
Why Silicon Valley Shouldn’t Work with the Pentagon - raleighm
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/19/opinion/silicon-valley-military-contract.html
======
wdewind
> Yet we shouldn’t forget that civil-military antagonism and the deep American
> tradition of distrusting the state have been crucial to the United States’
> ability to innovate. There are good reasons why defense-tech giants of the
> 1960s, ’70s and ’80s like Raytheon and Grumman missed out on such major tech
> advances as Web protocols, the smartphone, personal computers and various
> types of encryption — all of which would eventually have great military
> significance. The biggest reason was that none of these advances were
> directed at waging war; indeed, many aimed at transcending the power of the
> state.

This is a fairly cherry picked story to match a narrative that frankly does
not really exist. Silicon valley is not a partner of the defense world, it's
derivative of it. The vast majority of technological disruption has come from
technologies emerging from the state, that are then popularized by Silicon
Valley. Most of these came from the space race, and in many ways Silicon
Valley is still "behind" the Pentagon.

Web protocols, smartphones, personal computers, encryption etc., _all_ of this
came from the military into Silicon Valley, not the other way around.

The Pentagon doesn't need Silicon Valley, it's quite the opposite.

~~~
lambdasquirrel
You know how the U.S. (and its Allies) beat Russia in the Cold War because
they gradually developed a stronger electronics and high-tech sector, which
became more and more important as e.g. precision weapons showed their worth?
And as we started testing nukes in computers rather than in underground tests?
The Russians’ state-dominated model simply couldn’t produce the kinds of
innovations made by the Western commercial sector. It’s a similar thing with
Silicon Valley and the US govt.

The days where the govt seeded tech in the US are long gone. This is not to
say there’s no contribution, but when was the last time someone cared about
govt or defense contractor involvement? Not many who are alive and still
working in the Bay Area today.

The article is correct and there is a fear of being co-opted by the state.
There is a question whether there is some middle ground. Traditionally that
middle ground was held by defense contractors. Today there are tech-like
companies that are increasingly filling that niche. Examples of such companies
are Pivotal (which recently filed its S-1) and Palantir (which might never
file its S-1). I would argue that Amazon and Google are getting into these DoD
contracts because Pivotal, Redhat, etc. failed to build a compelling-enough
PAAS solution that the government can deploy on its own. The government would
love to own its own datacenters, but apparently that isn’t working out, or
there’s still some need for agility that’s not being fulfilled.

Given how much space Palantir leases in downtown Palo Alto (and the fact that
they seem to have no need or responsibility to ever exit or behave like any
other tech company), I think the fear of being consumed by the government is
not at all unfounded. Now you can argue that Pivotal and Palantir are nice
companies (for vastly different reasons) but when you really take stock of it,
no one can say they’re really tech companies (and, that is fine). To Silicon
Valley, they represent something else, something _bureaucratic._

On one hand Silicon Valley needs to be a bit more realistic about geopolitics.
The government isn’t going away. In practice, it's just the simple fact that
we are more beholden to political stability than we think, and we tend to take
it for granted. On the other hand, the government represents that side of
society that forces things and pretty much can’t get free-spirited commercial
innovation right. And again, in practice, it's like trying to do anything
interesting when you have your nanny mother (who has no real fiscal or
creative responsibility) watching over your shoulder. The reality is more
boring than people realize, but the tension is there and the problem is real.

~~~
wdewind
There's a lot in here I agree with. I am not discounting the private sector's
value in bringing state sponsored tech to market. This is huge. But what I am
saying is that the state leads. Innovation has not traditionally been led by
the private market, and again, the narrative that tech has flown from private
markets to the military is just not correct, except maybe I guess when you
consider the PAAS market bounded in the last 10 years? It really depends on
where you draw your boundaries though: PAAS ultimately sits on 65 years of
private sector innovation built on top of...a network created to monitor
nuclear silos originally deployed by the military.

> The days where the govt seeded tech in the US are long gone. This is not to
> say there’s no contribution, but when was the last time someone cared about
> govt or defense contractor involvement?

The entire self-driving car industry is build on top of DARPA experiments from
the 90s.

This is the second time I've recommended this book on HN in as many weeks, but
it's really quite good in going into the structure and history of the private
market/govt dichotomy: [https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation-
Economy-S...](https://www.amazon.com/Doing-Capitalism-Innovation-Economy-
Speculation/dp/1107031257)

------
str33t_punk
I disagree.

I have worked with DARPA and the Navy in the past. Now I’m in Silicon Valley.
However my experience with the defense industry has shown me that unless
Silicon Valley teams up with the Pentagon, the US will be destroyed.

