Are Experts Misunderstanding Google Indexing?
April 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Google is not perfect. More and more people are learning that the mystics of Mountain View are working hard every day to deliver revenue. In order to produce more money and profit, one must use Rust to become twice as wonderful than a programmer who labors to make C++ sit up, bark, and roll over. This dispersal of the cloud of unknowing obfuscating the magic of the Google can be helpful. What’s puzzling to me is that what Google does catches people by surprise. For example, consider the “real” news presented in “Google Books Is Indexing AI-Generated Garbage.” The main idea strikes me as:
But one unintended outcome of Google Books indexing AI-generated text is its possible future inclusion in Google Ngram viewer. Google Ngram viewer is a search tool that charts the frequencies of words or phrases over the years in published books scanned by Google dating back to 1500 and up to 2019, the most recent update to the Google Books corpora. Google said that none of the AI-generated books I flagged are currently informing Ngram viewer results.
Thanks, Microsoft Copilot. I enjoyed learning that security is a team activity. Good enough again.
Indexing lousy content has been the core function of Google’s Web search system for decades. Search engine optimization generates information almost guaranteed to drag down how higher-value content is handled. If the flagship provides the navigation system to other ships in the fleet, won’t those vessels crash into bridges?
In order to remediate Google’s approach to indexing requires several basic steps. (I have in various ways shared these ideas with the estimable Google over the years. Guess what? No one cared, understood, and if the Googler understood, did not want to increase overhead costs. So what are these steps? I shall share them:
- Establish an editorial policy for content. Yep, this means that a system and method or systems and methods are needed to determine what content gets indexed.
- Explain the editorial policy and what a person or entity must do to get content processed and indexed by the Google, YouTube, Gemini, or whatever the mystics in Mountain View conjure into existence
- Include metadata with each content object so one knows the index date, the content object creation date, and similar information
- Operate in a consistent, professional manner over time. The “gee, we just killed that” is not part of the process. Sorry, mystics.
Let me offer several observations:
- Google, like any alleged monopoly, faces significant management challenges. Moving information within such an enterprise is difficult. For an organization with a Foosball culture, the task may be a bit outside the wheelhouse of most young people and individuals who are engineers, not presidents of fraternities or sororities.
- The organization is under stress. The pressure is financial because controlling the cost of the plumbing is a reasonably difficult undertaking. Second, there is technical pressure. Google itself made clear that it was in Red Alert mode and keeps adding flashing lights with each and every misstep the firm’s wizards make. These range from contentious relationships with mere governments to individual staff member who grumble via internal emails, angry Googler public utterances, or from observed behavior at conferences. Body language does speak sometimes.
- The approach to smart software is remarkable. Individuals in the UK pontificate. The Mountain View crowd reassures and smiles — a lot. (Personally I find those big, happy looks a bit tiresome, but that’s a dinobaby for you.)
Net net: The write up does not address the issue that Google happily exploits. The company lacks the mental rigor setting and applying editorial policies requires. SEO is good enough to index. Therefore, fake books are certainly A-OK for now.
Stephen E Arnold, April 12, 2024
AI Will Take Jobs for Sure: Money Talks, Humans Walk
April 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Report Shows Managers Eager to Replace or Devalue Workers with AI Tools
Bosses have had it with the worker-favorable labor market that emerged from the pandemic. Fortunately, there is a new option that is happy to be exploited. We learn from TechSpot that a recent “Survey Reveals Almost Half of All Managers Aim to Replace Workers with AI, Could Use It to Lower Wages.” The report is by beautiful.ai, which did its best to spin the results as a trend toward collaboration, not pink slips. Nevertheless, the numbers seem to back up worker concerns. Writer Rog Thubron summarizes:
“A report by Beautiful.ai, which makes AI-powered presentation software, surveyed over 3,000 managers about AI tools in the workplace, how they’re being implemented, and what impact they believe these technologies will have. The headline takeaway is that 41% of managers said they are hoping that they can replace employees with cheaper AI tools in 2024. … The rest of the survey’s results are just as depressing for worried workers: 48% of managers said their businesses would benefit financially if they could replace a large number of employees with AI tools; 40% said they believe multiple employees could be replaced by AI tools and the team would operate well without them; 45% said they view AI as an opportunity to lower salaries of employees because less human-powered work is needed; and 12% said they are using AI in hopes to downsize and save money on worker salaries. It’s no surprise that 62% of managers said that their employees fear that AI tools will eventually cost them their jobs. Furthermore, 66% of managers said their employees fear that AI tools will make them less valuable at work in 2024.”
