Google Scientist Resigns Over “Forfeiture of Our Values” in China
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
Most of us here on HN are entrepreneurs. We wanna make something useful to the world and make tons of money in return. Just as we should look at what kind of impact our products have on our users' lives, in the discussion of whether Google should return to China, we shouldn't focus on the Chinese government and ignore the 1 billion Chinese people.
If Google launch a new Google.cn:
1. The Chinese government won't benefit much from this. Compared to these Chinese companies, Google will always be an outsider. It will have to work with the government, but won't be eager to do so, and might cause troubles to the government from time to time.
2. The Chinese people will benefit a lot! Without good competition, the dominant search engine Baidui has become such a bad actor over the years. If you are annoyed by Google ads, Baidu is 100 times worse, especially on mobile devices. For many search terms, the first a few pages are all ads. People are really fed up with this. In a recent survey by Sina (http://finance.sina.com.cn/stock/s/2018-08-07/doc-ihhkuskt26...) 72.8% the users surveied wanna use Google if it goes back to China.
If you were a farmer in the North right before the civil war, you probably would still have been willing to sell to the people living in the south that are against slavery, even if Southern government would benefit from tax.
Point 1 makes no sense, Project Dragonfly demonstrates a willingness to work with the Chinese government in the first place, so this does what for the Chinese people?
And in point 2, your only claim of the provided benefit is less annoying ads? Really? This is not a very convincing argument and reads like standard HN Chinese astroturfing...
Why is that not convincing, when you see how popular any ads related discussion in HN is(only yesterday something about brave browser..)?
Because all the companies operating in China already cooperate with the Chinese government. Google entering or not entering China changes nothing about the control of the Chinese government over its people.
> so this does what for the Chinese people?
Bringing a better search engine back while leaving everything else (like censorship) at its status quo.
Poulson's view seems to align with Brin's view from 2010. I wonder what Brin would have to say about the issue today, because the facts in China have not changed much since 2010, certainly not to the better.
He stopped talking shortly thereafter because a Google employee was leaking his statements to a reporter in realtime.
(My guess is the trade-off between the moral issues and the ability to like plate his yacht in platinum.)
I'm of the opinion anyone who's still in the game after becoming a billionaire is doing so for non-monetary reasons. At this point it might not be about money, but power? Either way...
I suppose not knowing the answer to that questions makes me likely not to become a billionaire...
I wonder about this too.
By this point, it's pretty clear that Google's strategy of leaving China hasn't led to any improvement in China with respect to censorship and individual liberties. Instead, Chinese companies that are willing to do whatever the Chinese government wants without question have filled the gap that Google left.
I wonder if he's concluded that this strategy is a failure and the best way to improve conditions is to re-enter China, even if it means playing by their rules.
Taking this to an absurd level: If the Aztecs still existed and were sacrificing humans with their volcanic rock blades. Should we sell them at least some steel blades, so their victims could die a little quicker and less painful death? Or should we absolutely abstain from selling any weapons to those murderous bastards?
I don't know.
Before a certain size and/or complexity use of force to literally force changes seems like the best option. But above that, there's no point in waging a war for more world happiness.
And then, on the other end of the spectrum we have the sophisticated autocratic propaganda machines (that are democratic in name), where people 4 year after 4 year vote in (almost) the same kleptocrats. Of course the election system favors the ruling party, of course there's a lot of ordinary cheating, of course the ruling party somehow manages to spend many times more on campaigning than the opposition, but the brain washing works, so why not?
[1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/08/sa...
[2] - https://www.businessinsider.com.au/saudi-arabia-crucified-ma...
I'm not sure I feel as strongly on this subject as he does. Nevertheless, he is one of the finest minds I've ever encountered.
As I see it the choice is to either do what Google is doing, which means being involved, staying relevant, and making a few bucks along the way, or to stay away. In the latter case the only result will be diminished influence for Google and by extension the USA, as that won't damage China at all, it will just leave the door open for new Chinese tech giants.
It's called realpolitik.
Baidu already exists.
Some of the rhetoric I'm seeing fly around on the topic sounds a little overheated to me, compared to how bad things could get.
When you refuse to do business, and "encourage" your allies to do the same, then the other side begins to think that perhaps it may just be easier to take your resources by force.
Based on that, better to be in than out.
Maybe so, but you definitely can hurt human rights by working there. I would say providing censored search results (and putting an American stamp of approval on them) is hurting human rights there. Furthermore, giving an authoritarian government economic leverage over an American search engine company can hurt human rights here.
This is a storm in a tea cup, but it shows that the US feel increasingly insecure when it comes to China.
25 years after Tiananmen, most Chinese university students have never heard of it
https://www.vox.com/2014/6/3/5775918/25-years-after-tiananme...
"Gosh, if only we had known there were no WMDs!" Nothing about the Philippine-American War made it into any history book ever assigned to any student in USA, just as nothing about the liars who killed 600,000 Iraqis ever will. Aware or not, we are still being manipulated.
Having Google censor results could create the false impression that search results are censored similarly in the US as well.
Maybe we can trust Google not to hide stuff from us, but how come the following bullshit is all over Youtube?
"teleSUR is funded in whole or in part by the Latin American government" [0]
First of all, that warning doesn't even make sense. "The Latin American government"? Who's the president in that government? Maybe they have a king? Is that government less reliable than the USA government? Do they fight as many wars? Does the USA government fund any part of any media sources?
More importantly, now that this sort of pathetic annotation has started, wouldn't we expect it to increase? If Alphabet require a complete accounting of all income sources for all video posters, they'll be able to annotate more comprehensively, and then charge on a sliding scale to hide those annotations. Can actual censorship be far behind?
> ...false...
> Maybe we can trust Google not to hide stuff from us, but how come the following bullshit is all over Youtube?
You're going off into the weeds and talking about an entirely different issue.
Google search results in the US are not censored similarly to China's: you can search for Tiananmen Square or Kent State and get accurate results. The kind of thing we're talking about is a scenario where those queries return nothing, or only garbage the supports the party line. The false impression is the one created when a Chinese person cross-checks Baidu against a hypothetical Google.cn and sees no difference in censorship, and makes the error that Google.cn reflects the behavior of Google.com.
