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Comment by toss1 | Hacker News Reader

Odious nonsense.

Google are having zero influence on China's totalitarian government, and there is zero hope that they could have any such influence. It is either do what the CCP wants, when they want it, or Google gets booted anyway in favor of the locals.

Most likely, China is simply using them to build and steal the best surveillance technology faster. The better result from a human rights POV would be to have less-competent locals build it.

The sole exception would be if Google is working very tightly with NSA, CIA, etc. and actually installing a massive US spy network within China. While this is a possibility we wouldn't know about, it's unlikely given Google's culture.

So, no, this is not even close to being in the interests of the US or it's citizens (a few major Alphabet shareholders excepted).

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> Google are having zero influence on China's totalitarian government, and there is zero hope that they could have any such influence

Exactly.

Therefore it is nonsense to be outraged by what Google is doing.

You have _entirely_ missed the context.

To spell it out, the GP was positing that by working with the CCP, Google was somehow adding western pro-human rights influence to the mix.

This is false because the CCP will allow no such influence.

Google's only possible influence is to enhance the effectiveness of the CCP's initiatives by adding Google's greater competence and development speed to the CCP's goal of mass surveillance and distorting or filtering the facts available to the Chinese people.

So, yes, since Google is enhancing the CCP's totalitarian goals of controlling the populace, outrage is quite appropriate (unless of course, you oppose the general principles of democracy and people being able to govern themselves).

I am the GP and I didn't suggest that this was adding any sort of pro-human rights influence. Likewise I don't think that Google is really enhancing the "CCP's totalitarian goals".

My angle is very much one of realpolitik, as already mentioned, and outrage is either naive or disingenuous.

So, providing it's world-beating expertise (vs a less-capable local team) to the practical implementation of CCP's totalitarian goals of surveillance and information restriction is not helping implement these goals?

Seriously? Talk about naive, that's textbook.

"Realpolitik" -- you may be right about that, since the first definition is "a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations."

In short, you say it is great as long as you consider only practical issues, and ignore all moral or ethical considerations.

So, you are either trolling to assist the CCP's goals or are simply advocating for behaving without ethics or morals. Which is it?

And I can assure you that outrage against helping totalitarian/authoritarian regimes is neither naive or disingenuous, at least for ethical people.

I suggest reading people who have actually lived in and fought such regimes, such as Garry Kasparov, former World Chess Champion and Russian Presidential candidate -- people who've actually been there, done that, buried their friends.

I assure you, they know the real score, and have zero tolerance for "realpolitik" bullst.

> Therefore it is nonsense to be outraged by what Google is doing.

I think you missed an important implication, from the context.

> Google are having zero influence on <limiting> China's totalitarian government

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