Managers themselves are not immune to the threat: Half of them said they worry their pay will decrease, and 64% believe AI tools do their jobs better than experienced humans do. At least they are realistic. Beautiful.ai stresses another statistic: 60% of respondents who are already using AI tools see them as augmenting, not threatening, jobs. The firm also emphasizes the number of managers who hope to replace employees with AI decreased “significantly” since last year’s survey. Progress?
Cynthia Murrell, April 12, 2024
The Only Dataset Search Tool: What Does That Tell Us about Google?
April 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
If you like semi-jazzy, academic write ups, you will revel in “Discovering Datasets on the Web Scale: Challenges and Recommendations for Google Dataset Search.” The write up appears in a publication associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s favorite university. It may be worth noting that MIT and Google have teamed to offer a free course in Artificial Intelligence. That is the next big thing which does hallucinate at times while creating considerable marketing angst among the techno-giants jousting to emerge as the go-to source of the technology.
Back to the write up. Google created a search tool to allow a user to locate datasets accessible via the Internet. There are more than 700 data brokers in the US. These outfits will sell data to most people who can pony up the cash. Examples range from six figure fees for the Twitter stream to a few hundred bucks for boat license holders in states without much water.
The write up says:
Our team at Google developed Dataset Search, which differs from existing dataset search tools because of its scope and openness: potentially any dataset on the web is in scope.
A very large, money oriented creature enjoins a worker to gather data. If someone asks, “Why?”, the monster says, “Make up something.” Thanks MSFT Copilot. How is your security today? Oh, that’s too bad.
The write up does the academic thing of citing articles which talk about data on the Web. There is even a table which organizes the types of data discovery tools. The categorization of general and specific is brilliant. Who would have thought there were two categories of a vertical search engine focused on Web-accessible data. I thought there was just one category; namely, gettable. The idea is that if the data are exposed, take them. Asking permission just costs time and money. The idea is that one can apologize and keep the data.
The article includes a Googley graphic. The French portal, the Italian “special” portal, and the Harvard “dataverse” are identified. Were there other Web accessible collections? My hunch is that Google’s spiders such down as one famous Googler said, “All” the world’s information. I will leave it to your imagination to fill in other sources for the dataset pages. (I want to point out that Google has some interesting technology related to converting data sets into normalized data structures. If you are curious about the patents, just write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com, and one of my researchers will send along a couple of US patent numbers. Impressive system and method.)
The section “Making Sense of Heterogeneous Datasets” is peculiar. First, the Googlers discovered the basic fact of data from different sources — The data structures vary. Think in terms of grapes and deer droppings. Second, the data cannot be “trusted.” There is no fix to this issue for the team writing the paper. Third, the authors appear to be unaware of the patents I mentioned, particularly the useful example about gathering and normalizing data about digital cameras. The method applies to other types of processed data as well.
I want to jump to the “beyond metadata” idea. This is the mental equivalent of “popping” up a perceptual level. Metadata are quite important and useful. (Isn’t it odd that Google strips high value metadata from its search results; for example, time and data?) The authors of the paper work hard to explain that the Google approach to data set search adds value by grouping, sorting, and tagging with information not in any one data set. This is common sense, but the Googley spin on this is to build “trust.” Remember: This is an alleged monopolist engaged in online advertising and co-opting certain Web services.
Several observations:
- This is another of Google’s high-class PR moves. Hooking up with MIT and delivering razz-ma-tazz about identifying spiderable content collections in the name of greater good is part of the 2024 Code Red playbook it seems. From humble brag about smart software to crazy assertions like quantum supremacy, today’s Google is a remarkable entity
- The work on this “project” is divorced from time. I checked my file of Google-related information, and I found no information about the start date of a vertical search engine project focused on spidering and indexing data sets. My hunch is that it has been in the works for a while, although I can pinpoint 2006 as a year in which Google’s technology wizards began to talk about building master data sets. Why no time specifics?
- I found the absence of AI talk notable. Perhaps Google does not think a reader will ask, “What’s with the use of these data? I can’t use this tool, so why spend the time, effort, and money to index information from a country like France which is not one of Google’s biggest fans. (Paris was, however, the roll out choice for the answer to Microsoft and ChatGPT’s smart software announcement. Plus that presentation featured incorrect information as I recall.)
