Thousands Of Google Employees REVOLT, Demand Company Stop Supporting US War Machine

in #news7 years ago (edited)

 Last month, a press leak revealed that  Google has been working with the U.S. Department of Defense on a drone  program called “Project Maven,” which is being developed to scan images  in drone footage and identify targets. Prior to it being reported in the news, this project was unknown to  most Google employees, even those who were working on different aspects  of the project. 

The company was so secretive about the project and kept their  employees so compartmentalized, that thousands of talented engineers had  no clue that they were aiding a war effort. 

Now, many of those  employees are speaking out, and demanding that the company cancel its  work on the controversial program. This week, a letter that was signed by over 3,100 Google employees,  addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai, stated that they did not want to  be involved “in the business of war.The letter reads: 

We believe that Google should not be in the business of  war. Therefore we ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google  draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google  nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology. Google is  implementing Project Maven, a customized AI surveillance engine that  uses “Wide Area Motion Imagery” data captured by US Government drones to  detect vehicles and other objects, track their motions, and provide  results to the Department of Defense. Recently, Googlers voiced concerns  about Maven internally. Amid growing fears of bias ed and weaponized AI, Google is already  struggling to keep the public’s trust. By entering into this contract,  Google will join the ranks of companies like Palantir, Raytheon, and  General Dynamics. The argument that other firms, like Microsoft and  Amazon, are also participating doesn’t make this any less risky for  Google. Google’s unique history, its motto Don’t Be Evil , and its direct  reach into the lives of billions of users set it apart. We cannot  outsource the moral responsibility of our technologies t o third parties  . Google’s stated values make this clear: Every one of our users is  trusting us. Never jeopardize that. Ever. This contract puts Google’s  reputation at risk and stands in direct opposition to our core values.  Building this technology to assi st the US Government in military  surveillance – and potentially lethal outcomes – is not acceptable.

The letter ends by demanding that the company immediately cancel the project and also “Draft,  publicize, and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor  its contractors will ever build warfare technology.” 

Project Maven was launched in April 2017, and according to a Pentagon memo, the objective is to “augment or automate Processing, Exploitation and Dissemination (PED) for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)” in order to “reduce  the human factors burden of [full motion video] analysis, increase  actionable intelligence, and enhance military decision-making.” 

When the issue was raised last month, Google spokesperson Diane Greene assured the concerned employees that the technology “will not operate or fly drones” and “will not be used to launch weapons.” 

However, the employees saw right through this excuse and pointed out in their letter that, “While  this eliminates a narrow set of direct applications, the technology is  being built for the military, and once it’s delivered it could easily be  used to assist in these tasks. This plan will irreparably damage  Google’s brand and its ability to compete for talent.” 

Even if this technology is used for “non-offensive purposes,”  it will still be assisting the military-industrial-complex to wage  unjust wars. In fact, it is the responsibility of everyone who is a part  of the machine to refuse participation in war efforts. 

Anti-war activist Arundhati Roy once made this point quite eloquently, saying, “Colorful  demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful  enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight  when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft when people  boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the  globe.” 

In a statement to The New York Times this Tuesday, Google CEO Pichai said,  “any military use of machine learning naturally raises valid concerns.  We’re actively engaged across the company in a comprehensive discussion  of this important topic.” 

Pichai also doubled down on the claim that Project Maven was “specifically scoped to be for non-offensive purposes.” 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem that this protest will end Google’s relationship with the Pentagon. Google/Alphabet executive Eric Schmidt, and Google vice president  Milo Medin, currently serve on a Pentagon advisory body called the Defense Innovation Board. 

In an interview last November, Schmidt recognized that there wasa general concern in the tech community of somehow the military-industrial complex using their stuff to kill people incorrectly,” but he insisted that the military would only “use this technology to help keep the country safe.” 

Google is notorious for helping the government build a war state  abroad and a police state back home and until now, their employees have  been largely silent about becoming a part of the military-industrial  complex. 


