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AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

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Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#191

Post by steve19 »

kevinmchugh wrote: post #157
steve19 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pay their journalists bonuses if they move the market. That gives some pretty perverse incentives to the journalists.

What's perverse about it? Bloomberg decided that the market is a good way to measure impact of their stories. They're business reporters, so that makes sense. The incentive is not directional; it doesn't rely on reporters causing a stock to lose value or gain it.

Imagine paying reporters by how many people they got arrested. Sure would result in some terrible criminals being locked up, but it may well result in innocent people going to prison as well.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#192

Post by hexane360 »

simonh wrote: post #148
fludlight wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big companies are now scandal proof. No amount of negligence or criminality is bad enough to bring one down. Wells Fargo committed millions of counts of bank fraud, yet they still exist and people buy their services. BP destroyed a large part of the economy and ecosystem in the Gulf of Mexico, yet they still exist and people buy their products. One of their top lawyers just became Assistant Attorney General for the D…

Crimes are committed by individuals, not companies. If execs at VW break the law, you go after the execs, you don’t put the whole company in jail or turf out all it’s employees on the streets.

I'd be on board with this position if it was applied consistently. But it's not. Companies take political action, companies take credit for innovation, etc. The whole basis of a company is that it limits the liability of the people who own it.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#193

Post by verelo »

novaleaf wrote: post #140
verelo wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it’s not. It’s much more like saying the Saudis probably killed the journalist because we do it too.

not sure why you are so downvoted on this (maybe less drama next time) but more or less right. More specifically though, the Snowden docs showed how the usa does this kind of stuff on a one-off basis.

Honestly, less drama, fair enough...but sadly it's not drama, it's fact albeit in small numbers, this 100% happened as we found out from Snowden docs and other leaks! That wasn't really the point i was trying to make though, and if it's happened or not doesn't really need to hold true for the basis of my comparison to hold true as a basis of english arguments.

Also, I gave up hunting karma on HN a while back, i'd rather speak my mind honestly than be artificially censored by chasing a number.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#194

Post by Pyxl101 »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #23
jackconnor wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the only question then the answer for every major company is "guilty". I don't think doing business in china means that Bloomberg gets to make up a bunch of BS from mysterious anonymous sources without a single piece of physical evidence, wiping out billions in market value, and just call it a day and we're all supposed to believe it because they use the word "China". I think we can probably hold them, and…

It isn't really plausible that Bloomberg made up the story. They had to have a high degree of confidence to publish it. The question we all need to be asking is why they had that high degree of confidence. Where their information came from and whether or not those sources had ulterior motives to lead Bloomberg astray. I have to imagine Bloomberg is also trying to find out why their story has not matched statements by…

For a good example of how reporters can be mislead, or can mislead themselves by buying too heavily into a narrative, and not examining alternatives with enough scrutiny, read about the Killian Documents Controversy (about George W Bush's military service, reported by Dan Rather 60 Minutes); or read about "A Rape On Campus" (the Rolling Stone article that was retracted in its entirety):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killian_documents_controversy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus

In both cases, it seemed to me that the reporters involved crafted a story in their heads about what happened, and then only sought information that confirmed their story while ignoring information that contradicted it. The Duke Lacrosse case is an example of the same thing happening in a criminal prosecution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_lacrosse_case

Another theme that I've seen is experts giving an interview about some very specific/narrow topic, which is then spun, taken out of context, or generally misquoted by reporters and presented as something different. This happened with document verification in the Killian controversy, and also seems to have happened with this Bloomberg story, according to another comment in the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18278023 . In the Killian case, document examiners explicitly told CBS that they were relying on poor material that could not be authenticated (see Wikipedia section "Response of the document examiners"), but CBS went ahead and characterized the documents as having been authenticated by experts.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#195

Post by gotocake »

5minbreak wrote: post #171
spydum wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t help resist the thought: this was planted for political purposes. 1. If people buy the narrative, it works as anti-China talking points and we continue to villanize China and look for US to step up manufacturing of tech. 2. If it blows up and backfires, we get to villanize journalism as a profession and push for government takeover of media to ensure honest and integrity above profit (eg fakenews). By planted…

Agree on 2. If only someone in the US administration really hated what he calls "Fake News" by established media and "Made-up anonymous sources". "Won't anybody think of the poor economy! These unfounded stories are doing direct damage. Disclose your sources to the government or lose your Real News License."

I think you’re both grossly overestimating just how popular this story is beyond the tech world. This is hardly on the radar of most people, and not likely to move them to support any new laws or initiatives.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#196

Post by kevinmchugh »

steve19 wrote: post #191
kevinmchugh wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's perverse about it? Bloomberg decided that the market is a good way to measure impact of their stories. They're business reporters, so that makes sense. The incentive is not directional; it doesn't rely on reporters causing a stock to lose value or gain it.

Imagine paying reporters by how many people they got arrested. Sure would result in some terrible criminals being locked up, but it may well result in innocent people going to prison as well.

That sounds like a bad system but I don't understand its relation to business reporters releasing stories that move the market

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#197

Post by superkuh »

clamprecht wrote: post #83

If Bloomberg ends up retracting the story, then the new question, for me, is how did this happen? Was it simply Bloomberg trying to get views? Or is it more interesting, like did their "sources" intentionally give them a fake story in order to hurt their credibility? Or was it to cast doubt on the anti-China stories in general?

Well, Canada is in the process of chosing which companies to buy their 5G telecom stuff from. The US feds were strongly suggesting not to go Chinese. This is very useful in that regard.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#198

Post by jsjohnst »

c3534l wrote: post #188
simonh wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s size up the options. Bloomberg is wrong. Apple and Amazing have every incentive to strongly deny the story. Bloomberg is right. Multiple employees up to executive level at 30 US companies and the government know about it and are actively leaking to Bloomberg about it. Numerous boards are out there at 30+ companies as physical evidence. There’s no way Apple and Amazon could risk denying this so strongly. It’s al…

Or the government told them to strongly deny the allegations and the fact that the government can do that is just one of the many powers that we already know get granted to intelligence agencies in secret by rubber-stamp classified court systems not held publicly accountable and already infamous for suppressing criticism of their practices under the guise of national security. If the three letter agencies don't want…

Do a search on the case law around “compelled speech”. tl;dr the government can force you to not talk, but they can’t force you to blatantly lie either. As an example, check out the difference between the denials of PRISM vs this.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#199

Post by justtopost »

jahlove wrote: post #138
clamprecht wrote: post #83

If Bloomberg ends up retracting the story, then the new question, for me, is how did this happen? Was it simply Bloomberg trying to get views? Or is it more interesting, like did their "sources" intentionally give them a fake story in order to hurt their credibility? Or was it to cast doubt on the anti-China stories in general?

It should be pointed out that Bloomberg authors get bonuses if they write stories that move the market: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa... Not saying that was necessarily a motivation here, but it's worth pointing out.

Keep parroting this if you want, but that ended in 2014.

Re: AWS CEO Jassy follows Apple in calling for retraction of Chinese spy chip story

#200

Post by brynjolf »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #149

(disclaimer: I worked at AWS from 2008 to 2014 as Technology Evangelist, and know Andy Jassy personally) I know nothing specific about the issue per se, but I am convinced that Andy Jassy is speaking the truth here, for two reasons: 1) I've never seen a company as obsessed with security as AWS, and/or with such a big budget for security. 2) There's so many actors/employees involved in the audits, security, etc, that…

If we reverse the roles, we notice how little information you actually provide except your own opinions.
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