From Uber to Eric Schmidt, tech is closer to the US government than you'd think

Twitter was scrabbling to defend the appointment of a Chinese head with government ties, yet US tech has a busy revolving door with its own government

What’s worse for a Silicon Valley executive: ties to the Chinese military or friends in the US Defense Department?

Twitter found itself confronting that question this week after it hired Kathy Chen, a former engineer for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), to head up ad sales and business development in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Internet freedom activists and Chinese dissidents, who have to skirt Beijing’s digital censors to use Twitter, said it was a betrayal.

The spat illustrates the delicate balancing act technology companies face as they are forced to expand overseas to grow. In the US, Silicon Valley, like any industry, has embraced and relied on close relationships with former government officials both for technical talent and to help grease the wheels as they confront regulatory issues.

Alphabet’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, recently joined a Department of Defense advisory panel. Facebook recently hired a former director at the US military’s research lab, Darpa. Uber employs Barack Obama’s former campaign manager David Plouffe and Amazon.com tapped his former spokesman Jay Carney.

Published By - Theguardian.com - Sports New, LifeStyle News, Politics news, UK and world political comment and analysis: Thursday 21 April 2016 19.47 BST

Comments

Over 40M people of Irish descent are in the United States, 8x more than the population of Ireland

The Irish people (Irish: Muintir na hÉireann or Na hÉireannaigh) are a nation and ethnic group native to the island of Ireland, who share a common Irish ancestry, identity and culture. Ireland has been inhabited for about 9,000 years according to archaeological studies (see Prehistoric Ireland). For most of Ireland's recorded history, the Irish have been primarily a Gaelic people (see Gaelic Ireland). Anglo-Normans conquered parts of Ireland in the 12th century, while England's 16th/17th century (re)conquest and colonization of Ireland brought a large number of English and Lowland Scots to parts of the island, especially the north. Today, Ireland is made up of the Republic of Ireland (an independent state), and the smaller Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom). The people of Northern Ireland hold various national identities; including Irish, Northern Irish, British, or some combination thereof. The Irish have their own customs, language, music, dance, sports, cuisine,

TIL: On his second day in office, President Jimmy Carter pardoned all evaders of the Vietnam War drafts

This article is about the 39th President of the United States. For the submarine, see USS Jimmy Carter (SSN-23). "James Earl Carter" redirects here. For his father, see James Earl Carter Sr. James Earl "Jimmy" Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. In 2002, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the Carter Center. Carter was a Democrat who was raised in rural Georgia. He was a peanut farmer who served two terms as a Georgia State Senator from 1963 to 1967, and one as the Governor of Georgia from 1971 to 1975. He was elected President in 1976, defeating incumbent President Gerald Ford in a relatively close election; the Electoral College margin of 57 votes was the closest at that time since 1916. On his second day in office, Carter pardoned all evaders of the Vietnam War drafts. During Carter's term as President, two new cabinet-level departments, the Dep

TIL the first animal to ask an existential question was from a parrot named Alex. He asked what color he was, and learned that it was "grey".

Alex (1976 – 6 September 2007) was an African grey parrot and the subject of a thirty-year (1977–2007) experiment by animal psychologist Irene Pepperberg, initially at the University of Arizona and later at Harvard University and Brandeis University. When Alex was about one year old, Pepperberg bought him at a pet shop. The name "Alex" was a backronym for avian language experiment, or avian learning experiment. Before Pepperberg's work with Alex, it was widely believed in the scientific community that a large primate brain was needed to handle complex problems related to language and understanding; birds were not considered to be intelligent, as their only common use of communication was mimicking and repeating sounds to interact with each other. However, Alex's accomplishments supported the idea that birds may be able to reason on a basic level and use words creatively. Pepperberg wrote that Alex's intelligence was on a level similar to dolphins and great apes. S

Bol News

Search This Blog