We are very behind in terms of cyber warfare, and our position is incredibly
weak in a post Snowden world, where all our defense strategies were leaked.

Our critical infrastructure is sorely in need of software updates - many
devices don’t have authentication so one can just shut down a power plant if
they get onto the same network.

China has been slowly pulling ahead by installing black doors in all the
hardware manufactured there. Russia is flexing their muscles with excursions
against neighbors critical infrastructure. The US is falling behind rapidly.

Despite incessant talk about ‘impact’ and ‘saving the world’, Silicon Valley
engineers build glorified slot machines for phones. Refusing to work with the
Military sounds like something the ultra privileged would say - they don’t
care about the people in this country. When the lights go out because China
has taken out power across the US, and Google is no longer working, I wonder
then if those ‘3000’ engineers will think twice about the importance of
national defense, or if they will continue to sit in their ivory towers and
lecture the rest of the world about how they are making the world a better
place for selling digital cigarettes. If engineers want REAL impact, there is
no where better than cyber defense.

~~~
tptacek
This is silly. Silicon Valley doesn't need to team up with the DoD to resolve
insecurity, and, in fact, the DoD has very few capabilities to improve the
security of Silicon Valley products.

Based on what we know, along with pretty straightforward logical
extrapolations, it's pretty reasonable to assume that the offensive CS
capabilities of the DoD are a specialized subset of what the industry already
has. The people staffing offensive operations at NSA are generally working
their first job out of college. What we've seen of the quality of their
tooling after leaks suggests mediocre software engineering and, if there's an
edge to be found at NSA over the best industry offensive teams, it's in
router, firewall, and middlebox security --- a consequence of the fact that
industry doesn't spend much time working on these targets.

I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that foreign adversaries outclass us on
any of this. The most elaborate, technically sophisticated computer attacks in
the last 20 years have all been carried out either by the US or by allies (in
other words: largely by US defense contractors).

What is the case is that the median target --- in the US or anywhere else in
the world --- is so poorly secured that none of this matters. We are still
working in an era where you can send someone an email with a blue-underlined
link in it, and if a receptionist clicks that link, their entire network is
owned up.

Despite the indisputably grave state of the US's computer security --- let's
be clear, of _everyone 's_ computer security, here and abroad --- the US is at
little risk of "destruction". Our adversaries also have the ability to conduct
kinetic attacks anywhere in the country. Every adversary of ours worth of that
name could blow up a US power plant. They don't, because the cost of
attribution to them is essentially infinite.

People in Silicon Valley aren't great about computer security, but they know
at least as much about it as the DoD does, and nobody should pretend they can
spook the industry with the specter of "cyber warfare".

~~~
mhneu
> the US is at little risk of "destruction"

Propaganda can destroy democracies. (And in most or all autocracies,
propaganda is central to the regime's power)

Social media, and private data, and disclosure of private emails, and
obtaining compromising info by hacking, can all be excellent propaganda tools.

So yes, computer security and hackers _can_ threaten the actual destruction of
western society. Via propaganda and 'information warfare'.

[https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-
democrac...](https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/562246/how-democracies-
die-by-steven-levitsky-and-daniel-ziblatt/9781524762933/)
[https://boingboing.net/2018/01/25/supercharged-
dumdums.html](https://boingboing.net/2018/01/25/supercharged-dumdums.html)
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fascism/2017...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fascism/2017/03/how_nazi_propaganda_encouraged_the_masses_to_co_produce_a_false_reality.html)

------
s3r3nity
Is it far fetched to think that the top technologists / developers in Russia /
EU / China / etc. are working for their respective governments & Defense
agencies?

From a pure game theory perspective, if you accept the premise above, then SV
should absolutely work with the Pentagon so that the US doesn't fall behind
competitively. Unless there was such a strong coalition of cooperation among
the entire community globally to not contribute towards Defense initiatives -
but even the most optimistic would say this is fantasy.

