Wow, this thread is funny as hell.
Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
61–70 of 107 posts
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#62This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the wall. It a big eye-catching headline with very little substance. I understand how Google's unwillingness to participate in DoD programs can impact the US military, but I don't understand the Google/China connection. Does anyone know what the "artificial intelligence venture" is referring to? Is it Dragonfly? I don't see how an exploratory…
Google also has an AI research center based in Beijing that hires Chinese employees. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/google-opening-an-office-f...
If it’s anything like their old Wudaokou office, there is a huge firewall between the work done in that office and the others.
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#63The bigger issue, in my mind is the DoD acquisitions process. It is severely out of step with the speed of business, and actively prohibits investing in companies who have foreign funding, esp. Chinese money. They have created a diode that pushes engineering talent away from the Pentagon and China is more than happy to help out. On the flip side, look at our nervousness about China putting money and talent into SV. Are you so sure they're not nervous about one of our companies doing the same?
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#64I emailed Richard, the author of this article, with the question: "What Robotics projects is Google helping the Chinese govt develop or leaking through a CCP cell?" I am very curious, as I think the HN community would be. I do not want to rehash the other arguments: if it is true Google would be hypocritical for assisting China or the lack of details what this General accused Google on possibly leaking through a CCP…
I think one general issue is that Google has an AI center in China, and I'm sure there is 0 doubt from the intelligence community that the information Google's employees there have access to, etc is being infiltrated by Chinese spies. Not to mention just general projects Google is involved in within China itself, and its willingness to pay a price for entry (which is Chinese custom for foreign companies.) So, Google…
I like your speculation.
Google's face recognition tech is the first tech that comes to mind of being a real issue (esp with Googlers).
I think this is something people need to discuss more.
Like, why is the US govt allowing companies to get US military contracts that allow CCP units access to their research centers?
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not a surprise, this is the same argument the oil industry has used for decades to oppose any kind of anti-oligopoly legislation. Basically they state that the US curbing the size of oil companies will adversely impact national interests in the Middle East and in other regions.
does that invalidate the argument?
It is a fallacy. If having a oligopoly is bad for the economy, it doesn't matter what other countries may want to do. Why weakening your economy, to satisfy the desires of an oligopoly, will be any better?
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google also has an AI research center based in Beijing that hires Chinese employees. https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/12/google-opening-an-office-f...
If it’s anything like their old Wudaokou office, there is a huge firewall between the work done in that office and the others.
Yeah, when I was there the China office largely worked on products for the Chinese market, and they lacked access to many things that Googlers in the rest of the world took for granted (like full access to the monorepo). It was more that some executive would throw a project over the wall to Beijing, a team there would work on it, most of the time the results of that work would stay in China (and be directly applicable to google.cn), but occasionally the exec would bring the tech back for U.S. engineers to work on.
I had regular contact with engineers in Zurich, Ireland, South Korea, Brazil, Israel, and Australia while I was there, but the only direct contact I had with the Beijing office was through a Mountain View expat (ethnically Croatian) who was leading a team there.
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#67Looking from different angle, if Google hires a bunch of Chinese AI researchers to do civilian tech research. Wouldn't that cause a brain drain from the Chinese military and other Chinese companies?
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#68I emailed Richard, the author of this article, with the question: "What Robotics projects is Google helping the Chinese govt develop or leaking through a CCP cell?" I am very curious, as I think the HN community would be. I do not want to rehash the other arguments: if it is true Google would be hypocritical for assisting China or the lack of details what this General accused Google on possibly leaking through a CCP…
I think one general issue is that Google has an AI center in China, and I'm sure there is 0 doubt from the intelligence community that the information Google's employees there have access to, etc is being infiltrated by Chinese spies. Not to mention just general projects Google is involved in within China itself, and its willingness to pay a price for entry (which is Chinese custom for foreign companies.) So, Google…
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Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
does that invalidate the argument?
It is a fallacy. If having a oligopoly is bad for the economy, it doesn't matter what other countries may want to do. Why weakening your economy, to satisfy the desires of an oligopoly, will be any better?
For the local national economy, an oligopoly seems possibly worse. On the international stage, it seems blindingly obvious that breaking up your local oligopoly to compete with larger foreign oligopolies or stated owned corporations is worse.
Fundamentally, this is all about negotiating power, and the whole point of breaking up a monopoly/oligopoly is to reduce its negotiating power. But that's clearly a problem when interacting with foreign companies not subject to the same anti-trust action, and will have much greater negotiating power.
This is complicated, and the argument is not a fallacy.
Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says
#70By that token, Google publishing AI papers publicly erodes US military advantage given that China can use them to accelerate their home grown projects.
Companies are opening offices in China as a recruitment drive I bet. The whole industry is trying to buy up every last data scientist. It happens that China graduates more engineers and scientists than practically anyone else and so if you want to set up an R&D lab to snap up new recruits, setting them up near Beijing or tsinghua university isn’t a bad idea, just like foreign companies opening corporate R&D labs near Stanford or MIT.