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Google Drops Out of Pentagon's $10 Billion Cloud Competition (bloomberg.com)
Citing corporate values, Google has decided not to compete for the Pentagon's $10 billion cloud-computing contract. Bloomberg reports: The project, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure cloud, or JEDI, involves transitioning massive amounts of Defense Department data to a commercially operated cloud system. Companies are due to submit bids for the contract, which could last as long as 10 years, on October 12th. Google's announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue. "We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement. "And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications."
The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."
The spokesman added that Google is "working to support the U.S. government with our cloud in many ways." "Had the JEDI contract been open to multiple vendors, we would have submitted a compelling solution for portions of it," they said. "Google Cloud believes that a multi-cloud approach is in the best interest of government agencies, because it allows them to choose the right cloud for the right workload."
Good time to buy Amazon stock I guess.
"We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement."
That's okay. They can bid for the Strategic Intervention Taskforce Headquarters instead.
Maybe the Chinese gave them a better offer. (or ultimatum)
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
How about getting reported to HR just because somebody heard you mention Donald Trump's name, even if you weren't speaking positively about him? Yes, that actually happened.
I guess google is choosing not to be competitive in this area. A company that values money over virtue signalling will end up passing google.
Actually I don't see the comparison. Plenty of years with mainframes, I do make a comparison between virtualization technology in it's present state and mainframes. Cloud is conceptually different. Sure it has the time sharing aspect via oversubscribing ofmcompute resources, but that's about as far as it goes to me.
This sounds like a typical stupid fascist statement. The company doesn't wish to support the military in this endeavour and that makes them unpatriotic? Even if it DOES get developed (which it most likely will) people can still feel better about not supporting it. Didn't the guy who created the electric chair end up regretting it? Sometimes peace of mind is a very comforting thing.
Surely the people who created Google must already regret it?
Google exploits it's customers' data for further revenue opportunities. Not likely the Pentagon is going to allow this. So Google passes. Smart move.
Have gnu, will travel.
"but we draw the line at actually killing people."
That's Waymo's job.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ok... time to move on here.
... well Japan. The infrastructure required to support 40,000 (mostly children with overpriced cars) is substantially larger.
Google is a global company who has interests in most countries of the world. They have an office 15 minutes from me here in Norway and they are certainly spread out pretty much everywhere.
Supporting the USA and supporting the US military are two different things. The US military is an organization that exists primarily to give the US government and excuse to dump money into the economy and to remove youths from lower income tax brackets from the national unemployment statistics while brainwashing them to have self respect and discipline through rigid structure which is something the tax payers are well aware wasn't provided in the homes of those children. The US military is an excellent program for many reasons. For example, if the US leadership is lucky, they can ship hundreds of thousands of children off to a battlefield where they will be shot, injured, killed, or at least be crippled by PTSD which allows them to be removed from the unemployment statistics when they get back home (or not). It's extremely important to convince as many Americans as possible that this cause is right and just because the currently, with generally the worst overall performing demographics in nearly every category in the western world, the US needs a reliable industry to maintain it's position in the 2nd world. Of course, the US is probably at the absolute top of the second world countries. So... don't worry... it's still #1.
Support the military and support the soldiers and support the war efforts, etc... this is something which every militarily dominate leader in the world has depended on in order to feed their economies. When the people of those countries stop working for greatness and instead depend on greatness instilled upon them based on the conditions which they exited a vagina, countries are left with a vastly lethargic population who believe that they have the right to greatness. The only way for leaders to keep feeding that is to take a "world leadership" role which means in all practical terms "World's police". And then some leader will go around and attempt to make all the other countries pay for their leadership... which means pay for the military.
Right now, the American leadership is at a serious loss. Southern Japan houses over 40,000 American sailors/soldiers... paid for by
All through the Pacific Rim, the US military as a corporate entity depends on the fear instilled by a bat shit crazy North Korean leader. Ten million or more Americans are fed based on being prepared to fight a war against North Korea. If peace is negotiated with North Korea, and it more than likely will be, then North Korea will receive funds, aid and support are favorable interest rates while North Korea is built into an international leader similar to South Korea. This was a stroke of brilliance by North Korea. Building a nuclear arsenal simply to use it as a bargaining chip to enter the world market without being a beggar.
Well once that happens and the big threat is gone, there's still China to fear. And American leadership keeps treating China as if they're a Western country. China has completely backed off of military domination. Sure, they have a military, but it's not for fighting wars with America. Beating America has never been interesting. The communist government is attempting to build a communist society. They are very quickly working towards simply collapsing the world market. The world market depends on money having value. For money to have value, it has to be able to be used in exchange for stuff. What gives the money real value is when it can be used in exchange for what we need as opposed to what we want. This means housing, food and energy. Other than that, we don't really need all that crap. Only three things actually have real, honest value. If we add medicine... it's really close to being a need.
