> Thiel, a Facebook Inc. board member, argued that the kind of AI developed by DeepMind, which like Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., should be thought of as a potential “military weapon.” “We’ve been a lot more dishonest about that in Silicon Valley than the nuclear physicists were in the 1940s,” he said in the opening speech at the National Conservatism conference.
If one believes this to be true, then how you consider its use to be weaponized can dramatically alter one's view of both Google and Facebook.
If it's a weapon like strong encryption, then it is a defensive measure for the benefit of their users, as they are sheltered and made safe by its use.
If it's a weapon like any other, then its use is an attack upon those it tracks and analyzes, as they are made less private, more vulnerable, and easier to manipulate.
Somehow I don't think Thiel is arguing that Facebook is attacking American citizens, though.
I mean, he started his talk[1] out by posing the question "Is Big Tech good for the U.S.?", which frankly seems like a question worth exploring - especially since the reflexive position of most everyone (e.g. those who post on HN) would be in the affirmative, and likely emphatically so. Being contrarian to a fault, I expect that there's something Thiel thinks is under attack here. Be it more broad things like the general fraying of social and civil cohesion through social media use, or more specific things like Google's enabling of the Chinese surveillance apparatus, Thiel at least has a starting point in this argument. I can't find a video so I don't know what he actually said but below are some notes I found (that seem to mostly rehash what he's said in a bunch of other places, so he obviously seems to think it's an effective rhetorical payload).
I don't think he's really making a point about social cohesion here. It seems like what he's asking is "has the US captured Big Tech well enough to make sure the gains don't leak out to other countries?"
Thiel has switched his allegiance to New Zealand from USA so I don’t understand his talks of treason. He is founder of Plantir which has mission for spying on American citizens and using tech for military without any concerns to ethics whatsoever. This is a guy who bankrupted journalist news media because they dared to publish about him. I am not sure how far Thiel can go to establish himself as one true tech villain.
Peter Theil's actions are pretty questionable without your incredible attempts to paint gawker as anything besides a trashy, disingenuous tabloid. I've heard other parts of the company were decent but their bread and butter was the trashy stuff. He can still be wrong to have funded their destruction even if they suck too.
I mean, he has a point. It's clear U.S. tech companies have become hugely susceptible to hiring foreign spies and the issue of foreign governments stealing IP is real. There was a very recent public case of Apple's autonomous driving unit stopping a Chinese engineer from leaving the country just as he was bound for China after detecting he had uploaded a bunch of code to a personal account. And most likely many more cases like that we've never heard of publicly.
1. Almost every tech company has been acutely aware of China stealing IP for decades now. It's not a new point.
2. Where did Thiel make this point? Thiel does not make the point that the Chinese are stealing US IP. He makes the charged point that Google executives (and somehow not Facebook executives) are Chinese agents. To that claim, I don't think he "has a point".
It's in very bad taste to me that Thiel would point this out, and claim the Valley "is getting a little bit of a bad conscience" when he sits on the board of the biggest troublemaker.
When Google leaks the personal data of millions of Americans, then maybe should Thiel start throwing stones.
>when he sits on the board of the biggest troublemaker.
Why is this some kind of detraction from his larger point? If he has a problem with how Facebook is being run - or has concerns with their implementation of AI - then of course he'd want to retain his seat. How else would he influence the company?
The article says "He then suggested Google’s actions were “seemingly treasonous,” asking whether DeepMind or Google senior management had been “infiltrated” by foreign intelligence agencies."
To clarify, by stealing I also mean infiltrated by spies that are hired as employees who in turn provide information to foreign governments...
And yes, of course this could happen to Facebook as well, but as of today Google/MSFT/Amazon/Autonomous vehicle companies/chip manufacturers are in a different league than Facebook as far as IP that is interesting from a military perspective goes.
But aren't they stealing IP from the companies? In that case it's not treason, is it? In fact, in these cases it's the government's job to help the company affected.
I find it hard to believe that there AREN'T droves of spies from every single country working at Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. If there aren't, they're not doing their jobs.
