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Comment by belligeront | Hacker News Reader

Highly recommend listening to this HBR podcast about the same topic. [1]

TJ Watson (of IBM) is quoted as saying: “I’m an internationalist. I cooperate with all forms of government, regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles or not.”

I hear a lot of similar echos within tech companies right now. People using “we’re a business” to shut down discussion about the role of supplying AI technology to Israel, who has been using AI to choose bombing targets [2].

[1] https://hbr.org/podcast/2019/11/lessons-from-ibm-in-nazi-ger...

[2] https://www.972mag.com/lavender-ai-israeli-army-gaza/

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This is where government sanctions come in. While some companies may behave morally, we can't expect that they all will when there is money to be made.

If we the people as represented by our government decide that a particular foreign regime is off-limits, then companies are compelled to not do business with them. We don't leave it to choice.

Shouldn’t individuals and companies also have a set of morals?

Individuals may, but the market doesn't.

So if you want companies to have any form of morality, you need to enforce it. Because otherwise all the ones that do care are just going to be outcompeted and die out, and you'll be left with specifically the worst of the bunch. Organizations and individuals act to their incentives, and if they don't, then they stop existing.

If ethics were self-enforcing, then we wouldn't need to be talking about it. We have laws against killing and stealing because without those laws, killing and stealing are a shockingly effective way to get ahead.

I think the moral obligation is slightly different when you have capabilities that no other firm has. I believe IBM falls into that category then, a company like ASML would now. Google Cloud would not: Israel can get cloud services anywhere.

(note this is true regardless of your feelings on the morality of Israel's government's choices)

If anything, "Israel can get cloud services anywhere" is an argument that Google should be even less inclined to take their money. If they have alternatives, it's not even as much money as it would be if they don't.

"Customers have other choices" is not a reason for a business to not accept a customer.

"Don't be evil" is a good reason for a business to not accept a customer though

> I think the moral obligation is slightly different when you have capabilities that no other firm has.

hmmm... I don't know if that argument holds water.

for example, the corollary would be that your obligation is less if other firms have the capability?

although AI and choosing bombing targets is pretty horrible, I think surveillance tech ("advertising") is something more fundamental that everyone should think more about.

So, "If I didn't do it, then somebody else would, so I may as well take the profit for myself"?

Or "As long as I'm not the only one who's complicit, it's okay"?

> regardless of whether I can subscribe to all of their principles

Sure, being able to work with people who have different values is a noble thing. But what about whether or not they observe international law?

This is like a business saying "I cooperate with all customers, regardless of their criminal nature". That is a quite different statement.

Exactly. The CEO is speaking in doublespeak (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qP07oyFTRXc)

There is a line between saying "I am a business person and therefore I don't judge people with different values" and saying "I am a business person and therefore I expect not to be judged for my lack of ethical behavior".

Doesn't that lead to absurdities, though? Like, is McDonald's morally required to avoid serving known fentanyl dealers?

I think McDonald's would condemn and distance itself from a high-profile customer or partner that was responsible for highly illegal activity like that. Like it did with Russia.

Like when Twitter declined to remove ISIS propaganda due to their liberal principles

ISIS propaganda isn't a crime, and anyone can be smeared as an ISIS propagandist for questioning any military decision or explanation (it's almost exclusively how Anglo-American politics is done these days.) Using unwritten and unconstitutional speech crimes as the benchmark for criminality is scary. Call me when some military contractor is helping jihadists find targets in Syria.

Yep that liberal company that’s owned by Trump. ISIS is the GOP, they both believe the same things about women.

As a complication, it's important to state that concentration camps were not against international laws at the time! Pursing racist and eugenic policies was in vogue, and many of Germany's concentration camps were toured and audited by the Red Cross before the war!

It's because of the holocaust that we thankfully have changed our collective attitude about such things. But in 1939, people's knowledge of the racial atrocities happening was very restricted, so I don't think we can underrate just how naïve some people where at the time.

I don't think eugenics by means of killing people was ever widely considered moral or even a gray area.

What happened a lot at the beginning of WWII was that people didn't know what was happening at the concentration camps. And yes, there were some twisted moral templates at the time based on racism and dehumanization.

> I don't think eugenics by means of killing people was ever widely considered moral or even a gray area.

Oof, how I wish that were true. You may be interested in Pernick, Martin (1999): The Black Stork: Eugenics and the Death of "Defective" Babies in American Medicine and Motion Pictures since 1915.

Several nations (the US included) were well on their way to "Great Society" ideas of shaping the next generation by controlling genetics (be that in who reproduced or who was allowed to live). A lot of experiments ended abruptly when the Allies reached the camps, and a lot of politically-powerful institutions have kicked dirt over their own pasts to try and help people forget that's where we were headed.

(Quite a few experiments did not; forced sterilization wasn't outlawed in the US until, IIRC, the eighties).

You might want to read a bit more about Margaret Sanger and her little project called "Planned Parenthood."

Indeed, the US had their own camps that they filled with Japanese, Germans, Italians and a few others. Of course they were relatively nicer to the people placed in the camps.

Yes, understanding and cooperating with people of very different values can be noble or evil, it depends entirely on what those different values are.

Also, legality doesn't have a close relation to morality, so cooperating with people regardless of legality can also be noble or evil.

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