As one example, I've been warming up to supporting stronger collaboration
between the US Tech Industry (because it's bigger than just Silicon Valley)
and the NSA purely for the cybersecurity benefits that are going to be needed
more and more over time. Cooperating with the best in the industry in the US
is the only way to execute well.

~~~
generalmycoup
Exactly. These 3000 engineers that protested in Google don't seem to live in
reality. In the real world, China and Russia are doing government sponsored
hacking against Western government/companies all the time, stealing IPs,
strategies and bankrupting companies. I wonder how these engineers would
respond when Google is hacked and its business is down, and engineers fired.

Case in point:

"Brian Shields, former Nortel security adviser, alleges Huawei hacked company
for 10 years..."

"It was on behalf of Huawei and ZTE and other Chinese companies that could
have used this information to compete against us in the marketplace. It gave
them a strategic advantage. How can you survive when you have a competitor
basically right there knowing all your moves, what you're doing, what you see
as the future products?"

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-
aga...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/former-nortel-exec-warns-against-
working-with-huawei-1.1137006)

~~~
oh_sigh
Americans are generally pro-military, save for ultra left-leaning types. The
fact that only 3000 people signed out of a population of ~100k(which already
clearly trends leftwards), tells me that most people did not actually have a
problem with that project.

~~~
philwelch
The majority of people on either side also probably recognize that signing
your name to an open letter opposing your employer’s policies and decisions is
a career-limiting move.

~~~
oh_sigh
I really doubt that at google.

~~~
philwelch
Google literally fired someone for that, so...

~~~
oh_sigh
I'm speaking specifically about this situation, not about signing open letters
in general. And James wasn't fired for signing a letter, he was fired for
writing it in the first place.

~~~
philwelch
But then he signed his name to it. Although, yes, you are technically correct.

------
mindslight
At least Surveillance Valley's technology adopted by the government and
military is nominally subject to the Constitution and judicial review, whereas
the autocratic de facto government being built out by "private" companies is
not even constrained by those traditions.

------
alottafunchata
Thanks to DARPA we have things such as the internet, GPS, Siri, and autonomous
vehicles. Not to mention the DoD provides us with the security to pursue
private ventures.

Go pound sand.

~~~
tptacek
You don't even have to get 1/4 of the way through the article to see that
3,000 Google employees disagree with you about that. Do you think you can find
2,999 other people to share your "go pound sand" argument, or do you think
you're an outlier?

~~~
philwelch
I'll agree with him. Our industry was created by men like Alan Turing and John
von Neumann who contributed their effort and intellect to the preservation of
democracy against totalitarianism. When free people refuse to weaponize
technology, tyrants will, and free people will be at a disadvantage.

~~~
kevinmchugh
Weapon inventors usually have no control once the weapon is sold. Richard
Gatling thought he was making war more decisive and thus more necessary to
avoid. He didn't anticipate machine guns being deployed against indigenous
people defending against colonizers, nor did he anticipate the New York Times
turning his gun on a riot.

~~~
pm90
Precisely. Also: Alfred Nobel, and many physicists who worked on the atomic
bomb, including Oppenheimer.

Its a difficult question and its sad to see how technology created originally
for benefiting humanity can sometimes be re purposed for its destruction. In a
world where sovereign nations are not bound by arms restrictions though, its
hard to see how this endless march of destruction can be stopped.

The SALT and other arms-reduction treaties b/w the US and erstwhile USSR
where, IMO, a very good compromise. I find it hard to do something similar in
the future if we continue to have dysfunctional administrations governing the
US though.

~~~
philwelch
> and many physicists who worked on the atomic bomb, including Oppenheimer

After 1945 (arguably 1953 at the latest), there were absolutely no direct wars
between any two major powers. Nuclear weapons _did_ make war too destructive
to ever risk.

------
maxxxxx
I think the first thing Silicon Valley should do is to stop building total
surveillance systems that can be used for advertising but also for controlling
a population. The East Germany Stasi or Stalin would have loved to have
Facebook data for finding their opposition and it's just a matter of time that
their data is falling into the wrong hands.

Not working with the Pentagon would be just a symbolic action that doesn't
address any real issues.

------
asdsa5325
I hate it when they group all of Silicon Valley together like this. Silicon
Valley is pretty damn diverse...

------
propman
Just an aside that some east coast liberals ignore. Because of DARPA we have
literally every successful technological innovation in the Valley.

Silicon Valley pompous, egotistical, man child billionaires mainly mine user
data, advertise, and sell and improve products created by someone else. And
how do they get market share? A fair percentage do due to laws and regulation
loopholes making other companies unable to compete.

You think publically traded or privately backed VC companies will spend
billions on R&D on a moonshot or just try to maximize profits as they should.

Silicon Valley today seems most interested in addicting people through cheap
psychological tricks and owning/tracking/influencing every part of their
lives, and then selling that information. Silicon Valley is what we in the
Valley thought Wall Street was two decades ago. I would trust Wall Street, the
Pentagon, and The Military before the holier than thou hypocracy prevalent
everywhere in the Valley today

~~~
panzagl
I think you struck a nerve.