If China can mak
"We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn't be assured that it would align with our AI Principles," a Google spokesman said in a statement.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with sticking to your principles. But what are those principles that disallow working with the US government but allow working with the Chinese government? I wish Google would expound on those principles, because they might be righteous and moralistic. Or they might be principles based on maximum profit. I wouldn't be surprised if the profits from Dragonfly (and the ability to operate in China) dwarf the slice of the $10 billion JEDI Google might have been contemplating.
"And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications."
That sounds weird. So get those certifications or hire people with those certifications. Google can't get certified to work with the US government, but they have no problems getting certified to work with the Chinese government.
Google's PR department needs an upgrade. These "reasons" don't make Google look that great.
[1] Founded by a Russian [Brin]
[2] Current boss is from India [Pinchai] (Is he still an Indian citizen?, or perhaps dual?)
[3] Keeps trying to find a way to help China oppress billions of people.
[4] Keeps refusing to help the US military (without which the world would now live under global NAZIism or global totalitarian communism)
[5] Employs large numbers of foreign workers on H1-B visas.
[6] Fires people for expressing non-politically-correct [enforced leftism] viewpoints.
[7] Spies on people to an extent that might make the old East German Stasi blush.
I'd like to think of Google as an American success story, by I cannot - they appear to be an offensive foreign influence outfit that has failed to register as a foreign agent.
I support your statement brickhouse. I want to add that the GP is jumping to conclusions. IMHO the "cloud" is a bad place to keep secure information. This JEDI project is a dumb idea and probably comes with some ridiculous onerous conditions, particularly for a multinational company. If I were Google, I simply wouldn't want the project and I could burnish my "Do no evil" credentials at the same time by acting like my hands were too clean to touch it.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Translation: I am not American, never met any Americans, nor know anything except Hollywood and socialist websites but I am fully qualified to rant about it from a superior position because I am a ultra leftist and therefore automatically smart.
What a load of bullshit.
You can rant all you want about awesomely bad America is and how great Chinese communism is because they've somehow adopted capitalism but only in a way to take down the world market.
Y'see, it doesn't work that way bozo - Like all good communist countries it only works until they run out of other peoples money. Then they collapse again. You might've heard of a few of those countries like Venezuela? Brazil? Cuba's quite the economic powerhouse too.
You also seem to have conveniently forgotten that China has built up their navy exponentially in the last 10 years - guess they're prepping their people to die in foreign wars too?
Google is not helping the US - Google actively works against the US because they, like you insipid twits, think that a controlled central command system where we're all dictated to in how to think and live is a GREAT utopian idea. That's why Google continues to work with China in subjugating its people. Google doesn't like free expression or free thought because that's anathema to a perfect society.
You didn't grow up - like every other moron that read Chomsky you think you're smarter because you read a radical book and travelled to a foreign land and pat yourself on the back for your ingenuity. While Chinese government FUD invades every aspect of your life - but that's ok because you're super-de-duper smart and can adapt right?
Adapt or die? hell no - I'll wave my piece of cloth in your face and tell you THEY can die and I'll live my free thinking individualist way - and if that means chaos, so be it. I'm not going to be a mind controlled zombie like you are.
I can tell you that in this specific instance, the RFP was blatantly designed to be met by Amazon's AWS (or technically, their GovCloud fork of AWS) and no one else.
I had personal friends who served on the Murmansk run.
For those with a poor education, that was a regular run of supplies and military equipment the US sent to soviet Russia by the US Navy and Merchant marines through frozen northern waters during WWII to keep them from being wiped out by the NAZIs, who they started the allied with. The USA provided the soviets with trucks, planes, artillery, ammunition, medicine, food and even ships... and in the end, the Russians reverse-engineered a lot of it and used their poor knock-offs against us during the early years of the post-WWII Cold War. The soviets were happy for the help, but that did not stop them from keeping any American aircraft that landed in their territory after being damaged over Germany and unable to make it back to American lines. The early post-WWII soviet bombers were clones of the Boeing B-29s that they grabbed in the East. The soviets also had another nasty habit - they kept some Americans, probably as sources of intel, and never returned them to the US.
So, no, to the extent that the Russians were on the winning side in WWII it was not by good behavior and it would not have been possible without the USA. The Russian model of winning by signing a treaty with NAZIs to jointly gobble up Poland, then throwing poorly-equipped peasants into a meat grinder and proving they could accept more of their own dead than the Germans could - until the USA could step-in with massive donations of decent equipment is not a workable model without the USA.
For $10billion how much of a cloud system could you build for yourself. Also, ten billion? Where the fuck do they come up with these numbers?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
They announce they "choose" not to compete for this contract right at the same time they shutdown Google+ due to massive data breach. Related? I think so.
Yes, that must have affected dozens of people.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
But what are those principles that disallow working with the US government but allow working with the Chinese government?
