
Trump signals scrutiny of Google's ties with China after Thiel comments - tosh
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-signals-scrutiny-of-googles-ties-with-china-after-thiel-comments-11563285110?mod=rsswn
======
adenverd
This article omits some pretty relevant info:

* Thiel founded Palantir [0], which has a very deep and ongoing relationship providing counter-terrorism info and analytics to 3-letter agencies. His comments are likely an attempt to protect Palantir's contracts from Google.

* Google recently (2018) had trouble with employees exposing a censored search engine project targeted for China, and quitting over it [1]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies)

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-
employe...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/16/technology/google-employees-
protest-search-censored-china.html)

~~~
la_barba
Palantir's clients might be public info, but AFAIK, there is no evidence that
Google has completely terminated their relationship with the NSA and the CIA.
Also to be super fair, it may well be that Google has no choice in this
matter. But in any case, the 'treasonous' claim seems to be a whole lot of hot
air. Google will be shut-down before they give China any direct access that
assists their intelligence ops.

~~~
claudeganon
>Google will be shut-down before they give China any direct access that
assists their intelligence ops.

Their Dragonfly project was going to be providing this kind of surveillance to
the Chinese government until Googlers (indeterminately) put a stop to it?

[https://theintercept.com/collections/google-dragonfly-
china/](https://theintercept.com/collections/google-dragonfly-china/)

~~~
la_barba
I don't know what you mean by "this kind" of surveillance. What was reported
was they were going to give the Chinese government the ability to remove links
from their index. Any business in China has to operate in accordance with the
local law. Yes, thats probably incompatible with the morality of some people,
but doesn't sound like some crazy surveillance scheme to me. Also, as an
aside, nobody (especially in the west) seems to be willing to take a personal
hit on this. Have the people who oppose this stopped buying stuff from China?
Buying Chinese made goods is just sending more cash to the Chinese government.
Has Google stopped manufacturing their phones in China? Has Apple or anyone
else? Its all fake concern and useless posturing for PR as far as I am
concerned.

------
umeshunni
If you're wondering what's with the upswing in media articles attacking Google
in the last few days, it's because there is a tech 'anti-trust' summit in the
White House today: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-tech-summoned-to-
washington...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/big-tech-summoned-to-washington-
for-antitrust-hearing-11562699445?mod=article_inline)

~~~
metalchianti
Why did you put 'anti-trust' in quotes?

~~~
TomMckenny
Perhaps because if it were really a tech anti-trust summit, ISPs would be the
chief topic. Or at least discussed somewhere. So a better description is tech
contribution shake down.

~~~
writepub
Just incidental that an overwhelming majority of tech giants' employees pledge
allegiance to the left, while having unregulated, monopoly control over
information dissemination? When was the last time an ISP de-platformed someone
for their politics?

~~~
bdhe
It's a deeply disappointing realization that to a lot of people, basic human
decency, integrity in disseminating truth, and a consistent view of facts has
become a partisan issue because of the Republican party.

~~~
sgnelson
Or the fact that what was once a cornerstone of American Conservatism has now
disappeared entirely, the free market economy. "I can't compete in the
marketplace of ideas, I need government intervention, subsidies, import
tariffs to break up those big bad 'leftist' companies, I'm not
smart/strong/good enough to do it myself."

Reagan is spinning in his grave.

~~~
TomMckenny
They managed the amazing feat of being both anti-free market and anti-social-
safety at the same time.

Perhaps a big-tent pro-democracy, pro-rule of law party will emerge as a
counter weight somehow.

~~~
18pfsmt
The amount of illiberal ideas coming out of many people scares the shit out of
me. Banning anything is not liberal, it's authoritarian.

------
davidw
I think there are real questions about what to do - if anything, because doing
nothing is also a legitimate point of view - with some of these tech giants,
but it's very disheartening to see it all get caught up in partisan politics.
There's a lot going on already that makes it difficult to think about
consequences and potential unintended consequences without making companies
take "sides".

