Is Google Better than the U.S. Military?

“Google should be ashamed,” says Marc Thiessen, the former chief speechwriter for George WMD Bush who is a “is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where he studies and writes about American presidential leadership and counterterrorism” and “writes about general US foreign and defense policy issues and contributes to the AEIdeas blog.” He also writes a twice-weekly column for the Washington Post “on foreign and domestic policy and contributes to the PostPartisan blog,” where his article referenced in my title was initially published before it was posted on the AEI website, a site I frequent because it often has good material.

Not this time. In fact, not any time the subjects of the U.S. military or U.S. foreign policy are addressed.

And why should Google be ashamed?

Not because Google:

  • keeps tabs on everything you’ve ever searched for, on any device, including search histories you’ve deleted from an individual device.
  • knows which apps you’re using, how often, when, where and with whom you’re interacting when you do
  • keeps tabs on every single YouTube video you’ve ever searched for, watched and commented on.
  • has the ability to access your microphone without your knowledge.
  • has maintained an intimate relationship with the National Security Agency (NSA) for a number of years.
  • has every single email you’ve ever sent, received and deleted.

No, Google should be ashamed because: The Free Society Laurence M. Vance Best Price: $13.55 Buy New $17.54 (as of 04:55 UTC - Details)

Giving in to pressure from its workforce, Google recently announced that it is pulling out of Project Maven, a groundbreaking Pentagon program to harness artificial intelligence to sift through and interpret video imagery from drones. The move came after an uprising by 4,000 Google employees who signed a letter urging the company to cancel Project Maven and promise to never “build warfare technology.”

In their letter, Google employees said that “working with the Pentagon would violate Google’s longtime motto “Don’t Be Evil” and “irreparably damage Google’s brand.”

To which the military sycophant Thiessen responded:

Excuse me? Are they saying that the U.S. military is evil? What would damage Google’s brand is the impression that its workforce thinks they are too good to support the men and women of the armed forces who face real evil on distant battlefields so that Google workers can sleep safely in their Google “nap pods,” enjoy free massages and take free guitar lessons.

Thiessen went on to praise the military even more. After mentioning that “Taiwan is Google’s largest R & D center in Asia,” and that Google has announced more large investments in Taiwan, he stated:

Who, exactly, does Google think prevents mainland China from launching a cataclysmic invasion of Taiwan? The men and women of the U.S. military. They provide the security umbrella in East Asia that allows Google to make these investments. The free riders at Google don’t seem to understand that their jobs and livelihoods are built on the foundation of peace and security provided by the U.S. military.

“Our military strength is the best guarantee of peace,” says Thiessen. Even “former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt understands this.” Schmidt “chairs the Defense Innovation Board, advising Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on ways to speed technological innovation of the armed forces.” Schmidt, in congressional testimony, praised Project Maven and urged “closer collaboration” with industry in the development of AI to “ensure American military supremacy,” warning that failure to do so would “would guarantee a loss of superiority on the future battlefield.”

Thiessen concludes that “Schmidt is a patriot who knows that the men and women of our armed forces are not ‘evil’ and that supporting them does not contradict Google’s core values.”

Obviously, Thiessen intended “Is Google better than the U.S. military?” to be a rhetorical question. Nevertheless, I will answer it. Even with all of its faults, Google is certainly better than the U.S. military.

Last time I checked, Google did not do any of these things and bill the taxpayers for the privilege of doing so: Free Trade or Protecti... Laurence M. Vance Buy New $5.95 (as of 04:55 UTC - Details)

  • Make widows and orphans
  • Fight senseless wars
  • Invade other countries
  • Occupy other countries
  • Intervene in other countries
  • Fight foreign wars
  • Kill civilians and dismiss it as collateral damage
  • Transport insurgents and detainees to torture-friendly countries
  • Carry out drone strikes that miss their targets
  • Police the world
  • Fight unnecessary wars
  • Destroy foreign industry, culture, and infrastructure
  • Unleash sectarian violence
  • Take sides in civil wars
  • Fight immoral wars
  • Spread democracy at the point of a gun
  • Engage in offense and call it defense
  • Kill foreigners
  • Enforce no-fly zones in other countries
  • Fight undeclared wars
  • Torture foreigners
  • Bomb other countries
  • Maim and disable foreigners
  • Fight unjust wars
  • Launch preemptive strikes
  • Help carry out an aggressive, reckless, and belligerent U.S. foreign policy
  • Create terrorists, insurgents, and enemies of the United States

As a consequence, no one at Google ever died in vain, for a lie, for a mistake, or for the military/industrial complex.

Of course Google is better than the U.S. military, which is nothing but a global force for evil.