Trump signals scrutiny of Google's ties with China after Thiel comments
wsj.com
wsj.com
* Thiel founded Palantir [0], which has a very deep and ongoing relationship providing counter-terrorism info and analytics to 3-letter agencies. His comments are likely an attempt to protect Palantir's contracts from Google.
* Google recently (2018) had trouble with employees exposing a censored search engine project targeted for China, and quitting over it [1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employe...
- Google decided to open a new AI research center in China, expanding its existing presence there. This in the face of expanding AI assisted surveillance in xinjiang and its 10 million population.
- Google decided not to renew its contract for project maven, a way to analyze drone footage using AI, for the US DoD
What does the first point have to do with the second? Is Google assisting in surveillance in Xinjiang?
A more direct connection is Apple handing over access to all Chinese users' iCloud data to the PRC, despite knowing about the mass surveillance and detentions in Xinjiang that this data transfer enables. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/02/5-things-you-...
Their Dragonfly project was going to be providing this kind of surveillance to the Chinese government until Googlers (indeterminately) put a stop to it?
https://theintercept.com/collections/google-dragonfly-china/
"Facebook, Google, Apple, and six other leading online services have all gone on record as having given their customers’ data to the NSA, as legally required by the “PRISM” program. Data shared includes emails, messages, and documents."
https://www.expressvpn.com/blog/8-ways-the-nsa-spies-on-you/
"MUSCULAR and TURMOIL – Headed by the GCHQ with help from the NSA, these programs collect data (thought to be twice as much as PRISM) indiscriminately from Google and Yahoo internal data networks and share it with the NSA, who then scan it for anything ‘suspect’. Even though the data from Google and Yahoo are supposed to be encrypted, it’s intercepted during internal transfers, during which time it’s not encrypted at all."
"XKeyscore – Run by the NSA but shared with all Five Eyes nations as well as Japan, Germany and Sweden, XKeyscore is the comprehensive program that analyses all the data from all the above programs (plus others) and creates a searchable database. Targets can be searched for using name, email, or phone number, but can also be found using other criteria, such as unusual words they use often, locations they visit using Google Maps, or using another country’s language often."
https://www.valuewalk.com/2019/07/espionage-operations-digit...
https://www.cnet.com/news/nsa-surveillance-programs-prism-up...
This was well-known and commented on at the time Greenwald's articles were being published, with the NYT reporting on the program correctly the very next day by interviewing people actually involved in the program (verifying claims like real journalists — why didn't The Guardian think of that?).
https://www.cnet.com/news/no-evidence-of-nsas-direct-access-...
https://medium.com/@alecmuffett/how-to-talk-about-prism-and-...
https://medium.com/prism-truth/the-prism-details-matter-82a1...
In response, Greenwald doubled down on his incompetent misreading of the slides without providing any evidence to support his obviously ridiculous assertions.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/14/nsa-pa...
Had no idea about what? There is no evidence that Google has cooperated with the NSA on anything except tracking down Chinese hackers.
> I recognize that co-operation with the NSA is.. as they say.. non-optional.
There is no evidence that they have been coerced into cooperating with the NSA on anything.
"We have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping, which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more Google services and links, especially the links in the slide. We do not provide any government, including the U.S. government, with access to our systems. We are outraged at the lengths to which the government seems to have gone to intercept data from our private fiber networks, and it underscores the need for urgent reform.”
First they say that they were concerned about the possibility.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323949904578539...
"Google's request, made in a public letter written by its chief legal officer, David Drummond, comes after the government last Saturday publicly acknowledged that Internet content companies had received secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requests about the activities of their users."
Then they say that they handed over the data as legally required.
The only point worth mentioning is the difference between 'access and 'unfettered access'. Google claims the latter never happened, only the former.
>There is no evidence that they have been coerced into cooperating with the NSA on anything.
Okay, you believe what you want to believe. This conversation doesn't seem tb be going anywhere. Goodbye, and have a nice day.
I mean it borderlines on his job to be interested in the subject matter of Chinese spying or whatever. Who watches Google? This all might come to nothing, but having tech companies watch each other would be advantageous for the public.
I agree there's politicing involved here.
Reagan is spinning in his grave.
Perhaps a big-tent pro-democracy, pro-rule of law party will emerge as a counter weight somehow.
Also, it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political battle. Important though those issues are, we ban accounts that do that on HN, because it's not what this site is for and destroys the curiosity that it is for. If you would review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended, we'd be grateful.
Strangely, there seems to be a very large number of people who decry google's information "monopoly" because of the blogs and youtube(!) videos they found while googling. A group that, given their power in government, is certainly not being oppressed.
And as a side note, I use no Alphabet product and obviously run an ad blocker. You'll find there are a great many technologists that do so. So, while there are certainly issues, the monopoly talk is obviously intentional hyperbole promulgated for political reasons.
