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Comment by thesausageking | Hacker News Reader

Let me see if I understand this right: New Zealand citizen and Facebook board member Peter Thiel criticizes UK-based DeepMind and its sister company Google for working with non-US countries on AI technology.

In addition, there's no mention that three of Thiel's key investments (Space X, Palantir, and Anduril) require contracts from the US government, which is run by a President who Thiel helped get elected and is very hostile towards China.

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It's a huge fail by the NYT that they failed to disclose Thiel's role as a Facebook board member, etc. This is no opinion piece, it's aiming to benefit the writer and his interests/investments.

Many people have eyes on this. This is not about an investment.

It absolutely is an opinion piece which is why the disclosure is not required. Why would someone write an op-ed that's not to their benefit?

Yup. The quality standards on opinion pieces, even at NYT has drastically decreased.

Google is Thiel's rival, this should be the lens through which everyone reading this piece reads it.

Also no mention of the fact that palantir and anduril may have their own list of ethical challenges.

And why exactly from a national security POV is Mr Thiel (now on his third nationality) allowed to involved with Space X, Palantir, and Anduril.

Probably because New Zealand is not a military rival and China is, this is pretty obvious to people who aren't being disingenuous.

In a lot of cases, it falls under similar reasons to why the US brought thousands of German scientists during and after WW2 via Operation Paperclip [1] and others, to work in places such as NASA. It becomes a matter of compartmentalizing secrets, understanding the individual's drivers, considering the levels of risks and potential ways to mitigate it, etc.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Paperclip

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20593547

This is not a FB thing -- It's a technology transfer thing. An economic thing. A trade thing. A national security thing...

There's a ton more going on in the news and behind the scenes beyond the Thiel NYT post.

This is a reductionist ad hominem response that fails to address any of the points raised in TFA.

> Let me see if I understand this right: New Zealand citizen and Facebook board member Peter Thiel criticizes UK-based DeepMind and its sister company Google for working with non-US countries on AI technology.

No, you do not have that correct. He is not criticizing Google for working with "non-US countries". He is criticizing them for working with China specifically, which is known to spy on and steal technology from the US and then use it to oppress their citizens. At the same time Google is refusing to work with the US, you know the country where they actually live and work.

Ad hominem accusations should not be used to try to hide large conflicts of interests.

Arguments are valid or invalid on their own merits, regardless of the interests of the person making them. If Thiel made a claim that was false or that did not logically follow from the premises, that would be worth pointing out. Merely suggesting that an argument is in someone's interest does not mean it's wrong. Are people only allowed to make arguments that are against their own interests? That seems unreasonable.

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