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Trump: We 'Will Take a Look' Into Peter Thiel's Claims of Google Working With China (cnbc.com) 351

President Trump said this week his administration will "take a look" into Google following statements made earlier this week by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. From a report: "Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason," Trump said in a tweet. "He accuses Google of working with the Chinese Government... A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone! The Trump Administration will take a look!" On Sunday, Thiel, a Facebook board member, said that the FBI and the CIA should investigate Google to see if it has been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence.

"Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI (artificial intelligence)?" Thiel said, according to Axios. "Number two, does Google's senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence? Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military," Thiel said during the National Conservatism Conference in Washington.

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Trump: We 'Will Take a Look' Into Peter Thiel's Claims of Google Working With China

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:38AM (#58939790)

    NO COLLUSION!!!!

    • by Matheus ( 586080 )

      Not even subtle.. Mr Thiel is on the board of Facebook. They are an ad company. Their biggest competitor is Google. "Hey US Gov't go fuck with Google" just rolls of the tongue...

  • by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:40AM (#58939800)

    The fact that Google is working with China has been known for some time, including censoring search results.

    The only question is does China have influence over what Google does outside China? That would be a very interesting thing to look into. I give that a 50-50 shot of having some merit, even if it's just low level infiltration where China has some way to monitor non-China data or traffic.

    • by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:54AM (#58939888) Homepage

      I give it close to 0% chance that Google's American team would do China's bidding without making it a media whistleblowing firestorm.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by andydread ( 758754 )
      Sorry...Google Search left China because they refused to work with them to censor search results. Are they pondering working with them in the future? well that is no secret. Currently they are not. Microsoft Bing is currently working with the Chinese govt to censor searches.
      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Sorry...Google Search left China because they refused to work with them to censor search results.

        It is not about google working with China. Trump doesn't actually care about that. It is about them working against propaganda he needs to win again. Trump cares about that.

        To Trump fact checkers are the enemy. Anything that slows or stops the right wing propaganda apparatus that brings us such wonderful gems as the Clinton's killed a guy and Pizzagate need to be eliminated. Propaganda, as long as it is his propaganda must be supported, so its fair game to use propaganda to destroy those who do not obe

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Thiel was the guy who bankrupted an internet company because he got outed as gay.

          Yes, at a time when Thiel was in Saudi Arabia, a country that executes homosexuals. As does much of the world - if you're gay, either you're subject to questionable things like conversion therapy or other horrors, or simply tortured and killed. Very few countries accept gays (mostly western nations), even fewer recognize marriage rights.

          So yes, being outed is a very big deal. Even in western countries where homosexuality is not

    • Not necessarily, they could be violating ITAR in any number of ways. That would definitely be a big deal if they were. Proprietary AI tech would likely fall under ITAR.

    • Working with Governments all over the world in the countries they serve.

  • seriously (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @11:43AM (#58939830)

    Trump investigating anyone for treason is hypocrisy in action.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

      Trump investigating anyone for treason is hypocrisy in action.

      He throws the word treason around a LOT, but I'm not sure he really knows what it means.

    • it becomes your enemy.

      It's up to you.

      And if your bellicose words then classify routine long-standing international business relationships and co-operation as aiding and abetting the newly defined "enemy", that's you that made the change of rhetoric. Nothing else really changed. Only you (and the fools that believe you) are surprised and (faux) outraged.

      By my count, Trump has, himself, without help or need, made fresh enemies of:
      Iran,
      China,
      Venezuela

      and I'm sure I missed a few.
      • And yet, when you talk about a country as your friend, it does not make them your friend.

        Sorry Ivan, but those countries have been enemies of the United States for decades.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @12:12PM (#58940012)

    It looks like Thiel and Trump need to look up the meaning of 'treason'. Or maybe they are deliberately using that word because they know that it amps up their clueless base.

    • Under US law, "treason" has a very specific meaning defined in the Constitution, one of the few criminal offenses actually referred to in the document. Treason in the US can only occur during a time of formally declared war. Period. Next argument please
      • Treason in the US can only occur during a time of formally declared war. Period.

        Wrong. Period.

        All you have to do is aid an enemy. There is no requirement for a formal declaration of war from the US or said enemy.

        If there were a requirement for a formal declaration of war from the US, then the US could simply declare war after the fact and get you retroactively. Yes, retroactively, because you could be aiding the enemy for a first strike before war was formally declared. The formal declaration changes neither your actions, your motives, nor the status of the enemy. If you tried to

  • by zifn4b ( 1040588 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @12:36PM (#58940118)
    I've been researching this. There was an interview done on CBS recently that ties Chinese investors to easy startup funding. That's because the Chinese are particularly interested in tech advancements to support their Totalitarian Regime like facial recognition, machine learning, blockchain, etc. The United States is still king when it comes to tech innovation. There is a real issue here despite all the propaganda and meme wars. Anyone who works in the Silicon Valley startup culture should be able to confirm this if they traced where they get their series funding. I'm not suggesting all funding ultimately comes from Chinese investment sources but from what I've been able to research, some of it sure does and they're not doing it out of a deep sense of empathy for the United States.
    • by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @04:13PM (#58941466)

      and they're not doing it out of a deep sense of empathy for the United States.

      The first motivation, and the enabler, is that they are doing it because they drag in about half a trillion US $'s per year and they cant simply convert it back to their own currency because they are manipulating their own currency.

  • by Btrot69 ( 1479283 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @01:07PM (#58940352)

    Classic PARANOIA -- cool it on the brain hacking drugs !

    Peter Thiel is a big proponent of all sorts of nootropics and longevity treatments, including micro-dosed psilocybin and LSD.

    I am too -- but I also know when I've overdone it -- mania and paranoia are common symptoms ;)

  • by CrimsonAvenger ( 580665 ) on Wednesday July 17, 2019 @01:26PM (#58940500)

    Treason is defined in the Constitution: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."

    Alas, the definition doesn't include dealings with a trading partner. Even if some people don't like the trading partner. Even if the trading partner were doing certifiably evil things (China could run extermination camps like the Nazis did, and that wouldn't make whatsisname a traitor within the definition of the Constitution).

  • But as new-fangled and artificial treasons have been the great engines by which violent factions, the natural offspring of free government, have usually wreaked their alternate malignity on each other, the convention have, with great judgment, opposed a barrier to this peculiar danger, by inserting a constitutional definition of the crime, fixing the proof necessary for conviction of it, and restraining the Congress, even in punishing it, from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.

    -- Federalist Papers #43

  • Dragonfly [bbc.com] project was cancelled by Google.
  • Thiel is chairman of a defense/intelligence contractor. I can only imagine how fully pwned his entire organization is at this point since basically every defense contractor is. And on the board of Facebook...classic. Definitely pot calling the kettle black.

    If I put my tin foil hat on, I suspect that Palantir's data analytics products are complete crap. They are so far behind google in AI research it is hopeless, and despite Googler's protests, Google feed at the US Govt trough and run roughshod over Pa

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