As compared to, say ISPs which actually are monopolies. Or even Sinclair broadcasting which actually does control all media in some regions. But those genuine monopolies are not objectionable because they align politically with the party in power.
This pattern does correspond with some political systems but certainly not democratic, rule-of-law forms.
Note that a mirror image of these types exist on the left, and they also tend to be despised. Again it’s not about the politics. It’s about being an unpleasant person.
2 years ago net neutrality was repealed.
1. Has anything changed to the worse, consumer-wise?
2. Was there any postmortem acknowledging the fact that the end of net neutrality, unlike predicted, isn't the end of the world?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/attack-net-neutrality-...
Relatedly, ever since the repeal of NN, internet speeds are up and prices are staying flat. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/average-internet-spe...
Demanding a free market in America did not use to be controversial. But for two years now, under a sea of double think, it's just used as cover for political cronyism and contribution shakedowns.
If the US wants something that works, then just do something that works. For example [1]
At any rate, the ISP arguments are well known. And are about as moot as appeals to a free market or the public good. In the current environment, no amount of evidence concerning monopolies will change policy that is fundamentally based solely on political favoritism and retribution.
[1]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/03/uk-regulators-of...
Ninja edit: If you do, we are not talking about anything other than straight civil war.
In the colloquial sense of that phrase, certainly not. Any honest calculation about the ends includes _all_ events that cause it. That necessarily includes the costs of the means.
> If you do, we are not talking about anything other than straight civil war.
I don't believe that is possible under any circumstances. The pattern being followed in the US is not at all unique. It is essentially identical to several other nations which are going or have gone down this path. There was never more than a broken window and burning trash can or two. (which of course are always portrayed as world ending violence justifying yet more authoritarian behavior)
In the end, either the public notices the situation in time and somehow gets enough ballots counted that they return the country to sanity (enough ballots to overcome gerrymandering, the electoral college, the unbalanced senate, systematic disfranchisement and foreign interference)
Or the country follows the same path that Hungary and Poland are on now, towards a hyper nationalistic, xenophobic kleptocracy. Essentially the same choice soon to be faced by several other western countries (and India and Turkey btw).
And I entirely agree, the US does have some considerable advantages:
- the "blood and soil" ideology is very alien (though not unprecedented as seen by the first, more obvious, "America first" movement [1] and later by John Birch)
- it's had 240 years of voting and some notion of civil-personal rights
- there's nice separation of powers. (Although it's becoming apparent that a president with >33% of the Senate can exercise almost unlimited authority.)
But these advantages are not automated, people have to use and defend them. The judiciary is especially delicate, it's been the first thing targeted by the other neo-autocrats.
Also there is a possibility of over confidence in these institutions ("it can't happen here"). And there's an unfortunate dose of denial ("he did not mean that literally"). And inexperience (modern Germans know exactly what the AfD is and how dangerous it is)
But absolutely, the future is not written yet and certainly I too am never going to be shut up.
By the way, the Bannon influence is so obvious (and 1930's obsessed) that you see Trump threatening opponents with half understood ideas of a paramilitary somehow made out of "bikers and police"[2]
[1] https://vimeo.com/237489146 [2] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/434110-trump-sug...
The conclusion one can draw from this should be obvious.
[1]https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/22/peter-thiel-sells-majority-o...
So, not a huge amount of Facebook nor of his net worth, but still a huge amount of money. I'm not sure how billionaires think, but I suspect to become a billionaire it's usually not "I won't sweat a loss of couple tens of millions of dollars."
Our "billionaire" president paid his son's Boy Scouts fees with charity money rather than his own. People with that kind of money are usually SUPER cheap and REALLY attached to every dollar.
all things being equal, I'm sure he would care at least a little about a seven or eight figure loss, but I'm not sure it would be worth the opportunity cost of neglecting his other investments.
So about $24M at today’s price.
Can Peter Thiel please just plug himself into his own personal Matrix/brain-in-a-vat VR fantasy where he gets to be John Galt and Howard Roark or whatever and just leave the rest of us alone already?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-security/obama-...
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/more-restrictive-us-...
HN is for people, stories, and conversations that are animated by curiosity. Political battle is the opposite. It is destructive of the subtler and lighter things HN exists for. What happens to a garden when tanks roll in? A garden cannot be a battlefield.
If you would please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and take the spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful. I know that the topic you care about is important and the feelings are strong and genuine, but those are actually reasons why we have to moderate more, not less—or else it and things like it will consume the site completely.
Remove the article/post if it will prompt a comment section that the overlords find displeasing.
I believe it is impossible to operate a facility in China without having the PLA operatives on the inside. It's part of the risk companies take to do business in China.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment
See also: "The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of Intolerance at Stanford", by Thiel, et al
It really is like watching history repeat itself. I've just been amazed by the past few years.
