Meta's Push Into Defense Tech Reflects Cultural Shift, CTO Says (bloomberg.com) 52
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth said that the "tides have turned" in Silicon Valley and made it more palatable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts. From a report: There's long existed a "silent majority" who wanted to pursue defense projects, Bosworth said during an interview at the Bloomberg Tech summit in San Francisco on Wednesday. "There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for," he said. Silicon Valley was founded on military development and "there's really a long history here that we are kind of hoping to return to, but it is not even day one," Bosworth added. He described Silicon Valley's new openness to work with the US military as a "return to grace."
It is easy.. (Score:4, Informative)
...just follow the money. That is how companies operate.
Where inflation has caused drop in big ticker purchases that have driven a lot of the ad revenue, defense spending is instead increasing.
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Re: It is easy.. (Score:2)
Crony capitalism is in this season. That's about the whole of it.
It's not like Big-"Tech" ever was ethical (Score:2)
I mean they always collected personal data, for example, fully aware that this can and will be used against people.
There are insane amount of money in the "defence" Industry. If you have no ethical standards, it makes no sense to ignore that kind of money.
Re:It's not like Big-"Tech" ever was ethical (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that tech companies used to feel like they had to at least maintain a polite fiction that they were ethical and in some way serving a greater good. Now we're in the Trump/Musk era, where being unethical is considered morally superior to being pointlessly encumbered by ethics/morals/empathy/etc, so there's no need to pretend.
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I don't get it...I would think most anyone in the US would consider supporting our warfighters would be "serving the greater good"....
When exactly did being patriotic become a negative thing...?
Re: It's not like Big-"Tech" ever was ethical (Score:2)
Much of this defense tech is surveillance tech that will also be on Americans. Not particularly patriotic.
Re:It's not like Big-"Tech" ever was ethical (Score:4, Insightful)
You just equated three very different things: military contracts, "supporting our warfighters", and patriotism. They're barely even related.
A lot of Americans are very patriotic (in the sense of loving their country, not in the xenophobic "America first" sense). And they also support the troops in the sense of wanting to taking care of them and make sure they come home alive. But those same people are deeply suspicious of the military, believe the government does some very evil things, and don't want to have any part in killing people.
Re: It's not like Big-"Tech" ever was ethical (Score:2)
Supporting war fighters hasn't looked good since the Gulf of Tonkin incident. Claims of WMDs in Iraq didn't help.
What did help was a tyrant invading a new aspiring democracy. Russia's attacks on Ukraine have given the world a new appreciation for the defense industry, because we finally have an example of what the defense industry was supposed to be all about.
But Also (Score:2)
"There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for," he said.
But also the money!
Re: But Also (Score:2)
H-1B = patriotic underpinning to which country exactly??
Collecting data on you (Score:5, Interesting)
Most of this will turn out not to be "defense", but "national security".
Known as the "counter-espionage", "internal intelligence" or political police in the former Communist countries.
The KGB, Stasi, Belügyminisztérium III and the Securitate pale in comparison [mashable.com] to the plans of the "swamp drainers" for surveillance.
Makes "governing" really easy for the people in power.
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You blame Trump but Biden or the autopen signed the 702 reauth not all that long ago. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/20... [npr.org]
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Shut up nazi
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nazi apologist, didn't read the rest, glad to make your day worse fucko.
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Larry Ellison is already best buddies with the orange one.
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There's already Oracle, who boasts about having a dossier on 5 billion people. Their first contract was to make a database for the CIA. But sure, make it out like Trump is starting something new (guess you were in a cave during Snowden). https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
You blame Trump but Biden or the autopen signed the 702 reauth not all that long ago. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/20... [npr.org]
I don't know why people are surprised by any of this. None of it is new. SV has been selling gear and services to the Pentagon since SV existed. SGI was famous for providing high-end stuff for Air Force/Navy simulator systems. Microsoft famously tried to sell the Navy "Windows for Warships". And Sun made what at the time was the single biggest sale in their history to the Army. [techmonitor.ai]
At one point the Pentagon was the biggest customer Sun had. It was only until Google came along that you had the granola types bitc
Market segmentation (Score:5, Insightful)
It turns out, some customers will pay substantially more to kill certain audience segments than their expected lifetime NPV from advertising would ever provide, so to someone like Zuckerface, it is just good business, right?
What shift? (Score:2)
Is Zuck intending to stop tracking everyone?
Umm... what?! (Score:1)
more palatable for the tech industry to support the US military's efforts
Maybe more palatable for shareholders, but not for the recipients of criminal US bombing campaigns.
