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Comment by SilverElfin | Hacker News Reader

All these tech companies have cowards for leaders, and Sundar Pichai is no different. And he’s a non white immigrant! The CEOs fear being attacked by the administration through regulations or anti trust or not being given contracts. They are some of the most powerful people and yet they bend the knee so easily. Andy Jassy of Amazon is the worst though - funding the Melania documentary is so blatantly corrupt.

This era is evidence for why we cannot continue allowing individuals or mega corps to accumulate the kind of money and power they have. It is too easy to corrupt them.

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> he’s a non white immigrant!

This seems like a very white-centric categorization to assume that a Tamil Brahmin should necessarily see himself as in the same racial solidarity group as a Somali, Haitian, or Venezuelan as opposed to a European.

It doesn't much matter how Pichai sees himself.

What matters is how Trump and ICE see him.

And all they really notice is the color of the skin.

The vice president's wife is a Telugu Brahmin, and the director of the FBI is a Gujarati Patidar. What evidence do you have for Trump and ICE having a problem with Hindustanis?

It is a matter of time. They go for one group first, then the other group. Until then, they're useful, albeit foolish, tools.

Take a look at the ecosystem of far right influencers and personalities guiding the MAGA movement, and what they post on Twitter. Go look at replies on deportation and ethnic cleansing (“remigration”) posts made by Elon or DHS or others. You’ll see a torrent of vile supremacist content, and most of it is directed at Indians. That includes insults aimed at Usha Vance, various Indian CEOs, and Indian people at large. It’s why Vivek quit social media - almost every single reply to any post he made was racist. It’s what the right always was, unfortunately, even though it looked for a bit like it might be moving on from that past.

When the deportation push shifts from illegal immigrants to legal ones - which it has to because their stated goal of deporting 100 million Americans is not possible otherwise - it’ll come for Indians too. In fact I would say Indians are perhaps the most hated group on the far right.

As for those Indians still ignoring what the administration stands for and where it’s going, such as the ones working for Trump, they’re useful idiots. Doing the dirty work that will come for them in the future.

He’s going to be a victim of the same anti immigration anti foreigner anti minority movement that the other groups you mentioned will be victim to. Remember the DHS tweeted a supremacist call to deport 100 million people. That is only possible if you denaturalize all the citizens who were once just immigrant workers on visas. The fact that he’s “Tamil Brahmin” isn’t relevant - his right to exist in America is at risk, by his very own actions of supporting the administration.

Cowardice is the wrong word here. It implies that these people have a desired action that they're not taking because of fear, weakness, or hesitation.

What tech companies actually have is rapacious sociopaths for leaders. They have purposely brought about the current state of affairs through intensive lobbying, spending, and direct action.

For the most part, they don't believe that they should be held accountable for their behavior. They don't fundamentally believe in democracy, and many of them don't really believe humans and human life are more important than some other abstract concept that they have in their heads. At root, they all believe in rule by the elite.

This may seem like an argumentative distinction, but I would counter that it's crucial to understanding what we have to do next, which is not to try to convince them, but rather to take back the power that they've accumulated over us, against their best efforts to stop us.

> take back the power that they've accumulated over us, against their best efforts to stop us.

It sure would be nice if so many smart technologists hadn't spent the last two decades poo-pooing distributed p2p software in favor of centralizing https and javascript webcrapps because "they have nothing to hide" and can always "vote with their wallet".

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