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

https://nytimes.blog/google-wants-to-work-with-the-pentagon-again-despite-employee-concerns/

by Jerry2 • 5 years ago

9 15 5 years ago

nytimes.blog

sneak4• 5 years 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.

adminscoffee2• 5 years 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

sneak4• 5 years 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.

aetherane• 5 years ago

Is everyone who works in the defense industry then evil? I don't get why tech companies are special in this regard.

sneak4• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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.

sneak4• 5 years 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.

adminscoffee2• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years 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• 5 years ago

Good catch. This looks like a scam. Even running a fake Twitter: https://twitter.com/nytimesblog/

Here's the original https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/technology/google-pentago...

dmitrygr• 5 years ago

All the language buttons on to link to the real NYT website except "US" which links to this blog. Sure looks fishy...

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

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