We're not talking about poor labeling around who funded what (which is not censorship at all, by the way).
The only question is whether Google and American interests want to be in the room or left outside in the cold.
It's always better to be involved and informed.
That assertion only makes sense if you assume that helping perpetuate human rights abuses has no impact on human rights abuses.
It's no different than the justification some use when we talk about the ethical ramifications of selling arms to middle eastern states in conflict.
"They are going to buy their arms from someone, it may as well be us!"
It is amoral almost by definition.
Only if you are an amoral actor that cares not a bit about human rights or ability to self-determination.
It is very much in the interests of the US and every democracy to uphold human rights and self-determination at every turn and every possible location in the world.
Failure to do so enables dictators, authoritarians, and criminals. The fact that we've often failed to do so, or do it well, does not mitigate the benefits when we it is done well, or the damage when we fail.
And make no mistake, failure is what you are pushing.
The only question is whether you are doing it right now as a shill for the CCP, or only because you are amoral?
NONSENSE. Google would be explicitly applying the best and brightest in the world to help CCP achieve its goals sooner and better.
CCP may indeed ultimately achieve those goals themselves, but it would be much later and with less expertise.
Delay and degrading anti-human-rights capabilities is a good unto itself, and a good to the US and every democracy.
Sometimes it is not better to be informed and involved with what are basically criminal gangs.
Are you promoting this because you are amoral or because you are a shill for the CCP?
Because when you don't, they make your existence difficult, to varying degrees?
Spending a lot of political capital to do the same thing as the other search engines in China doesn't seem like a good trade, politically. It makes a bit more sense as a way to make money, except that this doesn't seem like an area where China will let a foreign company win.
Google is building infrastructure for the powerful to control the masses' ability to communicate ideas.
Do you think the USA is "The People"? Then this is bad for them, because one of our most powerful companies is beginning to develop tools of direct social control.
Do you think the USA is the government & associated bureaucrats? Then this is good, because this technology will allow them to suppress threats to their authority.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made-goo...
Xi's trajectory is making me nervous right now, but then look at our current leadership. And their government DID lift a few hundred million people out of poverty over the last 30 years. Maybe we can work with that.
It's more than just a situation of, "Someone else will do it eventually, so I might as well" and then as you put it, make a few bucks along the way and stay relevant and so forth. The difference here is that Google is offering elite levels of brainpower/research and resources. Not everyone can do that.
And I think you meant realpolitik, the concept of viewing the world in terms of true/material interests.
In the former case it means increased influence of China's authoritarian government over an important western company that billions use to learn about the world. China has already used the implied threat to the Chinese operations of several American airlines to force them to make political changes to their global websites (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-44948599).
What do you think will happen if China asks Google to make changes to the results ranking for this query (https://www.google.com/search?q=tibet), so that it can continue "to share China's development opportunities [and] invest in and operate in China?" There are a couple of links on the first page I'm sure the Chinese government would say do not "respect China's laws and rules, China's sovereignty and territorial integrity and the feelings of the Chinese people."
Google are having zero influence on China's totalitarian government, and there is zero hope that they could have any such influence. It is either do what the CCP wants, when they want it, or Google gets booted anyway in favor of the locals.
Most likely, China is simply using them to build and steal the best surveillance technology faster. The better result from a human rights POV would be to have less-competent locals build it.
The sole exception would be if Google is working very tightly with NSA, CIA, etc. and actually installing a massive US spy network within China. While this is a possibility we wouldn't know about, it's unlikely given Google's culture.
So, no, this is not even close to being in the interests of the US or it's citizens (a few major Alphabet shareholders excepted).
Exactly.
Therefore it is nonsense to be outraged by what Google is doing.
I think you missed an important implication, from the context.
> Google are having zero influence on <limiting> China's totalitarian government
To spell it out, the GP was positing that by working with the CCP, Google was somehow adding western pro-human rights influence to the mix.
This is false because the CCP will allow no such influence.
Google's only possible influence is to enhance the effectiveness of the CCP's initiatives by adding Google's greater competence and development speed to the CCP's goal of mass surveillance and distorting or filtering the facts available to the Chinese people.
So, yes, since Google is enhancing the CCP's totalitarian goals of controlling the populace, outrage is quite appropriate (unless of course, you oppose the general principles of democracy and people being able to govern themselves).
My angle is very much one of realpolitik, as already mentioned, and outrage is either naive or disingenuous.
Seriously? Talk about naive, that's textbook.
"Realpolitik" -- you may be right about that, since the first definition is "a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations."
In short, you say it is great as long as you consider only practical issues, and ignore all moral or ethical considerations.
So, you are either trolling to assist the CCP's goals or are simply advocating for behaving without ethics or morals. Which is it?
And I can assure you that outrage against helping totalitarian/authoritarian regimes is neither naive or disingenuous, at least for ethical people.
I suggest reading people who have actually lived in and fought such regimes, such as Garry Kasparov, former World Chess Champion and Russian Presidential candidate -- people who've actually been there, done that, buried their friends.
I assure you, they know the real score, and have zero tolerance for "realpolitik" bullst.
Healthy competition and free exploration of markets leads to better tools which creates both economic and cultural value.
China is sacrificing that in order to maintain cultural control. It’s precisely the cost of Google’s absence which could twist their arm.
(Although I suspect they won’t change until they are forced to by censorship-resistant creatures which will spawn Jurrasic Park-style in the next decade from the morass of cheap electronic components and waste ideas)
You are right it's called Realpolitik.
You are advocating for amoral action, simply for profit, regardless of ethical considerations.
Your consistent promotion of this is repugnant, and raises the question of whether you are shilling for the CCP, are clueless about actual international affairs, or are simply amoral yourself.
If you truly have values, then your actions are aligned with, consistent with, and demonstrate your stated values.
It’s easy to talk about having values. Usually the pretense is dropped when the chance to advance self interest like money comes up.
When money is also the means to survival, it warrants a little more nuance than to wholly dismiss someone compromising in some way in order to live to fight another day.
From my perspective, most people who "stand up for whats right" have enough money to do so.
Those with significant assets may be _less_ inclined to upset the current order; war resisters, peace activists, and protesters of all stripes are often not from the moneyed classes.