------
olefoo
It's worth noting that in previous years an American businessman publicly
attacking his rivals as treasonous would be regarded as engaging in unseemly
conduct more appropriate to a citizen of more authoritarian nations.

The conclusion one can draw from this should be obvious.

------
the-dude
This story was flagged earlier today, albeit another publisher ( disclosure, I
was the submitter ).

------
covercash
What is Thiel’s current stake in $FB? I’m wondering if this was a play out of
the GOP playbook, accusing your opponent of the things you’re actually doing.

~~~
njarboe
Not much. This[1] Nov 22, 2017 article states he sold most of his stake
shortly after the IPO and then most of the rest on Nov 20 2017. At that point
he only held "220,718 Class A Facebook shares and 54,995 Class B shares".

[1][https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/22/peter-thiel-sells-
majority-o...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/22/peter-thiel-sells-majority-of-
facebook-shares-but-2012-was-bigger.html)

~~~
kbenson
So at $204 a share, that's about $56 million, right? If his reported net worth
is correct $2.5 billion, that's around 2% of his net worth.

So, not a huge amount of Facebook nor of his net worth, but still a _huge_
amount of money. I'm not sure how billionaires think, but I suspect to become
a billionaire it's usually not "I won't sweat a loss of couple tens of
millions of dollars."

~~~
erobbins
:)

Our "billionaire" president paid his son's Boy Scouts fees with charity money
rather than his own. People with that kind of money are usually SUPER cheap
and REALLY attached to every dollar.

------
Lowkeyloki
I think Thiel and Google are both guilty of some questionable dealings. Thiel
is only able to cast aspersions because his questionable dealings have been
restricted to federal and state government entities.

Can Peter Thiel please just plug himself into his own personal Matrix/brain-
in-a-vat VR fantasy where he gets to be John Galt and Howard Roark or whatever
and just leave the rest of us alone already?

------
JaimeThompson
Yet, strangely enough, selling nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia was just
fine according to this administration.

~~~
vuln
It's fine according to ANY administration.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-
security/obama-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-saudi-
security/obama-administration-arms-sales-offers-to-saudi-top-115-billion-
report-idUSKCN11D2JQ)

~~~
JaimeThompson
The only references to nuclear are in relation to the Iranian nuclear deal. Do
you have another source that shows the Obama administration allowed the
transfer of nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia?

------
jammygit
> In an interview Monday with Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson, Mr. Thiel
> suggested Chinese intelligence agents are likely to have infiltrated Google
> as it works on an artificial-intelligence project in the country. Mr. Thiel,
> in the interview, didn’t offer evidence that backed his claims.

~~~
lazyeye
I think that's why he used the word "likely". It's hardly a stretch. Let's not
be naive. If the Google research in China is anything significant I'd say it's
almost a certainty.

~~~
joshuamorton
How is applied ai for weapons (maven) at all similar to an academic research
institute that focuses on fundamental ml research in areas like NLP and ai for
education?[0]

[0]: [https://ai.google/research/join-
us/beijing/](https://ai.google/research/join-us/beijing/)

~~~
taiwanboy
If you believe that the Chinese government will never use the AI
talents/research incubated by google for military usages, then you also must
believe when Beijing proclaimed they would never weaponize South China Sea,
and has never stolen US technologies.

~~~
dang
You've been using HN primarily for nationalistic battle. We ban accounts that
do that, regardless of what they're battling for or against.

HN is for people, stories, and conversations that are animated by curiosity.
Political battle is the opposite. It is destructive of the subtler and lighter
things HN exists for. What happens to a garden when tanks roll in? A garden
cannot be a battlefield.

If you would please review
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
and take the spirit of the site to heart, we'd be grateful. I know that the
topic you care about is important and the feelings are strong and genuine, but
those are actually reasons why we have to moderate more, not less—or else it
and things like it will consume the site completely.

~~~
kpU8efre7r
Attack ideas not people. The comment was in line with the article.