Net net: I think this write up with its quasi-academic blessing is a bit of advance information to use in the coming wave of litigation about Google’s use of content to train its AI systems. This is just a hunch, but there are too many weirdnesses in the academic write up to write off as intern work or careless research writing which is more difficult in the wake of the stochastic monkey dust up.
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2024
Google: The DMA Makes Us Harm Small Business
April 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I cannot estimate the number of hours Googlers invested in crafting the short essay “New Competition Rules Come with Trade-Offs.” I find it a work of art. Maybe not the equal of Dante’s La Divina Commedia, but is is darned close.
A deity, possibly associated with the quantumly supreme, reassures a human worried about life. Words are reality, at least to some fretful souls. Thanks MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
The essay pivots on unarticulated and assumed “truths.” Particularly charming are these:
- “We introduced these types of Google Search features to help consumers”
- “These businesses now have to connect with customers via a handful of intermediaries that typically charge large commissions…”
- “We’ve always been focused on improving Google Search….”
The first statement implies that Google’s efforts have been the “help.” Interesting: I find Google search often singularly unhelpful, returning results for malware, biased information, and Google itself.
The second statement indicates that “intermediaries” benefit. Isn’t Google an intermediary? Isn’t Google an alleged monopolist in online advertising?
The third statement is particularly quantumly supreme. Note the word “always.” John Milton uses such verbal efflorescence when describing God. Yes, “always” and improving. I am tremulous.
Consider this lyrical passage and the elegant logic of:
We’ll continue to be transparent about our DMA compliance obligations and the effects of overly rigid product mandates. In our view, the best approach would ensure consumers can continue to choose what services they want to use, rather than requiring us to redesign Search for the benefit of a handful of companies.
Transparent invokes an image of squeaky clean glass in a modern, aluminum-framed window, scientifically sealed to prevent its unauthorized opening or repair by anyone other than a specially trained transparency provider. I like the use of the adjective “rigid” because it implies a sturdiness which may cause the transparent window to break when inclement weather (blasts of hot and cold air from oratorical emissions) stress the see-through structures. The adult-father-knows-best reference in “In our view, the best approach”. Very parental. Does this suggest the EU is childish?
Net net: Has anyone compiled the Modern Book of Google Myths?
Stephen E Arnold, April 11, 2024
Tennessee Sends a Hunk of Burnin’ Love to AI Deep Fakery
April 11, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Leave it the state that houses Music City. NPR reports, “Tennessee Becomes the First State to Protect Musicians and Other Artists Against AI.” Courts have demonstrated existing copyright laws are inadequate in the face of generative AI. This update to the state’s existing law is named the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security Act, or ELVIS Act for short. Clever. Reporter Rebecca Rosman writes:
“Tennessee made history on Thursday, becoming the first U.S. state to sign off on legislation to protect musicians from unauthorized artificial intelligence impersonation. ‘Tennessee is the music capital of the world, & we’re leading the nation with historic protections for TN artists & songwriters against emerging AI technology,’ Gov. Bill Lee announced on social media. While the old law protected an artist’s name, photograph or likeness, the new legislation includes AI-specific protections. Once the law takes effect on July 1, people will be prohibited from using AI to mimic an artist’s voice without permission.”
Prominent artists and music industry groups helped push the bill since it was introduced in January. Flanked by musicians and state representatives, Governor Bill Lee theatrically signed it into law on stage at the famous Robert’s Western World. But what now? In its write-up, “TN Gov. Lee Signs ELVIS Act Into Law in Honky-Tonk, Protects Musicians from AI Abuses,” The Tennessean briefly notes:
“The ELVIS Act adds artist’s voices to the state’s current Protection of Personal Rights law and can be criminally enforced by district attorneys as a Class A misdemeanor. Artists—and anyone else with exclusive licenses, like labels and distribution groups—can sue civilly for damages.”
While much of the music industry is located in and around Nashville, we imagine most AI mimicry does not take place within Tennessee. It is tricky to sue someone located elsewhere under state law. Perhaps this legislation’s primary value is as an example to lawmakers in other states and, ultimately, at the federal level. Will others be inspired to follow the Volunteer State’s example?
Cynthia Murrell, April 11, 2024
Has Google Aligned Its AI Messaging for the AI Circus?