Even though I don't necessarily agree with him, I see where he's coming from and I commend that he's actually willing to put his money where his mouth is on the matter.
Edit?
It is 100% abundantly clear that the Chinese government has no interest in "surrendering" industries to foreign competitors. If any foreign company gets reasonably successful I guarantee you the Chinese government will do something to hobble it in favour of a local competitor.
So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values and alienating a not-insignificant number of employees who feel pretty strongly about censorship and human rights to chase a buck that they will never get because the Chinese government will make sure that they don't.
The lure of a market of a billion people is an illusion. The game is very much rigged. I don't necessarily blame China for this either. But perhaps its well past due that the West restrict access to its markets to Chinese companies in some sort of reciprocal fashion.
If the Chinese government wants you to store data in China to do business there then require Chinese companies to store their data in the US to do business there. And so on.
This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
I can't hope for much more than enough people take such a stance to wake up the leadership of these companies but I'm not holding my breath.
What was the huge accomplishment of the 1978 reforms that Western people should recognize? From my vantage point, they were basically the abandonment of a lot of Maoist ideas in favor of something that was more in line with Western economic thought.
So the content of the reforms themselves weren't really an accomplishment, but rather activity of the people that the previous policies had restrained?
> and that didn't happen because a bureaucrat flicked his pen, but because hundreds of millions of Chinese toiled for generations to make it happen.
To make what happen? Deng's reforms? Poverty reduction? The path was so circuitous and so driven by the ideology and policy of leaders that I'm not sure if much can really be said about the political intent of that toil by such a large group over such a long span of time.
That’s right. The government basically concluded communism isn’t going to happen any time soon and shifted focus back towards gradual economic growth, and chaned lots of policies like opening more and more markets to private companies, letting state owned companies run in the same way as private companies, etc. (Before then, everything was owned and ran by the government). 1978 was just the beginning of the series of economic reforms
What’s different from many western economies though, is that government is investing and driving a lot of these changes.
Just to provide a little balance. I'm worried about Xi's direction too, but overall we could do a lot worse as far as major powers to share the globe with.
You're 100% right about the market protectionism stuff, though.
(sidenote, the implication that Great Leap Forward was intentional is a little disrespectful, IMO -- that's not how it happened).
Except Tibet (https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/chinese-invad...), Vietnam (https://thediplomat.com/2017/02/the-bitter-legacy-of-the-197...), India (https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs...), islands in the South China Sea claimed by other countries (https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2018/08/27/neighbor...), and unsuccessful attempts to seize islands controlled by Taiwan in the Taiwan Strait (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Taiwan_Strait_Crisis).
Still a very peaceful record compared to ourselves over the time period.
Why's everybody so invested up and loaded for bear with factoids about how China is so bad?
Have we terminally entered the Thucydides trap?
I'm seeing one 27-day long aggressive war in 1979, previous ones are 1960s or before? And some current day peaceful-yet-obnoxious saber rattling about the South China Sea? (completely oppose them on that BTW).
That's... really not 'aggressive expansionist power', as far as these things go. France, for example, has been in more war over the last 30 or 60 years. Britain MUCH more war. US and Russia? Don't get me started. China is by far the least warlike Security Council member, and it's quantifiable.
I'm all about spreading enlightenment values. Let's try not to look like total hypocritical a-holes and maybe we'll be successful.
~ Machiavelli
YMMV
They bad. We good. Even when facts suggest you're both different shades of bad.
Not random countries 10000 of miles away they felt like bossing around...
Straw-man much? It's not cool (and I didn't say that), but it's understandable. Neighbors have disputes, and that has been the case since forever, and it's understandable because they have common borders to settle (which are not god given), shared history, and so on.
Countries meddling with countries in the other end of the world just have imperialism and "national interests" to cheap oil and enforcing their preferred policies and ideology.
>What if they're technically not your neighbors, but still only like 100 kilometers away? Is that okay?
What if we stop asking silly questions and apply the principle of charity and/or common sense?
And yes, with nearby countries it's still natural to have disputes over e.g. this or that natural resource you both claim, this or that past war or whatever.
Now, France with Vietnam, the UK in Cyprus, or the US in Korea, not so much.
A country with shared borders and centuries of shared history with a nearby country is quite understandable to have disputes and even go to war with them.
With a country that had never interacted with it, and they have absolutely no reason being there (except entitlement and greed), not so much.
That's only controversial if one has blinders...
China is threatening Taiwan with war.
"The Kuomintang holds the "One China Principle" and maintains its claim that under the ROC Constitution (passed by the Kuomintang government in 1947 in Nanjing) the ROC has sovereignty over most of China (including by their interpretation both mainland China and Taiwan)...Former ROC President Ma Ying-jeou had re-asserted claims on mainland China as late as October 8, 2008."
The interview was published yesterday.
Ma said despite the stipulation of the ROC Constitution, Taiwan cannot recognize the existence of another country, nor does China want to recognize Taiwan. In other words, under the ROC Constitution, “mainland China” is not a country."
from http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2008/10/08/2...
China is trying to become a super power, as every great nation does. I've yet to see a nation do so peacefully. Just because they haven't yet launched a truly massive "peace keeping" mission.. well, I think it's a bit naive to believe they won't. History is a very useful tool, but you can't solely rely on an actor's past actions to predict the future.
(Also, I won't be replying to any whataboutisms.)
I'm really impressed by the box you just built, though:
1) China isn't perfect
2) I won't tolerate comparisons to other world powers, that's whataboutism
3) Therefore, China is black-and-white evil.
However, I do not think creating reciprocal restrictions on Chinese firms doing business in the West is helpful. Chinese companies with operations or staff in other countries will, over time, bring back values and practices that in the future may support the growth of rights in China while eroding the power of the Xi dictatorship.
