It’s ironic on so many levels. The first level is, of course, the irony of refusing to do military work at a company that only exists because of defense contractors working on a military project (ARPANET).
More generally, the irony is that the U.S. military has made a far greater positive contribution to the world than Google. Under the Pax Americana, we have seen the greatest number of people rise out of abject poverty in human history. The stable, liberal world order that has been beneficial to so many people has been bankrolled by the U.S. and backed by the U.S. military.
This world where people in India and Pakistan are using Gchat Facebook to talk to each other instead of waging nuclear war against each other is not the result of Google or Facebook. It’s not the result of humans evolving beyond their tendencies towards warfare. It’s because the U.S. military has made entire classes of armed conflicts untenable.
.. This country only exists because of Puritan persecution in England, but you don’t see me thanking the Anglican church for America. Bad means result in good ends all the time; that doesn’t mean we should celebrate bad means.I agree that the US military has made positive contributions to the world, but I don’t think it’s the main source of the Pax Americana — strong international bodies (NATO, UN, &c), the tendency for democratic nations (the dominant sort in the 20th century) to avoid wars with each other, and advancements in crop science are all individually more responsible for the relative global stability of the last 30 years.I don’t deny that the military had a role (usually financial) in any or all of the above, but I wouldn’t call it a causal role: virtually all academic research funding hits the defense world eventually (“food security”, “ecological security”, &c), especially during the Cold War. That’s the result of political contrivances, not any sort of deep connection between the U.S. military and scientific progress.
Finally, I wonder about drawing comparisons between the past U.S. military and current ventures. The Google engineers in question probably wouldn’t be designing waterproof radios for fastboats; they’d be training models that “recognize” “terrorists” from afar and systems that pass that information to drones for remote killing. Put another way: the shift away from conventional warfare changes the moral dimensions of working for the military.
.. It’s not that NATO and the UN are powerful or effective as bodies independent of the US, it’s that their greatest achievements have occurred without direct US military intervention.NATO and the UN both benefit (and suffer) from the power and presence of the US military, but their proudest moments (the German economic miracle, smallpox eradication, historic decreases in child mortality and malnutrition) all stem from smart policy and liberal principles, not from the looming threat of American tanks.
.. The fact that people are spurred into action by violence doesn’t mean that we ought to be violent, or that violence is even the most effective way to get people to act in the way you want... At the risk of sort of invoking Godwin, I’m curious if you’d apply the same logic to Stalin and the fall of Nazi Germany. What does the victory in the Battle of Berlin say about whether Stalin was good or bad?
.. an academic institution is a public institution focused on advancing science and teaching it to the public. A corporation or contractor is in it for the profit. Notably, the academics involved were able to publish their work as the TCP/IP standard (and others), and anyone was able to use it.If it had actually been military contractors we would not have the internet as it is today... Cerf (Stanford) and Kahn (DARPA) designed TCP. But BBN (now a subsidiary of Raytheon) built ARPANET... The best the military does is keep stability. Google changed everything. One is static; the other, change. I don’t see them as comparable at all.Anyway I’ve heard it said that the container ship has done more to lift the world standard up, than all the political action of the last 1000 years. By distributing goods to all the corners of the world at a cheap price...
How a Powerful Spy Camera Invented at Duke Ended Up in China’s Hands
High-tech camera, conceived by scientists for the Pentagon, finds light by moving east
Five years ago, a group of Duke University scientists developed a pioneering gigapixel camera to provide long-range surveillance for the U.S. Navy through a sponsorship from the Pentagon.
The technology, never picked up by the U.S. government, is now being used by Chinese police to identify people from nearly a football field away, after lead Duke researcher David Brady moved to China in 2016 to kick-start his business.
.. Surveillance startups using AI are booming in China as Beijing spends $30 billion a year on public-safety projects, including a vast network of cameras that aims to cover public squares, major crossroads and train stations. To feed that demand, Mr. Brady’s Aqueti China Technology Inc. developed Mantis, a 19-lens camera with processors that combine images into a 100-megapixel frame that users can zoom in on in extraordinary detail.
.. “A government doesn’t need the hand of technology to be oppressive,” he said.
Search The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
The reason this post took three weeks to finish is that as I dug into research on Artificial Intelligence, I could not believe what I was reading. It hit me pretty quickly that what’s happening in the world of AI is not just an important topic, but by far THE most important topic for our future. So I wanted to learn as much as I could about it, and once I did that, I wanted to make sure I wrote a post that really explained this whole situation and why it matters so much. Not shockingly, that became outrageously long, so I broke it into two parts. This is Part 1—Part 2 is here.
Why Microsoft is Acquiring GitHub
Developing relationships with developers and acquiring new talent is a huge opportunity here.
This is one of my favorite acquisition stories so far in 2018. GitHub (notice the cute mascot) really is the Switzerland of code. I’m not going to lie, this might not stay the same after the Microsoft acquisition. Devs have a way of preferring something that feels a bit more brand agnostic and independent.
However it’s also a huge opportunity for Microsoft to develop better relationships with devs, use the data to optimize its AI in the cloud and even cherry pick some of the best developers in the world to create a pipeline of new talent and hires for the AI-route Microsoft will be going.
.. Acquiring GitHub could give Microsoft unique insights and relationship opportunities to onboard some of the best developers in the world.
.. GitHub has “27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code,” according to Bloomberg.
That’s 27 million of the most valuable minds on the planet. What can full access to these repositories and people do for how Microsoft understand talent in the software developer vertical?.. Presumably coupled with the data of LinkedIn, this kind of information can help train Microsoft’s AI and its ability to acquire the right people to build it’s assault on AI in the cloud and the future.
.. In the world of tech, you don’t want your average employee to be necessarily 33 years OLD. This is exactly the sort of reason Microsoft will acquire GitHub.
.. and it’s pretty much recognized many developers do their best work in their mid to late 20s (since the field is so dynamic).
Without US Navy and its 10 carriers, we will be back to 19th century mercantilism and how much fun colonialism which is its off-shoot has been.
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