Google Is Pursuing Pentagon Cloud Contract Quietly, Fearing Employee Revolt | Hacker News Reader

Google Is Pursuing Pentagon Cloud Contract Quietly, Fearing Employee Revolt

defenseone.com

42 pointsscapecast24 comments

What's wrong with google? Are they that afraid of their internal perception?

Business is, so long as legal, business. This is not any worse than the personal info they collect on all google product users, but somehow this is more outrageous?

Can you imagine the people working at big co in S Korea, Japan, China, India, Russia, South Africa, etc., taking this kind of personal affront stand? No, don't provide services to your own government, they bad.

Well, Google is an advertising firm run by social justice warriors, so ...

The issue is not really working for the government. Internally there is a strong culture around ethics. One day we had an interesting discussion between collegues at lunch: we imagined what would happen if Google got involved in a war and participated to the effort by using all its projects for nefarious purposes... Biological weapons, robots, AI weapons, infrastructure hacked all over, disinformation, ... I think no one wants a militarized Google.

I do believe many of the people there believe in some form of ethics, but are blind to others. We know that Google has more information on people than FB, but this is irrelevant to most googlers because they believe they are good custodians of the data.

Back to realpolitik. These capabilities will be developed by someone. Unilateral retrenchment is ineffective, so if they somehow want to stall the US gov't (because they think google would give the gov't a leg up) all they are doing is giving our competitors in whatever area a nice handicap.

It would have been like the people working on the Manhattan project saying, no, this is unethical, while Germany and Japan would continue the effort unencumbered --leaving the US at a tremendous disadvantage.

It would make more sense to not collaborate with Russian/Chinese governments, since those are not remotely democratically elected.

This is true, but people in those countries believe in social cohesion and also personally believe that while flawed, they owe allegiance to their respective countries --they are not unaware of their respective countries' failings, afterall.

From what I know, contractors for questionable activities with Russian govt mostly live abroad, so much for social cohesion. No idea what they do in China.

There definitely are people who would not feel allegiance, that's true anywhere. But, by and large, Russians knowing Putin is not a good guy, etc., will still do things for Russia and in Russia's interest --even if that for now benefits Putin. Russia, much like China, is a society that is multi-generational in purpose. That is, they are willing to sacrifice their own generation for the benefit of a future generation --hence Putin somewhat irrelevant in the course of history of their country, when it comes to deciding what side to fall on.

That's not even funny (I'm Russian). There was zero allegiance while mass media was even half-free. After 15 years of state monopoly on TV most people are actually frightened into allegiance. Have a read: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/29/24-hour-putin-...

Edit: wrong week of watching Russian TV, correct one here:http://www.businessinsider.com/russias-showdown-with-west-wi...

While Putin did suppress the opposition, opposition figures readily admit that had there been free elections Putin would have still won, just not by as much.

I like the guardian somewhat, but you gotta know who the guardian are.

Not disputing your take --but you and I must know a diff set of people. [Should Russia return Crimea, should they give Japan the Ryukus --some small insignificant islets]

Also, amongst Russians, there are different waves of emigres. Some waves forsook everything upon leaving, those emigres by their nature, have a different view than other waves.

I edited the above comment with the correct article.

It's pointless to argue about free election outcome without free access to media. In any western country, an investigation alleging president's friends funneling billions of tax money offshore would be in every news issue. Brazil got rid of a president over much much less. How can you call it an election if you can't get any airtime, are convicted in a kangaroo court and your brother is in prison?

First the Github/ICE scandal, now this.

When did it become disgraceful to be a part of your country?

When the country is doing disgraceful things. Particularly our armed forces and law enforcement.

Google has many thousands of employees that don't live in America.

And of those that do live in America, is it that hard to understand that some of them don't want to work for a defence contractor?

what scandal are you referring to?

There is very little officially published about this. It appears that Github invited a senior ICE official to speak at one of their events. This, however remote, affiliation was deemed inappropriate by many, forcing Github to rescind the invitation.

https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/982655776614318080

What is the meaning of the ICE acronym?

I believe it’s “immigration and customs enforcement”.

Yet the very same folks were totally fine under Obama, who deported the largest number of illegal aliens ever. The whole anti-Trump hysteria used to crack me up, but it’s getting tiresome.

When the country does indefensible things.

As someone that helped construct killing machines(Nuclear submarines in my case) in the past, I will say that I believe I share responsibility for their destruction. My life will be more peaceful when they have retired from service.

At the same time, my life is more peaceful now knowing they’re operational.

At the same time, people in the armed forces are probably sick of hearing "GOOD JAB!" and getting slapped on the back while their countrymen do nothing to prevent the need for the means of war.

Hopefully none of those employees read HN.

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