Well, glass houses and stones and all that. There's a country that eliminated millions of its native citizens and restricted the little left to reservations, abducted and kept in slavery millions of black citizens for nearly four centuries, stole several huge areas from its southern neighbor, has the largest prison population in the world (25% of the world's prisoners for merely 4% the people in the world), had segregation for blacks until the late 60s, dropped two nuclear bombs (on civilians), has gone at war and/or occupied several countries all around the world that have no borders with it and had done nothing to it, has toppled foreign governments, has widespread surveillance that covers the whole world, meddles with worldwide politics, secret no-due-process prisons, regularly murders people in sovereign countries, they still have the death penalty, while the rest of the western world has abandoned, and their cops routinely kill thousands of people every year (especially black). Heck, they also bombed/invaded 4 different countries just in the last 20 years.
And they're pretending to have the moral high ground, and even point fingers to other countries! And if you point those things out, they go "but whataboutism", to restrict the conversation to some other party, which they present as uniquely bad.
It feels surreal to see Americans pretend they have any moral high ground.
American government is killing thousands more people yearly then Chinese for a long, long time.
Still, all things considered, I truly believe that America is relatively good, fair, and just, given the circumstances. Just imagine what the world would be like if positions were reversed, and China or Russia were the unchecked world superpower. I suspect such a reality would make you yearn for the balance we have today.
As a Latino and living in Brazil, I'm hoping for this to happen (and is happening). Brazilian business with Chinese and Russians are a lot more fair to our side than business done with US. And they don't use military force.
Now if I talk as a citizen of the world, I think the US is one of the greatest superpower of all history and brought insurmountable amount of human development (in pair with Egypt). But as a Brazilian, some if not all of our worldly known issues are because or related to the way our economic elite do business with the US.
No, what I'm saying is that Americans can't point fingers to China and Chinese while America state has a much more tighter grip on the world than China state. If you wanna fix human right problems in the world, you can have a lot more impact doing it at home than abroad.
"Vociferously" as in "some pundits talk about them but nobody really cares about those things, no politician resigned because of them, no mass demonstrations anywhere, and even when people talk it's the usual hypocrisy show (when it's not just about the costs and the toll on our own soldiers), meanwhile things get on as usual..."
>Americans who believe in human rights are somehow not credible when they criticize other governments in addition to their own. That is absolutely nonsense.
Actually sounds very valid.
Makes sense, to get one's house in order before they can talk about others. In fact that's where they should have more impact (and more moral responsibility to get right).
But it's also the case that such "criticizing other governments" is used by their own government as justification for all kinds of interventions.
It's this "criticizing of other governments" that was used to justify the wars and interventions that made Iraq and Libya from stable if autarchic regimes into today's hell on earth, for example.
2) The US is a democracy, is pretty diverse in terms of opinions, and the US government does things that the people don’t like (just like in China). I don’t hold the individuals of China accountable for egregious and unacceptable human rights violations of the Chinese government. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of US society to say that the people of the US are inseparable from their government’s decisions.
3) You still have yet to seriously engage the notion that the Chinese government is perpetrating wholesale oppression of a class of people simply for having a different identity. Whatever the US does doesn’t change how morally reprehensible that is. What-about-ism doesn’t change the moral calculus here one iota.
The US systematically does the same to its black portion of the population since always, sometimes in extreme ways, other times in soft ways.
Huh? It's notorious for doing just that. From the bizarro workship of the founding fathers, to celebrating people like Custer, to the whole Confederacy thing in the South, and so on. All kinds of dark history, from the treatment of Chinese in 19th century, to the mass murders of immigrants and workers fighting for their rights (e.g. at Ludlow) are swept under the rug.
>We acknowledge that the wholesale destruction of first peoples was a horrific act of violence, and the US does not cover up the ugly parts of its history. We talk about it openly.
Only in the sense that people don't go to jail for talking about them. Otherwise, the official histories and accounts all sidestep the ugly parts of history, wash them out in official narratives, and so on, and it takes people like Howard Zinn to make them somewhat known.
Heck, people are still taught the nuclear bombs in Hiroshima and Nagashaki where "necessary" and used to "stop the war".
Chinese currency has Mao's face on it, and he was a much bigger mass murderer that Hitler. The party he ran is still in power, and still actively violating basic human rights of its citizens.
I think the US government does have the moral high ground compared to the CCP, even if that ground may not be very high in all places.
In any event, our crimes and sins do not excuse those of others.
I'm also not concerned about China econimically annexing Africa. It's between them, and you can't say the West has been terrific friends to the nations and peoples of that continent, can you?
And I think the renaissance of the Silk Road would be amazing. A massive river of wealth and culture spanning the whole of Eurasia, vibrant and alive again after ages fallow. Merv was considered the most beautiful city in the world for centuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merv
My issue is with things like the sabre-rattling in the South China Sea, and the attempt to establish a stable society through mass mind-control and thought-policing. To my mind the legitimacy of the Communist government comes solely from the performance of the CCP in maintaining order. I think working toward economic well-being is a fine way to maintain order; but trying to cover up the "June Fourth Incident" is incredibly, wildly foolish.
YC just announced that they are going into China, and all I could think of was, what will you say when they ask you to call it the "June Fourth Incident" instead of "Tienanmen Square Massacre"? You're not naive, you must see that moment in the future, or have some idea to dodge it somehow? Will you kowtow?
To sum up, I like China and Chinese people; I don't like the CCP but only because of personal beliefs and preference; I don't think I'm capable of judging something so huge, that tries to run such a large and old nation. Nevertheless, some of their policies seem to me to be both odious and self-defeating. I'm alarmed that such an important source of world stability as the government of China might be acting foolishly. I mean, if we are going to elect a human cartoon character to our highest office I hope somebody is going to try to act like a grown-up, eh? The last thing the world needs is for the CCP to try to get into a dick-measuring contest with us in the sea, or demand to control the information everyone sees, or round people up into camps. Let's all settle down and make some money, because it's going to be expensive to cope with the weather from here on out, for everybody.
It seems to me you’re making a strong case for GPs point about how perceived US moral superiority influences one's arguments. It doesn't matter whether the US (the oppressor!) considered them citizens. It matters that they were people.
Disturbing how in the light of NSA revelations many people here were more concerned that they were spying on americans rather than the fact that they were spying on people.
In my non-american opinion, tech companies doing business in China are bad for the world. The fact that the US thinks it has the moral high ground doesn’t enter into it (incidentally China also considers itself morally superior).
(Appologise for brevity and potential errors, I am typing this on a phone).