April 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I followed the announcements at the Google shindig Cloud Next. My goodness, Google’s Code Red has produced quite a new announcements. However, I want to ask a simple question, “Has Google organized its AI acts under one tent?” You can wallow in the Google AI news because TechMeme on April 10, 2024, has a carnival midway of information.
I want to focus on one facet: The enterprise transformation underway. Google wants to cope with Microsoft’s pushing AI into the enterprise, into the Manhattan chatbot, and into the government. One example of what Google envisions is what Google calls “genAI agents.” Explaining scripts with smarts requires a diagram. Here’s one, courtesy of Constellation Research:
Look at the diagram. The “customer”, which is the organization, is at the center of a Googley world: plumbing, models, and a “platform.” Surrounding this core with the customer at the center are scripts with smarts. These will do customer functions. This customer, of course, is the customer of the real customer, the organization. The genAI agents will do employee functions, creative functions, data functions, code functions, and security functions. The only missing function is the “paying Google function,” but that is baked into the genAI approach.
If one accepts the myriad announcements as the “as is” world of Google AI, the Cloud Next conference will have done its job. If you did not get the memo, you may see the Googley diagram as the work of enthusiastic marketers. The quantumly supreme lingo as more evidence that Code Red has been one output of the Code Red initiative.
I want to call attention, however, to the information in the allegedly accurate “Google DeepMind’s CEO Reportedly Thinks It’ll Be Tough to Catch Up with OpenAI’s Sora.” The write up states:
Google DeepMind CEO may think OpenAI’s text-to-video generator, Sora, has an edge. Demis Hassabis told a colleague it’d be hard for Google to draw level with Sora … The Information reported. His comments come as Big Tech firms compete in an AI race to build rival products.
Am I to believe the genAI system can deliver what enterprises, government organizations, and non governmental entities want: Ways to cut costs and operate in a smarter way?
If I tell myself, “Believe Google’s Cloud Next statements?” Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, OpenAI, and others should fold their tents, put their animals back on the train, and head to another city in Kansas.
If I tell myself, “Google is not delivering and one cannot believe the company which sells ads and outputs weird images of ethnically interesting historical characters,” then the advertising company is a bit disjointed.
Several observations:
- The YouTube content processing issues are an indication that Google is making interesting decisions which may have significant legal consequences related to copyright
- The senior managers who are in direct opposition about their enthusiasm for Google’s AI capabilities need to get in the same book and preferably read from the same page
- The assertions appear to be marketing which is less effective than Microsoft’s at this time.
Net net: The circus has some tired acts. The Sundar and Prabhakar Show seemed a bit tired. The acts were better than those features on the Gong Show but not as scintillating as performances on the Masked Singer. But what about search? Oh, it’s great. And that circus train. Is it powered by steam?
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2024
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One Google Gem: Reflections about a Digital Zircon
April 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have a Google hat, and I don’t think I will wear it to my local burrito restaurant. I just read “The Beginning of the End?” That’s a snappy title for End of Times’s types, but the sub-title is a corker:
More of us are moving away from Google towards TikTok and AI chatbots — as research reveals that the golden era of search engines may well be over
Thanks, MSFT Copilot. How are you coming with your security? Good enough, perhaps?
The most interesting assertion in the essay is that generative AI (the software that writes résumés for RIF’ed blue chip consultants and SEO professionals) is not particularly good. Doesn’t everyone make up facts today? I think that’s popular with college presidents, but I may be wrong because I am thinking about Harvard and Stanford at the moment. I noted this statement:
The surveys reveal that the golden era of search engines might be coming to an end, as consumers increasingly turn towards AI chatbots for their information needs. However, as Chris Sheehan, SVP Strategic Accounts and AI at Applause sums up, “Chatbots are getting better at dealing with toxicity, bias and inaccuracy – however, concerns still remain. Not surprisingly, switching between chatbots to accomplish different tasks is common, while multimodal capabilities are now table stakes. To gain further adoption, chatbots need to continue to train models on quality data in specific domains and thoroughly test across a diverse user base to drive down toxicity and inaccuracy.”
Well, by golly, I am not going to dispute the chatbot subject with an expert from Applause. (Give me a hand, please.) I would like to capture these observations:
- Google is an example of what happens when the high school science club gets aced by a group with better PR. Yep, I am thinking about MSFT’s OpenAI, Mistral, and Inflection deals. The outputs may be wonky, but the buzz has been consistent for more than a year. Tinnitus can drive some creatures to distraction.
