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Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

nytimes.com

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Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#111

Post by darktimesahead »

z3t4 wrote: post #48

What do the military need 10 billion US dollars in cloud computing for ? Are they going to fork Bitcoin? DDOS attack? If they are for example going to archive video footage, it's probably much cheaper to print it to film.

Real-time surveillance of the world. Who said what when where to whom. Was that a threat. What were the consequences. Feeds for video, sound, https streams from billions of Internet devices. ML to extract salient features, at multiple levels of resolution. $10B is a drop in the bucket. This is heading into trillions territory. I wouldn't be surprised that in 10 years half the Pentagon budget will be spent on the cloud.

We can glimpse a world-wide stack-ranking system: "Echelon [0], who are the 1000 individuals most threatening to our strategic position and what will be their whereabouts today?". "Matrix [1], please dispose of these individuals at these locations". Let's pray there will still be some humans between step 0 and step 1. Worse, by the logic of MAD, it is possible we are going to end up with 2 such systems, one for USA and one for China, caught in a new cold war. Think distributed Vietnam.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposition_Matrix

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#112

Post by Scipio_Afri »

yourbandsucks wrote: post #81
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is "Trump's DOD" different from Obama's DOD?

[flagged]

He's not anti war as much as he's anti policy that pushes up against Russian spheres of influence. You see no issue with, and in fact a lot of funding and support increase to, Saudi Arabia. Where as Obama had put a pause on things during the initial outbreak. Didn't condemn things outright in public, but the Obama administration was definitely taking a step back during the Yemen war.

The trump administration also has changed the rules of engagement for military strikes on ISIS and other terrorists to allow for the potential of more collateral damage or civilian deaths. The Obama administration set that threshold pretty high to prevent blowback for our actions and feeding terrorist propaganda.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#115

Post by topkai22 »

Great news for Microsoft, but I hope they don’t end up with the tail wagging the dog. There is a reason that you don’t see many companies straddling the defense/civilian divide that much- the military’s crazy bureaucracy, Legal, contracting, and certification environment means that organizations that work with them often end changing their culture to suit the government, and those cultural changes make them less competitive in non-public sector arenas.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#117

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

DKnoll wrote: post #109

> ...unlike, say, New York City or Detroit, whose residents found out the hard way that lots of their power comes from Canada. Interesting that this myth is still alive. It started with Bush falsely claiming the 2003 blackout was Canada's fault before an investigation had even been done. Here is the actual postmortem report. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/oeprod/DocumentsandM...

Just a request: if you intend to directly refute another's comment by posting sources, posting a 238 page document without a specific page reference isn't really helpful.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#118

Post by azinman2 »

rayiner wrote: post #76
meddlepal wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core to many Texans identity is a belief that someday Texas is going to secede from the Union again and become its own independent country. Don't get me wrong, I love Texas and I love many of the Texans I've met for being some of the chillest, most down to earth, pragmatic and welcoming people I have ever met, but they are a bit weird about this particular issue sometimes.

One if my favorite season finales ever: https://youtu.be/xFgNZG3gmqc The people with this view are also a big and growing minority: https://texaspolitics.utexas.edu/blog/texan-first-american-s... > Among 18- to 29-year-olds, 40 percent identify as Texans before they identify as Americans, far outpacing any other age group.

I feel the same way about CA. I suspect this isn’t that uncommon — many people put family first, then community, then country.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#119

Post by serf »

p0rkbelly wrote: post #96
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was Bezos motive for purchasing the Washington Post? It certainly wasn't financial.

Haven't followed Bezos too closely, but, never thought of him to be a political person or saw anything where he made political comments. Buying the Washington Post certainly forced the world around him to see him as political...even if he considers himself not.

> Haven't followed Bezos too closely, but, never thought of him to be a political person or saw anything where he made political comments.

You never considered the idea that the richest man in the world may be political?

It'd be more surprising for me to find out that he wasn't political; you don't accrue that kind of cash without playing political games at at least some point in your portfolio -- even if it's just for the opportunity to reduce your tax burdens.

Re: Microsoft Wins Pentagon’s $10B Contract

#120

Post by tozeur »

vkou wrote: post #45
tozeur wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand the repulsive feelings towards helping the govt. Would we rather have the people in control of the military and our troops use out-of-date tech?

I would rather the military be less capable, because its current capability is being used for offensive, not defensive purposes. If it's less capable, it's less likely to get embroiled in stupid imperialistic adventures. Edit: I don't understand why so many people are, at the same time, so enthused by the idea of starving government (Because they think most of its services are a waste of money), while at the same tim…

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