Page Text: Here’s the thing:
Google is the enemy.
They’re at the head of the table when the facebook, twitter, media types discuss their strategies.
I arrived at that conclusion when, during the late unpleasantness, one of my sons (a medic) was assigned to the Ibn Sina hospital in Baghdad. He was with the 28th CASH hospital unit, and they were split between the airport (for US personnel) and Ibn Sina (for everybody else). This hospital is physically in the ‘green zone’, just barely. Right across the river from Sadr City. (In overhead pics, it’s the big concrete building at the bend in the river with the helipads next to it.)
Anywho, when I looked it up on Google Earth, the image came with a handy “north/east and range scale” indicator in the corner of the image. Next time I talked to the boy, I commented on it, and he said, yeah, they all knew about that, the DOD had been trying to get Google to remove it, but so far, no joy.
I said, “So, yall get mortared a lot?” He said “Every time the Blackhawks circle to land. It’s got to the point that they put concrete road dividers at the corners of the pad so you have a place to take cover from incoming.”
That’s when I came to the conclusion that Google is actively the enemy.
January 22, 2021 at 5:16 pm
“That’s when I came to the conclusion that Google is actively the enemy.”
I’ll let them know. I’m sure they will reconsider their actions. ;) Actually with Google, its a real problem talking to a human, its mostly AI now, the stuff that evolved from their various automatons, that used to run the place. The stuff Googles does is so vast, no human can really keep tabs anyway.
Xennady
January 23, 2021 at 12:33 am
…they all knew about that, the DOD had been trying to get Google to remove it, but so far, no joy.
I find this to be an absolutely fascinating anecdote, and people in my meatspace existence are going to hear about it. But I also find it to be utterly unsurprising and banal. It’s exactly what I expect these people to do.
And exactly why so many people have given up on such a system that would allow such a travesty to occur.
I wouldn’t expect an Iranian company to keep providing targeting data to a American invasion of Iran, yet somehow it has become accepted that American-based companies will imagine themselves to be neutral in American wars, and keep working with our enemies.
Again, this won’t last, nor should it.
Gavin Longmuir
January 23, 2021 at 10:14 am
Xennady: “… American-based companies …”
That is exactly the point – quoted on the New York Stock Exchange, but not American. Remember, this is Google which has bought off enough of the US Political Class to ensure a large supply of H-1B visa foreign workers at low wages who are abused as effectively captive labor while simultaneously eliminating job opportunities for actual American citizens.
The current conflict between Australia and Google is interesting. Australia, naturally, sees Google as a foreign corporation and thus is prepared to put its foot down and demand a certain level of Australian-friendly conduct from the foreign devil. Perhaps it would be better if Americans started thinking of the likes of Google as the trans-national rootless corporations they really are? But that would admittedly be difficult in a world in which China manipulates Google and both China & Google buy the service of our supposed “representatives”.
As individuals, our only choice is to vote with our feet and avoid Google to the maximum possible extent.
Xennady
January 23, 2021 at 6:06 pm
Perhaps it would be better if Americans started thinking of the likes of Google as the trans-national rootless corporations they really are? But that would admittedly be difficult in a world in which China manipulates Google and both China & Google buy the service of our supposed “representatives”.
I’m glad to see that you noticed my use of “American-based companies,” which was quite deliberate. That comment was originally much longer and contained quite a bit of rambling, which I deleted because it was both off-topic and tedious. American-based was what survived from all that.
Anyway, I think your take about Google roughly applies to just about every “American” corporation we could name. They may or may not be listed on a US-based stock exchange- I don’t know and at this point, don’t care- but they’re all globalist in outlook. They’re all quite happy to hire foreigners to come work in the US and equally happy to move operations out of the US. They’ve arranged it such with their friends in DC that they can do so, as you’ve pointed out.
If Americans don’t like this, too bad. Merchants have no country, as Thomas Jefferson noted long ago- and essentially the US is now ruled by merchants. Unfortunately for them, the people they rely upon to enforce their globalism- a “rules based international order,” as it was once described to me- are people who largely derive no commeasurable benefit from it, and hence have no great reason to seek its continuance.
