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Comment by temp1827 | Hacker News Reader

I mean, he has a point. It's clear U.S. tech companies have become hugely susceptible to hiring foreign spies and the issue of foreign governments stealing IP is real. There was a very recent public case of Apple's autonomous driving unit stopping a Chinese engineer from leaving the country just as he was bound for China after detecting he had uploaded a bunch of code to a personal account. And most likely many more cases like that we've never heard of publicly.

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1. Almost every tech company has been acutely aware of China stealing IP for decades now. It's not a new point.

2. Where did Thiel make this point? Thiel does not make the point that the Chinese are stealing US IP. He makes the charged point that Google executives (and somehow not Facebook executives) are Chinese agents. To that claim, I don't think he "has a point".

It's in very bad taste to me that Thiel would point this out, and claim the Valley "is getting a little bit of a bad conscience" when he sits on the board of the biggest troublemaker.

When Google leaks the personal data of millions of Americans, then maybe should Thiel start throwing stones.

The article says "He then suggested Google’s actions were “seemingly treasonous,” asking whether DeepMind or Google senior management had been “infiltrated” by foreign intelligence agencies."

To clarify, by stealing I also mean infiltrated by spies that are hired as employees who in turn provide information to foreign governments...

And yes, of course this could happen to Facebook as well, but as of today Google/MSFT/Amazon/Autonomous vehicle companies/chip manufacturers are in a different league than Facebook as far as IP that is interesting from a military perspective goes.

>To clarify, by stealing I also mean infiltrated by spies that are hired as employees who in turn provide information to foreign governments...

Again, this isn't new. This has been happening for decades - just ask Cisco. Wether is treason is one thing, but I'm not arguing it doesn't happen.

The radical statement Theil is making here, is that the _executives_ are compromised, and that they _actively_ sabotage the USG in getting Google tech while also sending that information abroad. This is an extraordinary claim that I'm less inclined to take seriously from someone who has been been both negligent in how his own company has handled the data of Americans in his own country and also stands to gain, via Palantir, the weakening of Google's relationship with the USG.

>Google/MSFT/Amazon/Autonomous vehicle companies/chip manufacturers are in a different league than Facebook as far as IP

I think what is effectively surveillance data on 90% of Americans is a far higher bar than Autonomous vehicle data that hardly works outside of Palo Alto.

Why is it easy to believe all tech companies are filled with foreign agents but hard to believe that any of them could rise to senior management? If anything, a desirable goal of getting hired as a foreign agent at one of these companies would be to rise to an executive rank

What Thiel is alleging isn't merely that some VP in Google is leaking secrets. He's suggesting Google leadership has been "thoroughly infiltrated", to the point that Thiel can see the infiltration based only on Google's public behavior.

Because Thiel is making the claim, that not only are they senior management, but they are both actively influencing the company from working with the USG as well as transporting, what maybe now Google's most important IP back to China. This would mean either large swaths of Google senior management are complicit or negligent, and that Google has no, or easily defeated safeguards around that IP. If Google had a track record of playing fast and loose with data, I'd more seriously consider his claim. In fact if it was coming from anyone else I'd consider the claim more seriously.

Aside: I'm not downvoting you as you have a fair question - I don't know why you are negative.

Negligence can be a crime under the right conditions.

1. If negligence in this case means treason, there are several companies you can investigate then - it makes less sense to single out Google when Cisco has likely suffered more. Huawei was literally founded on stealing foreign technology and is allegedly built by Cisco engineers.

2. Rather than investigating if Google negligence is treason, would Thiel agree to charge Zuckerberg with treason due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal? There's hard proof right there, why not get the quick win with Facebook?

Thiel is definitely hypocritical. That alone does not make him wrong. (He may be right or wrong, I don't know).

Being hypocritical actually often means you are wrong... or more so that the listener is wrong in entertaining the hypocritical thoughts. That's because hypocrisy is often a form of manipulation. A method of distraction, pointing out one issue elsewhere so that the listeners look away. For the listeners, it means they might lose sight of the true opportunities, so it could be an opportunity cost loss. A good hypocritical manipulation would need to distract the listeners in a plausible way, so maybe there is a point..., but we'd be wrong to let ourselves be distracted by it. (Not saying this is the case here, just that maybe it is, I don't know)

A broken cpu might produce a correct answer but you shouldn't trust it. Hypocrites are not trustworthy even when they are right.

>when he sits on the board of the biggest troublemaker.

Why is this some kind of detraction from his larger point? If he has a problem with how Facebook is being run - or has concerns with their implementation of AI - then of course he'd want to retain his seat. How else would he influence the company?

I find it highly improbable that the board of Facebook would do anything besides act as yes-men to Zuckerberg and Sandberg who are making them boatloads of money.

The board has no power over zuck. Not enough anyway.

>When Google leaks the personal data of millions of Americans

Google+ was hacked and leaked the data of users. No one knows how many because Google deleted the logs.

Google+ was never hacked, but there was a dodgy API endpoint that let you view profile data set to private.

So it wasn’t hacked, it just had an exploitable end point, that was exploited?

It had an exploitable end point that wasn’t exploited and google shut down G+ rather then let it become exploited.

My theory is that it was less embarrassing than saying they failed so spectacularly. A shame really.

I suspect that fixing the bug would have cost more then G+ was making them. Which is a pity because the world needed a nonfacebook social media platform.

But aren't they stealing IP from the companies? In that case it's not treason, is it? In fact, in these cases it's the government's job to help the company affected.

I find it hard to believe that there AREN'T droves of spies from every single country working at Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. If there aren't, they're not doing their jobs.

Isn't that a problem that Google should be themselves be seeking to solve? Is it typical for the government to help protect companies' IP by investigating them for treason?

I would say that the government should be trying to help companies in these situations. That's what all the rules about foreign trade are for after all, but it should be in a way that helps the company, not hurts it.

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