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Comment by gaius | Hacker News Reader

But we're all cool with Google helping with drone strikes, right?

I am both wary of some of the projects being done in regards to surveillance, but also not delusional about the focus other nations militaries have in regards to these technologies. It's highly relevant for operations abroad, and whether those operations should happen or not is a separate problem than the military's technological capacity. There's a fine line here, but most of the outrage should go to Congress more than anyone.

At the end of the day, while as an American aware that I disagree with many things the military and government does, it does not infuriate me that they are working with the best technology companies here to stay ahead (preferably) or at least par with what other nations are doing, especially when it comes to protecting US citizens abroad. No, that isn't a blank check of "anything soldiers do is infinitely defensible" but the seemingly 'noble' hobbling of US competitiveness seems out of line to me. I don't think it is an immediate crime for Google (a leader if there ever was one in these spaces) to do projects with them.

If employees have issues with it, then they can request to not be on those projects/teams or seek employment elsewhere, but the notion that it is inherently evil to do work with the government or military is absurd to me.

he notion that it is inherently evil to do work with the government or military is absurd to me

No-one is asserting that.

What are you asserting then, exactly?

Its stupid to think these companies are anything less than evil. Look at Palantir's mission statement. gawd. lol.

For people wondering, it's "What We Believe".

More significantly, "we're" all cool with US soldiers and anything they do to other countries. I don't understand the disconnect in "soldier good, army bad".

How about you ask the people that US soldiers protect, like the people liberated from living under the dictatorship of Saddam, whether they're cool with US soldiers?

It's so funny to see people ignore all the tremendous amount of good that US soldiers and the military have done in the modern era for different peoples and nations and obsessively focus on the relatively few individual bad actors and examples of clear military wrongdoing. It's naive.

I used to teach jiu-jitsu to an Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker in London. Despite his own people being gassed, he preferred Saddam. If you kept on the right side of the powers-that-be, you could run businesses and have a life. This is in contrast to the anarchy that ensued after the West's invasion.

Iraqi Kurdistan hasn't had many of the security issues that southern Iraq has had. I assume he was a Kurdistan not living in the north?

Every Kurd from the north that I know prefers their current situation to when sadaam was gassing them

Nope, he was living in the north. Sadly I forget exactly where.

Thanks USA for keeping bases on my country's sea and soil, meddling with internal politics and also thank you very much for the random civilian accidents when your kind soldiers are too drunk to, at least, be kind to the land you are raping for your own good. Some more wine, kind sir?

Blah.

Ah yes, the freedom army, "liberating" peoples from their oil.

Since we live in a democracy, you really should take it one step further and deeply examine yourself, the voter, as well.

The US has a great many resources; natural, produced and human capital. There are absolutely organised groups (some are nation states, some less powerful) that would come over and take those resources away if there was an opportunity.

In theory, soldiers of the US army will going to stop that thievery by any means up to and including giving away their lives for their country. This is a critically important role, and as a society you can't really afford to send mixed messages about how important soldiers are. This is doubly true because of the potential risks they face, they need to feel appreciated. They are filling a valuable role.

What the leadership does with those soldiers in times of relative peace, however, is highly questionable and open to the usual rough and tumble of political debate.

Since i was born, US seems to be the only country actively and openly stealing other countries' resources (apart from Friendly Green Men in Crimea ofc)

Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Serbian encroachment in Bosnia. Argentinian invasion of the Falklands. Chinese annexation of islands in the South China Sea. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (though I don’t know how old you are, likewise for Falklands). Russian occupation of territory from Georgia. ...I’m sure I’ve missed a few.

First and Second Congo Wars, a large part of which is battling for control of the mines in that region. It's one of the conflicts which gave rise to the concept of blood diamonds, which is to say, it's one of the few conflicts that's actually about control of natural resources.

(I'm assuming, of course, that the GP is largely talking about "wars I disagree with" when referring to "actively and openly stealing other countries' resources," because the number of recent conflicts that are openly about resource control is very small and the US is involved with none of them. The Iraq War is often claimed to be about oil grab, but that doesn't really make any sense when you dig into the history of the buildup to the war, and in any case, it certainly wasn't "openly" about it.)

There's also the whole Middle East and N. Africa situation, where Islamic countries are funding insurrectionists in their Islamic neighbors.

Indeed i forgot about those, you are correct.

A _tiny_ difference between those and United States of America is that USA crosses entire oceans to steal resources, where other invasions you mentioned are bordering countries; exception to that is obviously the Malvinas Island occupation by the British Empire - talking of which:

> Argentinian invasion of the Falklands Do you also consider Angola to be rightful Portuguese soil?

the Malvinas Island occupation by the British Empire

There was a British colony on the Falklands before Argentina even existed as a country. It was unnamed and unoccupied by anyone.

Then why not say they belong to the french, they were there even before the brits?

As far as I can read Las Malvinas were occupied by spanish and british forces, then the brits volountarily abandoned the place[0]

[0](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falkland_Islands#cite_note-FOO...)

Funny you should say that, because the last time the US crossed an ocean to steal resources was, uh... never.

The only US wars that are strongly arguably stealing resources would be the various banana wars (but the Gulf of Mexico isn't exactly an ocean), the Spanish-American War (ditto; note that the US never set out on the war to conquer the Philippines, the US Navy just happened to be in the area at the time), and the Indian Wars.

I suggest reading about how Gaddafi's came to power, who financed the Italian _anni di piombo_ or checking where the biggest US military bases have been built.

I guess they just happened to be there because of the nice weather.

You shouldn't turn your eyes towards Isreal, Russia (as mentioned above), many of the central African nations, China's treatment of some of it's bordering states and the Korean Peninsula.

To me Israel counts as USA invasion.

I’m not sure that’s true in the pure economic sense. It would have been incalculably cheaper to simply go on buying Iraqi oil that they were more than happy to sell us.

This rosy fantasy army recruitment in many ways erases the actual lives of people that join. Army recruitment often targets the poor and marginalized. People that have few opportunities in their communities for stable, above-board middle class employment.

People get recruited for the front lines because the system we’ve built around them pushes them in that direction. Our public schools are increasingly defunded, and people from communities that suffered under redlining still find it difficult to secure credit for to this day. (1)

Soldiers suffer for our national wealth and more often then not have been excluded from spaces where that wealth is generated.

1. https://www.revealnews.org/article/for-people-of-color-banks...

>The US has a great many resources; natural, produced and human capital. There are absolutely organised groups (some are nation states, some less powerful) that would come over and take those resources away if there was an opportunity.

Like the US did rape and pillage all over the world? Toppling regimes, bribing politicians, committing massacres, for the sake of the rich and powerful in the US?

Was Google actually helping any more than just putting tensorflow on GitHub?

If the Intercept is to be believed, yes:

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/06/google-is-quietly-provid...

With that said, while I'm generally a fan of their work, they've reported on some things I have non-public knowledge of in a way that I would classify as disingenuous with the intent to enhance the appearance of wrongdoing.

If the Intercept is to be believed

Well, they cite a quote given to Bloomberg by a Google spokesperson.

Yes. Otherwise there wouldn’t be an internal shitstorm.

i am not cool with it.

Me neither - it was a rhetorical question

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