7 ms·

Google Wants to Work with The Pentagon Again, Despite Employee Concerns

9 points by Jerry2 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
sneak 5y ago
Once again, we are reminded that most everyone who cared about "don't be evil" is gone or powerless now. I watched a video yesterday where Schmidt said he thought it was a joke.
- adminscoffee 5y ago
  it's super sad to see a business sell out this hard. it's almost like the end of their empire is unfolding in front of us
  - sneak 5y ago
    In the USA, you either become big enough to replace the military, or you simply get integrated with them. The CIA did the former, AWS did the latter. Google is already by law providing tons of data to NSA/et al without a warrant, for military spying (PRISM/FAA702). This is just another predictable step.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      you misread that slide
- aetherane 5y ago
  Is everyone who works in the defense industry then evil? I don't get why tech companies are special in this regard.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Yes, coordinated conspiracy to commit mass murder definitely falls under "evil" in my morality. Let's not forget that "defense" is itself a euphemism, a rebrand from "Department of War". There's nothing defensive about the USA's global drone assassination program, quite the opposite.
- _e8un 5y ago
  Is the defense industry evil? There wouldn't be a western, democratic world without it. It also indirectly advances technology. The Internet was a defence project.
  - gbhjnkthrow 5y ago
    > There wouldn't be a western, democratic world without it. Citation very much needed. That's an extremely narrow view of history (and many of the 'villains' on the global stage were responding to threats by the western, democratic world.) > The Internet was a defence project. The internet was an inevitability, but did receive defense funding and support. It is not fundamentally necessarily a defense project.
    - dekhn 5y ago
      I think it's fair to say that the US defense industry played a critical role in ensuring that the Allies were successful in WWII and the world would look very different if Germany had prevailed over western Europe and Russian over eastern Europe.
  - sneak 5y ago
    So was MK-ULTRA, and the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WW2. I don't think we get to cherry-pick. I'm pretty sure we would have had wide-area and eventually global computer networks soon enough even if ARPA hadn't funded that specific research. People like to talk to other people. A better argument would be GPS due to the massive capex involved, I think, but even that is one that is far too useful to have gone not-done for long. Starlink shows us that it didn't need to be the military.
adminscoffee 5y ago
google has to be working with the ccp to do business in china, would this be a conflict of interest/national security issue for either nation or no?
bluecalm 5y ago
Social media ethics: Work with important government department - can't have that! Work with the most ridiculously inefficient, scam enabling, dirty and pointless tech ever invented: "yup, excited about transforming the world".
liveoneggs 5y ago
is this website real? (nytimes.blog) it is registered on namecheap, hosted behind cloudflare, whois doesn't match nytimes.com, is running wordpress with an off-the-shelf theme, etc
- lelandfe 5y ago
  Good catch. This looks like a scam. Even running a fake Twitter: https://twitter.com/nytimesblog/ https://twitter.com/nytimesblog/ Here's the original https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/technology/google-pentagon-artificial-intelligence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/technology/google-pentago...
- dmitrygr 5y ago
  All the language buttons on to link to the real NYT website except "US" which links to this blog. Sure looks fishy...

9 points by Jerry2 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Once again, we are reminded that most everyone who cared about "don't be evil" is gone or powerless now. I watched a video yesterday where Schmidt said he thought it was a joke.

adminscoffee 5y ago
it's super sad to see a business sell out this hard. it's almost like the end of their empire is unfolding in front of us
- sneak 5y ago
  In the USA, you either become big enough to replace the military, or you simply get integrated with them. The CIA did the former, AWS did the latter. Google is already by law providing tons of data to NSA/et al without a warrant, for military spying (PRISM/FAA702). This is just another predictable step.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    you misread that slide
aetherane 5y ago
Is everyone who works in the defense industry then evil? I don't get why tech companies are special in this regard.
- sneak 5y ago
  Yes, coordinated conspiracy to commit mass murder definitely falls under "evil" in my morality. Let's not forget that "defense" is itself a euphemism, a rebrand from "Department of War". There's nothing defensive about the USA's global drone assassination program, quite the opposite.
_e8un 5y ago
Is the defense industry evil? There wouldn't be a western, democratic world without it. It also indirectly advances technology. The Internet was a defence project.
- gbhjnkthrow 5y ago
  > There wouldn't be a western, democratic world without it. Citation very much needed. That's an extremely narrow view of history (and many of the 'villains' on the global stage were responding to threats by the western, democratic world.) > The Internet was a defence project. The internet was an inevitability, but did receive defense funding and support. It is not fundamentally necessarily a defense project.
  - dekhn 5y ago
    I think it's fair to say that the US defense industry played a critical role in ensuring that the Allies were successful in WWII and the world would look very different if Germany had prevailed over western Europe and Russian over eastern Europe.
- sneak 5y ago
  So was MK-ULTRA, and the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps during WW2. I don't think we get to cherry-pick. I'm pretty sure we would have had wide-area and eventually global computer networks soon enough even if ARPA hadn't funded that specific research. People like to talk to other people. A better argument would be GPS due to the massive capex involved, I think, but even that is one that is far too useful to have gone not-done for long. Starlink shows us that it didn't need to be the military.

adminscoffee 5y ago

google has to be working with the ccp to do business in china, would this be a conflict of interest/national security issue for either nation or no?

bluecalm 5y ago

Social media ethics: Work with important government department - can't have that! Work with the most ridiculously inefficient, scam enabling, dirty and pointless tech ever invented: "yup, excited about transforming the world".

liveoneggs 5y ago

is this website real? (nytimes.blog) it is registered on namecheap, hosted behind cloudflare, whois doesn't match nytimes.com, is running wordpress with an off-the-shelf theme, etc

lelandfe 5y ago
Good catch. This looks like a scam. Even running a fake Twitter: https://twitter.com/nytimesblog/ https://twitter.com/nytimesblog/ Here's the original https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/technology/google-pentagon-artificial-intelligence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/technology/google-pentago...
dmitrygr 5y ago
All the language buttons on to link to the real NYT website except "US" which links to this blog. Sure looks fishy...