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Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

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Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that's bad you should see the startup I'm trying to get funding for.

I'll take ya up on that. Show me?

Multipart project. It starts with artificial uteri to harvest neural stemcells, probably from rats, then gets worse.

If you have 500k to invest I can send you some of the preliminary results and the roadmap for the next few stages.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#52

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 genera…

> 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.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#54
post #22

This part is worth considering: > 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 beli…

Strong encryption is used for offensive measures as well.

How do you mean? Isn't encryption essentially building a wall around your data - about as defensive as it gets?

Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#55

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 genera…

> 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).

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong encryption is used for offensive measures as well.

How do you mean? Isn't encryption essentially building a wall around your data - about as defensive as it gets? Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?

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Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong encryption is used for offensive measures as well.

How do you mean? Isn't encryption essentially building a wall around your data - about as defensive as it gets? Is your argument essentially "invaders can carry shields, therefore shields are a tool of attack"?

A good argument could be that the NSA is violating the intent of Congress by weakening encryption standards which are essential to online commerce. Could even be extended to authentication standards which there can be no legal restriction on.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#58
post #2

Thiel is on Facebook's board. So he is on the board of a Google competitor and a company with atrocious morals. Maybe he is just trying to take the heat off Facebook and send Congress in a different direction.

It seems like China is becoming a political football for US elites to attack each other with.

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#59
post #8

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…

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 poin…

[deleted]

Re: Thiel Urges U.S. Probe of Google's 'Seemingly Treasonous' Acts

#60
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?

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