The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep • Hacker News Board

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#81

Post by DonHopkins » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

v_lisivka wrote: post #66

grumdan wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't have a concrete moral framework in mind, but I was thinking of a few baseline rules that should hold in most sensible systems, such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago), not killing civilians without due process in countries where there is formally no state of war (drone strikes in Pakistan and other countries), not starting wars of aggression based on falsifi…

In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot. > such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago) It looks like er…

>Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion.

Now YOU are falsifying intelligence.

You can't win an argument by falsifying intelligence and not being interested in topics that contradict your falsifications.

Iraq war 'waged on false intelligence': https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2

And in case you only find Russian news interesting: How Distorted Intelligence Dragged US Into Vietnam War 53 Years Ago: https://sputniknews.com/politics/201708021056125095-us-vietn...

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#82

Post by frickinLasers » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 6:40 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #74

greggarious wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe? When in recent memory has the US military risked significant amounts of soldiers to "keep us safe"? If anything, the US military has made me unsafe . The invasion of Iraq was a disaster. Torture and drone warfare have created scores of "terrorists" - people angry that their civilian family members were killed in a war of aggr…

Actually, the Iraqi people were happy we freed them from the iron-grip of Saddam -- we unfortunately over stayed our welcome. For a while I was seeing a banner on an overpass: "thank you for our freedom, now go home". I kind of think they expected it to be a repeat of Panama with a quick game of "capture the dictator" followed by installing a puppet government but the general level of incompetence (i.e. de-Ba'athific…

This has nothing to do with the parent's comments. Whoop-de-do, so we toppled an unpopular dictator and left a power vacuum in his place; how does that "keep [America] safe"?

We should not be the World Police. We can't even afford to keep our own people out of poverty.

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#83

Post by lend000 » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:10 PM UTC

grumdan wrote: post #15

cmndrkeen wrote: post #8

Everyone acts like military research is obviously evil. Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe?

> Is it really so terrible to research arms for the people who risk their lives keep us safe? If this was the only thing the weapons were used for, then maybe people wouldn't be upset about this kind of stuff. The same arms will however also be used to extrajudicially assassinate people based on nothing else than their phone signal, in countries we are not at war with; they might be sold to regimes like Saudi Arabia…

Yeah, but you're barking up the wrong tree. The military will get the weaponry it wants regardless, likely at a higher cost to the taxpayer and/or more side effects (pollution, for example) if they're forced to do it in-house because all powerful private sector companies somehow agree to 'boycott' and leave the money on the table. It is in everyone's best interest for their military to be the most superior -- the real issue is in military leadership and civilian policy-makers causing the problems. It dilutes the message when you spend energy on issues that should be primarily reserved for commander-in-chief discussions.

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#84

Post by greggarious » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:21 PM UTC

mieseratte wrote: post #78

greggarious wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Vietnam prominently featured draftees Yes, the implication was that since then we've had a volunteer army. Sorry that wasn't clear to you. >in post-9/11 America the public was heavily led to believe that Iraq was somehow responsible or related to the 9/11 attacks such that one would have not reasonably known what they were signing up for. Weird, I was in my early teens then and somehow managed to suss out this was n…

> Yes, the implication was that since then we've had a volunteer army. Sorry that wasn't clear to you. Perhaps you should revise your writings, because nothing about the sentence would imply the "since then." This is an international forum, not everyone learns the history of US military recruitment practices. > Weird, I was in my early teens then and somehow managed to suss out this was not the case (as did many prom…

>Perhaps you should revise your writings, because nothing about the sentence would imply the "since then." This is an international forum, not everyone learns the history of US military recruitment practices.

If someone is not a citizen of the USA, and not familiar with how it's military functions, maybe they should take some time to educate themselves before debating how it should be used.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>In the lead up to the invasion, our borderline state media apparatus was heavily reporting that Hussein was building WMDs. There was also much accusations of him either funding or supplying Jihadis.

It's too bad no government has ever lied or distorted the facts to push for a war prior to Iraq... astute citizens could have learned from that experience and viewed US government proclamations through a critical lens.

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#85

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:22 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #6

rumcajz wrote: post #3

It's nice that in addition to the compulsory Google-bashing this article explicitly points out the other companies involved. Specifically, it mentions Amazon and Microsoft who did much less yet ethics-wise than Google did and yet are rarely called out in the press. Anyone working for Amazon or Microsoft here? Is this just a skewed press coverage? Or is there any dissent going on there?