Isn't that a problem that Google should be themselves be seeking to solve? Is it typical for the government to help protect companies' IP by investigating them for treason?
I would say that the government should be trying to help companies in these situations. That's what all the rules about foreign trade are for after all, but it should be in a way that helps the company, not hurts it.
Bloomberg goes a long way to avoid saying that Thiel was speaking at the National Conservatism Conference, a conference with a very biased audience in mind.
Just look at the other speech titles like "The Nationalist Awakening". Can this be taken as anything but pure propaganda?
I suspect so-called facts when the framing is bonkers. The assumption that I'm a nationalist would be false, therefore the "facts" aren't really facts.
The treasonous-ness seems like an exaggeration/distortion of [1].
> “The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
I once met Peter Thiel at an event and kindly asked him if he ever had a 'Robert Oppenheimer moment' with his investment in Palantir. Not surprisingly he diverted and did not provide an answer at all. His non-answer was most telling to me and made me think about his ethics.
At least a certain level of reasoning or even PR spin about the positive effects would have been better than this.
I left deeply unimpressed about our first and only encounter.
Anyone who thinks Google executives are exfiltrating core IP to China clearly hasn't ever used Baidu, the leading Chinese search engine that makes Bing look good.
Microsoft and Apple do business in China, yet somehow it's Google that's apparently working with the Chinese. These people are honestly out of their mind.
The logic is really not too complicated. China is using AI to spy on citizens -- Google is creating and freely publishing state of the art versions of this AI. It's pretty clear that there is a worry here.
The reasons why you consider Baidu not as good are probably not technical, but are due to censorship and Baidu's abandonment of non-Chinese websites and pages.
Probably worth noting that deliberately aiding the Chinese military is not treason in America right now because America and China aren't at war. It might be other things: unpatriotic, espionage, etc. But not treason itself. Even the Rosenbergs didn't get convicted of treason (America and the Soviet Union were not actually at war. It was illegal to give nuclear secrets to the Soviets, but it wasn't treason.)
So generally whenever somebody in America mentions treason, they're being hyperbolic or misleading, or have themselves been mislead. Generally.
> So generally whenever somebody in America mentions treason, they're being hyperbolic or misleading,
Some people simply don't need to understand the distinction between similarly used terms. In the end, prosecutors can file multiple charges but practically pick and choose based on a variety of factors.
Prosecutors in the US can't validly charge treason in all but the most extremely rare circumstances, though.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
(This comes straight from the Constitution, hence the weird capitalization and punctuation.)
The Supreme Court has clarified the definition above, and indeed, it can't apply where no actual assemblage of force against the US was being prepared or used by either the defendant or the enemy to which one is being accused of adhering and giving aid or comfort. Maayyybe the Supreme Court will extend this to cyberwarfare, but that's hard to predict and they certainly haven't yet.
Anyway, regardless, the two-witness requirement for every single overt act involved is a very high bar.
> "Some people simply don't need to understand the distinction between similarly used terms."
e.g. [...] or have themselves been mislead
There won't be any treason charges here. Federal prosecutors know that wouldn't work, so they won't bother trying it. Whether or not Thiel knows this, I cannot say.
> So generally whenever somebody in America mentions treason, they're being hyperbolic or misleading
Let's face it, vocabulary in main stream America is on the table with No chance of resuscitation. I mean according to popular news sites, there are probably 97 races on Earth now, and if one white gal thinks that immigration on the southern border should be enforced than she is a racist... I didn't know that being from Mexico was a race different than my own (I'm an adopted American most likely of Irish descent).
If Google trade secrets are relevant for national security, non US governments shouldn't allow Google to operate without revealing those trade secrets to their intelligence agencies.
Readit News
> Thiel, a Facebook Inc. board member, argued that the kind of AI developed by DeepMind, which like Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., should be thought of as a potential “military weapon.” “We’ve been a lot more dishonest about that in Silicon Valley than the nuclear physicists were in the 1940s,” he said in the opening speech at the National Conservatism conference.
