Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says • Hacker News Board

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#91

Post by creato » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #88

creato wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Following your reasoning, we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... In other words, lets kill the competitiveness of the local economy, so that other countries won't be able to do just that. This is similar to the soldier who decides to commit suicide so that the foreign army won't have the chance to do so!

You have a point. I'm just pointing out the argument you responded to is not a fallacy, it's a real concern as well. I honestly don't know what I would do if I had decision making power on this issue.

> we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries...

This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them. In part, precisely because most of their competition is fragmented and paralyzed by infighting.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#92

Post by craftyguy » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

ehsankia wrote: post #20

This 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…

> This article seems like a lot of speculating and throwing wild theories at the wall

The article is on 'military.com', would you expect anything less than speculative clickbait warmongering?

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#93

Post by coliveira » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 11:11 PM UTC

creato wrote: post #91

coliveira wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Following your reasoning, we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... In other words, lets kill the competitiveness of the local economy, so that other countries won't be able to do just that. This is similar to the soldier who decides to commit suicide so that the foreign army won't have the chance to do so!

You have a point. I'm just pointing out the argument you responded to is not a fallacy, it's a real concern as well. I honestly don't know what I would do if I had decision making power on this issue. > we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade…

> This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them.

if that is the case, then the US has no grounds on requesting the Chinese to open their markets for US firms! If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies, we should not be surprised if the Chinese create their own mega companies and close their market to the American ones.

Essentially what I'm trying to say is that if we go the path of supporting mega companies, then we should just throw away the illusion of free market and understand that other countries will do the same, because they're not stupid.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#94

Post by cromwellian » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 11:27 PM UTC

freyir wrote: post #72

cromwellian wrote: post #70

By 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…

‘U.S. companies must realize that in doing business with China, "they are automatically required to have a cell of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in that company and that it's going to lead to that intellectual property from that company finding its way to the Chinese military," Dunford said. "There's a distinction without a difference between the CCP and the government and the Chinese military."’ The argument is…

Seems like a lot of unfounded claims there. Dunford doesn't even know what projects the Beijing office is researching, for example, what if they're researching better Google Translate models for Mandarin?

All of this is red baiting. Sure, China is conducting economic espionage, overlooks domestic players stealing IP, and structures joint-venture companies to benefit their domestic economy. But it's not a playbook they invented, the US during its rise from an agrarian backwater violated British IP on a regular basis, the US also conducts espionage all over the world, including information used to seal deals for the military industrial and aerospace industries.

The real question is, how stupid do you think Google management is? After the last time they pulled out of China, do you really think they're going to host any "crown jewel" trade secret projects there?

Moreover, AI is firmly in the "publish almost everything" phase. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, OpenAI, even Apple, are publishing ever major breakthrough they come up with. There's very little secrets going on. AlphaStar, BERT/Transformers, WaveNet, NMT, et al, the core underpinning of many products are being openly shared.

This is just straight up scaremongering by government spooks attempting to force tech companies into compliance on the grounds of patriotism.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#95

Post by freyir » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:18 AM UTC

cromwellian wrote: post #94

freyir wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘U.S. companies must realize that in doing business with China, "they are automatically required to have a cell of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in that company and that it's going to lead to that intellectual property from that company finding its way to the Chinese military," Dunford said. "There's a distinction without a difference between the CCP and the government and the Chinese military."’ The argument is…

Seems like a lot of unfounded claims there. Dunford doesn't even know what projects the Beijing office is researching, for example, what if they're researching better Google Translate models for Mandarin? All of this is red baiting. Sure, China is conducting economic espionage, overlooks domestic players stealing IP, and structures joint-venture companies to benefit their domestic economy. But it's not a playbook the…

You had me up till OpenAI.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#96

Post by bduerst » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 12:26 AM UTC

president wrote: post #39

bduerst wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop with this xenophobia. 40% of the Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrant families [1] [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2011/06/19/40-pe...

What exactly is xenophobic about my post? I'm not exactly saying "get out of the country" if you carefully read my post.

Xenophobia isn't limited to just saying "get out of the country", but also the spreading fear, uncertainty, and distrust (usually without warrant) onto out-groups like immigrants.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#97

Post by cromwellian » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 1:15 AM UTC

freyir wrote: post #95

cromwellian wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like a lot of unfounded claims there. Dunford doesn't even know what projects the Beijing office is researching, for example, what if they're researching better Google Translate models for Mandarin? All of this is red baiting. Sure, China is conducting economic espionage, overlooks domestic players stealing IP, and structures joint-venture companies to benefit their domestic economy. But it's not a playbook the…

You had me up till OpenAI.

Well, except GPT-2.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#98

Post by chillacy » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 1:44 AM UTC

paleotrope wrote: post #36

ehsankia wrote: post #20

This 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…

My guess is the DoD/USGov is going to be opposed to any transfer of any ai/ml technology to China. I tend to think that most ai/ml news is hyped and highly speculative, but if the leadership in the US is not sophisticated enough to understand the hype cycle, any ai technology that could be put in a military drone is going to be heavily regulated.

AI is such a new field and China invests so heavily that they may end up leapfrogging US researchers anyways if the US doesn't up its funding: https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18265230/china-is-about-t...

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#99

Post by chillacy » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 1:50 AM UTC

danielovichdk wrote: post #89

Pharmakon wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies aren’t people, they don’t act like people and don’t have a person’s motivation. It’s a dangerous thing to talk or think as if they were. Companies like Google are a collection of people serving their own interests and desire to stay in power first and foremost, sometimes (if not often) at cross purposes with other people in the company doing the same. Incidentally the same is true of nations.

A company is and should have reflections of certain cultureal standards, such as not doing this kind of business with the chineese, when you are Google. It's bad management and a lacks morale. I see companies as people, for sure. Without people and types of people, companies wouldn't act a certain way.

That's a lot of "should"s and personal opinions that I'm sure not all people agree with.

Re: Google's Work with China Eroding US Military Advantage, Dunford Says

#100

Post by creato » Sat, Mar 23, 2019, 2:00 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #93

creato wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a point. I'm just pointing out the argument you responded to is not a fallacy, it's a real concern as well. I honestly don't know what I would do if I had decision making power on this issue. > we should just create and feed oligopolies to avoid, god help us, becoming "victims" of oligopolies from other countries... This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade…

> This basically is exactly the strategy of China, at least with respect to international trade, and it's working absolutely wonderfully for them. if that is the case, then the US has no grounds on requesting the Chinese to open their markets for US firms! If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies, we should not be surprised if the Chinese create their own mega companies and close their mark…

> If the US is itself committed to empower their oligarchic companies,

I think this is a silly strawman and you probably know it. This argument exists on a wide spectrum, at one end is "not acting to break up large companies", and at the other is "outright state owned enterprises with unlimited funding to compete abroad". The fact that the argument applies to both does not make them the same.