That’s a rather serious problem for them, which they’ve long noticed. Hence, the hysterical and endless attacks on Donald Trump and his supporters, long preceded by hysterical and endless attacks on any American who expressed doubts about globalism.
Blah, blah, rambling. But Trump was quite willing to work within the system and did not explicitly attack it. For example, he did not condemn Pfizer for holding back the release the Covid vaccine until after the election, nor did he condemn the federal bureaucracy for holding back the development of a vaccine because of idiot bureaucratic rules. I think the next guy, or girl, won’t be so polite, and has an incandescent incentive not to be. There is an enormous political upside for an outsider to attack these globalist corporations, for their globalism and for their treason.
Blah, blah. Ramble mode off.
MCS
January 24, 2021 at 2:02 pm
When evaluating Jefferson’s thoughts, it’s important to remember that he saw himself as a member of the landed gentry and above considerations of mere commerce. It underlies much of the friction between him, the other Virginian founders and the New Englanders, especially Adams and Hamilton. He spent his entire life indebted and at the mercy of merchants. It doesn’t make him wrong in this case.
The merchant that loses sight of profit, ceases to be a merchant. Successful merchants also never forget that they depend on certain preconditions for simple survival. The U.S. has for the last 232 years been the most dependable place to find those preconditions.
If you look at Google and the other “Big Techs”, you will find that they aren’t corporations in any real sense. Control is locked up in a tiny group of holders of privileged stock. The “public” stock holders have really signed onto a lottery with exactly as much input in the outcome as any other lottery ticket holder. They will do well only as long as there is someone willing to buy their shares for more than they did.
The most surprising thing about the Google/Pentagon kerfuffle was that anyone at Google was allowed to get between the real bosses and a chunk of money. This leads me to the conclusion that this particular project started as one of their infamous “side projects” and blew up before the adults had time to think about just how much money was potentially at stake.
The Apple saucer should be taken as a signal that they have ceased to matter in the tech world. The apparent answer to the question of what will top the I-Phone is: “We don’t know, look at our neat building”. They intend to milk the herd of Apple fans for as long as they can. The move to ARM based computers as well as phones will soon make it impossible to use any software not procured through Apple.
Twitter and Facebook operate on the sufferance of Apple and Google. I believe that Apple’s new “privacy” initiative is really a way to divert some of the money that Twitter and Facebook make selling user data to itself.
The tech “Wizards” are incredibly arrogant and self confident. They undoubtedly believe they are smart enough to play all sides and we are dumb enough to not catch on. The CCP plays a much different game. The clue that they have an army and nukes would be enough for most people to realize that an individual or business would never be anything but a very minor and painlessly disposable game piece. Jack Ma could enlighten them just how much they count for in his country, if you ever got him drunk enough or he became suicidal enough.
Even my paltry sources of information tell me that China is becoming not just less hospitable, but increasingly, openly hostile to foreigners on a weekly basis. I expect that those businesses that have lost sight of the importance of the preconditions to their success that I alluded to above are soon to be forcefully reminded. Remember the thousands dead at Tiananmen Square, their remains literally flushed down the sewers and consider how much your bottom line matters there.
January 24, 2021 at 11:02 pm
One thing the Pentagon worries about is the extensive Russian capacity to screw with underwater cables. They have invested heavily in submersibles, submarine deployed, to go and grab onto cables, to either listen to traffic, or destroy them if push came to shove. America too, is quite able to monitor and cut whatever cables they don’t like.
January 25, 2021 at 1:39 am
“The whole purpose of the Internet was to ensure communications in a war.”
This is a widely held belief that is simply not true. Some of the tech borrowed to create the ARPnet was from strategies to create diversified communications routing during a time of war. That’s it.
I highly recommend the book, “Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet” to get a good overview of the beginnings of the ‘net.
Kenneth C Mitchell
January 25, 2021 at 2:00 am
Become amateur radio operators. The Technician class license no longer requires 5WPM in Morse code; just some technical and legal stuff for the license. Check out the ARRL web site for complete details. That gives you a nice bandwidth on VHF and UHF for voice, and if you’re REALLY cut off from comms, that might be a good emergency way to chat.