Google Parent Alphabet and Aramco in Talks to Build Tech Hub in Saudi Arabia
wsj.com
wsj.com
While it was a tough slog living in the middle east, I did it out of greed (my startup was doing ML-driven-health diagnostics...and...where else can you get years of medical records with full government buy-in).
However..having been there I can see a lot of reasons for this possible Alphabet-SA-Aramco deal:
- there is NO cloud endpoint in the region. no AWS/GoogleCloud/Azure/SoftLayer, nothing. So if you have data locality issues, like we did, you build your own storage/GPU cluster as we did. There is a huge opportunity for AWS/GoogleCloud/Azure/SoftLayer, locality laws make doing typical stuff impossible in the middle east -- just imagine how your life would be if you couldn't use cloud services?!
- electricity is near free due to energy abundance, we paid no electricity costs on our giant GPU grid in the region
- there is a lot of tech and ml talent in the region, most of it unable to take jobs in the US due to immigration laws and unable to take jobs in China due to cultural differences. there are also many customs like keeping your parents living in your home, which is now (post-2016) pretty must impossible with current western immigration laws. we hired locally (mostly Egypt) and got great talent for a fraction of US costs.
- for the likes of DeepMind/DeepHealth trying to get UK NHS data, they can do it far more easily in Saudi Arabia for training models, etc.
I'm back home in the US after 3yrs overseas. DM me if you are curious.
I cant say I didn't try. We did a product with both market opportunity and one where the marginal cost would have allowed free distribution in needy countries. Inexpensive diagnostics help find conditions earlier so they can be treated more effectively and better human health, so very proud of what we achieved product-wise (whatever the business outcome.) Having a good country to work in with a sensible medical system and well-aligned incentives to improve the system allowed this. We tried to sell the idea/services in the US but the medical industry here is just out-of-control-complex-nonsensical.
That said, whatever one might think of the governments, we had a great time with the local population. We were a bit bubbled in a western "compound" and a US embassy school for the kids, but life was very easy there.
If you want apartment life, you can live/entertain pretty inexpensively on an artificial island with all things you might want: http://thepearlqatar.com/EN/TheIsland/Pages/The-Pearl-Qatar....
We did our best work in Qatar but there are early efforts in several other regional countries. The Arab embargos from this past summer really put a damper on that unfortunately. There is still hope, someone else is now running the effort and I hope it succeeds. Our top thing was real-time TB diagnosis for use at airports but we developed a number of other classifiers.
You are right, UAE is way ahead on the freezone aspect. Qatar, however, is way ahead on the academic front with the most concentrated selection of western academic branches (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_City). For us, having a Cornell University Medical School branch next door, complete with tenured Cornell Med School professors was a huge sell for Qatar.
Saudi Arabia, a country that has barbaric set of laws against women, and domestic workers [2] [3] which essentially the type of slavery we have not seen broadly in centuries.
A country with very negative human rights records [4] that should be sanctioned by UN [5]
It's so unthinkable that Alphabet, the "Don't be Evil" company would even consider that.
It does not even make business sense, as the country is in the midsts of internal clashes [6] and not very stable nor it has any human capital that can help google [7]
So, I'm lead to believe it's trading Saudi money for Google's brand to help create PR. So basically Google is used to promote evil!
[1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/feb/02/travis-ka...
[2] www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34483504
[3] https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/9ae4qd/where-maids-ar...
[4]https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/saudi...
[5] https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/12/19/its-time-un-sanction-sau...
[6] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-06/saudi-ara...
[7]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/296195348_Exploring...
You don't need very much skilled labor to run a data center. The data centers in South Carolina are running just fine.
If Aramco is putting any money into this, they are getting swindled.
Since when is conservative synonymous with authoritarian?
In other words: IMHO, social conservatism is very much authoritarian, in that it seeks to proscribe certain modes of living as contrary to the moral fabric of society. Saudi Arabia is, in this view, a prime example of this as it approaches its logical extreme. Fiscal conservatism, OTOH, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with authoritarianism. We've unfortunately managed to conflate the two in modern American politics, which is how you end up with counter-productive policies like "tough on crime", "war on drugs", "cut basic social services", etc. that end up costing more than necessary in the service of "proving" a moral point.