- Google does a wonderful job delivering Smoothies to regulators in the US and the EU. However, engineering wizards can confuse a calm demeanor and Teflon talk with real managerial and creative capabilities. Nope. Smooth and running a company while innovating are a potentially harmful mixture.
- The challenge of cost control remains a topic few Google experts want to discuss. Even the threat of a flattening or, my goodness, a decline will alter the priorities of those wizards in charge. I was reviewing my notes about what makes Google tick, and the theme in my notes for the last 15 years appears to be money. Money intake, money capture, money in certain employees’ pockets, money for lobbyists, and money for acquisitions, etc. etc.
Net net: Criticizing Google through the filter of ChatGPT is interesting, but the Google lacks the managerial talent to make lemonade from lemons or money from a single alleged monopoly. Thus, consultant surveys and flawed smart software are interesting, but they miss the point of what ails Googzilla: Cost control, regulations, and its PR magnet losing its attraction.
Stephen E Arnold, April 10, 2024
Meta Warns Limiting US AI Sharing Diminishes Influence
April 10, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Limiting tech information is a way organizations and governments prevent bad actors from using them for harmful reasons. Whether repressing the information is good or bad is a topic for debate, big tech leaders don’t want limitations. Yahoo Finance reports on what Meta thinks about the issue: “Meta Says Limits On Sharing AI Technology May Dim US Influence.”
Nick Clegg is Meta Platform’s policy chief and he told the US government that if they prevented tech companies from sharing AI technology publicly (aka open source) it would damage America’s influence on AI development. Clegg’s statement is alluding to if “if you don’t let us play, we can’t make the rules.” In more politically correct and also true words, Clegg argued that a more “restrictive approach” would mean other nations’ tech could become the “global norm.” It sounds like the old imperial vs. metric measurements argument.
Open source code is fundamentally for advancing new technology. Many big tech companies want to guard their proprietary code so they can exploit it for profits. Others, like Clegg, appear to want global industry influence for higher revenue margins and encourage new developments.
Meta’s argument for keeping the technology open may resonate with the current presidential administration and Congress. For years, efforts to pass legislation that restricts technology companies’ business practices have all died in Congress, including bills meant to protect children on social media, to limit tech giants from unfairly boosting their own products, and to safeguard users’ data online.
But other bills aimed at protecting American business interests have had more success, including the Chips and Science Act, passed in 2022 to support US chipmakers while addressing national security concerns around semiconductor manufacturing. Another bill targeting Chinese tech giant ByteDance Ltd. and its popular social network, TikTok, is awaiting a vote in the Senate after passing in the House earlier this month.”
Restricting technology sounds like the argument about controlling misinformation. False information does harm society but it begs the argument “what is to be considered harmful?” Another similarity is the use of a gun or car. Cars and guns are essential and dangerous tools to modern society, but in the wrong hands they’re deadly weapons.
Whitney Grace, April 10, 2024
Social Scoring Is a Thing and in Use in the US and EU Now
April 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Social scoring is a thing.
The EU AI regulations are not too keen on slapping an acceptability number on people or a social score. That’s a quaint idea because the mechanisms for doing exactly that are available. Furthermore, these are not controlled by the EU, and they are not constrained in a meaningful way in the US. The availability of mechanisms for scoring a person’s behaviors chug along within the zippy world of marketing. For those who pay attention to policeware and intelware, many of the mechanisms are implemented in specialized software.
Will the two match up? Thanks, MSFT Copilot. Good enough.
There’s a good rundown of the social scoring tools in “The Role of Sentiment Analysis in Marketing.” The content is focused on uses “emotional” and behavioral signals to sell stuff. However, the software and data sets yield high value information for other purposes. For example, an individual with access to data about the video viewing and Web site browsing about a person or a cluster of persons can make some interesting observations about that person or group.
Let me highlight some of the software mentioned in the write up. There is an explanation of the discipline of “sentiment analysis.” A person engaged in business intelligence, investigations, or planning a disinformation campaign will have to mentally transcode the lingo into a more practical vocabulary, but that’s no big deal. The write up then explains how “sentiment analysis” makes it possible to push a person’s buttons. The information makes clear that a service with a TikTok-type recommendation system or feed of “you will probably like this” can exert control over an individual’s ideas, behavior, and perception of what’s true or false.
The guts of the write up is a series of brief profiles of eight applications available to a marketer, PR team, or intelligence agency’s software developers. The products described are:
- Sprout Social. Yep, it’s wonderful. The company wrote the essay I am writing about.
