It should be fair and equal. It's either everybody acts on behalf of their country of origin or everybody fixes all problems they find.
"Country A can do it, but B can't because A is X and B is Y" is not an acceptable solution IMHO.
"Country A can do it, but B can't because A is X and B is Y" is not an acceptable solution IMHO.
Standards like transparency, rule of law and a clear separation between corporations and the government should be uphold completely independent from the fact that this isn't done exactly as rigorous everywhere on the planet.
It's a relatively new (and IMO flawed) idea that western democracies should corrupt themselves just because non-democracies exist.
I think it's rooted in insecurity over the long term superiority of democratic institutions. This might lead to western democracy being perceived as something you do not because it's strengthening the country but because you want people to enjoy it as a luxury as long as the country can afford it.
I think that's wrong and will surely be out of fashion as soon as more prominent autocratic regimes fail to deliver as consistently as they currently do.
The ghost of Henry Stimson would disagree.
It's not rooted in 'insecurity of the belief in a style of government' it's rooted in basic security measures. Western nations spy on other nations as a matter of national security policy much like they invest in early-warning satellites.
The 'corruption' stems from the type of authority that drives the activity, their motivations, and what they do with the power.
Fixing a software bug or vulnerability is unequivocally good, and the sooner the better, regardless of who thinks they need that bug to make their global manipulations a little easier. The realpolitik BS is just too easy of an excuse for any monstrosity, and the blowback is always worse than the immediate problem.
While I don't doubt that in reality, erring on the side of closing it is probably the right thing to do, the fact is we don't know.
If the vulnerability is being used to thwart a rogue entity from developing nuclear weapons, the balance of facts may be on the other side. At very least, Google should have worked with agencies on getting it closed down.
If they were using it to make a drug bust, when then who cares, shut it down.
The rogue entities on this planet already have nuclear weapons (and no, I am not talking of North Korea). A widely overlooked fact is that the nuclear non-proliferation treaty obliges the nations with nuclear weapons to get rid of them[0]. This part of the treaty has never been uphold.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferatio...
There are no 'rogue entities' with nukes outside of N. Korea unless you consider Pakistan to be 'rogue', or, their benefactors, Saudi Arabia who undoubtedly have access to the tech the moment they need it to be ... but they are not 'rogue', or rather, the action would be widely condemned but a different story altogether.
Iran, would be a 'rogue nation' trying to get nukes, which they have signalled they are trying to do.
A wayward state or quasi-independent province in the Caucuses, the M/E or Africa would be that as well. Or of course some legit terrorist group.
And it would have nothing really to do with non-proliferation obviously.
If the US was trying to thwart Iran from getting nuclear weapons through some back door, then it frankly would be in Google's best interests to help.
The notion that large corporate entities can exist in a geopolitical context and yet somehow ignore it at the same time is nonsensical. Once you are 'Google Scale' your piece is on the table and you have to play.
Edit: to put another way - Google's very existence is protected and enabled by the US Economic and Geopolitical situation in a tangible way. It's not abstract at that level, like it would be for a small company.
Remember how we thought of US Army in Iraq as 'Exxon's Army'?
Well it's 'Google's Army' now ...
Also Somalia originally wanted to split in multiple countries and NATO interventions happened to prevent that and force them to remain only one country, and remain in Civil war
How the EU member states act towards parties outside the EU seems a bit beside the main point: that the EU itself actually is about international rules and not a cover for violent actions between the various member states.
The "rules based international order", on the other hand, is not voluntary. If the US decides that you are in breach, then it will be rectified with hard power. It's simply an abstraction for hegemony, and you don't get a choice to parcipate or not, the choice is made for you by the hegemon (which also happens to be its enforcer).
The "rules based international order" is supposedly the body of international laws and customs as well as their enforcement internationally, and is what the US uses to justify their hegemony, placing them as the guarantor of this order - while themselves violently breaching it.
It's also called the "US-led international order" or the "liberal international order". Put simply, it's the US and its allies enforcing a set of rules internationally with violence or the threat of violence (or economic sanctions)
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
I think it not only acceptable but incumbent to hold yourself to a higher standard of behavior than the lowest common denominator. "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind."
(There's also a practical reason: China is much more effective at their approach than the US is, being much more experienced at it and also having stifled internal debate about it. If the US gives up its claim of being a morally superior employer than China, why would anyone skilled want to keep working for what will inevitably be the losing team?)
It can be anything. It's intentionally X & Y, not X & !X or a more concrete word. Put whatever you fancy. Democratic, White, Sunny, Oreo...
I don't take sides or make a suggestion. I do not suggest that we should go to the lowest denominator but, we shall aim for much higher. OTOH, entropy loves lowest common denominator and drives everything down. Lowest prices in cost of quality. Chaos for minimizing energy, etc. We're trying to reverse natural chaos in many areas and it's worth it IMHO, btw.