It's not anti-American (Score:5, Insightful)
"There's a much stronger patriotic underpinning than I think people give Silicon Valley credit for,"
Yeah, after Bush invaded a country unprovoked, it became patriotic to oppose war. Opposing Iraq was pro-American. Bush betrayed the principles this country is founded on. If you are going to kill people (especially since a lot of those people are innocent), you better have a VERY good reason.
Bosworth added. He described Silicon Valley's new openness to work with the US military as a "return to grace."
Oh fuck you Bosworth. Silicon Valley isn't the one that invaded another country preemptively. The one that needs a "return to grace" is the military, or more precisely, the ones who control it. Fuck you hard for brown-nosing those who kill innocents.
(If anyone here on Slashdot has the last name Bosworth, I apologize preemptively for the insult. It's not you, it's him).
Re: It's not anti-American (Score:2)
How about your understanding of the Constitution? Slavery never ended here.
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the freshness of a fine morning when you're young, and the taste of food when you're hungry, and the new day that's every day when you're a child. He took them up and he turned them in his hands. They were good things for any man. But without freedom, they sickened. And when he talked of those enslaved, and the sorrows of slavery, his voice got like a big bell. He talked of the early days of America and the men who had made those days. He showed how, out of the wrong and the right, the suffering and the starvations, something new had come. And everybody had played a part in it, even the traitors.
https://gutenberg.net.au/ebook... [gutenberg.net.au]
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In The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare described the quality of mercy [wikipedia.org]: "...in the course of justice, none of us should see salvation".
I see parallels here: if one is seeking grace, the military is not
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Oh fuck you Bosworth. Silicon Valley isn't the one that invaded another country preemptively. The one that needs a "return to grace" is the military
The valley is part of the MIC. It's the same picture.
Non-paywall link (Score:2)
https://archive.is/eKpp4 [archive.is]
PATRIOTIC to KILL BROWN PEOPLE (Score:1)
When Meta wants to do its thing they do their thing. When they want to blame "the workers" for "being patriotic" they trot out technology to kill brown people, harvest intelligence, help ICE do on-street renditions.
Meta should just shut the fuck up. They have out eviled Google.
"Patriotic" means support of your country's concepts, not its military, its DHS, its ICE, it's wicked witches Noem and Blondi and Trumpi. No, it's support of those ideals that made the US great in the first place, not tawdry red ha
When the American Reich falls (Score:2)
these treacherous profiteering companies will be broken up, and their execs will go to jail, IG Farben-stylee. Personally, I can't wait for Zuck to go cool off in the slammer.
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It takes a special kind of stupid not to understand the obvious about the United States. It is an end stage corporate kleptocracy staggering toward Third World status. It's like a caterpillar that ran into the wrong kind of wasp. The eggs the wasp laid in it hatched. The larvae have eaten the caterpillar alive, and they're now chowing down on the vital organs before they move out of the empty shell.
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cities with the urban blight project class
I put this into a CHUD translator and it returned the N-word.
The timing is perfect (Score:2)
The US arms industry is going to need a really good propaganda branch to persuade international customers that its wares don't have some kind of kill switch to render them useless against US armed forces.
Will your work be a weapon (Score:3)
There are a lot of tech jobs related to the military and I've been tempted to apply for a few at times but there's a moral problem. They call it the defense industry, yet clearly there is quite a bit of offense going on as well and many weapons systems are dual purpose. I don't want to work on things that could kill innocent people on the whim of some evil politician. I suspect there are many other people who feel the same way.
Andrew Bosworth is trying to justify working with the military as patriotism but it sure looks like simple greed.
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patriotic? Nah (Score:2)
An extra reason to block (Score:2)
Given ByteDance's apparent ties to the Chinese government to ban Tik Tok, this would likely give validation to other countries to ban Facebook, on the same basis. Maybe Meta is looking to get banned elsewhere?
Israel is already using facebook data to... (Score:1)
..murder journalists and activists in their AI assisted targeting programs Lavender and Where's Daddy.
Seems Facebook is fully embracing bloodshed for profit.
A bit (Score:1)
That's quite a blindered view. It was central for funding, sure. But that's ignoring who came up with all of the actually interesting, influential, revolutionary stuff in the Silicon Valley of the 60s and 70s. It was the original hackers, a generally very anti-war, anti-establishment, anti-MIC scene. The origins of the SC tech and founder scene are within the counterculture movement.