Microsoft and Amazon are both less liberal cultures than Google. Microsoft particularly historically has skewed much closer to centrist politically, in its culture, business operations and ideology. Microsoft is more like old IBM in that regard, which makes sense given how old its cultural foundation is (dating to the 1970s) and its history of working with more conservative old-line enterprise businesses. As are Orac…

[deleted]

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#86

Post by ruricolist » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:23 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #76

I haven't been able to dig up a copy, but I remember there was a file named something like AI: HUMOR; LOGO TURTLES that was a grant proposal written by some people in the LOGO group at the MIT-AI Lab, in response to a military request for proposals, about how they could hatch thousands of LOGO turtles to swarm around the battlefield in geometric patterns to confuse and bewilder the enemy. http://www.donhopkins.com/ho…

What Lisp is this? I can understand what it's doing but it's clearly pre-CL.

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#87

Post by chriselles » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:24 PM UTC

gumby wrote: post #7

chriselles wrote: post #2

Steve Blank has probably done the best job yet of conveying the historical and intergenerational connections between Silicon Valley and the military: https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ The video and slide set do a great job of covering it comprehensively. I had a chance to learn directly from Steve and his Hacking 4 Defense team. BIG changes since WWII when military R&D was nearly all R&D. Today, most R&D is comm…

> Today, most R&D is commercial with a lot of duel use potential... I am sure "duel" was a typo but too wonderful not to point out

Good catch!

My bad.....I wasn’t intentionally trying to be cheeky. :)

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#88

Post by v_lisivka » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:44 PM UTC

DonHopkins wrote: post #81

v_lisivka wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot. > such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago) It looks like er…

>Intelligence was not falsified in case of Iraq: chemical weapons are just moved to Syria few months prior to invasion. Now YOU are falsifying intelligence. You can't win an argument by falsifying intelligence and not being interested in topics that contradict your falsifications. Iraq war 'waged on false intelligence': https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/09/usa.iraq2 And in case you only find Russian news int…

«SADA: They were moved by air and by ground, 56 sorties by jumbo, 747, and 27 were moved, after they were converted to cargo aircraft, they were moved to Syria.»

http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/01/26/exclusive-former-top...

I newer read Russian news, because they are prepared and targeted. :-) I read memories (many of them were released uncensored shortly after fall of USSR), and I also listened to stories told us by our teachers, ex-officers of USSR army.

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#89

Post by v_lisivka » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 7:59 PM UTC

grumdan wrote: post #70

v_lisivka wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot. > such as not bombing hospitals (like what happened with that hospital in Syria a while ago) It looks like er…

> In general, I agree with you that army should not do that. However, enemy rarely tries to help to achieve that, i.e. they are not putting markers "we are soldiers, shoot us" at their positions. So goal of typical army is to minimize loses, not to avoid them completely, because risk is non-zero for every shot. I agree with that. This is why I was only asking for "reasonable effort" to try to avoid this. I realize th…

> This is the first time I've heard this claim. Most Western media reported that there was no intelligence to support the WMD claim at the time. e.g:

Read this interview: http://www.foxnews.com/story/2006/01/26/exclusive-former-top...

SADA: Well, up to the year 2002, 2002, in summer, they were in Iraq. And after that, when Saddam realized that the inspectors are coming on the first of November and the Americans are coming, so he took the advantage of a natural disaster happened in Syria, a dam was broken. So he — he announced to the world that he is going to make an air bridge...

> My main argument was that the US military in particular (since this is the one most relevant to Silicon Valley) has a history of this type of behavior that significantly complicates the point of military research to keep us safe.

Sorry to inform you, but army sometimes shooting even their own civilians. For example, in 2001 Russians used civil plane to fly over EU border to grab some intelligence. They turned off air responder on the plane to hide that. They decided that nobody will try to shot civil passenger plane, even if it doesn't respond. Well, nobody except Russia. Russian air defense battery shot plane with their own passengers without any doubt, even without call to commandment. Then they blamed Ukraine for that. Shit happens.

Re: The ties between Silicon Valley and the military run deep

#90

Post by joshe » Sat, Jun 09, 2018, 8:04 PM UTC

It's weird to put their Darpa funding together with this decision and then lump the whole thing as Google being confused or hypocritical.

Darpa funds fundamental research. They try to look ahead to what the military could use in 15 years, but it funds open and fundamental projects. They funded Google when it was 2 graduate students trying to search web pages. It was part of the "Digital Libraries" project to make libraries more usable. They funded research that led to the internet and self driving cars (Darpa Grand Challenge). Right now they are funding exoskeletons and implantable health sensors.

This project was to deploy tech to the military that could search drone footage for targets to bomb. It is a purely offensive technology that leads directly to killing people.

They chose to draw a line at not using artificial intelligence for weapons that target human beings or for surveillance that violates human rights.

Amazon is drawing a different line, something like it's ok to use our AI to target human beings as long as it's legal.

It all seems pretty straightforward, they hadn't drawn that line before or needed to and now they did.