Former NSA chief Keith Alexander has joined Amazon’s board of directors

Post by qppo » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

taftster wrote: post #368

I understand the general sentiment here, and don't disagree. But I think ultimately this is about dollars. There is a LOT of money in the government defense sector. AWS is in an excellent position to capture a lot of that money, but their primary competitor in this space, Microsoft, has been preventing a complete domination and monopoly by Amazon. With Alexander on the board, this will ultimately lead to different/be…

Post by pc86 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

whatshisface wrote: post #366

dwd wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All these 3-letter acronyms exists to further American interests - for a long time that was primarily the military/industrial complex followed by oil/gas. We're now just seeing the focus switch to supporting big tech as a priority.

> All these 3-letter acronyms exists to further American interests That's a strangely Aristotelian view of organizations. It is as if you are suggesting that the 3-letter agencies have a fundamental essence outside of the intentions of the people who work there.

Post by pc86 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #327

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because EU countries don't have mammoth sized, trillion dollar SW companies with a global monopoly. If your country's software industry is comprised mostly of 10-200 person web shops and consultancies there's no real gain for the Goverment agencies to be in bed with them.

Err... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP Billion, trillion, shmillion, lose some, win some, it's all virtual. Not backed by anything real. I mean, you can see the house of cards falling down because of a sneeze right now :-)

Post by smsm42 » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

srean wrote: post #289

deathgrips wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that here we have the freedom to criticize and organize against it. One of the presidential candidates wants to tear down all the stuff you pointed out. I can say that the surveillance doesn't affect me because it's almost unheard of for Americans to get arrested with evidence that the NSA collected. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. In China arresting people based on data from surveillance i…

> here we have the freedom to criticize and organize against it Ask those who wanted to protest against recent disproportionate police actions and those who did and became targets.

Post by DenisM » Thu, Sep 10, 2020, 5:43 PM UTC

ethbr0 wrote: post #101

DenisM wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how editorial pressure works. Chomsky detailed it quite well, but in a few words: The advertisers react to "wrong" coverage by withdrawing support, the chief editor is very attuned so he assigns the right people to the right jobs before trouble starts, and the journalists so assigned naturally work quite sincerely. No actual orders to publish or withdraw articles need to happen.

Unfalsifiable conspiracies are my favorite kind! There's got to be a natural law that, for any given situation, one can compose a scheme whereby no proof of anything would actually exist, but evil would still be done.