
Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says - Jerry2
https://www.military.com/defensetech/2019/03/21/googles-work-china-eroding-us-military-advantage-dunford-says.html
======
ehsankia
This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the
wall. It a big eye-catching headline with very little substance.

I understand how Google's unwillingness to participate in DoD programs can
impact the US military, but I don't understand the Google/China connection.

Does anyone know what the "artificial intelligence venture" is referring to?
Is it Dragonfly? I don't see how an exploratory program to bring Search, being
developed outside of China, applies at all to this situation.

~~~
paleotrope
My guess is the DoD/USGov is going to be opposed to any transfer of any ai/ml
technology to China. I tend to think that most ai/ml news is hyped and highly
speculative, but if the leadership in the US is not sophisticated enough to
understand the hype cycle, any ai technology that could be put in a military
drone is going to be heavily regulated.

~~~
chillacy
AI is such a new field and China invests so heavily that they may end up
leapfrogging US researchers anyways if the US doesn't up its funding:
[https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-
about-t...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-about-to-
overtake-america-in-ai-research)

~~~
A2017U1
The greatest trick the military ever pulled was convincing the populace that
the "others" were about to overtake them. It's been going on for decades.

Highly suggest looking at the stark difference in the two biggest military
budgets on Earth.

------
csdreamer7
I emailed Richard, the author of this article, with the question: "What
Robotics projects is Google helping the Chinese govt develop or leaking
through a CCP cell?"

I am very curious, as I think the HN community would be.

I do not want to rehash the other arguments: if it is true Google would be
hypocritical for assisting China or the lack of details what this General
accused Google on possibly leaking through a CCP cell to do business in China.

Also, how true are the claims that companies need a CCP cell (accused by a US
official of leaking IP to a foreign) that could lead to IP theft? Would
allowing a political party to have access to your trade secrets compromise the
obligation to keep the legal protections under US law?

~~~
partiallypro
I think one general issue is that Google has an AI center in China, and I'm
sure there is 0 doubt from the intelligence community that the information
Google's employees there have access to, etc is being infiltrated by Chinese
spies. Not to mention just general projects Google is involved in within China
itself, and its willingness to pay a price for entry (which is Chinese custom
for foreign companies.) So, Google is being a bit of a "useful idiot" in their
aiding of the Chinese government, and I believe prior quotes from the Pentagon
are saying their aid is "indirect."

People can say it's "not the same" because it's just an AI center, instead of
a direct military application. But...that's not really how AI is applied, the
AI from the AI center within China can be used for military purposes. And
given that it is a black box that the US is not directly involved in (unlike
China,) the general premise of Google's aiding of China seems pretty apparent.

~~~
csdreamer7
I like your speculation.

Google's face recognition tech is the first tech that comes to mind of being a
real issue (esp with Googlers).

I think this is something people need to discuss more.

Like, why is the US govt allowing companies to get US military contracts that
allow CCP units access to their research centers?

~~~
yorwba
Those CCP units are more a red herring than anything. The relevant law says
"The grass-root organizations of the Communist Party of China in companies
shall carry out their activities in accordance with the Constitution of the
Communist Party of China." [1], which doesn't automatically imply that they
get special access to anything. I think it's more a measure to boost
membership than anything (the term "grass-root" is a strong hint).

I also wouldn't be too sure that Google employees outside China aren't spying
for the CCP as well, and pulling out of China wouldn't protect against that.

Worrying about an AI research center in China only makes sense from a
perspective of those Chinese researchers being more likely to later apply
their experience at Chinese companies than if they moved to the US to work for
Google, whereafter they might stay and continue working in the US.

[1]
[http://www.china.org.cn/english/government/207344.htm](http://www.china.org.cn/english/government/207344.htm)

------
Ancalagon
If ever there were a reason to get politicians on the side of breaking up
Google (or any other tech company), I imagine this would be it.

~~~
vtange
Wouldn't a breakup/decentralization of Google, or any American multinational
for that matter, just hand Chinese tech giants a massive advantage since the
Internet as it is now heavily favors large, centralized organizations? I don't
see people arguing for the breakup of the tech giants across the Pacific even
though they hardly have a better reputation when it comes to privacy, etc.

By the way, I highly anticipate that the above argument will be made by said
multinationals to prevent said breakup/anti-monopoly moves.

~~~
coliveira
Not a surprise, this is the same argument the oil industry has used for
decades to oppose any kind of anti-oligopoly legislation. Basically they state
that the US curbing the size of oil companies will adversely impact national
interests in the Middle East and in other regions.

~~~
forgotmysn
does that invalidate the argument?

~~~
coliveira
It is a fallacy. If having a oligopoly is bad for the economy, it doesn't
matter what other countries may want to do. Why weakening your economy, to
satisfy the desires of an oligopoly, will be any better?

~~~
creato
For the local national economy, an oligopoly seems possibly worse. On the
international stage, it seems blindingly obvious that breaking up your local
oligopoly to compete with larger foreign oligopolies or stated owned
corporations is worse.

Fundamentally, this is all about negotiating power, and the whole point of
breaking up a monopoly/oligopoly is to reduce its negotiating power. But
that's clearly a problem when interacting with foreign companies not subject
to the same anti-trust action, and will have much greater negotiating power.

This is complicated, and the argument is not a fallacy.

