From the same tweet: "This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on Earth."
Sounds like a bit of a hyperbole to me.
Sounds like a bit of a hyperbole to me.
His words reflect his personal experience as a person who feels compelled to point out legitimate dangers to a free and democratic society.
It turns out that “free and democratic “ societies react harshly to criticism of their powerful agencies.
Ironically, he has ended up having to flee to a place that is much, much less “free and democratic” but letting him freely criticise the rest of the world is politically useful for now, so he is allowed the bully pulpit.
To the contrary, Snowden is an object lesson in what happens when you actually take your oaths to protect democracy and freedom seriously. Taking those oaths seriously is almost
always punished with the full coercive force of the state. They are supposed to be interpreted as being loyal to one’s superiors, not as actual commitments to any abstract set of principles or ideals.
Living unmolested in hierarchical societies is mostly an exercise in the effective interpretation of doublespeak and toeing the line.
All he did there was fail to believe that Putin would actually do something quite that extremely terrible. (Not my assumption. Later tweets supplied that.)
He was accusing Biden and the media of probably crying wolf.
He expressed a perfectly valid and supported-by-evidense opinion that the media stokes fires and the US manipulates the people via the media, and therefor you shouldn't just accept everything without question.
The media and the US government do in fact both do those things. You in fact should not just accept everything without question. That is all true and was true on that day too, because it's true at all times every day.
Merely in that case, that specific claim by Biden and the media was not false.
And because he got that wrong, he stopped tweeting at all because he considered his opinions and advice of low value on that subject. What lack of integrity!
Try again.
"perfectly valid and supported-by-evidense opinion"
He was clearly holding an invalid, incorrect opinion and supported the Putin state position that allowed a better chance of a surprise coup on Kyiv.
Educated geopol and intel circles already knew about the impending invasion months before, a very major "how the world works" event. That he was so crassly wrong, months after it was obvious, should be a stark lesson to you that Snowden does not in fact know "how the world works." and you should appropriately downgrade his opinion on such matters. If you did not know about this invasion in 2021, your intel sources and analysis are also garbage like Snowdens.
But it sounds like you'll twist anything to support your preconceived notions, even when confronted with the obvious contradictions. Try again
I don't think you are in a great position from which to to remark about anyone else's twisting and preconceived notions and contradictions.
Clearly implicating that US-adjacent media is the prime culprit for wanting war, not the 100k Russian troops already stationed on the border, with plans from months before to assault Ukraine and kill thousands. Rather than the media simply announcing, months late, the impending invasion.
"if nobody shows up for the invasion Biden scheduled for tomorrow morning at 3AM"
Clearly implicating Biden as being the one wanting the invasion to happen, instead of accurately warning the world what is going to transpire, and that nothing is going to happen anyway (wrong).
"your journalistic credibility was instrumentalized as part of one of those disinformation campaigns"
The journalism wasn't uncredible! It wasn't disinformation! It was accurately reporting the impending invasion.
Nothing here is ambiguous at all with decent reading comprehension. Snowden himself says "If there's an invasion tomorrow, dunk on me because I have been spectacularly wrong."
You are clearly the one with the "twisting and preconceived notions and contradictions." because you're denying Snowden was wrong when he literally admits it.
When interpreting public content, it is generally useful to carefully consider the perverse and straightforward incentives and value propositions of the parties involved. Most public speech (and most “news”) is fundamentally characterisable as some flavor of PR exercise.
Please do elaborate. I am not aware of any information that Snowden has published that was not factually correct and informative.
I think that of all people, Snowden would have a much more nuanced understanding of what it means for a former NSA chief to join the board of a company like OAI.
What does it mean when a Russian citizen [0] on social media smears an American company that's blocked Russian disinformation campaigns [1] for appointing somebody that's been in charge of defending against Russian disinformation campaigns [2], who has said as recently as last month: “If they are trying to influence or interfere in our elections, we should make it as hard as possible for them.”[3]?
(Vf guvf ahnaprq haqrefgnaqvat be vf vg vafvahngvba?)
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/02/edward-snowd...
[1] https://openai.com/index/disrupting-deceptive-uses-of-AI-by-...
[2] https://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/3508639-cyber-comma...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/us/politics/russia-disinf...
Like how some of OpenAI's current challenges include a) not leaking everything they create to the PRC and b) not having their tools abused for disinformation campaigns, so they appointed someone with leadership experience in keeping secrets from the PRC and combating disinformation campaigns.
Or did you mean "NSA man bad"?
Being a career military person that ends up as a head of a three letter agency requires a very specific kind of professional focus, worldview, and set of priorities.
A better example might be if a former member of the grateful dead joined the board of OAI. That would also be an indication of an intentional incorporation of a worldview into the guiding intellect of a company.
1. "This person has a specific professional history"
2. ???
3. "This is a willful, calculated betrayal of the rights of every person on earth"
The underwear -gnomeish jump here I think is: the “only” reasonable explanation for this (overtly terrible from an optics perspective) selection is that this is the NSA getting their hooks deeply into openAI in the same way they did with Google, which can now be reasonably considered a commercial extension or at least a close partner of the NSA.
Arguably, googles business model is based on violating the privacy of every person on earth to the maximum extent that they can get away with, so the somewhat hyperbolic statement seems less extreme in that context.
But, that is just my interpretation, I’m not in his head, so I could definitely be wrong. Still, this is my best estimate of the situation.
The only thing missing is the motive of harm, which is handily replaced by the motive of profit with indifference to harm.
My hypothesis is that in his time with the NSA, Snowden witnessed the cartoon-villainy that he called out, and that because of that experience, he identifies this recent event (of appointing an ex-NSA military officer to guide OAI) as a highly probable symptom of further villainy, this time is something arguably more expansive and impactful than FAANG.
It seems to me a rather reasonable conclusion , and framing it in sensational terms as the most reasonable approach to “sound the alarm “- a role that, for better or for worse, Snowden has taken.
Where there is smoke, there is fire is still an extremely useful adage, despite the overt lack of scientific rigor in its application.
This is not what I had in mind when I hoped I would live in interesting times.
This is the ROT13 cipher. Uryyb, sryybj unpxref.