And you're right that there are grave issues (for these and many other countries) but that doesn't excuse the actions of the Chinse government. Nor does it make all such actions equivalent and the presence of such sins doesn't disqualify you from pointing out such abuses.
Let's not forget that in the US I can talk about slavery, segregation, the arguably illegal wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, taking land from Native Americans and a whole host of other issues because such information isn't censored and I'm not going to end up in a labour camp for bringing it up.
Until that's true in China, don't even try the moral equivalence argument.
Doesn't change much. I'm contrasting the holier than thou western narrative vs China.
>And you're right that there are grave issues (for these and many other countries) but that doesn't excuse the actions of the Chinse government.
No, it just makes hypocrites of those that single it out.
>Nor does it make all such actions equivalent and the presence of such sins doesn't disqualify you from pointing out such abuses.
Sure. I posit that the actions I've described are actually worse.
>Let's not forget that in the US I can talk about slavery, segregation, the arguably illegal wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq, dropping the atomic bomb on Japan, taking land from Native Americans and a whole host of other issues because such information isn't censored and I'm not going to end up in a labour camp for bringing it up. Until that's true in China, don't even try the moral equivalence argument.
So, the idea is that it's OK to do bad things, as long as people in your country can openly talk about them?
Especially as this talk is just ignored (people talking and demonstrating about it didn't stop the Vietnam war continuing for 2 decades, or the abolition of slavery taking 4 centuries and a huge civil war).
And I don't want an evil person telling me how horrible another evil person is to further their interests...
Beyond that, which-tribe-is-better arguments powerfully attract flamewars. They're a fantastic way to deflect the original question. It's a classic pattern, and so we have a word for it, whataboutism.
Well, when put in front of a question, it's good to question the question itself.
People, media, governments, etc frame questions all day in a constrained way, either because it serves some interests, or because they can't see the bigger picture, or because they're used to thinking with blinders on.
I'd say that a question like "Is Google reentering China likely to do net good for the world?" much be put into question itself.
Why would it be good or bad? What is China? How is Google's own country better? What Google already does elsewhere? Is that good? Is China the same as "Chinese government"? and so on...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_harvesting_from_Falun_Go...
It's not an illusion. Go ask the hollywood studios. Go ask Apple. Go ask GM. Do you really believe those well paid business folks in hollywood, apple, GM, etc are banking on illusions?
> So by doing business in China Google is undermining its own values
Google never had any values. The only people who believe that are the naive who fell for their marketing campaign. Google is a company out to make money for its shareholders. They are fundamentally no different from exxon or disney.
> This is the country that starved millions of its own citizens (the Great Leap Forward), annexed Tibet (and now pretends Tibet never existed) and killed thousands of its own citizens in peaceful pro-democracy protests (Tiannemen Square), the last only ~30 years ago. How quickly we forget. And now Xi Jinping (aka "Winnie the Pooh") has abolished term limits and seems set to install himself as dictator for life in the model of Vladimir Putin.
What does this have to do with business? Why is it that whenever china is mentioned, the top comments invariably have political agenda behind it? Why don't you mention that china lifted 800 million people out of poverty? Does that not fit your agenda?
Regardless, the one thing I agree with you is china is not going to "surrender their industries to foreign competitors." Just like we wouldn't surrender our industry to china. That is common sense. What is happening is that china is giving portions of their market to foreign companies in exchange for what they want.
An example of this obviously tech transfer. Or china setting aside X number of hollywood movies to show in their huge movie market. Of course hollywood is going to give something for a portion of china's movie market share.
The idea that china's market is an illusion is verifiably false. Listen in on tim cook's quarterly conference call sometime.
Or take a look at box office numbers. US companies are making serious money in china.
https://www.scmp.com/culture/film-tv/article/2140381/china-w...
>I can't hope for much more than enough people take such a stance to wake up the leadership of these companies but I'm not holding my breath.
Wake up? Do you really think you know anything that the CEOs of apple, google, etc doesn't know? What hubris.
Take Gravity for instance. The reckless nation that shoots down the satellite causing all the damage is Russia when it was China in real life.
China then saved our heroine when its the Russians we've worked and continued to work with. Why? It's because they're chasing the Yuan while giving away soft power to China.
Yes. I thought my comment made that pretty clear. But is hollywood entitled to the chinese market? You act like the chinese owe us their market like we own them.
>Take Gravity for instance. The reckless nation that shoots down the satellite causing all the damage is Russia when it was China in real life.
I know. That's why I wrote "Or china setting aside X number of hollywood movies to show in their huge movie market. Of course hollywood is going to give something for a portion of china's movie market share."
Well, it's called the chinese market for a reason. It belongs to china. Their house, their rules. Why would china give their markets to foreigners without anything in return? Do you think we open our markets without anything in return? Do you think europe does? Or russia? Every nation or bloc protects their markets and demands something in return for access. Maybe the chinese go overboard with it, but as I said, it's their market. They can do whatever they want.
No, it isn't, but in my opinion Chinese people (not their government) should have the right to decide who to accept in their market or not. Currently, they do not.
It was the US giving its technology, military weaponry, college education, etc. to Chinese nationals. Their entry into the World Bank was supposed to come with freer markets and other reforms. Instead they run over peaceful protestors with tanks and seize all cameras from international reporters.
China doesn't respect our patents and conduct corporate espionage at the state level. They brazenly hack our corporations and governments. They don't allow our companies to compete fairly as theirs are propped up by the state.
They can't have their cake and eat it too and I believe its time for Western powers to come down hard on China and its unfair market practices.
Because the chinese leadership decided to make it a priority?
> It was the US giving its technology, military weaponry, college education, etc. to Chinese nationals.
Oh we did? Out of the kindess of our hearts? I thought we "gave" them technology, military weaponry, college education, etc in exchange for something? What was that? Oh yeah that's right, their gigantic cheap labor force. Using your logic, china gave us the tech industry and the modern world.
> Their entry into the World Bank was supposed to come with freer markets and other reforms.
You mean the WTO. Right? You clearly have no idea what you are talking about if you don't know the difference between WTO and World Bank.
> China doesn't respect our patents and conduct corporate espionage at the state level.