I wrote this story @ http://thefreethoughtproject.com/google-employees-sign-letter-demanding-company-stop-supporting-war/
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY:

My name is John Vibes and I am an author and researcher who organizes a number of large events including the Free Your Mind Conference. I write for numerous alternative media websites, including The Free Thought Project @tftproject and The Mind Unleashed. In addition to my first book, Alchemy of the Timeless Renaissance, I have also co-authored three books with Derrick Broze @dbroze : The Conscious Resistance: Reflections on Anarchy and Spirituality, Finding Freedom in an Age of Confusion and Manifesto of the Free Humans

I just won a 3-year-long battle with cancer, and will be working to help others through my experience, if you wish to contribute to my medical bills, consider subscribing to my podcast on Patreon. 

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Arundhati Roy's quote says much more than what's on the surface. There are times for all of us when we have to ask our selves if we're going to do that job or take that order. If you know it's wrong or helping the wrong people, ahem ahem " government", then we must refuse to participate. We can't be afraid to lose our job if in the trade-off we lose our humanity. No matter who tells you to do something, if it's immoral & you know better, you must refuse that request\order. Only you will held to account for everything that you think, say or do. Trying the line "I was just doing my job." or "I was following orders." will not release you from your liability & restitution will be required at your hand. None of us can abdicate our personal responsibility for what we say or do to any other person & it's pure evil to pretend to do so. All order followers are evil.

You must be a Mark Passio fan. I am with you on the order followers issue. You are SO right. Sad how this is actually promoted as a VIRTUE though! Unreal. My friend Ras who is showing me around this site (I'm new) told me to send you my new article since it's related and he said you might be into it. I hope that is ok to post here as I don't know ettiquette yet. https://steemit.com/blog/@besmirched/ever-notice-how-conspiracy-theorists-tend-to-be-right Cheers mate! Thank you for your awakeness. Much love.

The Great Work is an awesome program. Thank you for the article. I'll be sure to check it out.

well said :-) ...i got nothing to add :-P lol

Why thank you, sir.

@johnvibes

A legend that joined steemit! Great to see you guys here. I have been following your work for a while now!

yeah I am spending way more time here than facebook now, and im helping TFTP get more active over here too :-)

FaceBook is done. With so much work out there from people like you, many "normies" are looking for less invasive & parasitic social media sites now that their aware of what's going on behind the scene at these places. $teemit.com is the opposite of parasitic as it offers value for value. I feel like this platform is about to get rocked by a flood of minnows who are fleeing the censorship & intrusion of a lot of the mainstream sites. I've certainly got my fingers crossed.

Love it! Keep up the good work man. I will always support you guys!

Compartmentalization of a project means its end goal is nefarious.

Building today's highly complex machines and programs requires a great deal of integration. To limit that integration by only giving a group a slice of the overall plan is to endanger the entirety of the program.

Thus, a company would only do this if they knew that a huge blowback from workers was at stake.

Thus, Boogle is doing what it has always written

Do Be Evil

yeah compartmentalization is an age old strategy that tyrants use to get people to go along with their bidding

Lol Google (Alphabet nowadays) is getting stinkier and stinkier by the day. After Facebook they'll be next - beginning with youtube.
First Damore, now this... Their ship is rotting from the inside.

yeah i cant wait to see all three of them fall lol

I’m sure we all contribute to hidden agendas in some way shape of form any time we google search or post to Facebook... that’s why we are opting out 😊

While I'm glad Google employees stood up for themselves. I can't imagine it'll stop the U.S. war machine. We've been at war for over 17 years now and we almost never hear anything about it. The govt. really has learned from its mistakes with the Vietnam War & the first Gulf War.

What we really need is for Google to finish the project, but with a back door that uploads all the videos it takes to youtube. Then people would be able to see what's really going on. ;)

John my critical thinking is pinging here. While I think it is a good thing if the engineers are protesting like this. The truth is the program is active and the engineers are still working for Google. It seems to me that this actually may have been planned to help with public opinion. After all Google can't be all bad if their employee's are protesting. I smell a rat is all I am saying.

Yeah I am torn lol but you are right, if they were really serious they would quit their jobs

If it had really happened they would be fired.

Great article! I hope this evolves into a strike,
as it is clearly evil, who'da thunk that search
engines would be use to find people IRL and
report their coordinates to a pilotless UAV?

Somewhere in the Pentagon people are
taking bets on how long it will take for
Google to officiate it's first red wedding.

