Google Engineers Refused to Build Security Tool to Win Military Contracts

Don't be evil

Ok but why was air-gap so controversial ? Is it more than having isolated servers ?

Great for the people that protested and stood their ground, hopefully that kind of behavior and mentality towards war becomes more wide-spread.

Although it's hard not to be skeptical given...

> It's unclear if Google has abandoned air gap technology or is still planning to build it over employees’ objections. The feature is not technically very difficult, so Google could easily find other engineers to do the work.

And

> For now, Google falls short of rivals. Both Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have “High” certificates that authorize them to hold sensitive or classified data and sell to bodies like the Central Intelligence Agency. To do so, both companies had to set up a separate service called a government cloud.

One thing I find strange about this is why Google is so keen to get this government business in the first place. They’re amazingly profitable already, one of the most successful companies of all time; is defense work really something that could become another major revenue stream? Given the obvious conflicts with their company culture (obvious to rank and file employees, anyway) it doesn’t seem like a very appealing trade-off. Or is the leadership looking to other potential benefits, like increased leverage for lobbying?