An example: At the moment, 9 of the top 10 algorithms for Stanford Question Answering Dataset, including all of the top 5, are by Chinese teams. (2 of them by Microsoft Asia which is based in Beijing and the other 7 are by Chinese companies).
https://rajpurkar.github.io/SQuAD-explorer/
I wrote this about 3 months ago and the trend becomes quite concrete faster than I thought:
> Key competitive advantages of China are their strength in quantitative skills, a huge population, and the hard working and competitive culture of the populace.
> ...
> My back-of-the-envelope calculation, assuming above figures, is the proportion will be about five times as large. But China has more than 4 times the population of the US, so the difference in potential numbers of AI-capable natives could be around 20 times. ...
> ...
> The distinct advantage of the US is that it is the magnet for top talents and ambitious people from all over the world, including the Chinese, so it might continue to lead for a while. However, if the US becomes inhospitable to talents or potential talents, it is clear that China with its quality and quantity of human resources will soon take the lead.
Full comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15569339
Edit: they do fund a lot of PhD research in US universities, including fellowship for PhD students. But one can't expect a company, even Google, to overhaul the entire system
Unfortunately, when it comes to legislation and budget considerations (including education), lobbying works.
As it stands, US education is all over the place, and worse, it's more and more only becoming available to the elite; social mobility is low, that is, if you're born poor chances are you'll end up poor yourself.
This is unlike where I came from, where my dad was a low paid metalworker but I got an effectively free college education and repaid that government funding multiple times over in income taxes in just a few years, whilst simultaneously bringing a lot more money home than my parents did (to oppose any "but income taxes screw with my income" claims).
Anyway, since the government isn't doing it, I do think it's up to the big companies to offer it. That's what the US is all about, isn't it? Changing it to a capitalist government, where it's big companies that rule the people, not the government.
It is for this reason that I don't think private companies can significantly change that, even in the US. Even the most innovative/successful companies don't last that long in the US to make a significant change in the Education system.
And to an even larger extent it's up to the citizens of the U.S. Most don't care enough to support/reward such efforts at the ballot booth, so the politicians aren't motivated, and things don't get done.
They will continue to lobby I'm sure, as they will prefer to find the talent they need near their existing infrastructure instead of needing to build new - but they are at the point where plan B (building infrastructure elsewhere) is looking like competitive value for the investment in time and money.
Another argument (of several, large investments like this are very far from simple single-variable issues) may also be that their competitors don't have a foothold there: so by investing first they get access to that talent pool more exclusively than they do the pools elsewhere, at least initially.
Because the US is very familiar with them?[1] US companies continue to make billions off of authoritarian regimes. Why should tech be a stranger?
From a practical perspective, they are being smart, and safe. They know that China is positioning itself as the de facto global leader in trade, aid, finance, development, consumerism, etc, and their AI research is way ahead of ours. They know the Saudis have a butt-ton of money and can help them open up other middle eastern business. And they're getting in on the ground floor before their competitors do.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_authoritarian_regimes_...
https://www.saudismartcities.net/
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa...
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...
One might ask why during peak oil on the precipice of a major decline in relevance of Saudi Arabia (partner to the US military and client state of the US Government) this would be happening.
There must be a need to have US-guided firms crowd out any other tech infrastructure investment in Saudi, to provide a substrate more friendly to surveillance and psychological operations projects in the future.
There is also the factor that because we are at peak oil, Saudi elites have an unprecedented amount of wealth and they can simply transfer some of it to Alphabet in exchange for the increased political clout that teaming up with a major defense contractor offers.
Note that for all the moralizing done by Google about not being evil, censorship, etc., Alphabet is teaming up with one of the most backward and corrupt regimes in the modern world, a regime that would have been replaced by something far more democratic long ago if it weren't for support by the US Government.
So while in general economic cooperation makes wars less likely and helps reinforce private sector independence from the public sector (which is generally a good thing) anything involving Saudi or Alphabet is clearly a government sponsored, military-focused operation at its core.
It's going to be pretty hard for Alphabet employees to explain to their grandchildren why they worked for a company that was known to cooperate with US domestic surveillance programs and team up with undemocratic monarchies.
The greatest human evils are not obvious like scary monsters in movies, they creep up around us with the support of many reasonable people.
A tech hub, bringing coding, tech and entrepreneurship to a region (any region) is a good thing. It creates opportunities and helps lower and middle income individuals/family grow.
The question is if such a company will actually be free to serve/help the people or will it be a tool of the oppressive regime
FTFY
However, it certainly is a legitimate question as to what role the company may play, what control it will have etc. If a free country like the US spies on its people through tech, to what extent would be expected Saudia Arabia would have no issues going far beyond
Unfortunately, if there are abuses, we will likely never know.
