What a grim irony it is to see Google, the company that claimed ‘Don’t be evil‘ as its official motto and code of conduct, only to jump swiftly at the opportunity to equip the Pentagon’s combat drones with it’s DeepMind artificial intelligence. These are the same drones that murder far more innocent civilians than “militants”, whatever the hell that means, and are running wild all over the Third World. To their credit, over 3,000 Google employees, citing the ‘Don’t be evil’ motto, demanded that their employer end contract work with the Pentagon.
Google, in effect, has become just the latest cog in the military-industrial complex churning out machines of war to be deployed in the various endless wars that our government is currently engaged in. One can imagine Google drones flying over Syria soon, and even Iran.
I believe that almost everyone, and every company has a price, but at least drop the sanctimony. Evil is in the eye of the beholder, and when the price is right, that term can become almost infinitely elastic. It can even be twisted to mean its opposite.
What we have to fear most are people with tremendous power over our lives and who also believe they have the ability to distinguish between good and evil.
I was reminded of Google’s ridiculous motto while watching the eighth episode of season 3 of the tragically cancelled greatest show on television, Ash vs. the Evil Dead. Shotgun-and-chainsaw wielding slacker Ash Williams, upon seeing his teenage daughter’s fear and hopelessness as they are being dragged to Hell inside his Delta 88, reminds her, “Evil is not the boss of us!”, before gunning the car up out of the reach of the Deadites, plowing over the Grim Reaper himself, and reaching safety. Again, a tragedy that the show was cancelled.
“Don’t be evil” is only sincere when citizens use it to chide their own government and the architects of the Surveillance State that are in the Pentagon’s pocket. Government is the entity that is supposed to be residing in a Constitutionally-erected prison, because, if not, they will build one around us, and use power-and-money hungry dipshits in companies like Google to accomplish it.