~~~
coliveira
Following your reasoning, we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid,
god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... In
other words, lets kill the competitiveness of the local economy, so that other
countries won't be able to do just that. This is similar to the soldier who
decides to commit suicide so that the foreign army won't have the chance to do
so!

~~~
creato
You have a point. I'm just pointing out the argument you responded to is not a
fallacy, it's a real concern as well. I honestly don't know what I would do if
I had decision making power on this issue.

> we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming
> "victims" of oligopolies from other countries...

This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to
international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them. In
part, precisely because most of their competition is fragmented and paralyzed
by infighting.

~~~
coliveira
> This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to
> international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them.

if that is the case, then the US has no grounds on requesting the Chinese to
open their markets for US firms! If the US is itself committed to empower
their oligarchic companies, we should not be surprised if the Chinese create
their own mega companies and close their market to the American ones.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that if we go the path of supporting
mega companies, then we should just throw away the illusion of free market and
understand that other countries will do the same, because they're not stupid.

~~~
creato
> If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies,

I think this is a silly strawman and you probably know it. This argument
exists on a wide spectrum, at one end is "not acting to break up large
companies", and at the other is "outright state owned enterprises with
unlimited funding to compete abroad". The fact that the argument applies to
both does not make them the same.

~~~
coliveira
It is not a strawman when we're talking about the US trying to "protect" giant
and unhinged companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, ExonMobil, JPMorgan,
and Goldman Sachs. In fact what happens is the opposite, these companies are
in large part controlling the country, which puts us in a similar situation as
the Chinese.

------
FourierTformed
What military advantage does Google give the U.S. government?

~~~
president
They are refusing to work with the U.S. military yet cooperating with China to
help advance their AI technology. In some sense, this could be seen as leaving
your own in the dust while helping "others".

~~~
bduerst
Google refused to work on the machine vision for U.S. military drones that
kill thousands of people (project maven). [1] Google's work in China is
building an AI center to promote AI in general. [2]

These are not the same things.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_arms_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence_arms_race#Disassociation)

[2] [http://fortune.com/2017/12/13/google-china-artificial-
intell...](http://fortune.com/2017/12/13/google-china-artificial-
intelligence/)

~~~
chibg10
Is Google's AI work in China public though? If that's not the case, I see
Dunford's point.

The DoD does not have a unit in Deepmind ensuring all of their findings are
evaluated for potential military usage as far as I know. Whereas that's
certainly going to happening in any Google AI lab on China.

~~~
bduerst
Not sure, though if we are speculating, it's most likely a talent acquisition
move for recruiting the best data scientists in China, rather than some
conspiracy to help the Chinese military.

~~~
acct1771
When they're all the same bucket...

------
analyst74
Looking from different angle, if Google hires a bunch of Chinese AI
researchers to do civilian tech research. Wouldn't that cause a brain drain
from the Chinese military and other Chinese companies?

------
cromwellian
By that token, Google publishing AI papers publicly erodes US military
advantage given that China can use them to accelerate their home grown
projects.

Companies are opening offices in China as a recruitment drive I bet. The whole
industry is trying to buy up every last data scientist. It happens that China
graduates more engineers and scientists than practically anyone else and so if
you want to set up an R&D lab to snap up new recruits, setting them up near
Beijing or tsinghua university isn’t a bad idea, just like foreign companies
opening corporate R&D labs near Stanford or MIT.

~~~
freyir
‘U.S. companies must realize that in doing business with China, "they are
automatically required to have a cell of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in
that company and that it's going to lead to that intellectual property from
that company finding its way to the Chinese military," Dunford said. "There's
a distinction without a difference between the CCP and the government and the
Chinese military."’

The argument is that the Chinese government imposes conditions that the DoD
could never get away with (at least not easily and publicly), and Google is
playing into their hands.

~~~
cromwellian
Seems like a lot of unfounded claims there. Dunford doesn't even know what
projects the Beijing office is researching, for example, what if they're
researching better Google Translate models for Mandarin?

All of this is red baiting. Sure, China is conducting economic espionage,
overlooks domestic players stealing IP, and structures joint-venture companies
to benefit their domestic economy. But it's not a playbook they invented, the
US during its rise from an agrarian backwater violated British IP on a regular
basis, the US also conducts espionage all over the world, including
information used to seal deals for the military industrial and aerospace
industries.

The real question is, how stupid do you think Google management is? After the
last time they pulled out of China, do you really think they're going to host
any "crown jewel" trade secret projects there?

Moreover, AI is firmly in the "publish almost everything" phase. Google,
Facebook, Microsoft, OpenAI, even Apple, are publishing ever major
breakthrough they come up with. There's very little secrets going on.
AlphaStar, BERT/Transformers, WaveNet, NMT, et al, the core underpinning of
many products are being openly shared.

This is just straight up scaremongering by government spooks attempting to
force tech companies into compliance on the grounds of patriotism.