Oh dear. You mean china does what is in china's interests? Do you know who doesn't respect our patents and conducts espionage? Canada, Mexico and every ally of ours.
> Instead they run over peaceful protestors with tanks and seize all cameras from international reporters.
Wow? They have a version of kent state too? And seizing cameras from foreigners? Do they owe international reporters anything? Once again, you are pretending we own china. Like I said, their house, their rules.
> They don't allow our companies to compete fairly as theirs are propped up by the state.
Like everyone else? You do realize that we accuse the EU of unfairly proppping up Airbus right? And they accuse us of propping up Boeing? There are even accusations between us and canada over their subsidizing of bombardier.
> They can't have their cake and eat it too and I believe its time for Western powers to come down hard on China and its unfair market practices.
Who are you? You believe? Yes, "western powers" are going to listen to you. We are going to base our geopolitical decisions on someone who confuses the world bank with the WTO.
If we felt that china's trade practices were unfair, we could always not trade with them? But I wonder why so many companies and industries are desperate to do business with and in china? Perhaps their business practices aren't so unfair? I don't know.
Or maybe the CEOs of trillion dollar companies like apple aren't as smart as you.
I wasn't initially sure why you shifted to ad hominem all of a sudden but I see that you're on a throwaway for a reason. You don't have a base belief, you are simply shouting a tautology that things are happening because things are happening. It doesn't take a genius geopolitical expert to see that China is doing things because it's in China's best interest.
If you can't see that China has a unfair advantage in the global market and that their regime is a threat to our democratic system, then there's no point arguing. If you feel that their political system is superior to ours, I pray that you're not an ethnic minority.
China entices all business and western powers with "look, we're shifting towards free(er) markets but our big monolithic government is just slow at enacting changes" while ensuring that they fail.
[0] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1067056070119447...
But, the company was founded by idealists and is immune from takeover. It attracts idealists (or at least, it used to). Everything is justified in terms of helping users somehow. Justifying things in terms of getting a short-term stock boost generally isn't done, at least not where ordinary employees can hear about it.
More importantly, you've failed to account for the externalities, entirely. It's not just a bet ("pay for a chance"). Trying the bet--in this case, allowing government censorship to control search results--has complicated to quantify, but significantly negative human rights cost.
So to summarize: I wouldn't think twice about taking your bet--I absolutely would, because the chances are absurdly in my favor (see the pastebin). But I--and generally, the people protesting this--would decline a bet that actually has the right stakes, even if there is a payout.
It’s a moonshot. Despite that, in the eyes of people who are just trying their best to boost profits wherever and however they can it’s stupid not to attempt it.
Also for my game, you got one shot at playing. My formulation was not meant to be so rigorous— just trying to highlight the angle that the decision makers are taking here.
Do you know what Tibet has been like before? It's a bloody brutal slavery society that majority of the population lived in a unbelievably inhumane condition.
Also, Tibet has been a part of Chinese territory for centuries.
Tibet right now is just a fine place to visit.
Real helpful, thanks.
I watched hours of documentations about the entire event, but seriously, the government is not the only side to blame. If it happened in the US, the policy probably would have started sending protesters to jail much earlier.
China Daily (state-sponsored) pushes in the US a lot of pro-China-regime sentiment. (Right now on their web page there's a hagiography of Xi).
Epoch Times (Falun-Gong sponsored) appears to have gone all in for one party in the US, pushing daily misinformation and echoing lines from other countries attacking the West. My best guess at why Epoch Times has so much disinformation is because of feeling close to one group in the US due to christian identity, but I'm not fully sure.
A good article on state-sponsored influence operations, with an emphasis on China, is here: https://warontherocks.com/2018/01/contrasting-chinas-russias...
If you have a problem with surveillance you should have an even bigger problem with 'democracies' neck deep in surveillance and arbitrary 'secret courts', 'secret orders' and 'secret processes'. Yet there is near zero mainstream dissent and protest and Assange and Snowden continue to be stranded, surely if people care so much about human rights there would be much more robust activism and genuine efforts to get these individuals back, roll back surveillance and hold people accountable?
If you want to talk about human rights you better have an explanation for the devastation of entire countries and millions of lives in the middle east starting from Iraq to Libya to Syria on entirely made up premises. And the incessant meddling in South America and other regions of the world. China has nothing compared to the scale of destruction and human misery caused in just these two regions.
No country has its hands clean. What is the problem with China developing under their own system? Democracy did not magically form here and in Europe, it took hundreds of years of struggle and its naive to think China and others will make this transition in decades. They are not threatening anyone, at this very moment the US is threatening Iran and meddling with coup plotters in Venezuela, actions that could potentially led to the loss of millions of lives, destabilize these countries and devastate entire regions. This kind of brazen hypocrisy cannot stand in informed discussion.
Autocratic countries don't have the same controls.
Also, in the influence campaigns autocracies have been running in the West, there's a ton of effort put into whataboutism - 'democracies do it too'. Be careful.
That is not oversight to me.
Discussion of why this is false: https://www.stanfordlawreview.org/online/is-the-foreign-inte...
The win rate is misleading for a simple reason: The requests the FISC receives are not a random or representative sample of all cases in which the executive branch believes it would benefit from a warrant. The number and type of government requests are responsive to the level of oversight the court exercises—just as a plaintiff’s decision to litigate is responsive to changes in the law. Because it is costly to make an ex parte application (in time, resources, and reputation) and because the executive has long-running knowledge of how the FISC treats applications, there is little reason to expect agencies to submit losing requests. And while the rarity of ex parte proceedings might make this outcome seem unprecedented or extraordinary, other ex parte proceedings—like those for Title III wiretaps and delayed-notice warrants—display equally lopsided results: the government “wins” almost 100% of the time.
The United States learned its lesson to an extent, and our voters and leaders grappled with a moral question of how to live harmoniously in our difference. We certainly haven't solved that problem, but we have made progress, and we are trying. This is FAR better than China. China does not care whether they are evil, and feel no shame for oppressing their minorities. The very fact that in the west we have these discussions, and Chinese do not, is an indicator of the robustness of our culture.
China is actually stepping up their apartheid, using the latest technology we sold them to treat their minorities like livestock, forcing them to endure dehumanizing treatment in their own homeland.