The Pentagon has at least 5-10 of those
under it's belt already. They're probably
itching for the day that they can have
Google do the apologizing for them.

Great post.

Unfortunately, it has already gone way beyond trying to fix 'Google' now part of Alphabet. These are nothing but evil enterprises doing all they can to continue to manipulate the sheeple. Do not follow the crowd by buying in to anything that comes out of these ministries, especially any purported protests against them from their own insiders.

The ruling elites have long ago gained enormous information and thereby power via its CIA constructed info providers, e.g. Google, Facebook and others. If necessary they'll make it appear that we the people have won, kill off Google and Facebook (already well under way with FB) and set up new organizations to continue their mission of total enslavement and for many, annihilation.

The point at which we now find ourselves is much more precarious and will require great effort to change if we are to survive our government's onslaught.

You may find our short video Deep State Has Powerful New Weapon insightful. On Bitchute here.

What a fantastic sliver of hope. Thanks for posting.

What a shock for the Google employees to discover what projects their company is involved with. Wouldn't it be something to see the company devoured from the inside out. Employees walking out and such. @ironshield

yeah that would be the ultimate protest, quitting and then starting an alternative

Gotta be careful when I use Google Maps now 😅

It's good to know that Google employees took a stand -- but Google in my mind, is already damaged. Any company that loses my trust is. I have to use Google in a limited fashion, but I don't like it and I don't put any information in there I don't want shared or correlated.

I agree, as a company they are basically the US war machine lol, allthough it is refreshing to see that some employees dont want to be a part of that. It would be better to see them quit their jobs over this.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Aerospace

"Titan Aerospace was an American aerospace company based in Moriarty, New Mexico from 2013–2014. They intended to develop and manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles."

"The company was acquired by Google in 2014, who planned to use Titan Aerospace to develop unmanned aerial vehicles capable of bringing Internet connectivity to remote parts of the world. In January 2017, Google announced that it was abandoning the project.[1]"

I did a 3-part Google Series not long ago that your readers may find interesting, @johnvibes. It was just before you joined the #informationwar. Awesome job on this post! I liked your article so much that I’m also doing a short supplemental. I’ll provide the links in a follow-on post, or add in an edit.

Here's a short supplemental to the last post I made @johnvibes:

In the new post I just published, I referenced your article on @tftproject, as well as this Steemit article.

My article is below.
https://steemit.com/informationwar/@canusapatriots/cyber-mercenaries-a-look-inward-at-the-compartmentalization-of-google-s-project-maven

Hopefully this will be the start of a new trend at Google.

I feel guilty using a lot of their products (Google docs and drive specifically)but like a lot products and companies they make the it so convenient to grow and spread information, it is hard to break out a real boycott.

I hope their employees continue to pressure the company into being more transparent and moral. Now if they would just stop with the censorship and aiding in gender and racial division...

same here, google has us in a position where in many cases we have no choice but to use many of their products because they are the only available in some cases

I respectfully disagree. The only reason Google supposedly has us ...

in a position where in many cases we have no choice but to use many of their products because they are the only available in some cases ...

... is because we the people have willingly and without thinking things through bought into their sublimely delivered propoganda. All instinct of self-preservation has been killed off, like the evil Monsanto's Roundup on weeds, by their decades of mass manipulation of society.

People must ask themselves: why am I willing to sell my soul for mere convenience?

If I may ask, what Google products do you feel are the only ones available?

I agree with what you are saying.google drive is the only one I really use anymore, and I dont know of any other word processor that saves with every keystroke on an external server, I have lost too much work in word documents that I cant use it anymore.

However, lets remember that those of us who can figure out steemit are in like the top 1% of technical knowlege lol

Google is still the most user friendly option out there, and since most people arent tech wizzards, its really the only option available to them right now.

Even looking at a youtube alternative like Dtube, it is incredibly buggy and has a lot of problems, the average user is not going to stick around for that

I believe in supporting alternative platforms, and that is why I am here, but we need to remember that most of the internet is barely technically literate, and they are going to use what is in front of them and what they can figure out

So even if they dont have a literall monopoly on the technology, they still seem like the only option to the basic user

this is a good example why the 7 day limit does not make any sense...

Glad i found this 4 months later