Google is fine playing big brother for communist China
Google is a corporation without a country or much of a conscience for that matter.
The all-seeing Internet giant has just decided to end its long standoff with China. As the Intercept reports, Chinese citizens will soon be able to use Google for the first time in almost a decade. But they won’t have access to the world wide web as the rest of the globe knows it. Google will instead develop a search engine in compliance with the requirements of communist censors. Googling the Community Party of China or Xi Jinping from the mainland would return favorable search results. Meanwhile searches about human rights or democracy or religion or peaceful protests will return a 404 error. And don’t even think about typing “Tiananmen Square protest” into the search bar.
The censored search engine could be up and running within a matter of months. As the Intercept reports, Google already modeled a beta version for the Chinese government. Getting a billion people online isn’t easy, of course, and it turns out that Google has been working with China in secret for some time. The public only learned when someone inside the organization blew the whistle. “I’m against large companies and governments collaborating in the oppression of their people, and feel like transparency around what’s being done is in the public interest,” a source told the Intercept, adding that they feared “what is done in China will become a template for many other nations.”
The fear is more than justified. Google, and parent company Alphabet, aren’t just seeking the cheapest labor source or the next biggest market. They know better than anyone that the new world is online. They know they’re cutting an entire population off from the rest of the world. They know they’re leaving them to rot in digital chains. So much for not being evil. It is an especially awkward coincidence that while Google was cozying up to China, they were cutting ties with the U.S. Department of Defense. Responding to pressure from their own employees, the company ended Project Maven, an initiative in partnership with the Pentagon that used artificial intelligence to improve the targeting capabilities of military drones.
The company will focus instead on creating “socially beneficial” artificial intelligence, wrote CEO Sundar Pichai in a June statement, while steering clear of projects that cause “overall harm,” which is a perfect acceptable and responsible policy. If Google doesn’t want to help Uncle Sam turn bad guys into pink mists on a computer screen from thousands of miles away, so be it. But Google should stop the sanctimony. When it comes to things like human rights, the United States is a net positive while China is a net negative. Neither is blameless, of course. One is preferable, obviously. Google, it’s clear, doesn’t care.
https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/google-is-fine-playing-big-brother-for-communist-china