They cancelled their plan to work with China though. They thought about it, did a bit of prototyping to see what it would be like, and decided it was unethical.
It would have been an interesting story if they had found some compromise that the Chinese would accept and which they thought was overall a benefit to the Chinese people (the spread and democratisation of information is generally a good thing), but that did't happen so there isn't really anything to see here. By the time its existence was leaked it was already over.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Google has gone from the 'Do No Evil' company to a Shit Company. How long until they are just plain evil? So with this story they have 'corporate values'. Really? What does that mean, when today we find out they had a massive data breach but decided not to notify the public because it would draw 'immediate regulatory scrutiny'. What it means is they carry around the flag of 'Do No Evil' and use it to hide all the evil things they actually are doing.
Son, you cannot pick this out of context and scream "muh Fascist" without looking like a fool. The full context is Google's broad behavior which includes being unwilling to bend to employee demands that they give up on China and its demands. Funny how that works. They won't help the USAF build better drones that might be able to better avoid civilian casualties, but they'll actively help identify and punish political "criminals" in China.
I am an American, and I can't even begin to provide a good starting point for just how full of bullshit you are here. We had congressional inquiries when a handful of soldiers were killed in Nigeria, FFS. A handful. The only real socialized medicine we have is for veterans. If our political branches supported a genuine meat-grinder for our military, and it wasn't based unequivocally in defending us from a devastating attack that would kill millions of civilians, our veterans would rise up and burn Washington DC with the support of most of our police forces.
This is probably their actual main reason for jumping out of this. Their fear of regulation is also why they were so late on informing the public about consumer data leaking out of Google+.
The "Don't Be Evil" thing became embarrassingly ridiculous a while ago, which is why you had to ditch it. So, please, do not insult the intelligence of people, Google.
Eh, I find that the most persistent delusion that humans nurture is that they are "good." Yeah, maybe they did that kind of unethical thing, but really they had no choice. (Except suffer consequences or not be as successful or be slightly inconvenienced.) My personal favorite was a woman who told me that Jesus spoke to her and that Jesus conveniently wanted all the things her id wanted.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Is there any cloud service in the world that is secure against hackers/malware? If not, then, is it really a good idea to put whole US military data in any cloud service?
They cancelled their plan to work with China though. They thought about it, did a bit of prototyping to see what it would be like, and decided it was unethical.
That is quite a spun re-telling of what actually happened.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
Moving government data onto servers that they have no control over sounds like an absolutely god-awful idea. Why would any company want to move to "cloud"-based storage? Are they forgetting that "the cloud" is just some guy's computer?
Moving government data onto servers that they have no control over sounds like an absolutely god-awful idea. Why would any company want to move to "cloud"-based storage? Are they forgetting that "the cloud" is just some guy's computer?
Companies only really care about the bottom line and the SLA. If a cloud company offers it for cheaper and has the terms and SLA that the company expects they can get with their own people (or better), then they'll take it. IME, Google probably backed out because they won't meet the government's terms for security and control. Google typically won't even discuss HIPAA terms in contracts. Along with the latest Google+ breach, they probably just aren't up to doing the security that the government is requiring int heir contracts.
Google just better hope non of their shareholders have a problem with this, otherwise isn't going to an even more costly decision for them.
I'm going to make the assumption that you're American.
Without the US military, you'd likely be speaking German, Japanese, or Russian by now. You seem to be insinuating that we don't need a military, to which I just don't know what to tell you other than that I've been in and around the military for over 40 years, and would gladly call bullshit. Yeah, the military has done some bad shit over time, and they should be called out on those issues. That doesn't mean that you don't need them.
Japan's support to our military has allowed them the long term cost savings of not having to build their own defense...clearly a cost savings. North Korea has been threatening them for ages. I've been to installations in Japan and Korea (lived there for years)...they're happy we're there.
You speak out of your ass when you state that China has backed off of military domination while they continue to create fake island bases to control shipping routes, and claim lands that historically belonged to Vietnam and the Philippines, not to mention their continued attempt to dominate Taiwan.
Just another day in Paradise
But what are those principles that disallow working with the US government but allow working with the Chinese government?
They cancelled their plan to work with China though. They thought about it, did a bit of prototyping to see what it would be like, and decided it was unethical.
Has Dragonfly been canceled? I haven't seen any news to suggest that. The quote I see is
That says that the project has not been canceled and that work is proceeding as before.
If the project had been truly canceled, it would have made headlines, as that would have necessarily meant that Google was once again pulling out of the huge Chinese market. That would have induced material stock market waves. So, obviously the project has not been canceled.
See Slashdot's Project Dragonfly story from less than 2 weeks ago. Don't expect me to engage AC's much.
Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur...
"Force shits upon Reason's back." - Poor Richard's Almanac
How about getting reported to HR just because somebody heard you mention Donald Trump's name, even if you weren't speaking positively about him? Yes, that actually happened.
[Citation Needed]