- Reputation. Hello, social scoring for “trust” or “influence”
- Monkeylearn. What’s the sentiment of content? Monkeylearn can tell you.
- Lexalytics. This is an old-timer in sentiment analysis.
- Talkwalker. A content scraper with analysis and filter tools. The company is not “into” over-the-transom inquiries
If you have been thinking about the EU’s AI regulations, you might formulate an idea that existing software may irritate some regulators. My team and I think that AI regulations may bump into companies and government groups already using these tools. Working out the regulatory interactions between AI regulations and what has been a reasonably robust software and data niche will be interesting.
In the meantime, ask yourself, “How many intelware and policeware systems implement either these tools or similar tools?” In my AI presentation at the April 2024 US National Cyber Crime Conference, I will provide a glimpse of the future by describing a European company which includes some of these functions. Regulations do not control technology nor innovation.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2024
Information: Cheap, Available, and Easy to Obtain
April 9, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I worked in Sillycon Valley and learned a few factoids I found somewhat new. Let me highlight three. First, a person with whom my firm had a business relationship told me, “Chinese people are Chinese for their entire life.” I interpreted this to mean that a person from China might live in Mountain View, but that individual had ties to his native land. That makes sense but, if true, the statement has interesting implications. Second, another person told me that there was a young person who could look at a circuit board and then reproduce it in sufficient detail to draw a schematic. This sounded crazy to me, but the individual took this person to meetings, discussed his company’s interest in upcoming products, and asked for briefings. With the delightful copying machine in tow, this person would have information about forthcoming hardware, specifically video and telecommunications devices. And, finally, via a colleague I learned of an individual who was a naturalized citizen and worked at a US national laboratory. That individual swapped hard drives in photocopy machines and provided them to a family member in his home town in Wuhan. Were these anecdotes true or false? I assumed each held a grain of truth because technology adepts from China and other countries comprised a significant percentage of the professionals I encountered.
Information flows freely in US companies and other organizational entities. Some people bring buckets and collect fresh, pure data. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. If anyone knows about security, you do. Good enough.
I thought of these anecdotes when I read an allegedly accurate “real” news story called “Linwei Ding Was a Google Software Engineer. He Was Also a Prolific Thief of Trade Secrets, Say Prosecutors.” The subtitle is a bit more spicy:
U.S. officials say some of America’s most prominent tech firms have had their virtual pockets picked by Chinese corporate spies and intelligence agencies.
The write up, which may be shaped by art history majors on a mission, states:
Court records say he had others badge him into Google buildings, making it appear as if he were coming to work. In fact, prosecutors say, he was marketing himself to Chinese companies as an expert in artificial intelligence — while stealing 500 files containing some of Google’s most important AI secrets…. His case illustrates what American officials say is an ongoing nightmare for U.S. economic and national security: Some of America’s most prominent tech firms have had their virtual pockets picked by Chinese corporate spies and intelligence agencies.
Several observations about these allegedly true statements are warranted this fine spring day in rural Kentucky:
- Some managers assume that when an employee or contractor signs a confidentiality agreement, the employee will abide by that document. The problem arises when the person shares information with a family member, a friend from school, or with a company paying for information. That assumption underscores what might be called “uninformed” or “naive” behavior.
- The language barrier and certain cultural norms lock out many people who assume idle chatter and obsequious behavior signals respect and conformity with what some might call “US business norms.” Cultural “blindness” is not uncommon.
- Individuals may possess technical expertise unknown to colleagues and contracting firms offering body shop services. Armed with knowledge of photocopiers in certain US government entities, swapping out a hard drive is no big deal. A failure to appreciate an ability to draw a circuit leads to similar ineptness when discussing confidential information.
America operates in a relatively open manner. I have lived and worked in other countries, and that openness often allows information to flow. Assumptions about behavior are not based on an understanding of the cultural norms of other countries.
Net net: The vulnerability is baked in. Therefore, information is often easy to get, difficult to keep privileged, and often aided by companies and government agencies. Is there a fix? No, not without a bit more managerial rigor in the US. Money talks, moving fast and breaking things makes sense to many, and information seeps, maybe floods, from the resulting cracks. Whom does one trust? My approach: Not too many people regardless of background, what people tell me, or what I believe as an often clueless American.
Stephen E Arnold, April 9, 2024
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