Liberal Software Engineers and their Conservative Enablers
Microsoft and Google Engineers for Good?
Within the past year, software and hardware engineers at both Google and Microsoft have protested to their respective firms that they do not want to be involved in contracts that develop products for the U.S. military. In both cases, the engineers have essentially said they do not want to be part of efforts that "kill people." Weirdly, these two things have not gotten a lot more press. I recently heard an extended story on MarketplaceTech with Molly Wood did an interesting feature on this on February 27, 2019. https://www.marketplace.org/2019/02/27/tech/a-lot-of-tech-employees-dont-like-the-of-idea-their-work-being-used-by-the-military There are a couple of articles referencing this, this one on NPR on February 22: https://www.npr.org/2019/02/22/697110641/microsoft-workers-protest-army-contract-with-tech-designed-to-help-people-kill. Then there is one on Google engineers back in Summer of 2018: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/google-engineers-refused-to-build-security-tool-to-win-military-contractshttps://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-21/google-engineers-refused-to-build-security-tool-to-win-military-contracts.
I provide the links above so that the reader can understand context a little more. Marketplace Tech does a very good job (as always) of boiling the story down to its essentials. I say it is weird that these stories have not gotten more air for this reason: this seems like the perfect story for Fox News or other right wing media to grab onto and make a very big deal of. I can see Tucker Carlson decrying the lack of patriotism exhibited by these spoiled children who benefit from a strong military, but do not want to support it. On the left wing side, I can see those opposed to the amount we spend on Defense to laud these engineers as heroes. In my view, this story folds interestingly into another kind of Left-Right debate, and that has to do with the pervasiveness of companies like Google and Microsoft.
It is impossible to deny the reach of companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. Without these four companies, almost none of us would be communicating on the internet or on social media. We could not make on-line purchases, we could not access on-line mapping technologies, we could not do research. Imagine this: a handful of tech companies, most of whom are less than 30 years old, literally control the world. Perhaps not literally, but their reach is beyond the wildest dreams of Dr. Evil. That is part of what makes this story scary and interesting.
Engineers at companies like this have outsize power and influence, and they know it. The reason they do is that the companies they work for are near-monopolies. When the Senate called Mark Zuckerberg before a select committee in April 2018 to grill him on Facebook's influence during the 2016 elections, the joke was not on Zuckerberg (he actually did a good job of appearing penitent), but on the Senators. A genuinely befuddled Senator Orin Hatch did not understand how Facebook made money. "We run ads, Senator," said Zuckerberg, who tried mightily to hide his smirk. No, Hatch really did not get it.
But if engineers at Microsoft and Google seem like a bunch of Lefties refusing to help our military, then it is a bunch of Righties who enabled it. A recent series published by Planet Money goes into a lot of detail on the 180-degree change in antitrust enforcement during the past several decades. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-techhttps://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech. Essentially, the contention is that an influential book by Robert Bork (yes, the same Bork rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court) wrote a book in 1978 called The Antitrust Paradox which argues that the actual intent of the antitrust legislation of the Theodore Roosevelt era was designed not to protect competition (the way the law was interpreted for 70 years or so) but to protect consumers. That is, if prices are low, then why should we worry if there are monopolies
So here is my little summary of the paradox. The courts are pro-business, but they claim they are pro-consumer. And they may well be. It is difficult to argue that the prices one can get by shopping on Amazon are super-competitive. I order from Amazon. A lot. The ease of using Microsoft products (yes, I know the Mac people are out there) simply makes our work lives and our home lives easier. Who wants 12 different word processing or spreadsheet software products? It makes sharing documents a chore? If Google docs did not exist, someone would have to invent it.
What this boils down to is that a bunch of liberals can refuse to work on military projects. I mean, never mind that much of the tech boom owes its existence to the space program and research done by the Department of Defense. But if this bunch of liberals has a lot of power, they can thank a bunch of conservatives.
