Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts
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> 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.
Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?
The DoD’s faith in PKI is so great that many public facing DoD websites are signed by the DoD root CA.
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...
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.
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.
Again, this isn't new. This has been happening for decades - just ask Cisco. Wether is treason is one thing, but I'm not arguing it doesn't happen.
The radical statement Theil is making here, is that the _executives_ are compromised, and that they _actively_ sabotage the USG in getting Google tech while also sending that information abroad. This is an extraordinary claim that I'm less inclined to take seriously from someone who has been been both negligent in how his own company has handled the data of Americans in his own country and also stands to gain, via Palantir, the weakening of Google's relationship with the USG.
>Google/MSFT/Amazon/Autonomous vehicle companies/chip manufacturers are in a different league than Facebook as far as IP
I think what is effectively surveillance data on 90% of Americans is a far higher bar than Autonomous vehicle data that hardly works outside of Palo Alto.
Aside: I'm not downvoting you as you have a fair question - I don't know why you are negative.
2. Rather than investigating if Google negligence is treason, would Thiel agree to charge Zuckerberg with treason due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal? There's hard proof right there, why not get the quick win with Facebook?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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).
I'd say they do have bias, but it's questionable which has more credibility.
Maybe he is just trying to take the heat off Facebook and send Congress in a different direction.
They even changed their motto from don't be evil to "Do the right thing" which is pretty close to "the ends justifies the means" in nature.
The whole accusation is recursive bullshit if not fractal bullshit on so many levels. Essentially anything can be considered weaponized. Not only would cars count but when it came out freeze dried food would count as 'weaponized' because of logistical advantages. US government's efforts at promoting cybersecurity have been pretenses to gain power while making it less secure.
How so?
Edit: After doing some quick research, there definitely seem to be evidence of support and active involvement in anti-democratic circles. Now to what extent I can't say. It is also unclear if it is intentional, as in, he could be accidentally promoting and contributing to those circles. But I found sections describing his beliefs that women suffrage was a mistake (because they tend to vote against his agenda), that monarchies aren't so bad and startups are a form of them, that democracy prevents libertarianism and are thus incompatible etc. Now, those could all be misquoted or out of context ofcourse. Even then though, he seems pretty open about the fact that he is not in agreement with the current democratic system and wishes to change it. It all feels a bit my way or the highway. Like since he hasn't been able to have people democratically agree with him and pass the laws and rules which he believes in, he started to look for other alternative means in order to achieve putting those laws and rules in place, which are anti-democratic and tend towards forceful.
That sort of "step toward usurpation" is far more worthy of the label even if it doesn't fit the deliberately narrow formal legal definition.
Compared to exercising their right of who to work for and dealing with perfectly legal partners?
Got on the short list by telling the recruiter that "Palantir is a bunch of really smart guys run by a Bond villain". Not sure if that ever got back, but not being thrown out of the process tells me a lot about the company.
If you have 500k to invest I can send you some of the preliminary results and the roadmap for the next few stages.
How much of this knowledge (much of it focused on computer vision and image understanding) has been applied to China's surveillance program in Xinjiang, which has put over 1 million ethnic Uighurs in concentration camps? Why has Google continued to operate their China AI center, which aids and educates China's state-controlled enterprises, while refusing to work with the US government even on vanilla I.T. systems?
[0] https://www.scmp.com/tech/article/2165209/google-shrugs-trad...