Current Events > Google workers got the company to drop its contract with the Pentagon

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://jacobinmag.com/2018/06/google-project-maven-military-tech-workers

For months, Google employees have led a campaign demanding that the company terminate its contract with the Pentagon for Project Maven, a program that uses machine learning to improve targeting for drone strikes. Nearly five thousand Google workers signed an internal petition to cancel the project, and dozens resigned.

Last Friday, the workers won. Google announced that it will not seek another contract for Project Maven, caving to employee pressure. The about-face is a big win against US militarism, and reflects the new political currents that have been developing within the tech industry since Donald Trumps election.

Ben Tarnoff recently spoke to one of the Google workers who helped lead the campaign (and, for the purposes of this interview, goes by the pseudonym Kim). They discussed how the campaign got started, how it grew, and what lessons it holds for future organizing in the tech industry.

BT
Can you explain the origins of the campaign? How did this get started?

K
As soon as Google signed the Project Maven contract, there was internal dissent. It started around September 2017, and picked up speed in October. By January 2018, at least a dozen different teams knew about Project Maven. A group of Googlers from several different parts of the company cloud, AI, communications, the Google Brain team, and DeepMind, among others strongly objected to it. They got together and tried to raise their concerns through official channels and to Diane Greene, the head of Google Cloud.

But the companys human resources and ethics compliance teams dismissed those concerns. Within a couple months, it was clear the Googlers efforts werent going anywhere. The company was moving full steam ahead with the project. So they decided to take a different approach. They posted about Project Maven on the companys internal social media platform, explaining the project and outlining their concerns.

Their post got a ton of responses. The employee reaction was very strong against Project Maven. Diane Greene stepped in, trying to tamp down the concern by insisting that Project Maven was for strictly non-offensive purposes. But people werent persuaded, and many of them directly challenged Diane in their comments.

BT
Did the overwhelming response from other employees come as a surprise?

K
Definitely. But after seeing that response, the Googlers who wrote the post felt empowered. They saw that they had a lot of internal support. So they helped assemble an open letter to Sundar Pichai, Googles CEO, asking him to cancel the Project Maven contract, and shared it internally.

BT
What was the response like?

K
It only got a hundred signatures that night. But the next day, it exploded. In less than twenty-four hours, it got a thousand signatures.

That day, we had an all-hands meeting.
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Then, during the Q&A period, several of the questions were about Project Maven. Leadership got hammered. This was totally unplanned, and I dont think anyone expected such a forceful employee response. One woman stood up and said something like, Hey, I left the Defense Department so I wouldnt have to work on this kind of stuff. What kind of voice do we have besides this Q&A to explain why this project is not okay?

Sergey Brin, one of Googles cofounders, responded first. And his response really paid us dividends. He said something like, Letting you ask that question is the voice that you have. Very few companies would allow you to do that.

Thats completely true, actually. Google has a more open internal culture than many other companies. There is an established tradition of critiquing company decisions. But his remark came across as tone deaf and out of touch to almost every Googler who heard it.

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Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?
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VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.
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lol @ people thinking this will change anything
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Master_Bass posted...

VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.

This

Master_Bass posted...

VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.

i feel like the root issue is that we are doing all this sketchy shit with drones in the middle east, not the drones themselves, because obviously using drones in a tactical situation like this is safer and more preferable than using our own soldiers
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They're going to regret that massively, ditching a government contract as big as that for some PC/SJW bullshit is really going to hurt their pocketbooks
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tremain07 posted...

They're going to regret that massively, ditching a government contract as big as that for some PC/SJW bullshit is really going to hurt their pocketbooks

It'll greatly boost their PR, which for a company that size matters far more

tremain07 posted...

They're going to regret that massively, ditching a government contract as big as that for some PC/SJW bullshit is really going to hurt their pocketbooks

Google is omnipotent. They don't need the government.
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tremain07 posted...

They're going to regret that massively, ditching a government contract as big as that for some PC/SJW bullshit is really going to hurt their pocketbooks

1. The bottom line does not have to be the only logic in use.
2. I don't think it's in Google's interests to further upset the workers who create those profits.
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VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

Yes, but these people aren't thinking logically, just with their emotions.

Master_Bass posted...

VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.

So, knowing drone strikes aren't going to stop, they ceased improving the targeting which would reduce collateral damage and thus unnecessary loss of life, resulting in drone strikes that are going to keep causing maximum damage going forward.

What's the positive here? The warm fuzzy self righteous "Fuck the military" feeling they got?
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Master_Bass posted...

VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.

that's not going to happen
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VectorChaos posted...

they ceased improving the targeting which would reduce collateral damage and thus unnecessary loss of life, resulting in drone strikes that are going to keep causing maximum damage going forward.

What's the positive here? The warm fuzzy self righteous "Fuck the military" feeling they got?

It's not just "improved targeting" at play here

When we found out that Project Maven was an audition for JEDI, people started becoming extremely concerned. And as the media attention to the story increased, we learned a lot more. For instance, Diane Greene had told us that the Project Maven contract was only for $9 million, but internally they expected it to increase to $250 million per year. And they werent just giving the Pentagon access to open-source software they were going to build a massive surveillance system that gave military analysts real-time information on people, vehicles, and buildings in a Google Earthstyle interface.