~~~
freyir
You had me up till OpenAI.

~~~
cromwellian
Well, except GPT-2.

------
KirinDave
One can't help but wonder if this line of thinking is in some part a
consequence of Google's decision to put US government contracts on hold due to
ethical concerns from its workers.

~~~
jrbuhl
It is directly related.
[https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1106247367177764865](https://twitter.com/HawleyMO/status/1106247367177764865)

------
killjoywashere
The bigger issue, in my mind is the DoD acquisitions process. It is severely
out of step with the speed of business, and actively prohibits investing in
companies who have foreign funding, esp. Chinese money. They have created a
diode that pushes engineering talent away from the Pentagon and China is more
than happy to help out. On the flip side, look at our nervousness about China
putting money and talent into SV. Are you so sure they're not nervous about
one of our companies doing the same?

------
burtonator
It's really interesting to think about companies siding with governments now
that funding comes internationally as well.

The concept of nation states is fading and the rise of corruption and
oligarchy may take hold...

Saudi Arabia has a massive investment in Uber btw... this really prevents any
type of criticism of these companies or the view that they're independent or
that they should prioritize any specific country.

------
moosey
The sunset comes for US hegemony for the same reason that China will not
succeed long term, or even medium term, for that matter: Decision making that
is oppositional to what technocracy would demand. I think that it's fine to
take culture into decision making most of the time, but when your process
turns a full 180 from what observation suggests is the proper course of
action, you will run into long term issues socially, economically, and
militarily, and both of these nations are going to run head long into those.

What I fear is the damage that they will cause in the run up to these
failures.

~~~
ivalm
> what technocracy would demand

This is a somewhat complicated issue. Remember, eugenics, humors, etc were all
previously part of "technocracy" view of the world. I'm not saying we should
embrace religion/superstition/etc as an answer, but decision making in the
name of science/technology is not as fool-proof as many believe.

~~~
moosey
That's why I mentioned observational data as well. The examples listed did not
follow observational data, or followed flawed interpretations of data.

A contemporary example of the failure to follow what would be a true
technocratic ideal would be how we are handling climate change.

------
devoply
Good riddance to US military advantage. I don't want to live in a unilateral
world.

------
apercu
As much as there are things that are suspect in terms of the health and
privacy of humanity inherent in Google's business model, I don't know why they
get singled out. I did some consulting work for a company. It is private firm
that is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary that isn't an American
firm. Yet it has tech in the most sensitive places within the US government
and DOD. And the US defence firms? Well, they are multinationals and (for
money because there is no loyalty) will provide info/data/tech to anyone. Why
would they do this? Because if Iran or China or Russia catches up with us, the
US government will just give them more money to stay ahead.

The out of control capitalism in the US is the biggest threat to the health,
wellbeing and security of its citizens. Google is just a symptom.

And for the record, I am not a communist. I believe human being need some
(healthy) competition and that you should be able to work harder or smarter
and get ahead. Just not to the extremes we have developed.

------
gabbygab
Is it just google or all business? As china gets wealthier and as they
develop, doesn't that also erode our military advantage? Isn't the overall
economic growth a greater threat than one company, no matter how important?
Not sure why Google is being singled out.

------
trkh0
How?

What work with China?

Sure the words of a top general are newsworthy but some fact checking would be
nice.

------
_lessthan0
Wow, this thread is funny as hell.

------
saagarjha
Wow, the comments on that website are pretty horrible :/

~~~
espeed
Notice any pattern in the writing style and sentence structure?

------
jorblumesea
I think it's ironic that partnerships with the Pentagon get axed, but projects
with an authoritarian state go forward. Seems like a double standard.

~~~
ehsankia
Which project with authoritarian state went forward?

[https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-
se...](https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/google-china-censored-search-
engine-2/)

~~~
pdimitar
There was an article lately here at HN showing that there is a high
probability the project didn't end. It just became secretive.

Not sure what I believe personally but if there are big money involved then
I'd lean to believe that Google made a PR stunt (which your article
advertises) and just got employees who can keep quiet to work on Dragonfly.

------
tanilama
LOL, the author automatically assumes CCP trusted ... Google? Who openly
rebelled against it in the past?

BTW, Google might be leader in AI, but China has its own AI scene. CCP doesn't
need Google, period.

------
mtgx
It's amazing what companies will put up with if China only hints at giving
them "access to the Chinese market".

[https://9to5google.com/2019/03/21/nokia-7-plus-sending-
data-...](https://9to5google.com/2019/03/21/nokia-7-plus-sending-data-to-
china/)

[https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/nokia-at-risk-of-
chin...](https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/nokia-at-risk-of-china-ban---
analyst/d/d-id/748995)

~~~
sct202
Perverse incentives. Stock goes down if you have low growth or miss
expectations, and China is such a huge unaccessible market that would be easy
gains if the door was opened.

~~~
president
This growth-at-all-costs mindset is ultimately crippling our society. We are
essentially giving away our freedoms and giving into a country that is
exploiting this mindset.