>However, it certainly is a legitimate question as to what role the company may play, what control it will have etc.
It is always a legitimate question for any country. We have to move beyond merely asking questions, and work towards analyzing the scenarios. I know you did not intend it as such, but this is merely an alternative phrasing of "But I can't help wonder..."
>If a free country like the US spies on its people through tech, to what extent would be expected Saudia Arabia would have no issues going far beyond
I think the answer depends on how well you know Saudi Arabia. This is very much a business relationship, and very likely with active members of the royal family having some stake in it. They are not all-powerful in this regard, and Google does have its leverage. The net outcome will likely be a tweaking to satisfy both sides as opposed to something draconian.
There are countries (e.g. Pakistan) who in the past banned Youtube outright for long periods of time. With this move, I think this will make it far less likely it will be banned outright in Saudi Arabia - both sides will have something to lose. I don't doubt some filtering will be done, but that doesn't bother me any more than the sub-culture based filtering Youtube already does in the US.
Certain behaviors we consider normal can get you imprisoned or worse. Will Google be bound to report such activities from either data it collects or just reporting on its own employees? Troubling is that the answer to such I can not fully expect would necessarily be disclosed.
There is an old saying: people get the government they deserve
Beside (to address the tu quoque), among this crowd, I think you'll find that of those who (a) need not drive to work, or (b) can afford an electric vehicle (which is many of us), petroleum-based vehicle usage is far below the US average.
Are there travel restrictions there?
"Many travellers remain wary of visiting Saudi Arabia due to its extremely conservative culture and instability in the region...Major cities in Saudi Arabia such as Riyadh, Jeddah and Dhahran are considered to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Saudi Arabia still enforces strict Islamic rules on dress codes and gender segregation, though the Crown Prince's reforms may see this change. Public cinemas and theatres are also banned, another restriction which may need to be lifted if the country is to attract foreign tourists."
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/saudi-a...
* No entry if you're from or have been to Israel * No entry if you're from or have been from a country afflicted with ebola * No entry if you're from Quatar * Heavy punishments up to death if you don't follow their laws. That is, no pork, no alcohol, no non-islam religions, no homosexuality, porn, or unmarried sex.
Also keep the clothing things in mind; no shorts / t-shirt there, and women probably need to cover their heads.
Anyway, I did see tourism adverts on TV, advertising the sail hotel and such (forgot the name).
Sail hotel is in Dubai (in the U.A.E.)...different country.
As for the laws, pretty much everything goes inside compounds, which is where nearly all westerners live.
Diversity also includes operating in countries that are not as liberal as e.g. the US pretends to be; it's the only way to get a diverse world view for anyone. Closing your eyes for a culture as different as e.g. Saudi Arabia is not the way to go.
When the Damore thing went down Twitter was alight with their righteous indignation but now Google is happy to do business with a regime that regularly executes LGBT and not a squeak. Maybe they are afraid of being labelled racist?
Or is it some sort of investment in hydrocarbon energy to make up for all their renewable data centers?
Seems like a weird direction for Google. Especially since I think this is the first “tech hub” they have started in a specific country. Would be way cooler if it was in Nigeria or some developing nation with really high potential.
money chasing is, of course, amoral.
to be clear, this isn't even a case of "oh but they were forced into it" or "they'll go out of business if they don't"-- not that either of those absolve responsibility.
they're working to make this happen. they WANT to support the saudi regime.
i guess some people will try to break out the old "not everything is black and white" chestnut wrt the saudi government. unfortunately this is in fact an issue that is black and white with no moral ambiguity; the saudis execute dissidents, oppress women, suppress free speech, are waging a war of starvation against civilians in yemen, all while supporting jihadists worldwide. the average saudi person is probably a nice person.
but that doesn't make it okay to do business with them.
Plugging for duckduckgo - making the switch is easy, free, and without ethical mishaps.
- using umatrix to block requests to googleapis, google analytics, etc.
- dont use alphabets other products (youtube, hangouts, chrome, blogger, google earth, etc.)
- dont use frameworks from google or google associated companies (angular, gwt, tensorflow)
- dont use gogoles dns service if you happen to live in a opressive regime, that utilizes dns blocking
Doing this is perfectly possible, but you will isolate yourself very quickly. I use DDG since a while, and its an adequate search engine. But everything else... way too much hassle...
The US is a backwards regime with ongoing human rights violations. I mean look at your own shit first before throwing it at others.
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