Remove the article/post if it will prompt a comment section that the overlords
find displeasing.

~~~
dang
In this case the issue is not an individual comment but a pattern of site
usage.

------
blaser-waffle
Also remember Thiel's Dark Enlightenment[1] ideals and positions which are,
arguably, alt-right. He seems like a member of the coterie that Trump would
take orders from.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment)

See also: "The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and the Politics of
Intolerance at Stanford", by Thiel, et al

------
TorKlingberg
This is blatantly using government power to attack political opponents. Trump,
Thiel and other conservatives see Google as left leaning, so they want to hurt
it. Thiel also stands to gain economically through Facebook and Palantir.

------
sgnelson
"I have here in my hand a list of communist agents and sympathizers working
for the State Departmernt... er, I mean Google."

It really is like watching history repeat itself. I've just been amazed by the
past few years.

------
defen
This is why Thiel's backing Trump was such a smart move, purely in a
realpolitik sense.

If Trump had lost, Thiel would have taken a minor reputational hit based on
Trump's pre-election behavior, but since no one thought he would win anyway,
it could have been written off as him just taking a chance on an outside
candidate. None of the really controversial stuff would have happened, so
worst case scenario Thiel looks kind of foolish and wasted a bit of money.

If he had backed Clinton and she won, he would just be one of many Silicon
Valley backers, with no particular voice over and above the other
billionaires.

But now, Thiel is the only person in Silicon Valley who the President will
listen to. That's got to be worth way more than the 1.5 million or whatever
that he spent on it.

~~~
oposa
Thiel gets way too much credit for being pragmatic (or whatever you want to
call it). As far as I have read he has held those views for a long time,
whether you like them or not. It wouldn't surprise me if it goes back to his
parents or something. It seem mostly just that people don't want to believe
that the US has opinionated "media moguls" like Europe.

~~~
ordinaryradical
Agreed. Thiel wasn't playing realpolitik at all. He is adamantly anti-
democratic in his political views and appreciated Trump precisely because he
lined up neatly with his corporatist-authoritarian views.

Thiel has unusual politics that don't fit neatly along the right-left spectrum
and lucked into a candidate that matched them more closely than anyone who had
come before.

~~~
moate
>>don't fit neatly along the right-left spectrum

That's because it's more of a grid. You have 2 axis:
Authoritarian/Libertarian, Economic Left/Economic Right.

If you're looking at it as a line, all sorts of things "don't fit neatly".

------
awinder

      Speaking on Fox Business Network on Monday, Larry Kudlow, 
      director of the National Economic Council, said he doesn’t 
      believe Google is treasonous. “I meet with Google’s CEO on 
      a regular basis. I think they’re working for America, for 
      our military, not for China,” he said.
    
      “Peter Thiel’s a good man. He’s been a great supporter of 
      the Trump administration. He’s a very smart guy,” Mr.  
      Kudlow said. “I’m just not sure where he’s going on this, 
      so I have my doubts, but one never knows.”
    

I spend a little more time than is probably healthy trying to mentally "stack
rank" the crazies these days, having Larry Kudlow politely call this out makes
Thiel one of the high-velocity candidates of the week on the crazy movers &
shakers scale.

~~~
_red
What you said is true, but Project DragonFly is a real thing and its quite
likely DragonFly has state-sponsored spies working on it. (Possibly without
google's knowledge)

------
bassman9000
The amount of comments with plain ad-hominems and zero counterarguments is
telling.

Is there anyone with an actual counter, or proof, that what Mr. Thiel said was
plain wrong, in respect to Google?

~~~
sgnelson
It doesn't work that way. You have an extraordinary claim? You need
extraordinary proof. Show me the evidence.

And not all attacks are ad hominem. Reputation matters. You can't always
separate claims from those making them. If someone has clear biases/something
to gain from the claim, it would be unwise to simply to take their statements
on at face value.

That's my (what I consider) rational and logical counter.

~~~
bassman9000
_Reputation matters_

So you're dismissing Thiel's claims based on reputation. I'd argue that, based
on his reputation, on what he has done in this industry and his trajectory,
they have even more weight.

This is a 2 way street.