It turns out I do have a view about the military, and since I was in the Air Force for 26 years, you might think you know what it is. Actually, my view is that the military is a necessity in a democratic society. I think we could spend less on the military, and one place to do that would be by reducing basing and consolidating. Another place to do it would be to reduce the number of major commands which seem like great places to hire lots of senior officers and civilians. But that is another subject. The point is that the military does not belong to conservatives, nor is it the enemy of liberals. I just think it is ironic that those who claim to be pro-military have, at least in this case, provided a means for those who are not pro-military to flex their muscles.
I provide the links above so that the reader can understand context a little more. Marketplace Tech does a very good job (as always) of boiling the story down to its essentials. I say it is weird that these stories have not gotten more air for this reason: this seems like the perfect story for Fox News or other right wing media to grab onto and make a very big deal of. I can see Tucker Carlson decrying the lack of patriotism exhibited by these spoiled children who benefit from a strong military, but do not want to support it. On the left wing side, I can see those opposed to the amount we spend on Defense to laud these engineers as heroes. In my view, this story folds interestingly into another kind of Left-Right debate, and that has to do with the pervasiveness of companies like Google and Microsoft.
It is impossible to deny the reach of companies like Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft. Without these four companies, almost none of us would be communicating on the internet or on social media. We could not make on-line purchases, we could not access on-line mapping technologies, we could not do research. Imagine this: a handful of tech companies, most of whom are less than 30 years old, literally control the world. Perhaps not literally, but their reach is beyond the wildest dreams of Dr. Evil. That is part of what makes this story scary and interesting.
Engineers at companies like this have outsize power and influence, and they know it. The reason they do is that the companies they work for are near-monopolies. When the Senate called Mark Zuckerberg before a select committee in April 2018 to grill him on Facebook's influence during the 2016 elections, the joke was not on Zuckerberg (he actually did a good job of appearing penitent), but on the Senators. A genuinely befuddled Senator Orin Hatch did not understand how Facebook made money. "We run ads, Senator," said Zuckerberg, who tried mightily to hide his smirk. No, Hatch really did not get it.
But if engineers at Microsoft and Google seem like a bunch of Lefties refusing to help our military, then it is a bunch of Righties who enabled it. A recent series published by Planet Money goes into a lot of detail on the 180-degree change in antitrust enforcement during the past several decades. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-techhttps://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/02/22/697170790/antitrust-3-big-tech. Essentially, the contention is that an influential book by Robert Bork (yes, the same Bork rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court) wrote a book in 1978 called The Antitrust Paradox which argues that the actual intent of the antitrust legislation of the Theodore Roosevelt era was designed not to protect competition (the way the law was interpreted for 70 years or so) but to protect consumers. That is, if prices are low, then why should we worry if there are monopolies
So here is my little summary of the paradox. The courts are pro-business, but they claim they are pro-consumer. And they may well be. It is difficult to argue that the prices one can get by shopping on Amazon are super-competitive. I order from Amazon. A lot. The ease of using Microsoft products (yes, I know the Mac people are out there) simply makes our work lives and our home lives easier. Who wants 12 different word processing or spreadsheet software products? It makes sharing documents a chore? If Google docs did not exist, someone would have to invent it.
What this boils down to is that a bunch of liberals can refuse to work on military projects. I mean, never mind that much of the tech boom owes its existence to the space program and research done by the Department of Defense. But if this bunch of liberals has a lot of power, they can thank a bunch of conservatives.
It turns out I do have a view about the military, and since I was in the Air Force for 26 years, you might think you know what it is. Actually, my view is that the military is a necessity in a democratic society. I think we could spend less on the military, and one place to do that would be by reducing basing and consolidating. Another place to do it would be to reduce the number of major commands which seem like great places to hire lots of senior officers and civilians. But that is another subject. The point is that the military does not belong to conservatives, nor is it the enemy of liberals. I just think it is ironic that those who claim to be pro-military have, at least in this case, provided a means for those who are not pro-military to flex their muscles.
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