Your post is filled with exaggeration and lies.
Yes, western countries make terrible mistakes, but then our citizens have protests and vote our leaders out. China does not.
By this point, your argument makes no sense as Google violates every internet user privacy world-wide (a lot less in China).
"What does it mean when Google is willing to risk so much for additional ad clicks?"
A standard dramatic plot device is a character in situation who is acting out of character to the other members of the cast and confusing them; the audience though is let in on the secret that the character has some extenuating circumstance, a relative held hostage or a threat to lives or something, which is very important. So important in fact that our character is willing to put their values on hold until that problem is resolved.
It is relatable because it happens in a variety of ways, some minor and some major in "real life" to people. Thus the writer can tap into that experience and pull out some of the emotions of fear and anger at being trapped.
This was the analysis I shared on another list about Google going into China:
I see Google as a company that has terminal cancer but is putting on a good face while it searches for a cure. The cancer is that search advertising, the only thing that makes any money inside of Google at the margins they need to maintain their lavish environment, is dying. The symptoms that are out there for all to see; their CPC numbers (the cost per click is the money they get from advertisers for a click) has been going down for nearly a decade now, their search 'quality' (the reason that people would pick their search results over a competitor like Bing) has remained stagnant while Bing's have improved, and the amount of money they pay out per quarter for search traffic from other sources (phones, web browsers, etc) has skyrocketed. Advertising only works if you have eyeballs on your ads. Google has been adding more and more ads to their own sites, reducing the amount the pay out to partner sites, and paying more and more money to third parties to send their search traffic to Google rather than Bing. For me, I see these as signs of a dying ecosystem.
If you can accept that my view of what is going on at Google is 'true', the Chinese search engine makes total sense. There are more eyeballs in a strong economy in China than anywhere else in the world. It is the one place where Google doesn't currently play, and even if their margins on Chinese searches were half that of the rest of the world, it would be additional air in the pipeline while they continue to fight for a new business that can supply the margins they need to avoid losing their staff.
Do they know their employees would hate it? Of course they did and they tried to keep it secret. How desperate do they need to be to risk all of that? Very desperate.
If on the other hand, you believe the party line (which is the view that folks I know who are still at Google will share with you) then Google has never been stronger, and is crushing it on all fronts. Everyone wants to be "Google" and all the cool kids are there. There is no cancer here, no existential risk to the company, and no reason to worry.
The problem then is this, if you've convinced people that the company line is "true" then their argument that they are going into China with a search index that caters to the Chinese governments authoritarian whims is antithetical to everything you stand for.
That puts Google management in something of a bind, either explanation is bad. Either the company is dying and in fear for its life so its compromising its principles to extend its runway, or the company is evil and at the height of its power it is selling services in an authoritarian regime and supporting the goals of that regime for filthy lucre.
There might be a third explanation that fits all the facts but I haven't figured that one out yet.
If on the other hand, you believe the party line (which is the view that folks I know who are still at Google will share with you) then Google has never been stronger, and is crushing it on all fronts.
Apparently we know different folks :p
I see where you’re going but don’t entirely agree.
For one I think extracting every dollar is true but my theory is that comes from Ruth not Sundar. I mean Ruth would’ve been brought in for that purpose but that goes up to the board and Larry.
I also see where you’re going with the terminal cancer part but again I wouldn’t put it that way. I would say that Google is in a similar position to Microsoft after the antitrust case: it was directionless. It doesn’t know what it stands for or what it’s mission is anymore. Everything is a search for purpose. And this is really a failure in leadership.
This lack of leadership is what allowed the incredibly tone deaf military AI program to happen.
I also don’t think google search has stood still or is in danger from Bing.
In a word, you have been brainwashed by your media. I know it's hard to wake up someone who pretends to be asleep, but it's good for you.
(Yes, I know the quote is apocryphal. But the reason why it's so popular, is because the sentiment is so close to the observed reality.)
The use of derogatory nicknames detracts from your arguments and is a sign of laziness in an orator.
Many many US companies make billions, with a capital B serving in China. Apple, for instance, made $9+B in 2017 from China.
If anything, ignoring the Chinese market is detrimental to the US economy, as one can argue exports to China create many many jobs in the US
I think the only way this is going to work is to continue investing in China. Play their game, call them out on foul play and punish China on a case-by-case basis. As the Chinese population becomes even more united, rich, educated, we have to hope that China naturally evolves towards a more open form of government and economy. It’s already making massive progress compared to where it was before.
In recap, this will be a long process of challenge and play. Any extreme action such as further or completely isolating China is not only extremely unlikely to even be possible, but also unproductive.
How much money are our values worth? If we're willing to prostrate ourselves in front of dictators and tyrants who twist the rules of the game and compromise our values, let's at least put a number on it.
If, on the other hands, we're willing to do business with every butcher and murderer out there, let's stop pretending otherwise and stop referring to "our values" in every corporate meeting. They clearly don't exist.
They know they won't be allowed first place, but they're willing to compromise themselves for a second place finish.
We really need to start incentivizing executives to pursue more than just raw numbers.
Around 1 million Uighurs have disappeared without trial.
So much for "never again" after WWII... as long as our iPhone's are cheap, people seem happy to look the other way.
At any company with 50,000+ employees most generalizations will be wrong.
I find my work interesting. I fully admit that I don't have an expectations my job will make the world better even though it may in some small way because I don't believe that's what companies are for.
I work to make a living like most people. I'd like to make the world a better place but I don't tie that to my job since sadly the incentives don't really align. Still I'd consider Google to be pretty good compared to other companies given how much they donate but I guess it's easy to donate when you make a lot of money.
that google, who's mission is to make the world's information "universally accessible" would participate in it is a travesty.
i applaud mr paulson for standing up for his virtues and for the human race
For this reason, I think if the lower-level staff at your company are quitting over moral/ethical issues, you probably have much worse problems than if your highly-valued employees are leaving.
However, I'd imagine this particular employee has a lot more in common with the VP than the janitor and I don't imagine he will have any trouble finding new employment following this.
For example, Dr. Fei-Fei Li is a professor at Stanford and the Chief Scientist at Google. The professorship is orders of magnitude more prestigious than the Google thing.
