Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security • Hacker News Board

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#181

Post by acheron » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:20 PM UTC

kornhole wrote: post #110

jjulius wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>... previous experience working in intelligence Previous? But just moments ago you said... >... she works for US intelligence. And even still, the comment you reference is pretty innocuous if you have actual context. She has publicly stated that she worked alongside intelligence assets at a "threat intelligence unit" at Facebook[1]. [1] https://twitter.com/Rasha_Abdul/status/1496788958084280320

Of course I cannot prove that she still works with intelligence. The funding and direction of such assets is understably obscured. My statement is merely logical conclusion that you can choose to agree with or not.

I see you would be open to my information about how the lizard people run the world. Of course I cannot prove it but my statement is merely a logical conclusion.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#182

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:21 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #146

bavell wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like just another low-effort dig at greenwald? He's got haters for sure but they never seem to have substantive arguments... or at least none that I've seen.

Greenwald reply guys are probably the second vilest on the internet after Ilhan Omar reply guys.

[deleted]

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#183

Post by vernie » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:23 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #146

bavell wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like just another low-effort dig at greenwald? He's got haters for sure but they never seem to have substantive arguments... or at least none that I've seen.

Greenwald reply guys are probably the second vilest on the internet after Ilhan Omar reply guys.

Must be cozy living in a bubble that small.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#184

Post by kcatskcolbdi » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:32 PM UTC

BuckRogers wrote: post #165

Mikeb85 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You see this at the huge backlash you get, even here among relatively educated and informed commenters, when you dare to suggest that the US bears some responsibility for Ukraine's predicament even though Russia is of course wholly responsible for an unjustifiable invasion. Only 1 country is killing Ukrainians: Russia. There's no US troops massacring and raping Ukrainians... The only thing the US is responsible for…

The lines are clearer than ever for the 21st century. This century has been kicked off with the world struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. People have a choice. Choose the US/Europe/Japan/South Korea/Taiwan, or, the mideast/Russia/China. Many people voted with their feet, migrating to the former nations. Those people have no room to speak as they already voted. I'm missing some players of course, but gener…

> The Russian people are also ultimately responsible here.

I would be interested to learn about what steps you've taken to curb the abuses of your government. Surely your own government is not without fault, and through your logic you are responsible for all their transgressions.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#185

Post by nonrandomstring » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:33 PM UTC

colpabar wrote: post #175

nonrandomstring wrote: post #169

National security is the sum total of the individual earned securities of each citizen, including economic, political, social, health, cultural, military and all sorts of security that pertain to the identity we call a nation. What these guys are talking about is something else. They are talking about the security of the security services, their own self interests and the status quo of enmeshed relations between thre…

I have to ask - by "diverse", do you mean "different people from different backgrounds who have different viewpoints"? Or do you mean "people who all think the same way but have different skin colors"?

> I have to ask - by "diverse", do you mean "different people from different backgrounds who have different viewpoints"?

Yes, people and institutions, and technologies.

What gives security is something like "hybrid vigour" obtained by the whole system because it has evolutionary resilience (it's survivable, at least in part, to the greatest range of possible threats)

Parts of a resilient system can even be in moderate tension as they keep a check on each other.

For examples; it would be stronger to have both centralised and distributed philosophies represented; it would be good to have a mixture of public and private funding models in operation; small and large entities capable of agile innovation, and reliable scale.

That makes it hard for a malevolent or erroneous force to infiltrate and take out the whole barrel of apples.

Of course, diversity of gender, religion, race, age, political leaning and wealth tend to make a more interesting and vibrant workplace, but that's not primarily what I am saying.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#186

Post by trinsic2 » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:40 PM UTC

BuckRogers wrote: post #173

_dw1a wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a misleading and, frankly, rather disgusting analogy. The sovereignty of an individual, especially over one’s own body, and the sovereignty of a nation are not even near equivalents. And yes, I know that at this time the sovereignty of individual Ukrainians, men and women, is being horribly violated. But this did not need to happen even if the sovereignty of the nation itself was violated. It’s a separate mat…

Sovereignty of a nation is built on the sovereign individuals. Only a free man can build a free nation. It bubbles up, rather than comes from top down. I'm an "actions, not words" type of guy. Putin claims many things in this world, they're threatened etc. We all know it's a lie. You must watch Russia's actions, not their words. How many times have we learned this? Watch what they've done, not what they say. You're r…

Thank you for speaking what I was going to say. The idea that people are subject to government agenda's is wholly inaccurate. Governments are made up of people to protect the interests of individuals, not the other way around.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#187

Post by vvvzxd » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #47

incomingpain wrote: post #2

On april 17th I made the prediction that the US government was in control of twitter for probably this reason. I got flagged for this. A day later a bunch of former intelligence people basically said this is a good idea. That's funny to me.