If one believes this to be true, then how you consider its use to be weaponized can dramatically alter one's view of both Google and Facebook.
If it's a weapon like strong encryption, then it is a defensive measure for the benefit of their users, as they are sheltered and made safe by its use.
If it's a weapon like any other, then its use is an attack upon those it tracks and analyzes, as they are made less private, more vulnerable, and easier to manipulate.
Somehow I don't think Thiel is arguing that Facebook is attacking American citizens, though.
I mean, he started his talk[1] out by posing the question "Is Big Tech good for the U.S.?", which frankly seems like a question worth exploring - especially since the reflexive position of most everyone (e.g. those who post on HN) would be in the affirmative, and likely emphatically so. Being contrarian to a fault, I expect that there's something Thiel thinks is under attack here. Be it more broad things like the general fraying of social and civil cohesion through social media use, or more specific things like Google's enabling of the Chinese surveillance apparatus, Thiel at least has a starting point in this argument. I can't find a video so I don't know what he actually said but below are some notes I found (that seem to mostly rehash what he's said in a bunch of other places, so he obviously seems to think it's an effective rhetorical payload).
[1] https://medium.com/@bonniekavoussi/notes-from-peter-thiels-s...
Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?
2. Where did Thiel make this point? Thiel does not make the point that the Chinese are stealing US IP. He makes the charged point that Google executives (and somehow not Facebook executives) are Chinese agents. To that claim, I don't think he "has a point".
It's in very bad taste to me that Thiel would point this out, and claim the Valley "is getting a little bit of a bad conscience" when he sits on the board of the biggest troublemaker.
When Google leaks the personal data of millions of Americans, then maybe should Thiel start throwing stones.
Why is this some kind of detraction from his larger point? If he has a problem with how Facebook is being run - or has concerns with their implementation of AI - then of course he'd want to retain his seat. How else would he influence the company?
Google+ was hacked and leaked the data of users. No one knows how many because Google deleted the logs.
Deleted Comment
To clarify, by stealing I also mean infiltrated by spies that are hired as employees who in turn provide information to foreign governments...
And yes, of course this could happen to Facebook as well, but as of today Google/MSFT/Amazon/Autonomous vehicle companies/chip manufacturers are in a different league than Facebook as far as IP that is interesting from a military perspective goes.
Just look at the other speech titles like "The Nationalist Awakening". Can this be taken as anything but pure propaganda?
> “The work that Google is doing in China is indirectly benefiting the Chinese military,” Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-google/googles-....
The logic is really not too complicated. China is using AI to spy on citizens -- Google is creating and freely publishing state of the art versions of this AI. It's pretty clear that there is a worry here.
Deleted Comment
So generally whenever somebody in America mentions treason, they're being hyperbolic or misleading, or have themselves been mislead. Generally.
Some people simply don't need to understand the distinction between similarly used terms. In the end, prosecutors can file multiple charges but practically pick and choose based on a variety of factors.
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
(This comes straight from the Constitution, hence the weird capitalization and punctuation.)
The Supreme Court has clarified the definition above, and indeed, it can't apply where no actual assemblage of force against the US was being prepared or used by either the defendant or the enemy to which one is being accused of adhering and giving aid or comfort. Maayyybe the Supreme Court will extend this to cyberwarfare, but that's hard to predict and they certainly haven't yet.
Anyway, regardless, the two-witness requirement for every single overt act involved is a very high bar.
e.g. [...] or have themselves been mislead
There won't be any treason charges here. Federal prosecutors know that wouldn't work, so they won't bother trying it. Whether or not Thiel knows this, I cannot say.
Let's face it, vocabulary in main stream America is on the table with No chance of resuscitation. I mean according to popular news sites, there are probably 97 races on Earth now, and if one white gal thinks that immigration on the southern border should be enforced than she is a racist... I didn't know that being from Mexico was a race different than my own (I'm an adopted American most likely of Irish descent).