Being an assistant professor, or any part of academia, holds little appeal for many people who just want to make money in industry. For that matter, I didn't think working for Google was all that prestigious when I joined - I wanted to be a startup founder, like the guys who founded Flickr or Del.icio.us or ViaWeb, and Google was my consolation prize when that didn't work out. It was a bit of a mindfuck to see all the kids coming out of college and asking "How do I get a job at Google? It's been my dream since like forever!", and a further mindfuck when I met my wife, was like "Yeah, I was in line behind Larry Page at the cafeteria today", and she was like "Who's Larry Page?"
Ultimately convinced me that chasing prestige was pointless, because it turns out everyone has a different definition of it. You would be surprised how much peoples' values differ, or how some people can be completely indifferent to other peoples' heroes. I mean, this person clearly preferred living a life true to his values than whatever prestige comes from working for Google.
Anyway, I mentioned it because in my experience, former assistant profs at top universities were usually slotted into L5 (Senior SWE/Research Scientist/Data Scientist/etc.) at Google, while full profs were usually slotted into L7 (Senior Staff whatever). So there is a rough correspondence in that those are the corresponding levels that the same person who happens to have done both jobs ends up occupying. You could argue about which is more prestigious and you'd be right, by definition, because prestige is in the eye of the beholder.
Getting a spot on Stanford's gymnastics team is way harder than getting a professorship at Stanford. After all, there are 39 spots for the former, and 2219 spots for the latter. The denominators are of roughly the same size, 4.8 million kids who do gymnastics vs. roughly 5M Ph.Ds.
I have no interest in being a Stanford gymnast either (and in any case that ship sailed 20 years ago), but I'm making a point about prestige. The numbers would be even more stark if I'd picked another sport like basketball.
By what measure? She was the chief scientist of which there is only one but there are many professors at Stanford. She's not just any professor though: she's also the director of the AI lab which you could argue is more prestigious but I don't see why you would consider a "regular" professor title to be more prestigious than a chief scientist who managed a large number of researchers.
Why didn't this researcher resign over the 2nd instance?
> Why didn't this researcher resign over the 2nd instance?
Because they're obviously qualitatively different to a significant degree. Only one is viewpoint-based political censorship.
Copyright is a restriction upon sharing in order to prop up content creators, and censorship is a restriction on speech in order to prop up social harmony.
“Voltaire said about God that ‘there is no God, but don’t tell that to my servant, lest he murder me at night’. Hammurabi would have said the same about his principle of hierarchy, and Thomas Jefferson about human rights. Homo sapiens has no natural rights, just as spiders, hyenas and chimpanzees have no natural rights. But don’t tell that to our servants, lest they murder us at night.” - Sapiens
> I'd argue that both are political in nature. They're both cultural ideas (copyright and censorship have no physical manifestation) and cultural ideas are nothing but agreed upon ideas that unite us.
You're wandering off into the weeds. The key point is that Chinese censorship is viewpoint-based, while copyright is not.
Under a copyright regime, you can express anything as long as you're original and don't do it by duplicating someone's recent work verbatim in ways that aren't fair use. Under a censorship regime, you can't express a censored idea, concept, or fact in any form at all.
For example flipping the argument above: under a censorship regime, you can express anything as long as it doesn't threaten social stability such that the greater good is harmed by your words. Under a copyright regime you can't express a copyrighted idea, concept, or fact in any form at all.
To me the latter "can't express a copyrighted idea at all" seems a bit weak, but so does "can't express a censored idea at all", since in both cases you can express those ideas, you just pay the consequences.
Stepping back my original argument (maybe you consider it too far off into the weeds) is that it's not possible to bootstrap an argument for moral or cultural superiority without appealing to yet another framework like utilitarianism or divine right.
More broadly speaking, it does not suppress expression of ideas, even ideas expressed in copyrighted work. You could take any copyrighted book, and retell its story in however great detail you want, and that wouldn't be copyright infringement.
.,.. And the country to make the most demands for private user data, according to Google's transparency report is ...
Also, "the most demands" is, at best, misleading. To be meaningful, number of demands would be a numerator, requiring a denominator, such as total number of users, or, better yet, users multiplied by data.
I find much more concerning whether the Chinese Government will use Google Search for surveillance.
He's absolutely spot on.
Let's make some money if we can?
Unfortunately, as smartphones become globally distributed, 'free' market-driven growth is slowing. To maintain growth, Google needs to get access to the largest mobile market in the world, which incidentally is also one of the most diverse and the least Google controlled (as Google Play is banned): China.
Secondly, Google is under pressure from the market for the potential for political or regulatory backlash. Management is therefore pressing for a solution. https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2018/google-growth-mobile-sear...
In my mind Google is still a dichotomous organization with evil sociopath capitalist leadership and weird little hubs of naive engineering who think their experience and quinoa represent company values. (Only half sarcasm; not sure if this is accurate but suspect it holds some truths) Applause to this guy who popped the bubble and quit.
It's exactly like how people would clamor to censor all sorts of alt-right websites with glee, but defend all Trump-bashing websites to death. It's not that I approve of any alt-right ideology at all, but if they are serious about real "free speech", one would need to recognize this sort of double standards asap. Otherwise it's just another laughable exercise in hypocrisy and only labeling what helps your own interests as "just", exactly what the US government has been doing overseas in all these decades which is roundly criticized.
Sorry but you were all told you would hit this slippery slope...its fine when the SPLC is having tech companies filter out "undesirable" content but now you have PRC turning the same levers. You all demanded this door be opened when you freaked out about "hate"....now it can't be closed.
What will be left of Google and the other techs when everyone has taken their turn filtering out the content that "offends" them?
"All in all he's just another brick in the wall"
The Communist Party sets its censorship standard at anything that would denigrate the Party. Google, Twitter, etc. and ideological sympathizers set their censorship standard at "Hate Speech", which is an impossible term to rigorously define leading to political judgements in enforcement by necessity.
The modern political and ideological Left have far more in common with the Chinese Communist Party than I think even they themselves realize.
The arbitrary whims of the powerful can never define what political thought can and cannot be said in the public square if we wish to preserve freedom and justice.