For the same reason there are no country names in my comment. Fill the ones you want. My comment implies nothing. It's the readers' bias which puts USA/Russia/China/Moral/Ethical/Democratic/Totalitarian.
I see a lot of polarization in the world and everyone is claiming to be the good guys. We can improve when we accept that we're only guys and work upwards from there.
I am unconvinced that abandoning the attempt to be the good guys will lead people to be good. I believe it will only allow people to be bad guys without feeling bad about it. While claims to be moral have of course been used by many bad guys through history, the correct response is to argue convincingly that they're immoral, not to give up the idea that morality is a worthwhile standard.
Or, in other words, I believe morality is qualitatively different from any of those other categories you list. If a store chooses to sell Chips Ahoy instead of Oreos, that's just a question of taste; if a store chooses to sell cookies filled with razor blades and arsenic instead of Oreos, that's a different matter entirely, and we are not obligated to accept it because we've accepted that stores can sell Chips Ahoy.
I'm not suggesting abandoning the intention of being the good guy. Instead, I suggest to stop using it as a shield or plausibility cover for misdeeds. Instead I suggest the viewpoint of "Hey, we're trying to be good, but we fail sometimes. Let's accept it and collectively try to construct a better good, which is fair and equal to everyone, as much as possible." I think this is workable and can be iterated upon to make a better world (I know it's very hard, but it's not impossible).
Morality and ethics is universal. They're hugely important values to build upon, but interpreting them according to one's desires or in a subjective light, without empathy, makes them hollow. Again, a lot of misdeeds can be conducted by abusing these very important values.
I deliberately don't give any examples, because the examples may derail the conversation and take the spotlight to the examples themselves. All possible examples and evaluation of them is left to the reader, as a multi-faceted mental exercise.
Hope this clears my intentions a bit.
(I originally read your comment as saying that it is unfair for country B to be enjoined from action M if country A is engaging in it, and I think other commenters did too. I do absolutely agree with the goal of collectively constructing a better good in a fair and equal way, holding everyone to that standard, and expecting that people will fail but it's worth trying to meet that standard nonetheless.)
Secondly, from the point of view of the US it's also stupid. The US enjoys influence in the world because it propagates a rule-based order, not because it exploits everyone it can get its hands on. That would rapidly lead to a breakdown of trust and in this case result in every country trying to displace American technology from its markets. Which the EU say, could theoretically do.
Please read my other comments below (discussion with geofft). This is not the idea I suggest. In fact, it's the exact opposite.
> Secondly, from the point of view of the US it's also stupid.
My comment contains no countries and/or adjectives intentionally. It's neither about US or adjectives attached to US. I'm talking at a meta sense.
Again, please see my comments down the thread. This is not what I tried to say.
The core of the whole discussion is here [0].
Furthermore, let's create economic programs to build a baseline nuclear arsenal in every country. That'll prevent a lot of wars.
Some countries will object to that. Why?
Isn't everlasting peace much better?
Edit: Do I need to point out that I'm not writing these comments in support of war, but with a desire to spark a thoughtful conversation?
At the same time, I feel like there's still something there. Having nuclear weapons makes existing states much more resistant to opposition. Other states can't topple them in the traditional way because of MAD.
But neither can local freedom fighters -- suppose pro-democracy forces took three major cities in China and started using them as an industrial base to wage a conventional war against the regime. The US and anyone else couldn't really help them the way France did the nascent American Revolution, because of MAD. And if they actually started winning regardless, couldn't the dying regime nuke the rebel cities?
If we don't want people to live under permanent authoritarianism, maybe we still need something to level the playing field.
Though it doesn't necessarily have to be nukes; establishing uncensorable distributed communications comes to mind as an anti-authoritarian power. The fact that Western countries aren't spending billions to comprehensively subvert the Great Firewall is a significant strategic failure.
I have strong opinions in this matter.
The GFW is only possible because of metadata leaks that Western countries are exploiting too, for security and surveillance, or whatever.
Suppose Western countries start investing billions in subverting the Golden Shield, our own infrastructure and economy would suffer too.
A very naive but simple example:
I tried to train https://github.com/Kkevsterrr/geneva against a CheckPoint and a Fortinet ... It's not been fun for those "next gen firewalls", and CheckPoint is a NASDAQ-100, Fortinet an S&P 500.
'Nukes bring peace' mostly only if they are in the hands of a few major, stable powers, otherwise, nuclear proliferation probably is very bad.
These kinds of moral absolutions, i.e. projecting 'rights' into nations etc. (either we all have the right or nobody does) are pragmatically irrational.
Every nation is different, in a different set of circumstances, there's always some degree of moral relativism, but there's some degree of objectivity as well.
We have to balance the forces to figure out what to do in a complex world, and the rules may not always be so cut and dry.