Exposing all of those lies damaged leadership on this issue just as much as anything else that we did. That loss of trust really hurt them.

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VectorChaos posted...

Master_Bass posted...

VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.

So, knowing drone strikes aren't going to stop, they ceased improving the targeting which would reduce collateral damage and thus unnecessary loss of life, resulting in drone strikes that are going to keep causing maximum damage going forward.

What's the positive here? The warm fuzzy self righteous "Fuck the military" feeling they got?

The idea is to stop them. We need them to become more and more unpopular. Google is taking a stand and hopefully other companies follow suit

Good for the employees. They didn't want to work on this crap and now they don't have to.

The real problem however is someone will and conservatives that claim to be for a small government will continue to support interventions and preemptive wars and we'll continue to bomb brown across the globe in the name of freedom or oil or ideological differences.

This will continue to fuel hatred on both sides, it will not make us safer. It will further our debt, make people want to bomb us, and make those with investments in the military industrial complex a lot of money.
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Honestly, I'm really sick of this nation's military worship. Google made the right call here. Let the military figure it out on their own. We certainly pay them enough.
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tremain07 posted...

They're going to regret that massively, ditching a government contract as big as that for some PC/SJW bullshit is really going to hurt their pocketbooks

For most companies, sure. Google is not most companies.
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pogo_rabid posted...

lol @ people thinking this will change anything

Nobody itt has said it yet, but pretty much this

It's a minor setback at best. The most important thing when it comes to designing and evaluating ML algorithms is the data and Google doesn't have some some data goldmine that Project Maven needs (odd how Google draws the line at computer vision and ML used for the military but not at hoarding a shitton of personalized data and selling it to the highest bidder for targeted ads)

They wanted Google for readily accessible expertise in computer vision and ML but Google is far from the only option.
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MacadamianNut3 posted...

It's a minor setback at best. The most important thing when it comes to designing and evaluating ML algorithms is the data and Google doesn't have some some data goldmine that Project Maven needs (odd how Google draws the line at computer vision and ML used for the military but not at hoarding a shitton of personalized data and selling it to the highest bidder for targeted ads)

It's almost like there's a difference between murdering people and giving people ads they can adblock anyway

That's unfortunate.
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Darklit_Minuet posted...

It's almost like there's a difference between murdering people and giving people ads they can adblock anyway

It's almost like designing ML/CV algorithms didn't mean you were directly responsible for killing people when those algorithms were maybe used later for a different application. In that case, literally anybody who ever published a paper in those areas (protip: this includes people at Google already) ever would have blood on their hands. Project Maven is an object identification project. No shit a possible next step would be autonomous weapons. That's not the project though

So yes I find it funny that Google draws the line here because of potential future use while they feast off of personalized data that also has the potential to be used maliciously. I mean since we're talking about next steps right. No no military we won't help you identify objects in videos because we know you'll use it to mow down brown people in the future while we continue to publish papers to help tell you how to do so, instead random American citizen why don't you buy our Google Home so we have yet another way to collect data about you

I also question the logic of anybody celebrating this who also gave Obama shit for collateral casualties in drone strikes
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tremain07 posted...

They're going to regret that massively, ditching a government contract as big as that for some PC/SJW bullshit is really going to hurt their pocketbooks

yeah, because google is totally struggling making money
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VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

VectorChaos posted...

Master_Bass posted...

VectorChaos posted...

Wouldn't improved targeting reduce potential collateral damage?

So would stopping drone strikes.

So, knowing drone strikes aren't going to stop, they ceased improving the targeting which would reduce collateral damage and thus unnecessary loss of life, resulting in drone strikes that are going to keep causing maximum damage going forward.

What's the positive here? The warm fuzzy self righteous "Fuck the military" feeling they got?

"You should improve the military's capabilities in order to save lives!"
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I kinda dig it. If I wanted to kill people, Id join the military.
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EnragedSlith posted...

I kinda dig it. If I wanted to kill people, Id join the military.

To be fair, most jobs in the military branches don't involve killing people. Unless you count supporting and maintaining the infrastructure, personnel, structures, and vehicles associated with the military as killing people.
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MacadamianNut3 posted...

I also question the logic of anybody celebrating this who also gave Obama shit for collateral casualties in drone strikes

How so? Being against drone strikes and being against them being made even better aren't mutually exclusive. We want the entire idea scrapped, no matter who's in command of it

Darklit_Minuet posted...

We want the entire idea scrapped, no matter who's in command of it

And the problem here is that this won't happen, so let's talk about reality.

If Google won't do it, Microsoft and IBM will. If they don't do it, some other company will. If hell freezes over and no company does it, the researchers at the 100+ universities the military collaborates with inadvertently will while performing basic research. Something like this

https://www.army.mil/article/137837/army_robotics_researchers_look_far_into_the_future

is just one of many collaborations going on and this is just Army.

And if universities won't, they are already aggressively recruiting talent to try to catch up to industry so they'll just do it themselves...along with help from anybody publishing anything novel anywhere else on the globe.

So that's not going to happen because nobody in the military is willing to be caught with their pants down while other countries are doing similar things
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