If Trump had lost, Thiel would have taken a minor reputational hit based on Trump's pre-election behavior, but since no one thought he would win anyway, it could have been written off as him just taking a chance on an outside candidate. None of the really controversial stuff would have happened, so worst case scenario Thiel looks kind of foolish and wasted a bit of money.
If he had backed Clinton and she won, he would just be one of many Silicon Valley backers, with no particular voice over and above the other billionaires.
But now, Thiel is the only person in Silicon Valley who the President will listen to. That's got to be worth way more than the 1.5 million or whatever that he spent on it.
But maybe that's understandable, too. "The squad" has become the face of the Democratic Party, and the squad and Trump are neck-and-neck in a race to appeal to two-year-olds. Seems like both sides forgot that two-year-olds can't vote. If the Democrats had the appearance of competence and sanity, they should easily beat Trump, but at the moment, they look equally insane.
If the primary process produces someone who is not extremely left, someone who can look "presidential" rather than getting into a name-calling war with Trump, and someone that actually sounds like they care about the blue-collar voters, Trump should be gone.
Take Pelosi, for instance. It can't be Pelosi, nor someone like her. Pelosi seems to stand for Pelosi being the speaker. She doesn't seem to stand for any particular policies, other than "not Trump, but not something that's going to cost me the speaker job (even if by killing the Dems in the 2020 elections)". That doesn't win many votes in the Rust Belt.
[Even though I do not necessarily agree with you exactly, I tried to restore your comments visibility because of your long standing, seemingly in earnest, HN contributions.]
I had forgotten about her promise to relinquish.
Thiel has unusual politics that don't fit neatly along the right-left spectrum and lucked into a candidate that matched them more closely than anyone who had come before.
That's because it's more of a grid. You have 2 axis: Authoritarian/Libertarian, Economic Left/Economic Right.
If you're looking at it as a line, all sorts of things "don't fit neatly".
One can argue that this was always the way of the world -- and it's only coming to light now, but I think that this is a far too cynical view IMO. It neglects the steady decline in political participation, party/union membership and actions a single individual can take.
Keep in mind, that this is not only a problem in the United States -- maybe its just more visible there. My home country Germany has more than enough shady connections between economic execs and the political machine.
Whether this ends up being a shrewd move or a strategic blunder remains to be seen. I also thought that it was pretty smart in a realpolitik sense when he did it, but now I'm wondering if he's won the battle but lost the war. There's a lot of tacit power in the heads of various SV engineers, entrepreneurs, and executives, most of which is currently devoted toward making people click on ads, but which could be a force to be reckoned with if their ability to stay in SV and continue getting people to click on ads were ever directly threatened.
Speaking on Fox Business Network on Monday, Larry Kudlow,
director of the National Economic Council, said he doesn’t
believe Google is treasonous. “I meet with Google’s CEO on
a regular basis. I think they’re working for America, for
our military, not for China,” he said.
“Peter Thiel’s a good man. He’s been a great supporter of
the Trump administration. He’s a very smart guy,” Mr.
Kudlow said. “I’m just not sure where he’s going on this,
so I have my doubts, but one never knows.”
Is there anyone with an actual counter, or proof, that what Mr. Thiel said was plain wrong, in respect to Google?
Read up this: google doesn't work with the US military any more, but continues to collaborate with the Chinese government. Is that enough proof?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/01/technology/china-google-c...
Google is among the companies which doesn't do much business in China while many others tech or otherwise (including Trump's) do. China is a big and lucrative market but puts many restrictions on foreign businesses. Google was exploring providing web search and perhaps AdWords to increase its revenue stream as its hard stance against China a decade ago only resulted in domestic Chinese search engines. Working in Chinese market means abiding by their censorship rules. Some idealistic employees who didn't approve of it leaked the effort and it turned into a news cycle. Google eventually decided it's not worth it
Separately, another group of activist/idealistic employees felt Google shouldn't be in the war business (unlike IBM which used to sell to Germany half a century ago) and didn't want such research and development work to be used in applications such as drone strikes. So they also teamed up and through various means pushed the upper level management to forgo the military contracts.
I'm not approving or disapproving of these decisions but that's how things are. There's no convoluted and dramatic conspiracy
This is not paranoia. This is the Chairman of Joint Chiefs testifying so. Your understanding is, at best, wrong.
He spoke, with no substantiation, at a conservative conference denouncing a contributor to the democratic party.
Not only is that venue suspicious but any real counter intelligence conversation is done discretely. So perhaps the burden of proof is actually on him. And perhaps the requirements for such are rather high. And if anything, his actions strongly discount rather than support his claim.
And not all attacks are ad hominem. Reputation matters. You can't always separate claims from those making them. If someone has clear biases/something to gain from the claim, it would be unwise to simply to take their statements on at face value.
That's my (what I consider) rational and logical counter.
So you're dismissing Thiel's claims based on reputation. I'd argue that, based on his reputation, on what he has done in this industry and his trajectory, they have even more weight.
This is a 2 way street.