbaer 7y ago

Fox News says the FBI and CIA Should Investigate Google in 3...2...1 followed closely by Trump saying in his own words "The FBI and CIA Should Investigate Google".

filoleg 7y ago
HN in a nutshell: everyone in the comments advocating for Google to be investigated, right until the point when Peter Thiel suggests it. At that point, slam the breaks and turn 180.
- burk96 7y ago
  What Thiel wants investigated and what the general HN user wants are very different things I would imagine. Personally I'm more concerned with what Google is doing with my data, and how much they are sharing with a PRISM like program than anything involving China. Thiel's basis for this is also rather weak. A censored search engine and sharing AI with the military are two entirely different things. I oppose both for the record, but just because they are both bad does not equate them.
  - remarkEon 7y ago
    The censored search engine would be de facto controlled by the Chinese military, so no they are not entirely different things.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  I'd argue that 'HN' is not a monoculture, and opposing viewpoints come up from time to time in response to new information, from people who might otherwise have kept their thoughts on the issue to themselves.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    I agree, it isn't a monoculture. But on some topics, HN seems to have a bit more uniform response than on others. I remember GDPR being highly polarized with both sides represented about 50/50, maybe slightly leaning towards anti-GDPR. On others, however, like investigating Google or SF housing crisis/zoning issues, the opinion breakdown seems to be much closer to at least 80/20.
- cjhopman 7y ago
  I don't know man, the surveillance conspiracy theory is kinda at least a smidge more believable than the treason conspiracy theory.
- traderjane 7y ago
  Peter Thiel wants Google to be investigated for spy infiltration and treasonous behavior. Are you pointing out that HN is so hypocritical for not following along? It must be breathtaking to be so sure that Google should be investigated for spies and to see HN just turn its back to the issue. I also personally think the spies have gone too far and the CIA needs to do its job and clean Google's house. I am also speechless as to how the HN community, which sees the need to regulate for mere privacy issues, would then turn around on the serious matter of espionage.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  I see plenty of opinions on HN from both sides on both typical Google concerns and on this one specifically, so I don't agree that the HN community had some kind of politically hypocritical bias. It's also likely that any given person could want Google more regulated in some way, but disagree with Thiel's hateful, politicized ramblings here, where he suggests much more extreme tactics.

neom 7y ago

"He singled out Google for agreeing to work closely with China, trying to get its search engine back into the Chinese market, while deciding to let lapse a U.S. defense department contract that gave the military access to its artificial intelligence tools. Thiel suggested the actions were “seemingly treasonous,” as he delivered the opening speech Sunday at the National Conservatism conference in Washington. He asked whether Google parent Alphabet Inc.’s AI research program or senior management had been “infiltrated” by foreign intelligence agencies. “These questions need to be asked by the FBI and the CIA,” Thiel said, “And I’d like them to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner.”"

burk96 7y ago

Honestly I think this is a ridiculous take. Google's military contracts have been extremely controversial both publicly and inside Google. The thing is, if Google wants to exist in China, they must follow some orders. The US government agencies do not force that kind of control (that we know of) so they are more easily rejected. Project Butterfly and Project Maven are not even directly comparable projects also, they have very different goals and implications. All that said I do believe Google and others need to face some sort of regulations and audits. But hunting for Chinese intelligence officers seems like a waste of time with little evidence to actually warrant such an investigation. Apologies if this is written weirdly, I desperately need sleep.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
iameli 7y ago
I remember Project Maven was the drone AI targeting contract. What's Project Butterfly?

HouseLannister 7y ago

I'm pretty close to equivocating this kind of shit with the concept of "Russian Oligarchs" as a sort of extrajudicial conceptual model for the intersection of the older notion of the military industrial complex and the newer notion of technocratic mass panopticon hell, as focused through the entrepreneurial lens of post dot com smartphone data scientist global unicorn faangs. Intellectual Deep Web indeed...

bradknowles 7y ago

I think the FBI and CIA would be much better served if they were to investigate Peter Thiel.

mindslight 7y ago

It would be disappointing, if it weren't so formulaic - despite all his interesting views a decade ago Thiel is just yet another intellectual prostitute who talked a good libertarian game when confined to being inert opposition, yet given a whiff of stature he drops into repeating the bog standard authoritarian scaremongering of his latent team.

kodz4 7y ago
:) cool phrase - "given a whiff of stature" - 0 hits on google.

gorbachev 7y ago

...says a man who is a vocal supporter of a President with conflicts of interest with multiple foreign Governments.

warmfuzzykitten 7y ago

He's internet rich, so we should all listen to his random political opinions.

ralusek 7y ago
His political opinions are pretty interesting in their own right. You have to at least give him some degree of credit for anticipating many of the conversations we're only just beginning to seriously contend with right now, in 1996: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKL0Xc46nQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWKL0Xc46nQ
rchaud 7y ago
I think that applies more to people like Mark Cuban, who are "internet rich" in the sense that they haven't overtly tried to use their wealth to push a dystopian anti-privacy vision of the future. Thiel on the other hand owns Palantir, which is a service designed for governments and law enforcement to analyze volumes of surveillance data that are being collected about the citizenry with or without their knowledge. Right now it seems like its main clients are US organizations, including USMC operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I imagine there's plenty of interest among foreign governments in implementing those solutions in their countries as well.

adolph 7y ago

Notes from Peter Thiel’s speech at the National Conservatism conference on July 14, 2019 https://medium.com/@bonniekavoussi/notes-from-peter-thiels-speech-at-the-national-conservatism-conference-on-july-14-2019-6a51b26b202 https://medium.com/@bonniekavoussi/notes-from-peter-thiels-s... Twitter thread https://mobile.twitter.com/foggyanabasis/status/1150628829565718528 https://mobile.twitter.com/foggyanabasis/status/115062882956... MarginalRevolution comments https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/some-points-from-peter-thiel.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/07/so...