From your comment, you went unnecessarily political regarding the January 6, 2021 insurrection. In my view, this is why people downvoted your comment. The common narrative is that it was insurrection. It was certainly a dangerous mob driven by Trump and cronies intending to interfere with the US election proceedings without justifiable cause beyond pseudo-creedal feelings that somewhere, somehow, the election was sto…

>The common narrative is that it was insurrection.

how many people from Jan 6 have been charged with insurrection?

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#188

Post by car_analogy » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #61

So there are 3 ways the government could influence Big Tech: 1. Infiltration. An agent or asset could be in a position of power to enact desired policies and changes, provide a backdoor or whatever; 2. Jurisdiction. The platform falls under US jurisdiction so is subject to various forms of law enforcement, secret or otherwise. National Security Letters, FISA warrants, pen registers, that sort of thing; and 3. Propaga…

> The prevailing foreign policy view is that the US is good and a benign hegemony and a civilizing and democratizing force.

No, that's just how it's sold to the public. E.g. I guarantee nobody had civilizing and democratizing in mind when the US occupying force in Iraq issued order 81:

the people in Iraq are now prohibited from saving newly designed seeds (not the traditional ones) and may only plant seeds for their food from licensed, authorized U.S. distributors. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_Orders

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#189

Post by archontes » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 7:57 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #144

archontes wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without knowing what information they had at the time, I will say we now know that there was plenty of disinformation about it being manufactured and spread. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/04/hunter-biden-la... Perhaps the most concerning thing is that a group of such blatantly unscrupulous people has actual political support in the US. I feel the need to draw a parallel to Trump's refusal of military aid…

Mother Jones has the hallmarks of a media outlet deeply connected with US intelligence.

I'm not sure what your point is. Is it that you suspect that they are not accurately relating the contents of Guo's whatsapp message?

If I were a betting man, I'd happily bet that they're reporting accurately, and that Bannon and Wengui were, as usual, being unscrupulous. It's not hard to see that claims of serial bullshit-peddlers that contain all the same bullshit as they always contain is bullshit. How much pattern recognition do you need?

Not only that, but the laptop turns out to be verifiable, and it goes to the FBI, which investigates. As normal. I fail to see the outrageous part.

Re: Former officials say big tech monopoly power is vital to national security

#190

Post by archontes » Thu, Apr 21, 2022, 8:16 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #143

archontes wrote: post #57

I think Greenwald's characterization of the letter's contents is a bit disingenuous. The letter makes the claim that recently proposed legislation that would enforce non-discriminatory access would do so in a way that would include foreign adversaries. Greenwald takes that and elevates the claim to, "Any attempts to restrict Big Tech's monopolistic power would therefore undermine the U.S. fight against Moscow." The l…

> that letter was still well-founded at the time. You should be explaining this claim rather than speculating about "hallmarks."

Well, I prefer not to speculate, but let's assume for a moment that the intelligence community knows some things before the general population does.

I don't think it would be unreasonable to speculate that they knew then what a portion of the general population knows now, namely that a vast disinformation network was disseminating information on behalf of Steve Bannon. This has been analyzed and reported on by social media analysis firm Graphika.

So combine an outlandish story of an abandoned laptop making its way to Rudy Giuliani with the outlandish and serially repeated claims of child pornography and push it out with a known disinformation network, and it has all the hallmarks of a disinformation campaign.

But that's just what I see that leads me to conclude that it's reasonable. Don't expect me to actually explain the intelligence community's behavior.

I suppose I'll also speak to the fact that someone from among the intelligence community vs. Trump's ilk deserves more of the benefit of the doubt. Given Trump and his ilk's long and trivially verifiable history of being brazen liars, I find it exceedingly easy to give the benefit of the doubt to the intelligence community.