
Google Is Pursuing Pentagon Cloud Contract Quietly, Fearing Employee Revolt - scapecast
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/04/google-pursuing-pentagons-giant-cloud-contract-quietly-fearing-employee-revolt/147407/
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mc32
What's wrong with google? Are they that afraid of their internal perception?

Business is, so long as legal, business. This is not any worse than the
personal info they collect on all google product users, but somehow this is
more outrageous?

Can you imagine the people working at big co in S Korea, Japan, China, India,
Russia, South Africa, etc., taking this kind of personal affront stand? No,
don't provide services to your own government, they bad.

~~~
gbin
The issue is not really working for the government. Internally there is a
strong culture around ethics. One day we had an interesting discussion between
collegues at lunch: we imagined what would happen if Google got involved in a
war and participated to the effort by using all its projects for nefarious
purposes... Biological weapons, robots, AI weapons, infrastructure hacked all
over, disinformation, ... I think no one wants a militarized Google.

~~~
mc32
I do believe many of the people there believe in some form of ethics, but are
blind to others. We know that Google has more information on people than FB,
but this is irrelevant to most googlers because they believe they are good
custodians of the data.

Back to realpolitik. These capabilities will be developed by someone.
Unilateral retrenchment is ineffective, so if they somehow want to stall the
US gov't (because they think google would give the gov't a leg up) all they
are doing is giving our competitors in whatever area a nice handicap.

It would have been like the people working on the Manhattan project saying,
no, this is unethical, while Germany and Japan would continue the effort
unencumbered --leaving the US at a tremendous disadvantage.

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lokopodium
First the Github/ICE scandal, now this.

When did it become disgraceful to be a part of your country?

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scapecast
what scandal are you referring to?

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lokopodium
There is very little officially published about this. It appears that Github
invited a senior ICE official to speak at one of their events. This, however
remote, affiliation was deemed inappropriate by many, forcing Github to
rescind the invitation.

[https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/982655776614318080](https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/982655776614318080)

~~~
rurounijones
What is the meaning of the ICE acronym?

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woodson
I believe it’s “immigration and customs enforcement”.

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JudasGoat
As someone that helped construct killing machines(Nuclear submarines in my
case) in the past, I will say that I believe I share responsibility for their
destruction. My life will be more peaceful when they have retired from
service.

~~~
matt_wulfeck
At the same time, my life is more peaceful now knowing they’re operational.

~~~
risotto_groupon
At the same time, people in the armed forces are probably sick of hearing
"GOOD JAB!" and getting slapped on the back while their countrymen do nothing
to prevent the need for the means of war.

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noworld
Hopefully none of those employees read HN.

